BELLOWS FALLS — The headline “The shame of Bellows Falls” [Editorial, Dec. 14] certainly caught my eye.
I am a full-time resident, homeowner, and taxpayer in Bellows Falls. I was not involved in the Greater Falls Warming Shelter, and I've never met any of the people who are responsible for creating or running it.
I was confused when I read the stories and the conflicting opinions expressed in the letters to the editor in the local press concerning the closing of the shelter.
At first, I was on the fence and unsure of how I felt about all of this; I could see truth on both sides of the arguments put forth.
I'm retired, and I give a lot of my time to volunteer efforts in Bellows Falls and in the larger community. I volunteer at the Bellows Falls train depot, covering responsibilities there occasionally to give folks a break on holidays.
Recently, on a very cold, 9-degree morning, as I was unlocking the train station, a man, about 60 or so, on crutches with bleeding hands hobbled to the door. He'd clearly been out in the cold all night.
He had a plastic grocery bag with some soap and a razor and he asked if he could use the bathroom. He was in there nearly an hour washing up, getting warm.
The bus came and went, and it was time to close the station. I asked if I could drive him home. I partly wanted to find out if he had a home. He didn't want to tell me much about himself, but he said, “Yeah, you could drive me across the river.”
His leg was seriously injured. He was obviously in real pain, and he could hardly get himself into the seat of my truck. He had me drop him off outside a convenience store across the river. He said someone was coming to pick him up, but I felt certain that wasn't true.
After that experience, I was no longer on the fence. I decided to get involved and see if I could help.
On Sunday, Dec. 18, there was a training session for folks who were interested in volunteering at One Hundred Nights in Keene. The understanding I took from that gathering was that the monies that had been given and allocated through various grants and donations to the Greater Falls Warming Shelter would be made available to One Hundred Nights so that they could get something up and running here this winter, to simply keep people from freezing to death while GFWS was pursuing its various appeals.
So I've signed on to volunteer with that group. One Hundred Nights has been running (at their own expense) a van to Bellows Falls every night at 7 p.m. to pick up anyone who needs shelter and take them to Keene for the night. They bring them back to BF at 7 in the morning.
My friend and I did the intake shift at One Hundred Nights on Christmas Eve. I was impressed by the professional, yet genuinely caring, energy displayed by the staff there. One Hundred Nights is very well organized, pristinely clean and orderly. The people coming to the shelter were well behaved, friendly, respectful of the very reasonable - yet quite firmly enforced - rules, and extremely grateful for the services offered.
That night, the One Hundred Nights van brought an elderly couple from Bellows Falls. It was the second night they'd come to Keene for shelter and, as of this writing, they've been coming there every night since. The man is 57 years old; the woman is 67 years old. The woman is disabled and uses a walker.
They arrived shivering to the bone; the woman especially was looking very weak and frail. They just kept quietly to themselves, sat in the front of the room reading books until it was time to bed down. We gave them two lower bunks beside each other and close to the bathroom.
It was Christmas Eve.
It was 11 degrees outside when I went in to open the train station on Christmas morning. I kept wondering where that couple had gone on this Christmas Day. Where could they get warm? Everything was closed and still on Christmas morning.
At 8:30, I heard adult male voices coming from a vacant factory building next door to the train depot. Windows in the building were broken, and it appeared to me that homeless people had taken refuge there during the night. Tents, blankets, warm clothing are not enough to keep people alive who have no shelter in a New England winter!
Even if one is ready to cast aside simple, heartfelt concerns for one's fellows in need, the dangers of allowing people to be homeless and cold are significant to the entire community.
I can see from my front porch curls of smoke rising from the woods on the ridge top where no houses exist. Are cold people building fires there to keep warm?
I moved here from Baltimore, Md., where I witnessed incidents of death, destruction, and horror when homeless people, encamped in empty warehouses, attempted to warm themselves building small fires. This was one of the many reasons I left that sad city and relocated to Vermont, where I hoped to find like-minded people who genuinely cared about their communities.
There are different reasons why someone turns to a warming shelter. Many men are disabled veterans who never quite got back on their feet after returning from war. Often, there will be young women with kids, women who have fled their home that night from an abusive partner, old people who can't afford to heat their homes, recently evicted families in desperate and immediate need.
Tents, blankets, and warm clothing do not cut it and, from my understanding, there's a good bit of money that should be made available, immediately, to address this concern - monies that were given or earmarked for the purpose of doing much better.
If you had been in my shoes on this Christmas Eve, you too would have been very ashamed.