Bush's 'Points of Light' Honorees Will Outlast President's Tenure : Volunteerism: Whereas others might wring their hands at the crush of social ills, these folks are uncommonly optimistic.

By DAVID FOSTER

Jan. 3, 1993 12 AM PT

ASSOCIATED PRESS

“We live in a peaceful, prosperous time,” President Bush said at his 1989 inauguration, urging Americans to help their poorer neighbors.

Later that year, he began his “1,000 Points of Light” program, a daily recognition of volunteers whose good deeds supported the President’s belief that government alone cannot solve society’s ills.

The recognitions still are being made; President Bush honored Boston-area youth group Gang Peace on New Year’s Eve as the 1,000th Daily Point of Light.

Times have changed since Bush took office. Today, the nation is struggling out of a recession and a new Administration less averse to government intervention is entering the White House.

Is volunteerism still a priority in hard times? Are the Points of Light still shining?

Spend time with some of them, and answers start to surface.

They are a varied lot--a dentist who pulls teeth for free, a little girl who collects cans of food, a woman who teaches chess to children--but they share a confidence that their gifts, no matter how small, are worth giving.

They share something else too. Whereas others might wring their hands at the crush of social ills, these volunteers are uncommonly optimistic. There is no time to be discouraged by a problem, they will explain, when you’re busy trying to solve it.

Isis Johnson stood outside a New Orleans supermarket as grown-ups hustled by. “Would you bring out a canned good to help the homeless?” she asked each one.

At age 8, Isis is an expert at reading faces. People who smile on their way in, she noted, are more likely to buy food to donate on their way out.

“When they won’t be buying, their faces are down,” she said. “Or they look at me like, ‘What is the matter with her?’ ”

That doesn’t happen often. Each year since 1989, Isis has collected thousands of cans of food before Christmas and given it to the poor and hungry of New Orleans.

Her collections have made Isis a celebrity, bringing her the key to the city, TV appearances and recognition as Point of Light No. 779.

But there have been sacrifices, too.

Collecting is squeezed in between homework and appearances at churches, on news shows and in the city’s Christmas parade. She even had to drop her beloved ballet lessons.

But Isis keeps collecting, spurred by her family’s encouragement and a child’s simple view of right and wrong.

It started when she was 4. Isis saw a news show about famine in Ethiopia, said her grandmother, Claudette Jones.

“Gramma, why these children have flies all over and got big stomachs and little bitty hands?” Jones recalls Isis asking. Jones told her the children were starving, and Isis started to cry.

“We have chicken in there. We can send it to them,” she said.

Jones tried to explain that it wasn’t so easy, but the little girl persisted. She asked if hungry children lived in New Orleans.

When her grandmother said yes, Isis announced her plan: “Let’s go all over the state . . . and knock door to door and tell them people are hungry and need food.”

One by one, the children of Cornelius, Ore., climbed into Dr. Lee Emery’s examining chair and opened mouths of poverty.

Oscar, 6, was first. His four upper front teeth were black, rotted from too much candy. Then came 5-year-old Mario. Nineteen of his 20 teeth would have to be pulled or filled.

Emery, a pediatric dentist, looked at the roomful of children and mothers who waited patiently for the free dental care he was providing in this farming town west of Portland.

It was going to be a busy day.

“When we started this program, we got overwhelmed,” he said. “We tried to do everything for everybody, but you just can’t.”

Emery, 54, could easily pretend these children didn’t exist. He has a busy private practice in Portland.

But once a month, he closes his office and volunteers with the Mobile Medical and Dental Care Unit, a group of more 100 doctors, dentists and medical technicians providing free care to the poor in rural Oregon. The group was named Point of Light No. 403.

The cramped medical van has the essentials but not much more, and the dentistry Emery must practice is the same. There’s no time for doing cosmetic work or filling small cavities. A lot of teeth get pulled.

The parents appreciate it, nonetheless.

Arturo Echeverria, an unemployed farm laborer, said his 6-year-old son would not have seen a dentist if not for the free van. Dental bills are too steep, and health insurance is out of the question.

“We’re barely making it now,” he said, watching as Emery pulled four decayed teeth from his son’s mouth. “I wouldn’t be able to make the payments.”

Emery worked efficiently and happily, a master at the dentist’s art of one-sided conversation.

He said he loves volunteering--even though it costs him $1,000 a day in salaries and lost income.

“When you have certain skills, I feel you should do something with them,” he said. “It sure would be a better world if everybody did a little bit.”

Faye Turner’s rise to volunteerism was born of desperation.

Five years ago, when multiple sclerosis forced her husband to quit his truck-driving job, the homemaker in Spring, Tex., was thrust into the job market at age 40.

Bill collectors were calling, and employers were unimpressed by the wife’s resume, dominated by 20 years of running a household and driving kids to Boy Scout meetings.

With few other options, Turner used her rusty skills in art to start her own company making hand-painted signs.

She called it Sign Magic, and Turner did more than succeed; two years later, she started helping others in her predicament.

She founded a nonprofit organization called “Women Helping Women,” which offers training to battered wives, widows, divorcees and others who need help entering the job market.

The program, Point of Light No. 494, started by teaching sign-painting. Now, with help from other volunteers and businesses, the program provides training in 10 disciplines, from carpet installation to automotive repair.

The program also provides baby-sitting, transportation and counseling--anything to remove barriers keeping a woman from getting started on her own. Sixty-two women in training will graduate this month, “and we have jobs for all of them,” Turner said.

Though the service is free, it’s no handout. Turner disdains welfare, saying it perpetuates poverty. Women who complete the training are expected to help new trainees.

“It’s called networking,” Turner said. “Men have been doing it for years. We can do it too.”

She considers it part of an “Old West” ethic of people helping people.

“When you were part of a wagon train and your wheel broke, everyone helped you fix it and kept going. That’s how this should be,” she said. “I really do think communities can really go back to helping themselves.”

President Bush named her Point of Light No. 793, but the kids just call her “Nana.”

Irene Dixon-Darnell, 72, is the chess-playing grandmother of Reno, Nev., and she uses her passion for the game to reach children in a unique way.

“When a kid learns this game, they become addicts, they become obsessed,” she said. “And they learn to think.”

Two years ago, Dixon-Darnell brought a chess board to a latch-key program where she volunteered. To her surprise, two 5-year-olds took immediate interest and caught on fast.

Since then, she has introduced more than 300 youngsters to chess.

Friday nights find her at the YWCA, overseeing the Young Masters Chess Club. The group’s motto: “Push Pawns, Not Drugs.” Weekdays, she runs chess classes at the Virginia Palmer Elementary School.

During one recent session, 22 third-graders eagerly burst into the school cafeteria, some calling out “Nana, Nana” before settling down at the chess boards.

“It’s fun. It’s like a battle,” said James Ubben, age 8.

“It’s cool,” said Louis Vital, also 8. “You have to see every move.”

Teachers say attention spans lengthen and grades improve among the chess players.

“They have to think ahead about the consequences of their next move,” teacher Maryann Warren said. “I’m just amazed third-graders can learn this complicated a game.”

There may be more pressing social problems. But chess is Dixon-Darnell’s gift, and she said she’s glad to have found a way to share it. She wonders how many other elderly people are out there with untapped talents.

If government wants to help society, she said, it should fund programs such as Foster Grandparents. Too many seniors lose their sense of worth when they retire, she said.

“Give them a reason to get up in the morning and get dressed,” she said. “Aren’t we wasting all this experience?”

At least twice a week, Terry Pendleton starts work at 4 a.m. as transportation manager at the Indianapolis headquarters of the Kroger Co. supermarket chain.

She doesn’t have to start that early. She does it so she’ll have time after work with her “kids”--the children in her basketball league at an inner-city elementary school.

Pendleton, 32, is among hundreds of Kroger employees who have volunteered in the seven years since the company--Point of Light No. 747--started a Partners-in-Education project with Daniel Webster School 46.

Today, Kroger employees do so much at the school that a separate calendar is printed to keep track: basketball leagues, counseling, dinners out, shopping trips, field trips to museums and zoos. The company also provides $20,000 annually in college scholarships.

Principal Phyllis Imel credits Kroger President Ted Engel with beginning the corporate sponsorship--but Kroger employees clearly have taken the project to heart.

Pendleton said her 14-hour work-and-volunteer days can be physically exhausting, but it’s all worth it to her.

“The students at the school have become like family,” she said. “Their smiles are my reward.”

Six years ago, Hugh Larkins Jr. suffered a severe brain injury in a car accident. He was comatose for 22 days and doctors didn’t expect him to live.

When he emerged from the coma, doctors at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn., told Larkins he never would walk again. After nine months in a wheelchair he was standing. Six months later he threw his cane away.

Today, at 36, Larkins is a walking, talking inspiration, volunteering full time at the Vanderbilt rehabilitation center.

He runs errands all day, making copies and transporting mail, records and patients throughout the hospital. As he goes, he makes sure to drop in on patients who have suffered brain injuries.

It’s not so much what he says to them that matters. It’s what he has done.

“It’s been really good for them to see him standing up and working, while they’re in wheelchairs,” said physical therapist Skip Brown. “It gives them something to shoot for.”

Larkins, Point of Light No. 667, hopes that President-elect Clinton will continue recognizing volunteerism in some way.

“He has to,” Larkins said. “It’s so important.”

For Larkins, it’s no less than a strategy for survival.

“Volunteering is therapy,” he said. “I really believe that.”

A former body-builder who once placed fifth in the Mr. Nashville contest, Larkins still walks with a limp and cannot fully extend his right arm.

“I’m still not where I want to be,” he said. “But I’m optimistic that it will come.”

He shares his optimism with the patients he sees.

“Never quit,” Larkins tells them. “Don’t ever quit.”

As for the 1,000th Point of Light, the Boston-area youth group Gang Peace was accorded that honor Thursday.

The group’s 1,500 volunteers work to steer young people away from crime and drugs by giving them opportunities the schools and streets often don’t. It offers education on and tools for dozens of professions: a recording studio, courses in architecture, buttons and clothing for would-be entrepreneurs to sell.

“Kids leave school, and they don’t know how to get from A to B--they can’t see beyond the drug sales, stabbings and stickup artists,” said Rodney Dailey, a former gang member and drug addict who founded the group in 1990.

Dailey, 36, overcame his own addiction to get an education. He attended a community college and then the University of Massachusetts, where he got a degree in management of human resources.

The White House said there was nothing special about No. 1,000, and noted that Bush intends to keep naming honorees until his last day in office, 1,020 in all.