Once-prosperous family struggling on the edge

DALLAS - (KRT) - Standing on a street corner in Coppell, Texas, last winter, Sheila Wessenberg questioned her sanity as she turned desperately toward a line of cars, held out a coffee can and prayed that someone would drop money in it.

"There is just no other way," she remembers telling herself. "This is what you've got to do."

A suburban mother of two, Wessenberg breathed in exhaust fumes, dodged impatient drivers and netted $13 that day. When she ran into the nearby Tom Thumb to spend the money on potatoes, milk and coffee, she says it felt as though everyone in the grocery store was watching her.

"Of course, they had just seen me out there on the corner begging for money so people were curious about what I was buying," she recalls. "The store seemed much quieter than normal. It was like something cosmic happened to me. It was so weird."

Desperation can be a disorienting journey when you've always lived a middle-class life.

Wessenberg, 44, says she resorted to panhandling because there was no other way to feed her children after her husband lost his job. But her desperate act may be something more - a sign perhaps - that the so-called American dream is going seriously awry for some families.

"It just got really, really bad," she recalls – until it got to the point where neither she nor her husband was sleeping anymore.

"We'd gotten to the point where we were living on credit cards," recalls Bob Wessenberg, her husband of almost eight years. "That's when you know you're pretty near the bottom. When the credit card bills catch up to you, you're done."

So swallowing her pride, Sheila Wessenberg spent eight Sundays last winter panhandling on suburban street corners. She got good enough at it that she netted about $15 an hour, just enough for groceries.

What her donors couldn't know was that the smiling woman - toting a can labeled "Not a bum. I'm a mom, please help" - had been through hell before she planted herself on that street corner.

In the previous year, Wessenberg had been diagnosed with breast cancer. After her husband lost his six-figure job, she had to stop chemotherapy treatments. There was no way the family could afford health insurance when the premiums jumped to $837 a month. Her doctor gave her 18 months to live.

"More than once, I asked God, `What did I do to deserve this?'" Sheila Wessenberg says.

Public begging was a last resort in a long and painful process of dismantling their previous life. First, they liquidated his pension plan and cashed in their stock portfolio. Then they moved out of an expensive condominium in Las Colinas, Texas. And, finally, they sold off nonessentials such as her fur coat and jewelry, any furniture with value and even their washer and dryer.

Friends and family did what they could, say the Wessenbergs. But there was nothing, short of a good job, that would stop the family's downward spiral.

"It just breaks your heart watching them go through all this," says her close friend Tonya Perrine. "Sheila is the strongest person I've ever met."

Sheila Wessenberg's mother and six siblings have tried to be supportive from afar, sending money when they had it, visiting whenever possible.

"We'd love it if Sheila would move back here," says her mother, Sheila Sabbagh, who lives on Staten Island in New York City. "But things have changed since she left here 14 years ago. And we know that Sheila loves being in Texas. She won't give up on what she wants. She is quite a fighter."

A native of Brooklyn, N.Y., Wessenberg says she is resisting the temptation to return to New York City with her family. She worries about being forced to ride in the overcrowded subway again and live in claustrophobic conditions. Whatever comfort her husband and children might derive from being near other relatives would be diminished by such a dramatic culture change, she fears.

"The quality of life in Texas is much better," Wessenberg says firmly. "We just have to hope that the next time that phone rings it will be a job that turns all this around."

There have been some high points in the months of struggling to keep food on the table. In the midst of her panhandling effort, Wessenberg shared her family's story with a San Francisco freelance writer, who was compiling a book about 41 uninsured Americans - a group meant to represent the 41 million people in the United States who have no health insurance.

In the book, "Denied: The Crisis of America's Uninsured," author Julie Winokur wrote that "the Wessenbergs are running out of time and options." (The book was published in April and is available online at talkingeyesmedia.org for $10.)

The family's hard-luck story was plucked from the book, along with photographs showing Sheila Wessenberg panhandling, and was published in The New York Times Magazine on Feb. 9. Almost immediately, the Wessenbergs were inundated with phone calls of support, cards and letters containing cash and the promise of larger donations that would cover their house payments and other bills for a time.

As wonderful as the outpouring was, it forced the Wessenbergs to acknowledge how desperately they needed the money. "I've never asked for charity before. That's a fact," Bob Wessenberg stresses. "It's not a good feeling. But sometimes, there are no options."

Along with money, well-wishers sent groceries, clothing and toys. A Canadian company offered free chemo drugs if Sheila Wessenberg needs to take them again. And someone anonymously sent a new washer and dryer to their house.

Pretty soon, it was clear that the Wessenbergs were basking in their proverbial "15 minutes of fame," complete with the couple's appearance on the "Today" show in March. Asked on national television if she would panhandle again if her family needed money, Sheila Wessenberg responded: "You bet. To save my family, to go out and feed my kids, I sure would – in a heartbeat."

While she hasn't gone back to panhandling, it is not because their lives have returned to normal. In fact, six months after the national publicity about their plight, the Wessenbergs are still heavily dependent on the generosity of strangers.

"We saved our house," Sheila Wessenberg says of their now caught-up mortgage payments. "The American public has come to our rescue in a major way."

But the generosity of strangers has not eased Bob Wessenberg's desperate search for the kind of job that would stabilize the family's situation. Each month, it seems, he lowers his expectations as he applies for every possible opening, including sales positions at local retail outlets.

"They read my resume and they figure if they hired me, I'd be gone in three weeks if something better came up," says the long-time computer programmer, who is certified to operate Lotus Notes, software used by businesses for messaging and document sharing.

But there are glimmers of hope. Bob Wessenberg signed a two-month contract in June to provide computer support at TXU Corp. "We can tread water as long as the contract lasts," he says. If the contract is not renewed, however, he will again be looking for a job.

It would be easy to blame the economy for his lingering unemployment. But Bob Wessenberg's fears go much deeper. He's worried that he has reached an age – 52 – that means snagging a well-paying permanent job with full insurance benefits may no longer be possible in his field.

Although he's well groomed and physically fit, Wessenberg doesn't try to disguise his graying hair. He wonders if his appearance automatically eliminates him from competition with younger workers.

"If they're looking at a guy who's 52 years old and wants a full-time job," he says, "and a guy in his 30s or 40s, it's tough to get anyone to listen to you."

While Wessenberg has landed a series of temporary jobs, usually earning between $11 and $14 an hour, they don't come close to paying for the comfortable life the Wessenbergs once knew, or even the scaled-down version they've been living for the past 18 months.

Although the Wessenbergs were able to buy a small house in Coppell a year ago with no down payment, they can afford to use the air-conditioning only sparingly and have learned to ignore the serious repair work the house needs. Last winter, they scoured the neighborhood for tree limbs to burn in the living-room fireplace, instead of using the furnace. They cut corners at every conceivable financial turn.

"I can now feed a family of four for $1.50," Sheila Wessenberg says with her usual blend of pride and humor that has cushioned the family's fall from the middle class.

For her part, Wessenberg works one day a week doing payroll records for a local company and spends most of her time taking care of 3-year-old Alex, who suffers from autism, and his 6-year-old sister, Amy.

"I have a handicapped child that one of us needs to be with at all times," Sheila Wessenberg says, explaining why she has not sought full-time work. However, she will grab periodic temp jobs when she hears of them.

As to her own health, Wessenberg prefers to remain optimistic. She was alive and healthy in June - the month she could have died had her doctor's 18-month survival prediction come true.

But when she returned recently from a visit to Dr. Dennis Costa at the Lake Vista Cancer Center in Lewisville, she didn't feel as positive as she'd hoped she would. The long-awaited visit and tests, which were free under an arrangement by the nonprofit Bridge Breast Network, are inconclusive, at best.

"All the blood work came back normal," Wessenberg says. "But one of the scans found a spot on my lung and my liver. The doctor couldn't say if it was cancer, but I'll go back for another scan in September. We're hoping it doesn't mean anything."

So she went home from the doctor's office that day and washed her kitchen floor, trying to put the test out of her mind.

"My house is a mess, and I've got laundry to do," she says. "God doesn't take people who have housework to do. Somebody's got to do it."

I agree it's a different culture. It's a distorted culture without the anchoring values and the religious absolutes we used to acknowledge. Many people ignore the hard-won wisdom we used to take as commonplace, but it doesn't mean that they (and our entire society) will escape the consequences. I also agree that it is extremely difficult to unplug and minimize the impact of a consumer culture, but I maintain that it can be done to a reasonably good degree by a few simple, but radical, actions.

1) Dump the television. I know, I know, there's all kinds of good stuff on it and I agree with that, too. My reason was that it was a terrific time waster. Much like the internet which I believe is living on borrowed time (with me). In addition, the endless commericals are designed by the most sophisticated manipulators we have in our society. The sole object is to fill people with disatisfaction with what they have and to desire more (and usually the wrong) things. Lastly, the values that are normalized in much of TV are the last thing I want in my house, so, out it goes.

2) Make your society people that are like-minded with you. For many that is church, homeschoolers, homesteaders or whathaveyou. This is the real culture that is important. Forget the pop-culture as a total waste of time. Develop bonds with others you want, and minimize time with those you don't want. The left perfected this in the 60's and 70's and called it the counter-culture. As one wag on this forum wisely notes in his screen name, conservatives need to form a 'counter-counter-culture.'

3) Make your family the first priority. Im not trying to preach here because I believe the vast majority of people that have children believe that is what they are doing. My point is that if you aren't making regular, focused time for your kids each day and extended family activities in the evenings or weekends, something else is intruding.

Most people living in $250-300,000.00 dollar homes in the suburbs would say: 'Duh, what's intruding is called my job! I gotta do things to make the kind of money I make to provide for the things I can provide for the family.' I won't criticise the work ethic or motives of those people. All I'm saying is that children rarely care what neighborhood or affluence level they are in. If they do, they are already well-steeped in the pop-culture. For me, the ability to do much as I please is worth far more than the ability to BUY things as I please.

4) The last thing I would add to the basic list of preventative measures is to homeschool. That, in itself, is no cure. I have seen many families that really don't do well at it and lack the kind of commitment that I have seen in families that really do do well. This measure really helps develop the values you want to pass on and gives the parents a great deal more time with their family in a teacher-student role. It also translates to other parts of the relationship. It goes without saying that the issue of poor choices for friends and peers usually is helped in the context of homeschools since associations provide plenty of socialization opportunities as well as like-minded families for friendship and support.

I don't pretend to have all the answers, but I have found a great many of my own. Seeing the success of these ideas at work in the lives of others, I conclude that anyone willing to take what seems to be radical steps (by current social standards) to achieve a more satisfying life, will be more than rewarded by other things than they would be through the loss of material pleasures.

A Message to Garcia

(I have not placed a background on this page in hopes that it will be easier to read and/or print out. Enjoy it and remember it was originally published in March 1899.)

In all this Cuban business there is one man stands out on the horizon of my memory like Mars at perihelion. When war broke out between Spain and the United States, it was very necessary to communicate quickly with the leader of the Insurgents. Garcia was somewhere in the mountain fastnesses of Cuba - no one knew where. No mail or telegraph could reach him. The President must secure his co-operation, and quickly.

What to do!

Someone said to the President, "There's a fellow by the name of Rowan will find Garcia for you, if anybody can."

Rowan was sent for and given a letter to be delivered to Garcia. How "the fellow by name of Rowan" took the letter, sealed it up in an oil-skin pouch, strapped it over his heart, in four days landed by night off the coast of Cuba from an open boat, disappeared into the jungle, and in three weeks came out on the other side of the island, having traversed a hostile country on foot, and having delivered his letter to Garcia, are things I have no special desire now to tell in detail.

The point I wish to make is this: McKinley gave Rowan a letter to be delivered to Garcia; Rowan took the letter and did not ask, "Where is he at?" By the Eternal! There is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in every college in the land. It is not book-learning young men need, nor instruction about this or that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies; do the thing - "carry a message to Garcia!"

General Garcia is dead now, but there are other Garcias.

No man, who has endeavored to carry out an enterprise where many hands were needed, but has been well-nigh appalled at times by the imbecility of the average man - the inability or unwillingness to concentrate on a thing and do it. Slipshod assistance, foolish inattention, dowdy indifference, and half-hearted work seem the rule; and no man succeeds, unless by hook or crook, or threat, he forces or bribes other men to assist him; or mayhap, God in His goodness performs a miracle, and sends him an Angel of Light for an assistant. You, reader, put this matter to a test: You are sitting now in your office -six clerks are within your call. Summon any one and make this request: "Please look in the encyclopedia and make a brief memorandum for me concerning the life of Corregio."

Will the clerk quietly say, "Yes, sir," and go do the task?

On your life, he will not. He will look at you out of a fishy eye, and ask one or more of the following questions:

Who was he?

Which encyclopedia?

Where is the encyclopedia?

Was I hired for that?

Don't you mean Bismarck?

What's the matter with Charlie doing it?

Is he dead?

Is there any hurry?

Shan't I bring you the book and let you look it up yourself?

What do you want to know for?

And I will lay you ten to one that after you have answered the questions, and explained how to find the information, and why you want it, the clerk will go off and get one of the other clerks to help him find Garcia - and then come back and tell you there is no such man. Of course I may lose my bet, but according to the Law of Average, I will not.

Now if you are wise you will not bother to explain to your "assistant" that Corregio is indexed under the C's, not in the K's, but you will smile sweetly and say, "Never mind," and go look it up yourself.

And this incapacity for independent action, this moral stupidity, this infirmity of the will, this unwillingness to cheerfully catch hold and lift, are the things that put pure socialism so far into the future. If men will not act for themselves, what will they do when the benefit of their effort is for all? A first mate with knotted club seems necessary; and the dread of getting "the bounce" Saturday night holds many a worker in his place.

Advertise for a stenographer, and nine times out of ten who apply can neither spell nor punctuate - and do not think it necessary to.

Can such a one write a letter to Garcia?

"You see that bookkeeper," said the foreman to me in a large factory.

"Yes, what about him?"

"Well, he's a fine accountant, but if I'd send him to town on an errand, he might accomplish the errand all right, and, on the other hand, might stop at four saloons on the way, and when he got to Main Street, would forget what he had been sent for."

Can such a man be entrusted to carry a message to Garcia?

We have recently been hearing much maudlin sympathy expressed for the "down-trodden denizen of the sweat shop" and the "homeless wanderer searching for honest employment," and with it all often go many hard words for the men in power.

Nothing is said about the employer who grows old before his time in a vain attempt to get frowsy ne'er-do-wells to do intelligent work; and his long patient striving with "help" that does nothing but loaf when his back is turned. In every store and factory there is a constant weeding-out process going on. The employer is constantly sending away "help" that have shown their incapacity to further the interests of the business, and others are being taken on. No matter how good times are, this sorting continues, only if times are hard and work is scarce, this sorting is done finer - but out and forever out, the incompetent and unworthy go. It is the survival of the fittest. self-interest prompts every employer to keep the best-those who can carry a message to Garcia.

I know one man of really brilliant parts who has not the ability to manage a business of his own, and yet who is absolutely worthless to anyone else, because he carries with him constantly the insane suspicion that his employer is oppressing, or intending to oppress, him. He can not give orders, and he will not receive them. Should a message be given him to take to Garcia, his answer would probably be, "Take it yourself."

Tonight this man walks the streets looking for work, the wind whistling through his threadbare coat. No one who knows him dare employ him, for he is a regular firebrand of discontent. He is impervious to reason, and the only thing that can impress him is the toe of a thick-soled No. 9 boot.

Of course I know that one so morally deformed is no less to be pitied than a physical cripple; but in your pitying, let us drop a tear, too, for the men who are striving to carry on a great enterprise, whose working hours are not limited by the whistle, and whose hair is fast turning white through the struggle to hold the line in dowdy indifference, slipshod imbecility, and the heartless ingratitude which, but for their enterprise, would be both hungry and homeless.

Have I put the matter too strongly? Possibly I have; but when all the world has gone a-slumming I wish to speak a word of sympathy for the man who succeeds - the man who, against great odds, has directed the efforts of others, and, having succeeded, finds there's nothing in it: nothing but bare board and clothes.

I have carried a dinner-pail and worked for a day's wages, and I have also been an employer of labor, and I know there is something to be said on both sides. There is no excellence, per se, in poverty; rags are no recommendation; and all employers are not rapacious and high-handed, any more than all poor men are virtuous.

My heart goes out to the man who does his work when the "boss" is away, as well as when he is home. And the man who, when given a letter for Garcia, quietly takes the missive, without asking any idiotic questions, and with no lurking intention of chucking it into the nearest sewer, or of doing aught else but deliver it, never gets "laid off," nor has to go on strike for higher wages. Civilization is one long anxious search for just such individuals. Anything such a man asks will be granted; his kind is so rare that no employer can afford to let him go. He is wanted in every city, town, and village - in every office, shop, store and factory. The world cries out for such; he is needed, and needed badly - the man who can carry a message to Garcia.

I read that a long time ago. It's a great story, and parts of it still ring true. Like I said to WCF, government seems to punish initiative. If you want to start your own business, it seems like you spend more time appeasing government entities, rather than concentrate on your plan of action. I've had some bosses from hell. I've also had to deal with the employees from hell. "Could you look that up for me"? "Sorry I'm on break". One girl actually said to a customer and put the customer on hold. This was a contract position for seasonal work. I proofread invoices, and this particular girl couldn't spell. She had the nerve to yell at me when I brought the 5th invoice back to her that morning because she had misspelt a backorder message. Hey you can't send out stuff like that to customers.

I agree with the message of this story, but this is 2003. I was raised with what I consider a good work ethic, and I've been called back on temp jobs when I was doing that. Great, you think they'd give me a little more than minimum because I did such good work? Ha! These days employers worship the bottom line, and there are 10 more to take your place. What they don't realize is that it costs them less to hire someone like me in the first place, then to hire someone who can't file, misspells everything, and works at the speed of snail. After they get rid of that person, the next person has to work twice as long to clean up the mess and do the job itself. That costs more money.

If I were an employer, I'd be on the lookout for someone who will clean up the file system without being asked, correct all the typos on the customer mailing list when things are slow. I'd pay them what they were worth to keep them too.

My son in law is working in a contract position for a mortgage lender. He is the first one there and the last one to leave. Last week he worked 65 hours. They keep telling him what a great job he's doing, but they're stringing him along about employing him permantly. As this is none of my business, I won't point out that perhaps they are looking for someone who will work as hard as him....for less money. It's a long way from 1899.

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