Posted on 08/19/2003 10:33:27 AM PDT by new cruelty
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.
Despite repeated phone calls, nothing promising has materialized.
"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."
There are panhandlers in downtown Pittsburgh who have signs reading, "Veteran - please help," so my brother-in-law (a veteran himself) asked one of them if he'd like him to accompany him to a veterans' facility where they could help him find work, a place to live, etc. He also offered to take him to a local McD's for a hamburger. The guy almost bit his head off. He didn't actually want help or even food, and he sure as heck didn't want to work. He just wanted the cash (of which he had a rather large wad, my b-i-l noticed).
"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."
These facts nullify the entire story. All she had to do was move home. Probably had a falling out with her mother and was too stubborn to accept the family's help - which hardly qualifies this story as supporting documentation for the "It's All Bush's Fault!" case the newspaper is trying to make.
My brother-in-law's parents are around 60 years old and are both currently unemployed. One was laid off, the other was fired. The one that was laid off knew well in advance that the contract position she held was coming to an end and so she diligently sought work, with no success so far. The one that was fired is a hot-head and argued with his department manager one time too many. He hasn't worked in almost a year and has few prospects. To make matters worse, a little over a year ago, they purchased two new cars, a 60" tv, and a got a second mortgage on their home, which they moved into just two years prior. Now at 60, they are unable to find work and they are looking to my brother-in-law to bail them out.
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