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."
You were an angel (literally and biblically) for the man who needed help. Somehow it got done. Imagine that.
There's much in this story that smacks of a Jason Blair School of Journalism Production.
The Reporter should join the unemployed. That would be a critical part of the story.
Perzackly! I'm self-employed, and when I found myself (my previously healthy self) facing major surgery in January, I looked into financing with the hospital. The very nice financial counselor suggested that as a (divorced) mother of a minor child, I would be eligible for MediCal. Lots of paperwork later, I was not only approved, but with 100% coverage. I expected to pay part of it, which would have been difficult given the off time from work, but having paid taxes for MANY years, I was relieved and grateful for the help.
I do have basic disability insurance, but won't be able to afford private health insurance until I'm "clean" for a certain period of time.
As far as the urgency of getting the coverage, my doctor wrote a strongly worded letter to that effect, and to their credit, MediCal was very responsive. You just have to do your part.
So yes, I find it unbelievable that she did not apply for aid. Perhaps their house was too much of an asset, but I don't know how much equity they have in it. I don't own a house (yet), so the assets weren't a problem!
And, what about her church?
Northerners are easily shocked in Texas, and lazy writers are easily tripped up.
You are right. Perhaps they could have planned better.
It just sounds like they hit a long run of bad situations between losing a 6 figure job, getting breast cancer, and caring for a sick child.
I wonder how haughty you would be with cancer, no insurance and no job.
Oh, now, I think that's a little harsh! I'm sure these folks really exist, and so do lots of other good folks "down on their luck", and we should certainly do what we can to "love our neighbors", but you must admit this story (at least as written) reads like complete "spin" of their plight, and makes these particular folks sound like incompetent selfish dead-beats to many of us usually compassionate types here on FR!!
Check out their "PR"...S.F. freelance writer, NYTimes, "Today" show...and donations...it's a living! There's nothing funny about people in need through no fault of their own, but somehow this story comes across as more like a page from the liberal "it's the economy, stupid! we need jobs! it's all Bush's fault!" playbook... ;)
That story is out dated. Today, kids learn about the Grant and the Asshopper.
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