The humiliation of using green lunch tickets --- identifying the user as being on welfare --- still brings tears to Jim Best's eyes. He recalls vividly the many lunches he skipped rather than endure the humiliation of using his green tickets, the embarrassment of trying to hide holes in his socks from classmates, and the Spam-sandwich lunches he discarded, out of shame, on the way to school.
Growing up in Milwaukee's central city in the 1960s, going without was a way of life for young Best and his four siblings, the 54-year-old businessman told the Catholic Herald, Milwaukee archdiocesan newspaper. A member of Lumen Christi Parish in Mequon, he was interviewed at the Oak Creek offices of his multimillion-dollar franchise, Pilot Air Freight.
Another memory that has stayed with Best was the Thanksgiving when his mother, who worked 70 to 80 hours a week in a T-shirt factory making $1.75 an hour, worried about not being able to provide a Thanksgiving dinner for her family.
Two nights before Thanksgiving, there was a knock at the family's door. Best recalls standing behind his mother as she opened the door to strangers -- members of the St. Vincent de Paul Society --- who were holding a turkey and the fixings for the Best family's dinner.
"I recall how amazed I was at the fact that total strangers would care about my family and our basic needs in life," said Best. "I wondered who are these people who don't know us but are sharing with us, giving us something so our family could have a meal."
Describing himself as an average student who bordered on becoming a troublemaker, Best believes he would have ended up in jail or dead had it not been for the intervention of several priests and a nun. He said he had planned on attending the local public high school, but Father Thomas F. Wittliff, then chaplain at St. John Cathedral High School, "was able to find those 'strangers' again who would pay my tuition so I could learn in a caring Christian environment."
He said Father Wittliff, another priest and Dominican Sister Mary Ignatius, St. John's principal, saw to it that donors picked up his tuition until his graduation in 1970.
Now Best and his wife, Anne, try to repay the past generosity of other strangers by being "strangers" themselves, anonymously reaching out to others to provide a helping hand.
In November, he contacted Father Guy Gurath of Holy Trinity Parish in Newburg, Father Tim Kitzke of Three Holy Women Parish in Milwaukee, and Maureen Polczynski, principal of St. Rose Catholic Urban Academy in Milwaukee. He sent each of them 20 $50 gift cards for Pick 'n Save, a local grocery chain, and in a cover letter he explained his own impoverished background and asked them to distribute the cards as they saw fit.
"I know by giving these to you that once again God's 'strangers' will be knocking on the doors of the needy and that this simple gesture will bring some joy to those in need," he wrote.
The Bests have also donated funds for computer labs at St. Rose and at St. Leo Urban Academy and they paid for Christmas parties for the students in early December. They've established four scholarships for graduating eighth-graders to attend Catholic high schools.
When contacted by the Catholic Herald, Best was reluctant to toot his own horn. But he was persuaded to share his story in the hope it will encourage others to share their blessings.
"I think if people see me doing random acts of kindness, maybe it can all be contagious," he said.
Best said his journey from the poverty of his youth to his business success has been rocky and was almost derailed by alcoholism. He said that, like his father, he became a heavy drinker as a young man and his drinking got worse until 1987, when it was so out of control that his wife issued an ultimatum: either the drinking or the family.
He entered a treatment program and to this day attends weekly Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. His Pilot Air Freight franchise, started in 1992 with a $20,000 loan, struggled at first but has now grown to a $10 million-a-year business with 32 employees.
He said he's a strong believer, though, that "God won't judge us by what we have, but what we do with what we have. That means I have to find ways to give back."
---CNS |