EDITORIAL: Some stew in darkness, others work to brighten their world

Does Ozaukee County exist in a different universe than the rest of America?

The U.S. is “a failing nation” populated by citizens aggrieved by the economy’s “collapse into a cesspool of ruin.” Thus does the man who is likely to be the Republican candidate for president describe America. In his campaign speeches, there are promises of vengeance against the “vermin” who led the country into this supposedly apocalyptic state, but never a call for citizens to improve their country by contributing their own effort to treat its ills, whatever they may be.

Portraying the U.S. as a nation consumed with despair may serve some political purpose, but it does not jibe with reality. One measure of that reality is that the U.S. economy is ranked as the strongest in the world, as it surges past others in its recovery from the pandemic. Nonetheless, some of this country’s people are hurting in one way or another, even in Ozaukee County, where there is little reason for grievance.

The answer to the opening question is no. Ozaukee County is not unique. There are places like it across this “failed” country, places where people give some of the time of  their lives to making the lives of others better, but Ozaukee communities are exceptional examples of this civic altruism.

Hardly an issue of this newspaper goes by without a story and pictures about residents doing their part for good causes. That is because charitable work goes on here without relent. Sustained by an army of volunteers, it is manifested in everything from distributing groceries to needy families at food pantries to serving pancakes at a fundraising breakfast.

Volunteers and financial contributors support food pantries in Port Washington, Grafton and Saukville. A graphic example of this support was captured in an Ozaukee Press front-page photo showing a parade of people pushing shopping carts full of packaged food across Highway 33 to supply the new quarters of the Ozaukee Food Alliance in Saukville. Twenty-five of the volunteers were staff members of Ascension Columbia St. Mary’s hospital in Mequon.

An emergency homeless shelter opened in a renovated building in Port Washington last year as a temporary home for families and individuals. Every weekday, volunteers from local churches go to the Portlight Emergency Shelter to prepare meals for the residents.

In December, members of the Port Washington High School DECA Club presented a check for $2,000, which the students raised through various activities, to the family of an 11-year-old boy who needs expensive treatment for a rare and painful disease.

Charity of a different sort can be found in, of all unlikely places, the Ozaukee County Jail. It is unusual too in that the direct beneficiaries of the charity’s work are criminals, though its efforts benefit all of society as support for the rehabilitation of prisoners. 

Teachers in the Ozaukee County Jail Literacy Program go to the jail in Port Washington to teach inmates reading, writing, math and other academics to prepare them to earn high school diplomas.

The program, started 32 years ago, was the first of its kind in the state. Its current annual budget is $80,000, and not a penny of it comes from taxes or other public funding. Private donations and the proceeds of an annual fish fry put on by volunteers finance the program.

Two teachers spend 12 hours a week teaching a class of 10 students. About 50 inmates take part in the program each year. Since it started, the program has helped 370 inmates earn high school diplomas. Presumably, that achievement will lead many of them to more productive lives. National statistics show graduates of literacy programs are 30% less likely to be returned to jail than other inmates.

The foregoing is merely a passing sample of the give-back-to-the-community ethic that abides in Ozaukee County. It can found in acts as plain and simple as an Interfaith Caregiver volunteer shoveling snow on a shut-in’s sidewalk and as powerful as the fundraising force of Mel’s Charities, a virtual industry of charity.

The genesis of Mel’s Charities was a pig roast in Cedarburg that raised a few hundred dollars for Special Olympics. With help from friends, Mel Stanton built on that modest success to create an organization that has raised $2,300,000 for charitable causes, much of it to benefit children and others with special needs, all of it distributed in Ozaukee County. In 2023, Mel’s raised $419,500 for scores of organizations and individuals.

The fiction that America has descended into a state of ruin may fuel resentment in some, but in Ozaukee County, and surely many other places in the U.S., citizens confronting society’s problems do not waste their time nursing grievances. They put their energy and empathy to work improving their communities and their country by helping others.