From Modest Heroes, Major Deeds

By Darragh Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 22, 2007

And now, on this national day of gratitude, we pause to give thanks.

Thanks for those who have given of themselves, who have spent time and energy, who have endured inconveniences and hurdles, who have seen a need and met it.

To all the unsung heroes who work to make life better -- better for the unhappy boys of Ward 7, and a group of Eastern Shore high school students struggling to pay for college, and the homeless families of the District who've never held a framed portrait of themselves, and the troops at Walter Reed who inspired a smattering of major leaguers to begin playing baseball for a cause, and the Chinese elders who once spent their days isolated and alone but now have a place to gather -- this we offer to you.

* * *

Taking a Mother's Lesson to Heart

Kevin Beverly grew up on Maryland's Eastern Shore, on Taylor's Island, in the Chesapeake Bay. He was the youngest of three sons. His mother, Mildred, raised her boys by herself in a house with no running water and no bathroom.

From the time he was 10, he helped by picking tomatoes, dredging oysters, cleaning chicken houses and wheelbarrowing "the smelliest" piles of crab emulsion. His mother kept steady work picking crabs in the summer, peeling tomatoes in the fall and shucking oysters in the winter.

"And . . . cracking heads when she needed to make sure we were getting the homework done," Beverly remembers.

Mildred Beverly instilled in her boys: "If you ever have the opportunity to give, do." So many times, Kevin Beverly recalls, the family got by because of neighbors who "had excess" and dropped off "part of their catch" -- fish they couldn't sell or sometimes chickens. "If these folks weren't giving," Mildred Beverly said, "we wouldn't have this."

After graduating from Cambridge High School, Beverly left the tiny island. He received undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Maryland and lives in Bethesda. Now 50, he works as senior vice president for a company in Silver Spring and has two sons.

His mother died 10 years ago, and in honor of the woman who taught him how to do right, Beverly began in 2003 to give away college scholarships from the Mildred Beverly Family Fund. He selects students from his high school alma mater, and he tends to look for African American students who are "giving back and engaged in the community and -- this part, unfortunately, isn't so hard to find -- are single-parent kids. . . . I know their plight."

In the past four years, Beverly has given nine $1,000 scholarships.

"I know people hear stories like this," he says, and they decide that there's something extra-special about the giver or that to start such a fund would be beyond their reach.

"But it's somewhere in you to do the right things," Beverly says. "It takes someone to help you find it. And I had my mom."

* * *

Mastering the Art of Possibility

The boys in Mary Brown's group have created more than 1,000 pieces of art and sent their message -- "to change life's challenges into possibilities" -- around the world. Their canvases have been shown to wonks at the World Bank, to artistes at the Smithsonian, to patients and visitors at Children's Hospital, to the haute monde in Paris.

Brown and her former husband started Life Pieces to Masterpieces 12 years ago, hoping to infuse artistic inspiration and a sense of beauty into the sometimes bleak outlook that can accompany life in public and low-income housing.

Her former husband was the artist. He had grown up in public housing. Four years after co-founding Masterpieces, he pulled back, and Brown found herself in charge, besotted by the kids and determined to carry on.

Brown works weekly with almost 200 boys, most of them ages 8 to 18. She sees herself as the "single parent" to them all: an honor, but with drawbacks.

"It's horrible for the dating life," she jokes. Guys ask: You have children? "Yeah, 200," she answers. "Can you handle it? Am I still hot?"

The point of Masterpieces is this, she says: "Everyone comes with a blank canvas. Our stories begin in different ways. We don't choose the family, we're born into it. We don't choose the circumstances we're born into. Those are colors that are chosen for us. But we can choose to take the various stories and create whatever masterpiece.

"You may have a parent who's addicted to various substances. You may have been a victim of abuse yourself. And this is painful, and this is very real, and these are very real colors you are putting on the canvas.

"But let's use all this to create a very powerful masterpiece. Let's not become a victim."

The first time she returns a phone call for this article, Brown is at a hospital with the sister of one of her boys, accompanying the girl as she waits for a CAT scan.

"A lot of my life involves our boys," says Brown, 44, who has no biological children and grew up in New Orleans with two parents who loved her very much. Her parents and her background, she understands, have taught her everything she needs to know about helping boys whose lives have been starkly different from hers.

"I know," she says, "how love works."

* * *

In the District, Portraits of Caring

The idea just came to Tony Brunswick.

Last year, the 33-year-old photographer, whose day job is director of programs for a national network of community centers, thought: Maybe the District's homeless families would like their portraits taken.

So he started a sign-up sheet at D.C. Village, which was then the city's largest family shelter. He planned his first shoot for a Sunday afternoon. Forty families showed up.

Since then, over the course of four or five Sundays, he has taken portraits of more than 150 families.

He has posed mothers with their children, a father with his 10-month-old baby, entire families who appeared much more nuclear than displaced. And as he worked, many would tell him things such as: "This is the very first picture I've had with me and my child."

"Homelessness is a tough life," Brunswick says. "People have no stability, and there's no sense of permanence. . . . You only get to travel with what you can carry, and the rest you leave behind until you get more stable again.

"Portraits and pictures," he adds, "are still a pretty privileged experience for some people."

After snapping 50 to 100 digital pictures of each family, he and a few other volunteers culled them to four or six shots, which were put into 4-by-6 and 5-by-7 frames.

When he gave the families their portraits, "the reaction," he says, "was so intense.

"One father just stood with his picture for 15 minutes, and he didn't say a word. He just looked and looked and looked."

* * *

Keeping the Elderly in Touch

Charity for Montgomery County's Vivien Hsueh began at home. Or rather, at her rental home.

About a decade ago, she and her husband sold a rental property in Bethesda and with the proceeds began the Peter and Vivien Hsueh Family Fund, which Vivien oversees, deciding each year where their money should go. Some years, she gives to programs that help the homeless or underprivileged children, or Parkinson's patients, or to a school back in China.

But after a while, she got the urge to do more. To do, period. She had retired from IBM and was focusing on elderly Chinese immigrants in Montgomery. They had lived with their children and cared for their grandchildren, but now the grandkids were grown, and the grandparents were "all by themselves at home."

"In Montgomery County," Hsueh says, "all the funding goes to school kids. Not that that's bad. But proportion-wise, it's a bit off."

Three years ago, she started the Chinese American Senior Services Association, or CASSA. Three days a week, Chinese elders come to the Plum Gar Community Center in Germantown and from 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. do tai chi and other exercises, sing in a choral group or do karaoke, learn English and computer skills, and take part in line dancing, bridge, Chinese chess and mah-jongg. Attendance averages 80 to 100 people, she says.

She has since expanded the program to the Wheaton and the Good Hope community centers.

"The idea is . . . they don't just sit home and get depressed. They make a lot of friends and speak their own tongue, and they don't feel they are lost, " Hsueh says.

* * *

Going to Bat for Wounded Troops

It all started at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. While visiting soldiers, a Bay Area baseball player named Barry became inspired.

It was time, he decided, to give -- and give big. The player promised to tie his on-field performance to donations to war-wounded soldiers and their families. He amped up things by persuading other major leaguers to join him.

This was in 2005, when a steroid scandal was staining the reputation of another Bay Area ballplaying Barry: Barry Bonds.

But this Barry -- Barry Zito, now the San Francisco Giants' pitcher -- has created and expanded his fledgling charity, StrikeoutsForTroops. It has more than $500,000 destined for war-wounded troops at Walter Reed, Bethesda Naval Medical Center and other sites.

He donates $400 a strikeout and guarantees a minimum gift of $100,000 a season. He has pulled in nearly 50 other major leaguers, including such baseball royalty as Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling, who pays $100 a strikeout; New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez, who gives $200 a home run; and Cleveland Indians pitcher C.C. Sabathia, who donates $100 a strikeout.

On the StrikeoutsForTroops Web site, Zito calls their efforts a reward for what he considers today's greatest cause: "the men and women in the armed forces who are making the ultimate sacrifice."

Heroes, all.

As Zito puts it: "Sometimes, in a world where professional sports and celebrities are front-page news, it's easy to forget who the real heroes are in this country."