 |
|
Paying for
college 1 can at a time
 |
| Chettie Winter displaying
a bag of aluminum cans, which she collects to recycle and raise money
to help her great-grandson, Ian, pay for his college education. Last
week, someone stole 20 bags of cans from Winter’s home. |
When Chettie Winter says that little things mean a lot,
you can believe her. You might see the many framed pictures of birds in
her kitchen, and know that her love of nature’s small creatures
helps pull her through difficult times, such as her husband’s recent
death.
“I love the things that don’t cost any
money, the things you keep in your heart,” she said recently.
Small acts of kindness make a difference as well,
and performing them helps give her life meaning. Retired for 20 years, she
keeps up a steady pace of volunteer work, cooking dinners and making visits
to the sick and bereaved in her church, Xenia Church of Christ, or coifing
hair for nursing home residents.
“I keep busy,” she said. “I like
to put the other guy first.”
But Winter, 75, takes her belief in small things,
and small actions, further than most do. For the past six years she’s
been walking Yellow Springs streets and country roads and picking up cans.
Inspired initially by her desire to keep her town
clean, she added new meaning to her project when her first great-grandson,
Ian Newton, was born. Why not turn the cans in for cash? And why not save
those pennies — literally pennies, since one pound of clean, dry aluminum
cans brings in 34 cents — to raise money for that little boy to someday
go to college?
It takes faith to imagine bags of discarded cans
turning into a college education, but if there’s one thing Chettie
Winter has, it’s faith — in her God and her fellow humans. Her
faith and her feet led Winter to pick up tens of thousands of discarded
beer and soda cans, and so far she’s raised $5,000 for Ian, who is
now 6.
But recently life has thrown Winter for a loop.
Two weeks ago, her beloved husband of 27 years, Jim, died after six years
of illness. He was a good man, she said, and she misses him terribly.
And a week ago, something she never imagined happening
in Yellow Springs did in fact happen — someone stole her cans.
And not just a few cans — due to the inclement
winter weather and her husband’s illness, 20 huge bags of cans had
accumulated behind her garage. A week ago she set out to take them to the
recycling center outside of Xenia — for the trip she borrows a truck,
and hauls the bags in and out herself — and discovered the cans were
gone.
While Ian’s college fund has suffered a setback
of about $70, Winter doesn’t mind the loss of cash nearly as much
as the loss of faith.
“I love people,” she said. “It
kind of broke my heart.”
Still, even faced with some of the worst humanity
has to offer, Winter strives to see her loss in the best possible light.
“That person’s need might have been greater
than the need I have,” she said. “That’s how I try to
look at it.”
Winter said she comes by her love for people honestly.
“I’m just like my daddy. I never met a stranger,” she
said.
Born and raised in Murray, Ky., Winter came to Yellow
Springs 57 years ago with her first husband, Harold Grinnell, who had grown
up here. She met him when he was in the service in Kentucky and she was
still a high school girl, and they married not long after.
The couple raised two sons in Yellow Springs, and
Winter cleaned houses to help make ends meet. When her sons were almost
grown, her husband left her, but Winter soldiered on. She’s always
thrived on hard work, she said. She worked at the steam table at the Antioch
Inn, as a teller at the Miami Deposit Bank (now US Bank) and wrapping meat
at Luttrell’s grocery (now Tom’s Market). She ended up doing
factory work at Vernay Laboratories, where she met her second husband, Jim.
Because Vernay had a policy that married couples
couldn’t both work at the business, Winter chose to quit rather than
make her new husband leave his job. After that she worked in the cafeteria
at Yellow Springs High School, cooking meals for 200 young people.
“I didn’t really have to work then,”
she said. “But I loved every minute.”
When her husband retired 20 years ago, Winter retired
too, although she kept active with volunteer work. And when her husband
got sick six years ago, she began picking up cans on her regular walks.
Each day when he slept and she could leave, she headed out of her Phillips
Street house and walked north out of town on Polecat Road to Jackson, then
home again. On sunny summer days she sometimes biked instead, traveling
to Xenia on the bikepath or to Enon on country roads. And always she took
along bags, and picked up cans.
Sometimes her project seemed like an obsession,
she said.
“I even dig up cans around the trees at Mills
Lawn,” she said with a smile. “I’m a silly old gal.”
Gradually, people became aware of her project, and
neighbors often donate cans, as does Tom Gray, the owner of Tom’s
Market. She’s not surprised to find an abundance of helpfulness in
her town, which she loves for its tolerance and diversity.
“You’re taught to love your neighbor
as yourself,” she said. “I haven’t found very many people
since I’ve been in Yellow Springs that I haven’t been able to
love like I love myself.”
Well, there might be one now, although Winter holds
out the hope that need rather than greed drove whoever took her cans.
And while her faith in humanity is now tempered
by caution — she now keeps her cans locked in her garage — Chettie
Winter still has in abundance her drive to help her family and to make the
world a better place. She’s still walking and just in the last week
she’s filled up a new bag of the discarded aluminum cans that will
someday send her great-grandson to college.
—Diane Chiddister |
|
