November 2, 2006

By Lauren Heaton

It was Mary Ann Bebko’s mission that no child go to bed hungry in Yellow Springs, and as long as she knew about it, no child would. For 38 years Bebko’s name has been synonymous with the Village Emergency Welfare and Food Pantry program that provides temporary relief to people and families in Yellow Springs and Miami Township who find themselves suddenly in need of basic necessities to survive. Since Bebko’s unexpected death last month, a group of local residents has come together to take over her duties and continue the welfare program that has existed in the village since the days of the Great Depression.

“It’s going to take about five people to replace Mary Ann Bebko, at least,” according to Yellow Springs Senior Center director Rodney Bean, who has helped organize the transition. “But this community wants to help people in the community. It’s a community thing. As soon as word got out that there was this need, people came flocking.”

A group of 12 local people, including representatives from churches and social service organizations, has worked hard to ensure that the welfare program maintains its integrity. Yellow Springs Police Dispatcher Norma Lewis will continue to be the first point of contact for those who find themselves in need. The police will then refer the appropriate calls to Denise Swinger, the director of STARFISH, Inc., a local nonprofit whose articles of incorporation include relief aid in the general categories of food, shelter, healthcare and education.

While STARFISH has mostly been active locally in affordable housing, Swinger said she is eager for her organization to help people in other ways. Help could mean offering money at the end of a hard month to pay a utility bill or purchase perishable food items from Tom’s Market, she said, or it could be help dealing with a healthcare or a counseling issue, in which case Swinger might refer requests to a Greene County agency or to local retired social worker Andrée Bognár or Amy Crawford, who manages the Senior Center’s Home Assistance Program.

The other half of the program, the local food pantry, will be continued through the Yellow Springs United Methodist Church. Patty McAllister is helping to coordinate that program, which has accepted nonperishable food items for many years from the Yellow Springs Cub Scouts, the Masons, Yellow Springs schools, the Yellow Springs Library and local churches. Church organizers expect to finalize the operation procedure for the pantry in the coming weeks, McAllister said.

Village Community Council will continue to fund the welfare program with a yearly grant of about $500, Bean said, and organizers hope that individual donations, which tend to more than double that amount, will continue to support the program.

“It’s the same program with the same goals and the same need for support,” he said.

Bill Bebko, Mary Ann’s husband, was worried when Mary Ann became ill that families might not get the help they needed, he said. But he has been pleased with the work the community has done to bridge the gap.

“I know the need exists, and I hope the rest of the village, who have been very supportive of Mary Ann in the past, will support the new arrangement,” he said. “I expect the service which the village has had all these years will continue.”

Yellow Springs has for many years provided for those who find themselves suddenly having to do without. In the 1930s villager Sarah Adams founded the Emergency Welfare program by donating, with help from the Village, a bushel of apples and her homemade jams to help local families make ends meet.

Mary Ann Bebko, then a social worker in Greene County, took over the program in 1968, and, with the help of Juanita Richardson and Myrtle Brown, began running the food pantry out of her home storage room. They worked closely with the police department to find out which local families, and sometimes transient people in town, needed assistance. People would usually come to the Bebko’s home, take food from the pantry or get money for gas with no questions asked, Bill Bebko said. Mary Ann also made sure they got connected to the long-term help they might need from other Greene County agencies, he said.

“Mary Ann didn’t do things with a lot of fanfare. It was quiet, neighbor helping neighbor kind of stuff,” Bean said.

And in her quiet way, Bebko earned a lot of people’s trust, according to Lewis, who said people would just hand Bebko checks when they saw her downtown. Eventually Bebko was handling somewhere between $1,200 and $1,500 to help about 35 families, or 90 to 110 people each year, Bill Bebko recalled.

“She handled the needs in the village first, but Mary Ann made sure that transients had something to eat, a meal at KFC, or earlier at Dick and Tom’s. Nothing extravagant, but enough to keep people alive,” he said.

Bebko and Richardson also began the Christmas Tree Project at the library, where residents would hang gift requests on the tree. Villagers filled the requests anonymously and delivered the wrapped gifts back to the tree in time for Christmas. Richardson will continue to coordinate the gift tree.

Though now the servants are different, the welfare and food pantry program has remained faithful to its mission as a temporary aid to community members on a limited income who run into unforeseen difficulty, Swinger said. The welfare program aims to provide a safety net for community members, and she hopes to use it as a way to help people to help themselves to establish greater stability in their lives.

“This isn’t really relief as much as it is emergency help with the hopes of helping people make their situations better,” she said. “It’s to give them a leg up so they can get going again.”

Contact: lheaton@ysnews.com