Giving Back
How older Ohioans overcame age—and poverty—to serve their communities: The story of SCSEP
Dayton
“These are people who were going to give up,” Pat Barnes explains. And well they might have.
They are auto workers whose factories downsized, immigrants with limited English and few transferable skills, lifelong job-jumpers, and convicted felons. Yet these people and many more have found a way up, a way in and a way out via SCSEP—in a city that is far poorer and far older than the average in Ohio. Consider:
- Twenty-three percent of Dayton’s 166,179 residents live below the federal poverty level.
- More than 15 percent of Daytonians who are 65 and older live below the poverty line;
- One in every nine Dayton households consists of someone 65 or older who lives alone.
- Nearly 20 percent of the population is over 55.
“Dayton has become a town of a lot of older people,” says Pat Barnes, who coordinates the SCSEP program for the Senior Resource Connection, a nonprofit agency with offices at the Montgomery County Job Center, the largest One-Stop employment and training center in the country.
Dayton is a racially divided community, with 55 percent of its population white, 44 percent black. Blacks live in black neighborhoods and whites live in white neighborhoods, almost without exception. That can lead to isolation and discouragement.
“Older people, they’re stuck here,” Barnes says. “They feel there’s nothing here. They don’t have the education to make the opportunities.”
Yet SCSEP brings a wide grin to the face of Joan Tanks. In the space of three minutes, she uses the word “blessing” six times.
“I am where I am supposed to be right now,” Tanks says, “and this program is the whole reason.” Tanks has graduated from SCSEP and works now as an administrative aide for Clothes That Work, a non-profit organization. She answers the phone, does data processing and makes appointments. SCSEP built the bridge to the job.
Clothes That Work supplies head-to-toe outfits to both men and women so they can look neat and businesslike when they go on job interviews. Tanks earns $6.50 an hour for 24 hours of work each week. Her only other source of income is Social Security.
Tanks, 64, moved to Dayton five years ago to be near her brother, a minister “who needed me.” She has been a widow for 25 years. She left behind 39 years of life in New Orleans, and her three sons, 14 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. “When I say I moved from New Orleans here, most people say, ‘Are you crazy?’ I say no. The season of New Orleans was over. It was my new time for a new season.”
Tanks has always worked. She was a “fish flinger” aboard a shrimp boat in the Gulf of Mexico. She worked for five years as a receptionist in a senior citizen housing office. But when she came to Dayton, she basically had nothing.
She qualified for—and moved into—subsidized senior-citizen housing. One of her neighbors (she calls them “the ladies”) told her about the SCSEP program. She received job training at Clothes That Work and did so well that the agency hired her, offering her more hours and a higher salary.
For Tanks, work isn’t just about getting a paycheck. “This is the best,” she says. “People come in down and out, you give them some clothes, and they’re a totally different person.”
Couldn’t she have gotten her job without the help of SCSEP? Why not just hunt through the classified ads in the newspaper? “The newspaper doesn’t care if I quit or not, but Pat (Barnes) cares,” Tanks replies. “It’s a very loving and very caring program. Just the encouragement I’ve received—you can’t get that out of the newspaper.”
Tanks has found that her life experience helps her do her job much better. “I’ve been blessed enough to learn some life lessons,” she says. “I’ve learned to look beyond what I can see. I’ve learned how to recognize a cry when I don’t see a tear. Sometimes I get hugs. Sometimes those are the things that go a long way.”
It’s especially rewarding when she can pierce the shell that many younger Daytonians have. “I had this young lady, she was used to wearing micro-minis,” Tanks says. “She says, ‘I can’t understand why I can’t wear what I want to wear (to a job interview).’ So I explained. Some take it nicely. She was one of those.”
Tanks completed 12th grade in her native West Virginia. She wanted to go to college “but my parents couldn’t afford it.” Now, she is “very satisfied with my life”—in part because of her volunteer activities.
Since arriving in Dayton, she has served as a foster grandparent and a prison minister. She could work a 40-hour week for Clothes That Work, but she wants to reserve some time “in case one of the ladies in the building gets sick.”
Joan Tanks “wouldn’t want to see anything happen to this (SCSEP) program. It’s necessary in a way that a lot of things aren’t necessary.”
Part of the reason is the kind of people whom Pat Barnes helps.
She once placed in a job a woman in her 70s who had just finished serving more than 20 years for murdering the man who raped her daughter. Sound like an impossible-to-place person? It would to many. Not to Barnes. “She did her time. She was trying to get a job, take care of a family and do what everybody else is doing.” The woman “got off the bus, passed go and came straight to me.” She now works for a local auto parts company.
Another SCSEP enrollee had been an international businessman. He once earned six figures. He returned to Dayton from Dubai because his family lived there. He figured he could find another job without any trouble. Fifteen months later, he had no more savings, no new job—and a bad case of the jitters. “He had never eaten peanut butter or a hot dog—that’s how much of an aristocrat he was.” The man swallowed his pride, enrolled in SCSEP, took a low-level computer training assignment and eventually found an executive’s job in nearby Kentucky. It pays more than $80,000 a year.
A third Dayton enrollee, 64, was born in Pakistan and worked all over the world as a religious proselytizer. He retired in Dayton because that was where he was last assigned. He obtained a Green Card and began steps to become an American citizen. But he discovered that without an income or a pension, American life can be very difficult, especially when one has three grown children and an eight-year-old, plus a wife with a severe case of depression. “My eldest daughter tells me, ‘Dad, you’re in trouble,’ ” said the man, who asked that his name not be made public. “I tell her, ‘You should worry about yourself. I’m not worried about my future.’ ”
His present is actually quite solid. He qualifies for Medicaid and food stamps. He lives rent-free in his daughter’s house. He is able to keep his 1993 Toyota on the road by doing all repairs himself. For daily expenses, he depends on his minimum-wage SCSEP assignment to a local community agency, where he does administrative work. Like so many older adults, this man “knows what work ethic means,” says Nanci McGuire, SCSEP project director for Senior Resource Connection.
Once upon a time, Dayton might not have needed SCSEP. Ford, Chrysler and General Motors plants were thriving—and paying big-enough-to-live-on pensions to their unionized retirees. At one time, a major international cash register company employed thousands. Railroad freight yards employed hundreds more. But the woes of all these industries have made Dayton’s economy thinner than it once was, and the need for SCSEP more profound.
The issue with many current Dayton enrollees is confidence. “A lot of them are just afraid, period,” says Barnes. “I’m here to kick them in the tail.”
The kicks work. “I tell them, ‘It’s either the job I can find for you or you’re at home,’ ” “Barnes says. “You’re just going to have to do it.” Thanks to SCSEP, they can and they do.