Real hearts know no poverty

The Bluefield Daily Telegraph’s Christmas Eve headline read, “Little Jimmie success represents ‘genuine heart’ of region.” Little Jimmie is a symbol for the two Virginia’s (Southwest Virginia and Southern West Virginia) tradition-rich Community Christmas Tree program that plays Santa Claus to children who most likely will find little to nothing under the tree on Christmas morning.

This year, the Little Jimmie campaign garnered a record amount -- more than $31,000, enough to fill the stockings of 740 needy children. The Community Christmas Tree fund was only one of many area programs devoted to making all the children’s Christmases happy.

Bluefield Union Mission provided hundreds of people with meals, clothes and holiday bags. The Salvation Army did the same. Kind-hearted people quickly stripped paper angels, each one representing a boy or girl who needed clothes and toys, from the angel trees that the SA placed in stores. Labor of Love Mission in Tazewell County partnered with Clinch Valley Community Action to provide gifts and food for nearly 500 children. In addition, church groups, civic organizations, firefighter and police officer teams, and individuals adopted families, schools, the elderly and soldiers to ensure that everyone had a happy holiday.

On the surface this doesn’t sound like a grand feat -- Christmas is the time that people open their pocketbooks to share with those who don’t have as much.

But it is impressive. For the people giving record amounts of money are far from being wealthy. You can find proof of their economic status and their "genuine hearts" in two places: the Appalachian Regional Commission’s economic data and the Catalogue for Philanthropy’s 2004 Generosity Index.

Appalachia is a region made up of 13 states and 410 counties. It stretches 1,000 miles along the spine of the mountain range from southern New York to northwest Mississippi. It is home to 23 million people, many of whom do not make as much money as those who live outside the region. Of the three areas within Appalachia, the central one where the two Virginias lie has the most people who know hard times. Per capita income is always well below the national average.

Tazewell County’s is also lower than that of the Virginia counties to its east. It is people in these eastern counties who make enough money to raise Virginia’s wealth index to 7th among all states. Southwest Virginia, too, is better off than a lot of the central Appalachian region states for it only has two counties tagged as economically distressed.

West Virginia has 19 that fit into this category; most are in the southern part of the state. Among all states, West Virginia ranks 48th in the amount of money that its citizens make. And here is the amazing part. The state that on the surface seems poor in money is 13th in giving according to the 2004 Generosity Index. Virginia’s generosity ranking is not as commendable -- it is 38th, but the people who live in the Appalachian Virginia region would have a greater generosity index if it were calculated county by county.

Thus, the ‘genuine heart’ label fits the people who give liberally to help their neighbors, even when it might mean they have to do without. I’ve long thought that most people don’t see themselves as poor. It’s a term placed on them by statisticians, politicians, market analysts and the like.

I found this truth in a poem written by poet and Virginia Tech professor Nikki Giovanni. She might be writing about her black experience, but also she could be speaking for the culture of poverty, a culture that transcends race. She wrote:

And though you're poor it isn't poverty that
concerns you . . . but only that everybody is together and you
and your sister have happy birthdays and very good
Christmases
and I really hope no white person ever has cause
to write about me
because they never understand
Black love is Black wealth and they'll
probably talk about my hard childhood
and never understand that
all the while I was quite happy.

Giovanni didn’t see herself as some others saw her. She saw herself as she was -- rich, not poor. Rich in something more fundamental than what money could buy.

For all the people in the so-called “poverty regions,” this fundamental something is at work in them. They have no trouble opening their pocketbooks and giving to those who have less. Stingy is one label that no one can pin on them.