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Lynda Coates wasn’t any brighter or harder working than anyone else who gets born into the trap of generational poverty, she said. What lifted her out of the trap, she said, was the support and mentorship of people who understood where she was coming from.
Coates, a Portland-area poverty consultant, was keynote speaker for Tuesday’s annual luncheon celebration and awards ceremony of the Community Foundation for Southwest Washington. She described growing up in a family where nobody progressed beyond eighth grade, with parents who picked cherries in the hot sun and sent the kids to school mostly for the free meals. She described sleeping in the backs of trucks and fleeing town when there was any hint that child-welfare authorities might be on the family’s trail. Her sisters started having babies when they were teenagers; her father died of stress, overwork and alcoholism in his 50s.
Coates figured all that was typical, she said. Major success in life, she figured, would be graduating from high school and working as a secretary.
So it was an amazing turn of events when a cousin took Coates under her wing and started pushing for a better future. The cousin was the one who provided the first books Coates ever had; the cousin pulled Coates into a housing-subsidy program that put a stable roof over her head for the first time.
“That was the turning point,” Coates told the crowd at the Hilton Vancouver Washington. “She was the one who saved the day.”
That cousin, Donna Beegle, went on to earn a doctorate degree and become an even better-known local poverty consultant (who’s been profiled in this newspaper). She’s also the one who hired Coates and started sending her out to speaking engagements.
“She thinks I can do this? My whole world started to change,” Coates said. Time after time — in college and grad school, internships and paying jobs — she was given a hand up by people and programs that refused to shrug her off just because she was disadvantaged. “It wasn’t because I was smarter or tried harder,” she said. “It was because I was given opportunities. I had more opportunities to succeed.”
Such opportunities may be disappearing now, she said. Housing subsidies and federal Pell grants for college tuition don’t go as far as they used to, she noted, while the cost of food and housing are “out of control” these days. Meanwhile, the “American dream” narrative that everybody absorbs is that working hard is the sole key to getting ahead; Coates pointed out that the reverse lesson also gets hammered home hard: “If you are in poverty in America, there’s something wrong with you.”
So Coates cheered the charity-supporting crowd on Tuesday, and encouraged them to make the community a better place not just with donated dollars but with personal engagement, too. When you invest caring, support and love in somebody in poverty, Coates said, the rewards are incalculably greater than the investment.
Honors presented
Community Foundation President Jennifer Rhoads said that breaking the cycle of intergenerational poverty has been a main goal of the Community Foundation for a few years now; Coates added that when you are considering what charity you want to support, you might research whether the staff is truly “poverty-informed.”
The luncheon also honored several local philanthropists whose efforts have involved personal involvement as well as dollars:
• Bob and Sharon Lewis were named Philanthropists of the Year. The Lewises — whose leadership of lumber company Columbia Vista Corporation includes scholarships and forgivable home loans for staff members — are longtime supporters of the YWCA Clark County, Boys & Girls Clubs of Southwest Washington and the Humane Society for Southwest Washington, among others.
Sharon Lewis said that the people of Clark County are “the most generous and giving of anyone we’ve ever met.” Bob Lewis cheered “the selfless service, the long arm of volunteerism, the openness of people’s hearts” here.
• David and Diane Difford got the Lifetime of Giving Award, which honors people who have made significant personal sacrifices in order to pursue philanthropy. David and Diane’s first spouses were both diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and the couple met while acting as full-time caretakers. The heartbreak of that experience shaped their charitable giving, with important gifts going to the PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center Foundation and other health care and education organizations.
The day of the luncheon happened to be the 100th birthday of David Difford, who noted all the “energy and opportunity” in Clark County nowadays — and who also sized up the crowd with a quip: “There are no old people here.”
• Law and estate-planning firm Pabst Holland and Reynolds won the Friend of the Foundation award for service to the foundation and its mission.
Also honored during the ceremony were 10 local philanthropists who died in 2015. Rhoads choked up as she noted the passing of Ed Lynch, who died about a month ago. Lynch, a businessman and leading local philanthropist, was also one of the founders of the Community Foundation; Rhoads called him “a giant” in the community and said it’s still too soon to sum up his legacy.
Lynch will be memorialized by the foundation at an upcoming event that has yet to be announced, she said.
