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click image for full-size Other articles in Part 1 Oregon's unseen poor Remarriage and training help single mom escape poverty Homelessness in Oregon, Life on the Streets Workshop simulates what it's like to be poor Official Government poverty line shows signs of old age 1999 federal poverty guidelines

Remarriage and training help single mom escape poverty Sharon Thornberry remembers feeling desperate, worthless story by Andy Duncan "My husband was a Vietnam vet," says Sharon Thornberry of Philomath, Ore., explaining how she and her two children ended up homeless in Texas 20 years ago. "He was in the Marine Corps for 13 years before he got out," she says. "He soon found he didn't fit in the outside world anymore either and left Houston. I'd been a military wife. No college. We had kids aged two and five, a daughter and a son." Thornberry recalls her feelings: Desperation. Failure. Worthlessness. Anger. "You're a mother," she says. "You're supposed to take care of your kids. I felt betrayed by my husband. He wasn't supposed to leave and not care. And I felt an overall sadness for my children. "We stayed with his relatives for a while after he left. We even camped out in our old house one night after we'd been kicked out of it. I tried to go back to school in Houston. But I realized I couldn't. So I got on a bus with my two kids and we rode to North Carolina where my parents lived. I remember ending up in the middle of the night in a bus station in Selma, Ala. That was the most scared I'd ever been in my life." At her parents' home, she wondered what to do. Her parents weren't wealthy. Her dad was a farmer and her mother had health problems. "I went down to the welfare office and at first I couldn't get help there," she recalls. In assessing the situation, officials included her parents' income. "The man at the employment office said because I only had a high school education I was basically worthless," says Thornberry. Finally, she got a job as a clerk at Kroger's grocery store, and $25 a month in food stamps. "We used to get by on some real interesting foods. I'd ration out green peas to add color to the macaroni and cheese. Eventually I bought a mobile home for $1,000 and rented a lot for $25 a month. The mobile home leaked like a sieve. To keep the rain out I put a tarp over it and held it down with old tires. You can't find things like that anymore-lots for $25 a month. Now the rent on one would cost $400." She worried about her children. "My son stayed with my parents during the week. He felt abandoned," she says. Welfare helped with daycare for her daughter. "I only paid $7 a month," she says. "Now the co-pay for that in Oregon (the recipient's cost under welfare reform) would probably be $400 a month. I really didn't see the light of day until I got married again. It took the resources of two people to come out of it." Eventually Thornberry and her second husband moved to Oregon. "I was determined I was going to change jobs and get one I could grow in," she says. She worked in a paper mill but was injured and, finally, fired. She entered a job training program offered by Community Services Consortium, an organization that evolved from the community action agencies of the 1960s War on Poverty. "I grew up in leadership roles in 4-H. I knew what I could do," she says. "But they (the training program instructors) helped me develop a resume that documented my skills and experience from the previous 20 years, including a lot of work I did as a military spouse organizing volunteers," she says. With the resume, Thornberry got a position as a VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) volunteer organizing a firewood gleaning program. As she gained experience, Community Services Consortium hired her to work with an energy assistance and firewood gleaning program. Then she became the coordinator of volunteers for the consortium's food gleaning program. Today, Sharon Thornberry is statewide gleaning coordinator for the Oregon Food Bank, which distributes food to a network of 20 regional hunger relief organizations that supply food to hundreds of smaller groups. She crisscrosses Oregon working with about three dozen gleaning groups that collect and package donated food from farmers' fields and food processing companies. She prays she never again has to face the kind of poverty she and her children did in Texas. "I think things are a whole lot worse today," she says. "When you send your child off to school, you'd better be ready to write a very big check (for activities that used to be free). What if you're unemployed or making minimum wage? It's harder for low-income kids to be in organizations that give them skills and confidence and a sense of worth." Whether people will admit it or not, some, including other kids, look down on poor children, she believes. "Poor kids are growing up with a brand on them," she says. "It's a vicious cycle."   Article 2 of 6 in Part 1   back to top

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