Kendall County community gives generously to PADS

By Tom Siebert

Midway through its eighth season of providing nutritious meals and overnight shelter to the area’s homeless community, Kendall County PADS has received an outpouring of donations that have helped its guests get through what has thus far been an unusually harsh winter.

The homeless support group has received generous gifts from churches, businesses, civic organizations, and individual citizens, according to Anne Engelhardt, executive director of Kendall County PADS.

“I am very grateful for the tremendous community support for people living with homelessness,” said Ms. Engelhardt. “We have not had to do any fundraising activities. Instead, our time and energy go into volunteering at the shelter sites.”

One longtime donor to PADS is the Fox Valley Family YMCA, where gymnastics director Karen Oelker led a fundraising effort late last year that garnered $400 from coaches and participants at the Plano facility.

Ms. Oelker said that every year she works with her team captains to come up with a way to give back to the community. In recent years, the YMCA has donated winter clothing, laundry detergent, and laundromat cards for PADS guests.

“This really made the girls think about how real this was, and we then decided this is what we would be fundraising for,” she recalled.

So they held an open gym and advertised it as a “parents’ night out,” with profits going to Kendall County PADS.

Why does the Y do this?

“I believe part of my job is to help these young ladies grow up to be caring individuals and tomorrow’s leaders,” Ms. Oelker explained. “We have plans to do this even bigger this year.”

At Parkview Christian Academy in Yorkville, the second grade class of teacher Kristen Dudding collected and donated to PADS guests dozens of toothbrushes, tubes of toothpaste, bars of soap, and other hygiene items.



Becky Grace of Coldwell Banker The Real Estate Group in Yorkville also organized a PADS drive. Coldwell Banker agents and clients donated paper goods, hygiene items, pre-paid laundry cards, NCG movie passes, and gift cards for McDonald’s and Walgreens. In addition, Coldwell Banker collected nine large boxes of winter outdoor clothing (coats, hats, gloves, and scarves). And the real estate firm donated funds to the Kendall County Community Food Pantry, a PADS partner.

Some area residents found innovative ways to give to PADS. David Edelman, a 1987 graduate of Oswego High School, raised $500 from his fellow classmates at a recent reunion. And Yorkville resident April Morsch used her Facebook page, April’s Awesome Attic, to collect coats, scarves, gloves, and boots––as well as a monetary contribution––from her friends and neighbors.

Also donating to Kendall County PADS this shelter season were the American Legion Riders, Oswego; Au Sable Grove Presbyterian Church, Yorkville; Church of the Good Shepherd, Oswego; First Baptist Church, Plano; Kendall Lodge 471 A.F. & A.M., Yorkville; the Marian Fathers of St. Mary Catholic Church, Plano; Masonic Raven Lodge #303, Oswego; the Men’s Group at Trinity United Methodist Church, Yorkville; St. John’s Lutheran Church, Somonauk; the sixth grade classes at Emily G. Jones School, Plano; United Methodist Women, Yorkville; Wheaton Title and Trust; Wines for Humanity, Naperville; and the Yorkville Junior Women’s Club.

There were other donors who asked to remain anonymous, Ms. Engelhardt stated. Those who wish to donate or volunteer at a shelter site may call (630) 553-5073 or visit the website at www.kendallcountypads.org.

Each of the seven Kendall County PADS shelters remains open one overnight per week from 7 p.m. until 7 a.m. through April 14. The nights and sites are as follows:

• Sundays: Cross Lutheran Church, 8609 Route 47, Yorkville
• Mondays: Yorkville Congregational United Church of Christ, 409 Center Parkway, Yorkville
• Tuesdays: Harvest New Beginnings church, 5315 Douglas Road, Oswego
• Wednesdays: Parkview Christian Academy, upper campus, 202 East Countryside Parkway, Yorkville
• Thursdays: Trinity United Methodist Church, 2505 Boomer Lane, Yorkville
• Fridays: Church of the Good Shepherd, 5 West Washington Street, Oswego
• Saturdays: St. Luke’s Lutheran Church, 53 Fernwood Road, Montgomery

PADS of Kendall County is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) group funded by donations received from grants, gifts, individuals, organizations, and businesses. Overnight guests at PADS receive a hot meal, a safe place to sleep, breakfast, and a packaged lunch to go. They also receive help with employment, social services, and housing referrals.

And as Ms. Engelhardt noted: “It’s mid-winter and the homeless are still in need of shelter, food, and care.”

Hanks, Streep, and Spielberg give 'The Post' greatness and gravitas

 By Tom Siebert

In a dark age when most Americans get their news from their favorite cable channel, and the president of the United States refers to the media as the "enemy of the people," "The Post" hearkens back to a more enlightened time when newspapers were widely read, believed, and beneficial to the public good.

It is June 1971 and the New York Times is publishing excerpts of the so-called Pentagon Papers, a voluminous, decades-long discrediting of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, which by that time had cost more than 50,000 American lives. John Mitchell, attorney general under President Richard M. Nixon, secures a court injunction to stop publication of the top-secret documents, citing national security and the Espionage Act of 1917.

In steps the Washington Post to begin publishing its own articles based on the Pentagon Papers, setting in motion an epic two-week court battle that threatens to swallow up both newspapers, along with the First Amendment.

Legendary director Steven Spielberg, noting the similarities between presidential attacks on the press then and now, rushed "The Post" into production and filmed the movie in the stunning span of six months. He could not have done it without Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep, arguably the best actor and actress of our times, as well as a stellar supporting cast that includes Allison Brie, Carrie Coon, David Cross, Bruce Greenwood, Pat Healy, Bob Odenkirk, Sarah Paulson, Jessie Piemons, Matthew Rhys, John Rue, and Zach Woods.

The male-dominated cast, reflecting the man's business world of the 1970s, is led by Hanks, who plays fabled Post executive editor Ben Bradlee with flair and feistiness. But it is Streep's tour de force performance as Post publisher Katharine Graham that carries the film, chronicling her remarkable career arc from self-doubting widow to feminist pioneer to free press champion.

Written by Liz Hannah and Josh Singer, "The Post" also addresses the cozy relationships that many news people once had with the public officials whom they covered. Bradlee, for instance, had been good friends with President John F. Kennedy, whose administration is among four that are damned in the Pentagon Papers for misleading the nation about Vietnam.

And this multi-dimensional movie also shows how Graham's friendship with Robert McNamara is painfully strained by her newspaper's pending publication of the papers, which quote the former defense secretary as concluding as early as 1965 that the war was unwinnable.

Director Spielberg proves once again that he is a master story teller––from the jarring opening scene of U.S. troops fighting in Vietnam, to the John le Carré-like skullduggery depicting how government analyst turned peace activist Daniel Ellsberg stole copies of the Pentagon Papers from a California think tank, to the tense conversations between Graham and the Post's investors, who fear that the publishing controversy will cause the newspaper to go under just as it is going public.

And as he did with his previous period pieces such as "Bridge of Spies," "Lincoln," and "Schindler's List," Spielberg demonstrates that he is a virtuoso of verisimilitude. "The Post" is accurately replete with 1970s hair styles, sideburns, wide ties, bell bottoms, and even a mass peace rally held outside of the United States Supreme Court Building. (But the director did display his artistic license by accompanying the opening 1966 war scene with Credence Clearwater Revival's "Green River," a song that was not recorded until 1969.)

The fast-paced film is scored by mega-Oscar winner John Williams, who deftly blends suspenseful electronic sounds with dramatic orchestral flourishes. But the real soundtrack of "The Post" is composed of clicking typewriters, ringing phones, and rumbling presses.

Spoiler alert: "The Post" ends well. The Supreme Court rules 6-3 in favor of the New York Times, Washington Post, and the 15 other newspapers that had begun publishing the Pentagon Papers. Graham and Bradlee do not go to prison. And two years later, the Post goes on to break the Watergate Scandal, which made it a national paper of record.

But what about today––when newspapers are struggling to survive in the digital age and Americans have retreated to their cable news niches, with millions on each side claiming to have cornered the market on the truth and dismissing the others' media sources as "fake news"?
This sharp national divide will be evidenced writ large during the upcoming O.J. moment when half the country will believe the findings of special counsel Robert Mueller, while the other half will not. What then?

Most newspapers still provide responsible objective journalism but their readers are dwindling by the day. And even a great newspaper movie such as "The Post" has a limited audience. At my suburban Chicago multiplex, a sparse crowd showed up on the opening night of this important film. Meanwhile, for nearly a month, two screens in the theater complex have been drawing packed houses for "Star Wars: The Last Jedi."

Perhaps the slogan for our time should be: "Fiction trumps truth."