globe-trotting grandma              

S-W LUNCH WAGON PROCEEDS GO TO NONPROFIT THAT HELP WORLD’S WOMEN AND CHILDREN                                       


    SEDRO-WOOLLEY — Somehow, the urge is just overwhelming — something she has to address. Maybe it’s the teachings of her Mormon faith, maybe her own personal experience. Or maybe, for Terry Gifford, the need to help other people is in her genes.

    After all, helping others is a family affair handed down through the generations where Gifford’s family is concerned. Mother Liz Adair taught remedial reading for years, ran a tutorial business and was involved in numerous local community groups. And her grandmother —

    Well, Grandmother Lucy Shook is where it really began, Gifford explained, sitting in her kitchen spooning hot barbecue beef over homemade buns like she does every week in front of Valley Auto Supply in Sedro-Woolley.

    Each Wednesday for the past three months, Gifford has set up her wellequipped lunch wagon for three hours along Ferry Street to serve hot dogs, sandwiches, fresh baked cookies, muffins and bread as part of her efforts to make a difference.

    The proceeds from her lunch sales go to help pay for school and medical supplies, micro-loans, and reproductive and sanitary assistance for women and children in several developing countries.

    So far, the lunch wagon and Gifford’s other fundraisers have brought in $7,000.

    Much of that money is funneled into a nonprofit organization, Serving Women Across Nations, that Gifford set up in 2003. And through SWAN, Gifford has been able to contribute to another nonprofit organization, Opportunity Fund for Developing Countries, out of Salt Lake City.

    OFDC provides medical and educational supplies and micro-loans directly to the people of several developing countries, primarily Kenya, Nepal and Bolivia.

    Interestingly enough, it’s Gifford’s family ties that also helped bind the two charity organizations together, said Nia Sherar, founder and executive director of OFDC.

    And, like Gifford, Sherar said it all started with the words of one inspiring and indomitable Lucy Shook. 1960s Afghanistan

    Standing quietly in the dining room of her Sedro-Woolley home, Gifford, 41, gazed at the souvenirs lined up on her table — small dolls dressed in traditional clothing from Afghanistan, an antique-looking clay oil lamp, and a small pile of handwritten and typed pages on which Lucy Shook wrote to her children and friends about her five-year stay in Afghanistan between 1965 and 1970, during the country’s “golden age.”

    The letters detail the harsh landscape, the uneducated, friendly people and cultural differences, the politics and burgeoning growth of the country, as well as her own homesickness and frustrations.

    Lucy and her husband, Jim, were no strangers to living in isolated, rugged areas. In 1950, the couple and their two children moved to the cold, small town of Palmer, Alaska, where Jim Shook worked with the U.S. Department of Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation helping to drain a lake and build a power plant. The family lived in a tent without most of life’s more basic household items.

    But Lucy was an adventurous woman — tent life was a fun challenge, and one she didn’t mind at all, Gifford’s mother Adair said.

    Jim’s career kept the family on the move. They pulled up stakes from their “tent” home in Alaska and moved to Arizona, where Jim was assigned to another job. One of her greatest adventures was when Jim went to work for the U.S. Agency for International Development on an irrigation project just outside Lashka Gah, a village about five hours outside of Kabul, Afghanistan.

    Lucy was hired to run the staff house, a hotel and restaurant for the Americans who worked there. It was an odd setup; Lucy became boss to about 15 traditional Afghan men.

    “In a world where women were secluded, she was the boss of all these men,” Gifford said, laughing, while Adair smiled, reading one of Shook’s hand-written letters.

    Sometimes, especially in the first few months, Lucy’s letters were full of homesickness.

    “I am going to try and fix some kind of holiday for us, but I’m not much in the mood because part of our lives are separated from us by half the world. But no one told us to come, did they?”

Lucy Shook wrote during the Christmas season in 1965.

    Afghanistan in 1965 was an isolated country — undeveloped in its rural areas, tribal and for the most part, friendly to foreigners. People lived life like they had for the past 5,000 years.

    Most work was done by hand; transportation was by foot or on the back of a donkey. Women lived for the most part shrouded in their long head and body coverings, called chadors, and usually stayed in the shelter of their homes. And children grew up with the idea that they would continue along the same life paths as their parents.

    Shook immediately began making friends with the locals and familiarizing herself with the local customs. Everywhere she turned, the devastating poverty of the people, especially the lack of food and medical care, weighed on her.

    Lucy returned home to Arizona after her ordeal and continued to be involved with public service, even cleaning the home of an elderly neighbor when she herself was in her 60s, Adair said.

    But her experience in Afghanistan stayed with her for the rest of her life. When the Russian Army invaded the country in 1979, Shook was distraught.

    “She said, ‘These Russians don’t know what they’re doing,’” Adair said. “She said, ‘These people will never let them (the Russians) win.’”

    She moved to Ferndale in 1976, and died of Hodgkins disease at age 70.

Taking up the mantle

    Years later, Shook’s granddaughter, Terry, set off from home as a 21-yearold Mormon missionary to Bolivia. There, she preached her faith and helped out on several public service projects, including in an orphanage in Montero.

    The experience connected her to her grandmother’s letters and left her with a lifelong desire to help women and children in poorer, developing countries.

    “I remember one night, after meeting one of the children at a get-together, this child couldn’t stay,” she began quietly. “His little belly was distended, and I remember carrying that child with his head on my shoulder home …” her voice trailed off, her eyes filled with tears.

    “We so take for granted the things we have here,” she said, extending her arms toward her large, comfortable kitchen full of up-to-date appliances, high ceilings and cupboards stocked with food.

    Gifford went on to get married and have six children. But all the while, she dreamed of becoming more involved with helping the poor and returning to the orphanage.

    Shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, Gifford, her mother and her sister, Ruth Lavine, began talking about condensing their grandmother’s letters and putting them together as a book.

    “This view of Afghanistan through the eyes of Lucy Shook needed to be shared,” Gifford said. “In light of what’s been happening to them, her letters can change perceptions.”

    So Adair and Lavine prepared the letters for print, and Lavine and Gifford published them in 2003. Gifford put together a multimedia program, including slides of her mother’s time in Afghanistan and a home movie, to showcase the book and its message at libraries in Arizona, Idaho, Washington and Utah.

    While returning from one presentation, Gifford had a thought: What if her grandmother’s letters could be used to inspire others to help the poor?

    Immediately, Gifford began working on establishing her nonprofit organization.

    Not long after, she met Nia Sherar at one of her library cultural presentations in Utah. Sherar was enthralled by Shook’s story and Gifford, Adair’s and Lavine’s boundless energy and dedication.

    “I really enjoy Terry’s openness and the book — what she was trying to do,” Sherar said.

    For her part, Gifford was impressed with Sherar’s efforts to bypass governments and go-betweens and bring much-needed help directly to the people.

    Sherar’s organization receives about $70,000 a year in donations from individuals. That money is spent primarily on education for women and microloans. For instance, a woman can borrow $10 to buy a pig, raise the pig, slaughter it, sell the meat and then pay back the loan and use the rest of her profit to help her buy more pigs.

    It’s a way of helping the people become self-sufficient, Sherar said.

    Gifford said that eventually, she’d like to join Sherar on some of her trips hauling supplies to rural people. For now, she’s content to try to educate others about the plight of the world’s poor and raise money one sandwich at a time.

    “I’m just hoping that this lunch stand brings people in to see all the good that’s being done,” Gifford said. “I hope people will want to get involved.”

    Beverly Crichfield can be reached at 360-416-2135 or bcrichfield@skagit valleyherald.com.

Above Photo courtesy of Terry Gifford Lucy Shook sits on a handmade rug while living in Afghanistan in the late 1960s. Shook’s daughter and granddaughters of Sedro-Woolley self-published a book using the letters Shook sent home from Afghanistan about her experiences. The family is donating proceeds from the sales of the book to help pay for much-needed medical supplies and micro-loans for poor women in developing countries.

Frank Varga / Skagit Valley Herald Terry Gifford of Sedro-Woolley serves up some hot barbecue beef during a recent Wednesday lunch in front of Valley Auto Supply in Sedro-Woolley. The proceeds from the sandwiches, bread, muffins and other items Gifford serves go to her nonprofit foundation, Serving Women Across Nations, to help poor women and children in developing countries. Gifford sets up her lunchmobile from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. every Wednesday.