23 minute read
GLAD TIDINGS
kind·ness noun
Kindness is defined as the quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate. Affection, gentleness, warmth, concern, and care are words that are associated with kindness. Being kind often requires courage and strength.
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TREMAINE BROWN STANDS OUTSIDE OF SHI LEE’S, THE RESTAURANT THAT HE OWNS AND OPERATES WITH HIS MOTHER, CHARLOTTE BROWN.
A Thousand ‹‹ Blessings
By Jason Boyett
“I feel really blessed to be someone else’s blessing,” says Tremaine Brown during a rare day off from Shi Lee’s Barbecue and Soul Food Cafe. He describes himself in humble terms. He’s just a single dad being a good example for his daughter. Just a man out there doing his best. Just “a vessel” trying to do God’s work.
What he doesn’t always mention is how extensive that work really is. Tremaine is just one man – a heavily recruited, linebackersized man who played for the University of Texas – but he has been a blessing to literally thousands of Amarillo schoolchildren and families this year.
And the year before that.
And the year before that.
And so on. Thousands.
Describing his leadership and community impact as the result of “kindness” doesn’t quite do it justice. Kindness is buying lunch for a stranger. Buying lunch for a thousand strangers requires a bigger word. A better word. An article filled with words.
Along with his mother, Charlotte Brown, Tremaine owns and operates Shi Lee’s, a now-legendary restaurant in a tiny building on Southwest Third in a heavily industrial section of Amarillo.
Among hungry office workers and the blue-collar set alike, Shi Lee’s has been known for its delicious lunch menu, highlighted by chicken-fried chicken, brisket nachos, catfish and more since it opened in 2010. But for an even larger segment of Amarillo, Shi Lee’s is known for a multi-year streak of incredible generosity.
October saw Shi Lee’s Fifth Annual “Trunk or Treat” celebration at Bones Hooks Park, during which Tremaine and his family handed out candy to neighborhood children.
November meant giving away 100 boxes of turkeys and sides for Thanksgiving.
December brought Shi Lee’s Eighth Annual Christmas Toy Drive, which cumulatively represents more than 400,000 toys and bikes collected and given away to needy families.
Beyond these recent events, Shi Lee’s is known for hosting citywide Easter egg hunts, school supply giveaways, events at the park
and meals for the homeless.
Then there’s Shi Lee’s Kids Free Lunch Program, which had been several years in the making even before 2020 and COVID-19. Living near Bones Hooks Park, Tremaine had noticed years ago that children in his neighborhood had largely been left to their own devices during Spring Break. “It kind of clicked: They don’t get breakfast and lunch at school [during the break]. Some probably weren’t getting dinner. They were probably starving,” he says.
He began setting up a grill at the park and offering to cook hot dogs or chicken legs for anyone who showed up, announcing his plan on Facebook and hoping families took notice. They did. So he continued the practice in the summer. “If they’re missing [lunch] during Spring Break, they’re missing during summer,” he explains. Then the program began to evolve. Parents asked him if he’d set up in other neighborhoods – like Mary Hazelrigg Park nearby, or San Jacinto Elementary Park to the west.
He knew these also were needy neighborhoods. Sometimes 50 kids would show up, sometimes hundreds more. “I just never stopped giving after that,” he says.
When the pandemic reached Amarillo in March, the city closed the parks and Tremaine had to abandon his free lunch plan for the week of Spring Break. But then the schools didn’t reopen at all. “I was like, well, I have to do something,” he says. He went to Sam’s and spent $600 on hot dogs and nonperishable snacks. That was enough to make 400 lunches.
On Facebook, he told families he’d be giving away the lunches starting at 11 a.m. from Shi Lee’s. “That first day, we ran out of lunches,” Tremaine says. “I just wanted to buy parents a little time until they figure out what the next meal is gonna be.”
So he went back to Sam’s, bought more supplies, and did it again the next day. “We gave away 1,600 lunches that day,” he says. Eventually, the police showed up, wondering why traffic was stopped up and down Third Avenue. Tremaine pointed out the cars filled with parents anxious to feed their kids during a moment of crisis. “I just told them I was doing my best,” he says, laughing. “I was like, ‘Come down here and give me some help!’”
Then he and his family just kept doing it, day in and day out. For the next 10 weeks, they prepared and gave away around a thousand lunches a day. They kept at it through the summer and into a new school year. Finally, in November, the Amarillo Independent School District announced that it would be providing free meals for any student needing one, including children who didn’t attend AISD, for the rest of the school year. Tremaine shut down Shi Lee’s program at that point, having given away around 90,000 free lunches.
Ninety. Thousand.
He says his ability to react quickly was key to the sustained giveaway. “The food was coming out of the restaurant and I already had my [food establishment] permit, so there was no red tape to cut through,” he says. “You just don’t know what people are going through. Some people went from a two-income family to a no-income family in the blink of an eye. Some families came in every single day.”
While neighborhoods on the North Side already knew Tremaine and Shi Lee’s, the rest of the city began to get wind of the program, thanks to a flurry of media coverage in the first weeks of the pandemic.
Soon, corporate partners like Plains Dairy and Mrs. Baird’s began contributing to the giveaway. Individuals and businesses donated money, keeping the project afloat as they continued to run Shi Lee’s. Extended family got involved, and Tremaine says it helped them grow closer as they served others. “After two or three weeks of thousands of lunches a day, I started telling these youngsters, ‘You need to take pictures of this. Y’all are making history. Y’all are doing something nobody else will ever be able to say they were a part of.’ It’s been an amazing honor.”
But Tremaine wasn’t done.
On Sept. 15, the nonprofit Keep Amarillo Clean organized a citywide campaign on National CleanUp Day. Tremaine agreed to supervise cleanup efforts around Carver Elementary, where his daughter, Shilah, attends. “I had an area that stretched from Amarillo Boulevard to NE 24th, and Hughes to McMasters. A big chunk of real estate,”
TREMAINE GETS he says. “I drive this neighborhood
AN EARLY START every day.”
PREPARING Weeks before that Saturday, he knew
CORNBREAD FOR A WEEKDAY LUNCH. that a single day wasn’t going to put a dent in the accumulated trash that had been dumped in this long-neglected neighborhood. Alleys were filled with abandoned furniture. Empty lots were filled with discarded tires. “I said, ‘Well, if I’m gonna make any kind of impact, then I need to start early,’” he says. So during a week off from the restaurant, Tremaine and a neighbor towed a pickup and trailer through the community. “We couldn’t make it down a street or alley without running into couches or mattresses. We were going to the dump five or six times a day for two weeks.” Some of the trash had been around for years. He posted photos of the trash loads on Facebook, which resulted in additional media attention. Amarilloans Dan Zwinck and Jacob Breeden saw the coverage. “They just showed up one day and said, ‘You’re embarrassing us. We’re living our lives and you’re feeding thousands of people and hauling off trash,’” he says. Zwinck offered use of a big flat-bed trailer. “That’s when we really started moving trash.”
Using the trailer, they hauled off a 7,000-pound load. Then they did it again. Clean-Up Day came and went. The next weekend, members of the Palo Duro High School football team pitched in. Tremaine and crew expanded out of the North Heights and into the Hamlet neighborhood and Mesa Verde. They made dozens and dozens of trips to the dump.
“Every time we went across the scale, we’d write the numbers down,” he says. “All told, it was 78,562 pounds of trash out of that section of the city.”
His Facebook photos caught the attention of the city government, and Tremaine ended up in multiple meetings with everyone from Amarillo’s Director of Public Works to Mayor Ginger Nelson. He didn’t shy away from calling on the City to do better, pointing to the trash as an example of systematic neglect. “It’s just oversight,” he says.
“You have a wheel that’s in motion and it appears to be working for everybody because nobody is saying the wheel is broken. But the wheel has never been inspected.”
By picking up so much trash, Tremaine made it clear the wheel was broken. He believes it is the result of decades of disenfranchisement of Amarillo’s poorer residents, especially neighborhoods like North Heights, which are predominantly Black. And if personally overseeing the removal of 40 tons of trash was necessary to get government attention, Tremaine says the effort was worth it.
Just like Martin Luther King, Jr., transitioned from civil rights marches to a focus on the labor movement before his assassination, Tremaine recognizes that free lunches and moldy couch removal are different stops on the same road to social justice.
He points to the graphic on his sweatshirt, which reads Proudly serving in the War on Injustice.
“The war on injustice doesn’t have to be a black and white thing. It can be a trash thing. It can be a neighborhood thing. Some things have to change. The neglect has to stop,” he says.
That’s part of the reason Tremaine gives so much to North Amarillo. But there’s another reason – one even closer to his heart, if that’s possible. Tremaine is a single father to 7-year-old Shilah. “The day that changed everything was the day I left the hospital with a baby. I’m a single father in every sense of the word. She still, to this day, has never seen her mother,” he says. “I was in charge of a life and I wanted to do my best to try to inspire that life and teach that life and guide that life to the best of my ability.”
He didn’t want Shilah to grow up being materialistic. He wanted her to know “how to give a little of yourself and your time.”
So he’s been showing her what that looks like. Whether in the kitchen at Shi Lee’s, on a stranger’s doorstep at Christmas, or surrounded by trash in a North Heights alley, Tremaine Brown has given more in 2020 than almost anyone we know.
Kindness? Yeah, it’s kindness. But it’s also passion, generosity, optimism, responsibility, truth-telling and justice. Tremaine embodies all those things.
He’s not “someone else’s blessing,” as he put it. He’s a thousand blessings at once – and Amarillo is the beneficiary.
It’s good to be good to others. After a long, discouraging year – one filled with Human/Kind economic uncertainty, political division, and energy depleting Facebook arguments – our main takeaway from 2020 will be the truth that kindness matters. Phrase it however you’d like: Be nice to people. 12 AMARILLOMAGONLINE.COM • JANUARY 2021 ‹‹ Practice empathy. Don’t be a jerk. The sentiment is the same. As we start a new year, we are focusing our energies toward doing what is necessary to improve the lives of the people around us. Maybe it’s a small gesture, like paying for the vehicle behind us in the drive-thru line. Or maybe it’s something much bigger, like the incredible efforts of community leaders like Tremaine Brown. Regardless, we realize more than ever that human kindness is critical to the survival of humankind, and locally, we want to promote it as much as possible. With that in mind, we asked a few of Amarillo’s most thoughtful citizens to share their perspective on the importance of kindness within their own lives and within our community. Be inspired, and then? Follow their lead.
Michael Timcisko Executive Director, PASO
What I have come to believe and embrace is that we are on this earth, not for ourselves, but for other people. We “receive” from other people, we “learn” from other people, we are “affected” by other people. I know that my actions can “affect” other people as well.
There is one thing that all of us can do, and it costs us NOTHING!
We can be KIND to one another.
Being kind can change your life. It’s also contagious. A single act of kindness is capable of creating people that show more kindness to others. 2020 was a year like no other for most human beings. An invisible invader made its way into our world and has been wreaking havoc ever since it arrived. We are experiencing, and are in the throes of another worldwide pandemic, too. Not a single one of us is immune. It’s not a hoax, not a conspiracy, and everyone on the planet is vulnerable to being infected. COVID-19 kills people. So does HIV. Yeah … HIV is still around, and continues to infect people around the globe.
I believe I started to really understand what kindness is, and what it can do, during the early years of the HIV pandemic. During those early years, HIV was misunderstood and was thought to only infect a few “groups” of people. This thought allowed fear to expand into misinformation, conspiracy theories, discrimination, and outright violence against sick and dying individuals. HIV, like COVID-19, became very politicized.
In the early years, landlords evicted individuals upon learning of someone’s illness. Families disowned and rejected their children and siblings for becoming sick. Doctors and nurses refused to care for those that were sick. People who were sick were shunned. There was very little kindness during this tragic time.
As we faced HIV long ago, and now with COVID, individuals refused to modify their behavior in an effort to reduce their risk of infection. We see the same issues today as people decide not to wear masks, socially distance, and take common sense recommendations from our public health officials seriously.
During those early years facing HIV, my partner Jason and I knew several people that contracted the HIV virus. As they were dying there was no one to help them. They were dying alone. We realized that HIV infection could happen to anyone and everyone. We had to do something.
We began to offer kindness. We offered to clean someone’s house, or offered to go grocery shopping. I often cooked and took prepared meals to people so they could eat. Many people did not have the strength to even cook a meal for themselves. We helped plan funeral services. We listened to their fears and felt their loneliness. We held hands. Sadly, we were often relieved when someone died since they were no longer suffering – physically, emotionally, spiritually. I became confident that our kindness eased suffering. This realization allowed us to heal. We had lost so many wonderful and loving friends.
We are losing people today at an alarming and terrifying rate. Rapidly and quickly. Needlessly.
I urge you to start being kind TODAY. Or, even KINDER today.
Say “good morning” to someone, and mean it.
Ask how someone is doing today, and mean it.
Open a door for someone. Pay it forward while in the drivethru at McDonald’s. Carry in sacks from the grocery store for an elderly neighbor. Better yet, offer to go grocery shopping for them. Rake the leaves from a neighbor’s yard. Let someone have that parking spot you were eyeing so closely. Offer to drive someone to a chemotherapy treatment. Deliver food to a hungry family. Call a friend or family member that you know is lonely. Tell someone that they are appreciated. Tell someone that you love them.
None of us has time to lose. We must be kind to one another. We must be respectful. We must be loving. We must be there for “other” people.
As we move forward and into the new year, let’s celebrate that 2020 is over. Let’s look forward to a new and brighter year. A COVID vaccine has arrived. The COVID nightmare can be behind us soon. I urge you to be kind. Take the vaccine when it is available to you. It will protect you. It will protect your family. It will protect your neighbors. Protecting one another … is kindness.
PASO (Panhandle AIDS Support Organization) offers free support, education and assistance to people with HIV and AIDS, along with their loved ones.
As the Executive Director of the PARC, I consider myself one of the least likely people to do what I do. At the PARC, we provide care for the homeless in Amarillo. I have never been homeless, used drugs, been in jail, rejected by my family, or wondered where I was going to sleep. Before I worked at the PARC, I basically lived in a bubble. The thing I cherish about the PARC is that our members don’t judge me for my lack of experience in the things they are going through, and we don’t judge them for the place in which they have found themselves.
We are a place for the homeless to come during the day where they can be shown kindness, a place where they can be called by their name, treated with respect, and have expectations placed on them to remind them that they are valuable and capable. Homelessness is not their identity; it is their situation.
At the PARC we see people as they really are and the potential for all they can be. Working here has been the greatest honor of my life. I have gotten to know the most amazing people, people I would never have known if it wasn’t for the PARC.
Being able to witness the kindness of our members causes me to examine my own heart. Many who walk through our doors are difficult. They are angry, hungry for attention or just lost. The work we do is hard and I admit that I sometimes grow weary of listening to their stories or watching them make the same bad choices over and over. It is in those times that I will just watch them interact with each other. Every day, I see those who are homeless showing kindness in the simplest ways: giving their full attention to someone who talks nonstop, truly engaged in the conversation. They demonstrate tolerance for those who are mentally ill as they carry on conversations with imaginary people. I watch them share the little bit of food that has been provided for them. Sometimes, they offer their last cigarette to someone who is agitated and struggling. They often shrug and say, “I thought it might help him.”
I could go on and on, but when I think of kindness my thoughts immediately go to the PARC. The story that impacts me the most is when my sister had cancer a few years ago. She was given a 4% chance of survival. And so our members prayed. She was given bad report after bad report and told by MD Anderson that there was nothing else they could do; she needed to go home and check into hospice. The members continued to pray. They called her a “4 percenter.”
My sister is now completely healed and well. When she went to her last appointment to confirm her remission, I sat with her in the examining room in Lubbock waiting for the doctor. My thoughts went to our members at the PARC, and I checked our security camera to make sure things were going well. What I saw brought tears to my eyes. There were our members, standing in a circle, praying for my sister. They didn’t know her and had never even met her, but they believed for her and prayed. Some of those members have since moved on to their next, but if they visit they still ask about her. They invested in her healing. They gave of themselves to believe when I couldn’t, and to fight when I was so very tired. While homeless and with so many needs, they were kind enough to take their focus off themselves to pray for someone that I loved. What an extraordinary example of kindness.
Valerie Gooch is the Executive Director and co-founder of the PARC. The Panhandle Adult Rebuilding Center, located in downtown Amarillo, provides educational and creative opportunities for the adult homeless population as it seeks to build relationships with each individual.
Alan Keister, M.D., Founder, Heal the City
As I write this article, our community is in the middle of a surge of COVID cases and it is the week before Thanksgiving. It is a strange time to reflect on thankfulness with so much chaos around us. One of the things I am thankful for is the kindness of the Panhandle community. According to Webster’s dictionary, kindness is the quality of being friendly, generous and considerate. In the Christian tradition, kindness is manifested as loving your neighbor. I have had the privilege of experiencing the kindness of the Panhandle firsthand while working with Heal the City.
Over the past six years, I have witnessed our city displaying kindness as those with resources have shared so others might receive health care. What does it look like? It is generous donors, businesses and foundations that provide financial resources to provide hope and transform health care. It is a group of board members that volunteer their unique skills to help accomplish the mission of the clinic to provide quality health care to the uninsured of our community and to communicate the love of Christ to our patients and volunteers alike. It is a staff of incredible people who choose jobs that pay less to serve people who need more. It is a group of medical professionals that volunteer their time and expertise to help patients who could not otherwise have access. It is the small groups that cook each week to provide meals for volunteers. It is the simple acts that are not seen by others that encourage me, like a business that shows up to light the HTC outdoor Christmas tree for the holidays.
What happens when people are treated with kindness? They behave differently and the gift is paid forward. I am amazed at the generosity of HTC patients as they seek to give back. I see this as patients return to volunteer for the Shalom food assistance program through Snack Pak. I see it as our patients share notes of encouragement to our staff that cares for them. I see it as incredible young people come to work at Heal the City because of the care and kindness their families have received from the clinic. I see it as patients who did not think they could escape from their trials graduate from Heal the City and get jobs and insurance on their own. In turn, more neighbors who need a hand can be served.
I am a recipient of the kindness of this community. Daily I am encouraged to see the unique ways people show their concern for me. During the pandemic, our community has prayed for me, provided masks for our practice, and gone out of their way to support the work of Heal the City. What I love about the Panhandle is that kindness is not simply a one-time act but a lifestyle. I love raising my family here because they see a city of people who care about their neighbors.
Dr. Keister founded Heal the City in 2013. HTC offers free quality medical care to the city’s uninsured.
Sarah Curtis, Director of Family Services, Habitat for Humanity The kindness the citizens of Amarillo show when volunteering to help their fellow man, not just with Habitat for Humanity, but at any one of the hundreds of nonprofits in our area proves that even in times of personal crisis, our community shows up for one another. “ ”
Working in a local nonprofit has afforded me the a Habitat jobsite. Our volunteers aren’t only building a unique opportunity to witness our community’s house – they are building the foundation for a family to kindness every single day. For those that might have stability and dream larger than they ever have before. not be familiar with Habitat for Humanity, our program None of these things could be completed without offers low income families the chance to purchase a safe, the individuals in our community that step up to help affordable home with a zero percent interest mortgage. their neighbors. Our volunteers believe in the impact our This interest rate is earned by the family through program makes and they come devote their time, energy volunteerism and their participation in financial literacy and skill sets to making our goals as an organization courses to help prepare them for homeownership. With become a reality. the use of volunteers, we keep our build costs low and Margaret Mead once said, “Never doubt that a small give single parents, refugees, our elderly community group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change and many others the opportunity to live out the the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” The American dream. kindness the citizens of Amarillo show when volunteering
As you can imagine, volunteering to build a home can to help their fellow man, not just with Habitat for be a labor-intensive endeavor. There are walls to be raised, Humanity, but at any one of the hundreds of nonprofits in rooms to paint, windows to install and siding to be hung. our area proves that even in times of personal crisis, our What amazes me personally is that most of our volunteers community shows up for one another. have their own full-time careers and choose to spend their In 2019 alone, Habitat had 5,161 hours of volunteer precious time off in service of others. time donated to our organization and since our inception
While many of our volunteers may not be directly in 1981, we have been fortunate enough to complete associated with our program, others have purchased a 115 homes for low income families in our area. This Habitat house themselves and know firsthand the way would not have been possible without our kindhearted their lives changed when they were placed into stable donors and volunteers that believe every person deserves housing. In fact, Mugisha, who grew up in a Habitat home the opportunity to provide a safe, decent home for and is a graduate of Texas Tech University says that his their families. own success in life is attributed greatly to the volunteers he worked with while building his parent’s house. Habitat for Humanity was established in Amarillo in
I recently learned that while building his home, 1981. Habitat welcomes volunteers and supporters from Mugisha was encouraged to apply for school and guided all backgrounds and also serves people in need of decent through the process by a group of WT volunteers he housing regardless of race or religion. developed a close friendship with during their time on
