Flower Mound Leader > News
Phillip’s Wish blanket drive comes to an end
By Chris Taylor,Staff Writer
While most people were out shopping for gifts Saturday, Cyndi Bunch and her volunteers delivered blankets to the homeless.
At the loading area, she was amazed at how many people arrived to help.
“There were people who read about the drive in the paper and came to help hand out blankets,” said Bunch, who works in Flower Mound.
Mike Bowman, owner of Mike Bowman Century 21, donated some of his office space to store the blankets. He had originally set aside one room for the blankets.
“We had three full rooms of blankets, hats and gloves. It [the drive] was great last year, and we’ve tripled the amount this year,” Bowman said.
Volunteers took the blankets from Bowman’s building and loaded them into the truck. Bunch greeted volunteers who arrived and thanked them for coming.
After the truck was loaded, the caravan started to the Presbyterian Night Shelter in Fort Worth.
Bunch rode in the lead vehicle, a blue Dodge pick-up driven by Ken Wyatt. Wyatt is a Navy veteran who moved here from California a few years ago.
“I’ve never seen people do for others like this. This is why I love being in Texas. I’ve never seen one person go out her way to do something of this magnitude,” Wyatt said.
Bunch gave directions to Wyatt as he led the dozen vehicle caravan down the highway.
When Bunch hands out a blanket, she’ll shake their hand, touch them on the arm or hug them.
“They are people. They liked to be touched, to have that human contact,” she said.
The Night Shelter
As the caravan pulls up to the Presbyterian Night Shelter, people start crowding around the vehicles. Some even remembered Bunch from her previous visits.
The scene was, in many ways, out of a movie. The way the people amble up to and surrounded the truck, it resembled a zombie movie. Volunteers had to keep people from rushing the truck as the people were trying, desperately, to get the much wanted sleeping bag or blanket.
“Keep things decent, and in order, people. If you run these people off, they won’t come back,” said Emmitt a worker and resident of the shelter who would only give his first name.
During the trip to the Presbyterian Night Shelter at the intersection of Presidio and Cypress Streets, it was impossible to restrain emotions. One woman broke down crying at the site before her.
The people who showed up for the blankets were not the prettiest to look at. Many were missing teeth, had scars or were wearing filthy clothes. Seeing some of them smoking or using boomboxes to listen to music, the first thought was “if they had money for that, then why can’t they get the basic necessities for themselves.”
That is when Bunch’s words come back: “They are people.”
That was the key statement. These people might not have much education, and they probably have made poor choices in life, but the punishment for them was unusually harsh, Bunch said. Many of them are addicts because they are mentally ill and self medicate, she said. As for the radio, it was a small slice or normality in an otherwise depressing life, she said.
That fact became especially evident when the volunteers started handing out socks. Plain tube socks, which most people take for granted, created a stir that one would expect to see for the newest gaming console. It was amazing that in a world where people can get massages while they shop for groceries, some people go crazy over fresh socks, Bunch said.
Bunch was everywhere. She went inside the shelter to see the children. She was out in the crowd making sure everyone who needed a blanket got one. When they found children, including a newborn, she would make it her priority to get them some jackets, blankets or whatever they had.
To some of the people this was like Christmas. They were trying to get as much as they could for themselves.
For others, it was about survival.
“May I have a sleeping bag, please? All my stuff was stolen. May I have a sleeping bag?” a woman with a cane, about late 30s to early 40s, said. Bunch handed her a sleeping bag, hugged her, and watched her walk down the road.
One man came up to Bunch and told her, “I’m just happy to have a coat with a hood.”
Josey Williams, a resident of the shelter, came out to the truck as they were closing the doors of the truck and quietly asked if they had any more blankets.
Chuck Berneche, general manger of Mohawk Moving and Storage, and donator of the truck, opened the side doors and helped him pick out a comfortable blanket.
“I had to be part of this. I volunteered the truck, filled it up with gas and told Cyndi to tell me where she needed to go,” Berneche said.
As we were leaving, a young man came up and thanked everyone. He hugged Bunch and her son Phillip.
“Bless you all. Thank you for doing this. Have a wonderful Christmas,” Berneche said.
The trip to the night shelter was not without incident, though. One man was buying the blankets for $2 a piece, and then “re-donating” them, as he put it. Bunch walked with him to see where he would donate the blankets.
Downtown and the Salvation Army
The next stop was the corner of Grafton and Bomar streets in downtown Fort Worth, near a public housing building. When people inside the building realized what was happening, they came outside as fast as they could. Many of them were in wheelchairs or and scooters, wanting some kind of blankets they could lie down on.
Inside the building, the temperature was extremely hot. Bunch said she thought the building may not have heat and air.
Bunch and her volunteers took several boxes of blankets inside the building for residents to choose from.
The next stop was the Salvation Army on Lancaster in Fort Worth. The drive there showed how the people who lived there weren’t the only thing forgotten in that area. Abandoned, boarded up buildings were the norm in that area.
At the Salvation Army, the volunteers were giving the rest of the blankets to give out, but Bunch kept a few to hand out on her own.
Wyatt walked down an alleyway by the Salvation Army building and saw about six people living there. Wyatt handed blankets to every one of them. There were thin, rolled up mattresses were hidden behind trees, and milk crates were used for chairs in their makeshift neighborhood.
“Do you have any shoes?” one of the men asked, Wyatt.
Most of these people were in groups, possibly for safety.
A man came walking down the street and hollered at Wyatt. He identified himself as “Beback Black.”
“BeBack” grabbed his sleeping back and talked about being in the Navy with Wyatt. “Beback” said he served, also.
The day was almost over, but there was one more stop. Bunch has two people in downtown she always delivers blankets to: a man who sleeps there and Tarrant County District Attorney, Tim Curry.
Bunch handed the man a $100 leather coat and a twenty dollar bill and hugged him. For Curry, Bunch left him a blanket with a note: “Hope you sleep well tonight.”
Headed home, the volunteers felt pretty good about the impact that was made, but realized it was a small drop.
“People are already talking about next year,” Bunch said.
Bunch started Phillip’s Wish, three years ago because her husband, who was schizophrenic, would spend much of his time on the streets. Bunch’s son Phillip, wondered one night whether his father was warm, and wondered if others were warm, too. And so began an annual crusade to make sure that those without the regular amenities that we take for granted would have warmth. In the first year, she and Phillip collected 200 blankets, in the second year it was 5,076. This year she set a goal of 10,000.
At Mike Bowman’s Century 21, as they were loading the blankets on to the 26-and-a-half foot truck, they stopped counting at 16,000 blankets.
“The drive is over and we still have blankets coming,” Bunch said.
Bunch said she will continue taking blankets even though, the drive is officially over. To donate blankets, volunteer or to offer storage, call Bunch at 817-741-7179.
At the loading area, she was amazed at how many people arrived to help.
“There were people who read about the drive in the paper and came to help hand out blankets,” said Bunch, who works in Flower Mound.
Mike Bowman, owner of Mike Bowman Century 21, donated some of his office space to store the blankets. He had originally set aside one room for the blankets.
“We had three full rooms of blankets, hats and gloves. It [the drive] was great last year, and we’ve tripled the amount this year,” Bowman said.
Volunteers took the blankets from Bowman’s building and loaded them into the truck. Bunch greeted volunteers who arrived and thanked them for coming.
After the truck was loaded, the caravan started to the Presbyterian Night Shelter in Fort Worth.
Bunch rode in the lead vehicle, a blue Dodge pick-up driven by Ken Wyatt. Wyatt is a Navy veteran who moved here from California a few years ago.
“I’ve never seen people do for others like this. This is why I love being in Texas. I’ve never seen one person go out her way to do something of this magnitude,” Wyatt said.
Bunch gave directions to Wyatt as he led the dozen vehicle caravan down the highway.
When Bunch hands out a blanket, she’ll shake their hand, touch them on the arm or hug them.
“They are people. They liked to be touched, to have that human contact,” she said.
The Night Shelter
As the caravan pulls up to the Presbyterian Night Shelter, people start crowding around the vehicles. Some even remembered Bunch from her previous visits.
The scene was, in many ways, out of a movie. The way the people amble up to and surrounded the truck, it resembled a zombie movie. Volunteers had to keep people from rushing the truck as the people were trying, desperately, to get the much wanted sleeping bag or blanket.
“Keep things decent, and in order, people. If you run these people off, they won’t come back,” said Emmitt a worker and resident of the shelter who would only give his first name.
During the trip to the Presbyterian Night Shelter at the intersection of Presidio and Cypress Streets, it was impossible to restrain emotions. One woman broke down crying at the site before her.
The people who showed up for the blankets were not the prettiest to look at. Many were missing teeth, had scars or were wearing filthy clothes. Seeing some of them smoking or using boomboxes to listen to music, the first thought was “if they had money for that, then why can’t they get the basic necessities for themselves.”
That is when Bunch’s words come back: “They are people.”
That was the key statement. These people might not have much education, and they probably have made poor choices in life, but the punishment for them was unusually harsh, Bunch said. Many of them are addicts because they are mentally ill and self medicate, she said. As for the radio, it was a small slice or normality in an otherwise depressing life, she said.
That fact became especially evident when the volunteers started handing out socks. Plain tube socks, which most people take for granted, created a stir that one would expect to see for the newest gaming console. It was amazing that in a world where people can get massages while they shop for groceries, some people go crazy over fresh socks, Bunch said.
Bunch was everywhere. She went inside the shelter to see the children. She was out in the crowd making sure everyone who needed a blanket got one. When they found children, including a newborn, she would make it her priority to get them some jackets, blankets or whatever they had.
To some of the people this was like Christmas. They were trying to get as much as they could for themselves.
For others, it was about survival.
“May I have a sleeping bag, please? All my stuff was stolen. May I have a sleeping bag?” a woman with a cane, about late 30s to early 40s, said. Bunch handed her a sleeping bag, hugged her, and watched her walk down the road.
One man came up to Bunch and told her, “I’m just happy to have a coat with a hood.”
Josey Williams, a resident of the shelter, came out to the truck as they were closing the doors of the truck and quietly asked if they had any more blankets.
Chuck Berneche, general manger of Mohawk Moving and Storage, and donator of the truck, opened the side doors and helped him pick out a comfortable blanket.
“I had to be part of this. I volunteered the truck, filled it up with gas and told Cyndi to tell me where she needed to go,” Berneche said.
As we were leaving, a young man came up and thanked everyone. He hugged Bunch and her son Phillip.
“Bless you all. Thank you for doing this. Have a wonderful Christmas,” Berneche said.
The trip to the night shelter was not without incident, though. One man was buying the blankets for $2 a piece, and then “re-donating” them, as he put it. Bunch walked with him to see where he would donate the blankets.
Downtown and the Salvation Army
The next stop was the corner of Grafton and Bomar streets in downtown Fort Worth, near a public housing building. When people inside the building realized what was happening, they came outside as fast as they could. Many of them were in wheelchairs or and scooters, wanting some kind of blankets they could lie down on.
Inside the building, the temperature was extremely hot. Bunch said she thought the building may not have heat and air.
Bunch and her volunteers took several boxes of blankets inside the building for residents to choose from.
The next stop was the Salvation Army on Lancaster in Fort Worth. The drive there showed how the people who lived there weren’t the only thing forgotten in that area. Abandoned, boarded up buildings were the norm in that area.
At the Salvation Army, the volunteers were giving the rest of the blankets to give out, but Bunch kept a few to hand out on her own.
Wyatt walked down an alleyway by the Salvation Army building and saw about six people living there. Wyatt handed blankets to every one of them. There were thin, rolled up mattresses were hidden behind trees, and milk crates were used for chairs in their makeshift neighborhood.
“Do you have any shoes?” one of the men asked, Wyatt.
Most of these people were in groups, possibly for safety.
A man came walking down the street and hollered at Wyatt. He identified himself as “Beback Black.”
“BeBack” grabbed his sleeping back and talked about being in the Navy with Wyatt. “Beback” said he served, also.
The day was almost over, but there was one more stop. Bunch has two people in downtown she always delivers blankets to: a man who sleeps there and Tarrant County District Attorney, Tim Curry.
Bunch handed the man a $100 leather coat and a twenty dollar bill and hugged him. For Curry, Bunch left him a blanket with a note: “Hope you sleep well tonight.”
Headed home, the volunteers felt pretty good about the impact that was made, but realized it was a small drop.
“People are already talking about next year,” Bunch said.
Bunch started Phillip’s Wish, three years ago because her husband, who was schizophrenic, would spend much of his time on the streets. Bunch’s son Phillip, wondered one night whether his father was warm, and wondered if others were warm, too. And so began an annual crusade to make sure that those without the regular amenities that we take for granted would have warmth. In the first year, she and Phillip collected 200 blankets, in the second year it was 5,076. This year she set a goal of 10,000.
At Mike Bowman’s Century 21, as they were loading the blankets on to the 26-and-a-half foot truck, they stopped counting at 16,000 blankets.
“The drive is over and we still have blankets coming,” Bunch said.
Bunch said she will continue taking blankets even though, the drive is officially over. To donate blankets, volunteer or to offer storage, call Bunch at 817-741-7179.
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