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- afoglio, on 11/19/2008, -1/+0I’d like to introduce you to my sister Bonnie Buckman who needs a home and is the perfect recipient of this contest.
Bonnie is 48. She is your perfect candidate. Please hear me out. She is a great mom who has made huge sacrifices for her family. In order for you to understand why I personally believe this statement, I need to give you some history.
We are 15 months apart. From the beginning we have been more than sisters. We are best friends. Every wonderful early childhood memory I have of my life before college includes Bonnie. I am older, so my memories involve convincing her to be the one to ask for more cookies from the neighbor, or plead with my mom for a treat at the store. She was the one that would have to ask Santa Claus at the department store for another candy cane because I was too chicken to ask. She was fearless. Bonnie was very funny and full of life; a smart beautiful girl with a beautiful smile.
Then I left for college leaving my best friend behind in her senior year of high-school. While I was enjoying my freshmen year at Southern Oregon State College, Bonnie was a senior at Siuslaw High School in Florence Oregon. Bonnie bloomed that year. It was her senior year and without my influence she was free to develop her own friendships instead of being part of her older sister’s world.
In the spring of that year, I received a phone call that would change our lives forever. My mom called to tell me that Bonnie had been brutally raped at gunpoint and then thrown down a ravine and left for dead. I really didn’t understand at that moment how this single event would change her life forever. The first time I saw Bonnie after the phone call, she was sitting in front of a big mirror in our bedroom at my parent’s home with a look that I can only describe as “empty.” She was brushing her long beautiful hair and staring into the mirror with a blank look that is hard for me to describe. It was like her soul was gone. There was no more laughter. There was no more jumping out of the big trees in our backyard as a daredevil. There was no more laying on our beds reading fashion magazines until the wee hours as we had done for so many years. No more dreaming of what our future children would look like or what our careers would hold.
Her life took a turn. She didn’t want to smile anymore. Eventually my mom and dad coaxed Bonnie off to school after a long summer. She didn’t do well at the University of Oregon. I was in Florida at this point and encouraged her to come and live with me. I had so many expectations of returning to our childhood friendship and being able to laugh at each other until the day she stepped off the plane. She was holding her hair and crying because some guy sitting next to her lit up a cigarette and accidentally caught part of her hair on fire. (This was back in the early 80’s and yes people did smoke on planes). I’m not sure why I am including this in here for you, but I want you to try to picture a small frightened girl at the age of 19. She is afraid of strangers; she is holding onto her outer beauty while her inner beauty is shattered.
After a few weeks of trying to figure out how to help my sister, I found her diary and started reading it. While she was at the University of Oregon, a counselor had been manipulating her fragile spirit to get her to have sex with him. Unbelievable, outrageous as it is, she had been raped again.
Bonnie started looking at herself as “huge”. She was rail thin and she would look in the mirror and think she was this obese creature.
Bonnie did not enroll in school, but decided to go to work. She went to work in a restaurant and met her soul mate. His name was Stephen. Stephen had a beautiful smile and great heart. He also had deformed hands. He was the carrier of a genetic disorder. (Something that we wouldn’t understand until later how it would impact Bonnie).
Bonnie and Stephen married and it seemed to me that things were turning around for her. She was happy. They eventually opened their own delicatessen. Bonnie became pregnant with their child. Nine months later, he was born and died of complications because of the genetic card his father carried. Six months later in a robbery attempt on the delicatessen Stephen was murdered in front of her for twenty dollars out of the cash register.
Here we are at the age of 23 with two losses, one rape and one very immoral manipulative counselor playing with her wounded spirit.
At this point, I am back in Oregon and Bonnie returns to Portland. She enrolls in school and makes every attempt to put her life back together. She starts working for a computer systems company and rents a room in a household filled with students.
Her self-esteem is at an all time low. She starts feeling like everything she touches turns ugly. She looks in the mirror and sees an ugly fat person with ugly hair and an ugly smile. What I see is a sad girl with a beautiful figure and beautiful hair.
A few years go by and Bonnie again meets a future husband. Within a matter of a couple of months Bonnie marries again. At her small family wedding, I remember looking at her and praying that she could see how beautiful she is. She had (and still does) have a hard time making eye contact.
Her husband is hired by Nike to move abroad. Bonnie is pregnant again. This time she gives birth to a beautiful boy. His name is Grant. When Grant is still a baby she becomes pregnant again. Two kids, close together. That was the plan. From Hong Kong, Bonnie calls me to tell me that Grant (18 months) is not “progressing”. I thought she was just being a nervous mom. Then she visited us. At this point, I had a 3 ½ year old and a 17 month old. I knew she was right. Something wasn’t right with Grant.
When she returned to Hong Kong she called to let me know that he was diagnosed with autism. I didn’t exactly know what this meant, or what it meant for her long term. (Grant is now a beautiful 16year old with many challenges.) Bonnie went on to have her 2nd son who is now 14½ and is mentally retarded and autistic. During the time they lived in Hong Kong she phoned me to tell me that she couldn’t believe it and was struggling to come to grips with the fact that she was pregnant a third time. Because I have 3 children, she called to ask me if she should jump off a bridge. We both knew it was going to be tough with Grant being diagnosed as autistic, but we knew nothing of what was ahead for her 2nd son Gauge. Gauge had not been diagnosed at this point. Autism is not diagnosed until around 18 months to 2 years and it is very uncommon for families to have multiply children with the disorder. Children with autism come into this world like all healthy normal children. Then at around 2 years old they start declining,
Bonnie had no knowledge in that third pregnant that anything was wrong with her second child. Life was going to be tough with 2 children, but she would have the third child and be busy for a few years. Her relationship with her husband was strained, but she felt that they would get through it.
Well the third child actually turned out to be a set of twins. (One of the twins is autistic and the other isn’t.) Bonnie and her husband moved back to Portland. The twins were born three months later. Two months after that, her husband left her because “it was too hard.”
I am so proud of my sister. She has been the best mom I know. She has made all kinds of sacrifice to keep her family together. Bonnie has a programming support job that she does each and every day from a small desk in the corner of her kitchen. It provides their income, the benefits for the children and a small 401k plan that she is attempting to build. The children have health and dental benefits, but she doesn’t have medical insurance. She also takes contract programming work and stays up to the wee hours of the night to complete work so that they will someday have a home. She has had all of the kids in behavior modification programs. She works endless and tirelessly to try to make ends make for all. When I calculate the amount of money she has paid in rent to a landlord (same landlord for 10 years) I cringe.
Now with the market the way it is, any small little nest egg she has is being dipped into for living expenses. Also, it would take another 5 years for her to reach her goal for a down-payment on a home.
She buys clothes for herself at Goodwill so she can buy the kids clothes at Fred Meyer or Target, or buy school supplies and groceries
When Bonnie was brutally raped at the tender age of eighteen and thrown down an embankment, she suffered a blow that left her with a bad back. My heart broke last year when we sat in a neuro-surgeon’s office and he repeatedly quizzed her on her injury. She kept saying “I didn’t injure my back when I was younger.” Then she said “oh except that guy that threw me down a ravine and left me for dead – do you suppose that might have done it?”
She is a strong woman. I wish I could be more like her.
Bonnie is doing much work on herself in terms of her life goals. She has come to grips with her own story. She has plans for her family to own their own home. She works every chance she gets to pay off debt and save. She is her kid’s biggest advocate refusing for teachers or administrators to assume that they cannot be an integrated part of a classroom.
She fought back hard when her ex-husband’s new wife wanted custody of the kids. They had money, a home and there were two of them. Their argument was she was only one person and she didn’t own a home. Their argument was that the kids were clearly better off with him. They tried to throw in allegations of child abuse. Fortunately the court system didn’t see it that way.
She deserves medals. I want her to continue to get support for the kids, but most of all I want her to have a home. She deserves it.
This is her story. Your picking Bonnie as the recipient of this home could be the move on the chessboard that will help her round the corner and continue to improve her spirit.
I very much hope that you will consider my sister as your candidate.
Sincerely,
Annette- silverwolf70, on 11/20/2008, -0/+0My God! This story makes me cry. Thank you for sharing this inspiring and touching story. I hope you win!
- WELFAREIS4LOZRS, on 11/23/2008, -1/+0THIS is the person that needs this house. She is not some sniveling whiner that has made bad choices, instead she has done teh very best she can to take care of her own and the world has just not been supportive enough of her.
God Bless her Annette and I pray that Bonnie gets this home. I will vote for her most definitely and hope others do as well.
The rest of these idiots that whine about not being able to work because of stomach conditions (?) should head to the my local Welfare office and see the guy in the wheelchair there that has a full time job and is a paraplegic. He has a better attendance record than anyone.- siszam, on 12/02/2008, -0/+1If you want God to hear your prayer you should change your thoughts and words. Christ told us to care for each other and to love the needy. You've done nothing but spread hate in every comment you've made. You must be a very sad, angry person. Your bitterness and greed are not the fruits of a person who has a relationship with Christ.
- galfromdownunda, on 11/24/2008, -0/+0This is a compelling story - it had me reading til the end. I always wondered how some women managed to study for a PhD, raise 3 kids, keep down a full time shoulder-padded job, get dinner on the table, sit on dozens of committees. Now take a women doing a similar potpourri of things and thrown in relationship and familial hardship - but without hearing her complain - this astounds even more.
This is a tale of survival against all odds. To top it off, she's had to endure the challenge of being publicly exposed. I just hope (ironically, but only for the sake of this contest) that she's real.
She gets my vote, but then, I haven't read all the way to the bottom here. I'm almost afraid to.
If these stories do one thing, it should not be to make us judgmental (I know you ultimately mean well, WELFAREIS4LOZR!, but people have a hard enough time dealing with their own feelings of guilt and inadequacy without someone abjectly pointing them out) but make us appreciative of what we have, of what we can do for self and others, and simply, to inspire us to shut up and stop complaining.
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