One of Bobbie Lynn Mayfield’s greatest joys is making
Christmas special for people who otherwise would have little or nothing under
the tree.
|
| Journeyman lineman Bobbie Mayfield became Santa's helper on St. Croix.
|
But last Christmas she was 2,000 miles away from home, one of hundreds of IBEW linemen working 12-hour days, seven days a week to restore power to the hurricane-ravaged Virgin Islands.
Mayfield, a member of Detroit Local 17, decided she’d use whatever spare moments she had to make Christmas magic happen there, enlisting scores of enthusiastic union brothers to help.
A journeyman lineman for 27 years and one of just two women among signatory contractor Haugland Energy’s crews on St. Croix, Mayfield arrived in early November to a landscape of wreckage “like nothing I’ve ever seen before in my life,” she said.
She’s loved most every minute of it, describing her time as “an experience that will never be relived, so unique and absolutely amazing” – especially Christmas.
She was straightening a power pole in a woman’s yard one day, chatting about the tradition she and her daughter share of adopting families in need for the holidays. Aware that many Crucians – as St. Croix natives are called -- were impoverished even before Hurricane Maria tore their island apart, Mayfield wanted to know how best to help.
The woman told her about the Queen Louise Home for Children, a Lutheran Social Services facility that has provided residential foster care for abused, abandoned or neglected children since 1904.
On Thanksgiving, the only day off for linemen in all their months on St. Croix, Mayfield headed to the facility to find out what the children wanted and needed.
Queen Louise Director Dana Holtz said donors have given generously at Christmas over the years, but it can be an uncertain period of wait-and-see and last-minute gifts. She worried that the 2017 season would be more precarious, with hurricane recovery still everyone’s top priority. Then she met Mayfield.
“I interface with a lot of donors and many of them are a little bit set in stone about how they want to donate or what they want to do to assist,” Holtz said. “Bobbie was so open-minded about meeting our needs.”
That gave Holtz peace of mind. “We try to create family traditions for the children,” she said. “They need routine, things they can depend on, because there have been so many things in their lives that they haven’t been able to depend on.”
|
| Children at St. Croix's Queen Louise Home woke up Christmas morning to find a mountain of gifts from IBEW elves.
|
After the home’s 22 youngsters wrote their annual letters to Santa, Holtz converted them to lists that included each child’s initials, age, gender, clothes size, favorite color and favorite cartoon character. She also sent wish lists for 16 disabled adults, most of whom live in another Lutheran Social Services home on St. Croix.
“I told her I’d like to get a list from every child, every young adult – everyone,” Mayfield said.
A few things listed were furnishings – beds and dressers – to replace items destroyed by flooding. Bicycles were a popular wish. But mostly, “the lists were so simple it kind of broke my heart,” Mayfield said. “Some kids only wanted two things, like costume jewelry and socks.”
Mayfield received the lists Dec. 12 and quickly distributed them. “I’d been prepping the guys, asking them if they’d be interested in helping,” she said. “They were out-of-this-world excited. They were practically standing in line to get their lists.”
With just 12 shopping days until Christmas, lineman scoured the island’s Kmarts while wives and other helpers hit mainland stores and websites in search of toys and games, T-shirts and tiaras, small electronics, CDs, DVDs and more.
Mayfield and a core group were prepared to pick up the slack if anyone dropped the ball, she said. But everyone came through, filling every wish on every list, and more.
If a bicycle and a teddy bear were listed, for instance, Holtz said, “the linemen took the next step and got a bicycle and a bicycle helmet and a teddy bear and they would also buy maybe five outfits.”
Holtz always asks donors to deliver gifts unwrapped, in part to ensure that special-needs children don’t open something they’re unable to use or play with. After she and friends wrapped into the wee hours at her house on Christmas Eve, she stacked the IBEW packages under the Queen Louise tree while the children slept.
The thrilled youngsters thanked Santa Claus in letters that didn’t quite make it to the North Pole. “We got all kinds of thank-you cards,” Mayfield said. “They’re beautiful.”
Holtz said what linemen achieved “without a hiccup” for the children, and their many other kindnesses on the island, are helping to heal St. Croix.
While the hurricanes were an “angry” force of nature, IBEW members, she said, “were a force of hope, a life preserver.”