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closeSo, you're Tutu Iverson and you've been invited to Los Angeles for a dinner celebrating your selection as one of the country's 100 most extraordinary women.
You were chosen for your ceaseless work helping Whatcom County's sick, hungry and mentally ill residents.
The gathering in L.A. at the end of June includes a private screening of a new movie, "Phoebe in Wonderland."
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* Whatcom County Free Food Hotline: 788-7328
* Whatcom Anti-Hunger Coalition: 676-9399
Ylla Romdall, Iverson's friend who nominated her for the award and who also went to L.A., knew what was going to happen as soon as she saw the bounty of box lunches that contest sponsor Kraft Foods put out that day. Romdall took their lunches up to their room.
"Sure enough, by the time I made it back downstairs she had scored two more box lunches (pretending we hadn't picked ours up yet) and within minutes had given them away to people who were outside the hotel," Romdall recounted in an e-mail.
Iverson then skipped the movie to talk shop with the head of the Los Angeles food bank and skipped other events so she could sit in on a conference at the same hotel on the subject of health clinics in schools.
"She's got her own way of doing something, and has a very strong spirit," said Mike Cohen, executive director of Bellingham Food Bank, where Iverson has been a volunteer for several years.
When it comes to volunteer service, Iverson is a catalyst and a clearinghouse. She's a one-woman, lean, gray-haired whirlwind; a Pied Piper on the need to help others; a firm voice for people on the lower rungs of the economic ladder.
"I have been fired from volunteer jobs," she acknowledged. "I ask hard questions; that's mostly how I get in trouble."
The official list of the 100 winners won't be released until September, but word spread quickly in Whatcom County when people learned that Iverson was one of several winners from Washington state. The winners' pictures will be featured in national magazines in October.
Mary Jo Iverson, 68, has gone by "Tutu," the Hawaiian word for grandmother, ever since her grandkids returned from a trip to the islands. A retired high school English teacher, she moved to Bellingham from Michigan 13 years ago to be near her daughter.
Once here, she promptly volunteered to help organize files at Interfaith Community Health Center. That's where Romdall, another volunteer, met Iverson.
"I stubbornly stuck to my six hours a week, but Mary Jo came in every day and stayed until the work was done, often putting in longer hours than the paid employees," Romdall recalled. "Mary Jo sees a need and finds a way to get it filled, even if it means doing it herself."
Iverson is now a board member at the health center, but spends most of her time helping free-food and anti-hunger groups in the county.
She's a longtime helper with the Bellingham Community Meal Program - "Where else can I invited a thousand people to dinner, and 600 show up?" - and the Small Potatoes Gleaning Project.
She mentors university students interested in hunger issues, coaxes people to volunteer, and updates the county's free food hotline every morning.
She collects donated doughnuts daily, does whatever needs to be done at Bellingham Food Bank and zips from place to place seven days a week gathering and distributing food, clothes, diapers and other life necessities to people with little or no money to spare. And that's just a slice of what she does.
She considers her volunteer labor a debt of gratitude for the major heart surgery she underwent 17 years ago. The cost was covered by insurance, but she vowed to repay it in community service if she survived with the strength to help others. Has she ever.
"I passed the $75,000 mark many years ago," Iverson said. "My house is a wreck, but it's fun."
BUSY DAYS FOR FOOD BANK ADVOCATE
How energetic is Mary Jo "Tutu" Iverson? The May newsletter for Whatcom Volunteer Center includes an account of a typical Thursday for Iverson:
- Deliver a sack of food bank groceries to needy family before leaving the parking lot.
- Collect donated doughnuts from Rocket Donuts for workers at the food bank construction site.
- Go to Whatcom Hospice to collect donated diabetic supplies.
- Print fliers for a 9:30 a.m. meeting of the local anti-hunger coalition. The meeting goes to 11 a.m.
- Drive to Assumption Catholic School to empty a freezer that's being defrosted and pick up donated bread.
- Deliver the bread to the food bank, then travel to the Church on the Street to drop off supplies and to pick up pet and cleaning supplies donated by Target.
- Take baby wipes to Assumption and pet supplies to the food bank.
- Sort food at the food bank. Start to leave, then stop and help a woman unload donations there.
- Read and send e-mails for an hour, then have more fliers printed.
- Gather more Rocket doughnuts, deliver copies of a flier to Community Food Co-op, then go to Whatcom Transportation Authority to collect bus guides for Church on the Street.
- Deliver the doughnuts to a soup-and-sandwich giveaway downtown.
- During a lull, call in the next day's menu information for the county's free food hotline. Fold fliers in the car, then return to Assumption to check on the freezer.
- Deliver brochures to a Christian charity and pick up a box of donated books.
- Attend a National Alliance for Mental Illness meeting from 7 to 9 p.m.
- Go home for a meal of crock-pot chicken.
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