John Records, the director of COTS, the Petaluma homeless shelter, shared an example of selfless giving he had witnessed. He spoke about bringing a cold, hungry and destitute hitchhiker to the Petaluma armory many years ago.
Upon hearing that he had missed dinner, the hitchhiker almost collapsed in despair. Seeing this, another homeless man pulled out his only remaining piece of food, a hard-boiled egg, and presented it to the newcomer.
Other speakers told about overcoming prejudice.
Dorothy Morris, an African-American living in Petaluma for almost 30 years, remembered feeling “like someone had put a plastic bag over my face” when she came home one day to find “KKK” painted over her garage door.
She concluded her talk by lauding the Petaluma community spirit, and asking the audience to “just walk away” from racial prejudice by refusing to take part in reinforcing stereotypes.
Children were also represented. Among the presenters were young poet Richard Little Moon, whose work “Life on the Street” described his family’s homeless days as a time when “it was always cloudy, it was always rainy. The grass was dead. I was scared.”
The Rev. Lynda Burris of the United Church of Christ closed out the evening’s ceremony by intoning, “If you only say one prayer in your life, make it be two words: ‘Thank you.'”