• Leslie Wilber •
• Originally published December 31, 2008 at 11:59 p.m., updated December 31, 2008 at 11:59 p.m.

In Gary Moses' America, everyone is greeted with a handshake or a hug. Neighbors call each other by name and extend a hand when help is needed. Give Moses your tired, your poor and he'll find them places to sleep, food to eat and put smiles on their faces.

The work seems exhausting. But to Moses, there is too much goodness not to go out and try to see it all.

"Have we seen happy people today?" Moses asks. He's unlocking his Jeep, which he calls his office. Inside, he keeps a foot-high stack of neatly ordered fliers, schedules and pamphlets about community events.

The trick, he says, is to have a good filing system, but not spend too much time on it. It's the Saturday before Christmas, almost 2 in the afternoon. Moses is leaving his fourth event of the day, where 50 kids who behave and perform well in school, but come from families without much money, got new bikes.

At this event, like most others, Moses met a handful of the former students he collected in more than 36 years of teaching at Patti Welder Middle School.

A man with neck tattoos, accompanied by a clean-scrubbed and well-pressed 6-year-old boy, greets Moses. The man was once Moses' student and is now a single dad. His son is about to get a new bike at the Texas Roadhouse Holiday Bikes 4 Kids giveaway.

The boy might be the most obviously delighted person Moses will meet all day. He's speeding around the parking lot on his new bike. His father beams as Moses compliments the child.

"Good people," Moses says, introducing the father, who is telling Moses about the landscaping work he's done nearby. "Hard worker."

This is what Moses does all day: he makes people feel good, calling out their best attributes to anyone in earshot.

"I can't have a bad day," Moses says inside his Jeep. He's not bitter, in fact, he's offering this as one of the reasons he loves serving his community.

"You never feel Gary is resentful," says longtime friend Dennis Tardan. "It's his joy."

Tardan and his wife, Melissa Roth, called Moses when they started the jigsaw puzzle exchange in 2001. Moses is like a brand name for some people, a stamp of approval that lends legitimacy.

"We called because we know if something needs to get out in the community, you call Gary," Tardan said.

And when people call, Moses can't say no. He's in the habit of overbooking, said Irene Henrichs. Moses asked Henrichs, who he's been seeing for about six years, to describe their relationship - she picks companion as her title.

Even if he's running late or can only stop by briefly, Moses makes it to every event he commits to, Henrichs said.

When Moses was asked to speak at the bike giveaway, he told organizer Christine Werner he couldn't be there at noon, because he needed to go to the Carver Center giveaway. No problem, the Texas Roadhouse manager told him, and moved her event to 1 p.m.

At both places, Moses says a few words into a microphone. He chats with as many people as he can. He makes sure they're having fun and getting everything they need.

At the Carver Center giveaway, which, coincidentally, is at Patti Welder, Mimi Gutierrez is eager to talk about Moses.

"Hey, I've got something nice to say about him," Gutierrez says, with no other introduction. She is a certified nursing assistant at Citizens Medical Center, where Moses now works in hospital patient relations. "He's always asking about patients. If they need anything, he finds it for them."

Once, the hospital called Moses because a boy who was about to be discharged was asking for him, Henrichs said. The boy was a wrestling fan, so Moses not only visited him, but brought him tickets to see a match.

"It made his day," Henrichs said.

For many people, especially those who didn't go to Patti Welder, Moses is best known as an announcer. But it's hard to calculate Moses' volunteerism using titles - like commissioner of the Crossroads Youth Football League. Every time he tries to list a few favorite groups, he stops - he loves the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Adopt-a-Pet, veterans' groups, hospice and chambers of commerce - but he doesn't want to leave anyone out. He thinks all the community groups do important work.

Moses also spends a lot of time speaking at quinceañeras, birthdays and other big parties. It's such a honor to be asked, Moses says, that he can't say no.

But the most important work Moses does is away from the microphone, he says.

"What I'm able to do is I have contacts," Moses said. "People call me and I give them a direction to go in. A contact. I'm a liaison to help get things going."

Moses has become a clearinghouse for information about Victoria. If someone calls him with a question, he always tries to dig up an answer, Henrichs said.

"Any time you need something, you call him," said Debra Williams, 51, who knows Moses because she was a student at Patti Welder, although she did not take any of Moses' classes. "He stands up for us."

Williams stands with a group of friends at the Carver Center giveaway. Each woman can recall a time Moses helped her through her adolescence.

Another woman there says Moses made her middle school years bearable. Sylvia Kazmir was shy and bookish in middle school in the '70s, and didn't have many friends.

"Mr. Moses, he was my inspiration," Kazmir said.

Moses does this work - fun work, he calls it - with few days off, rare vacations and no pay. He flew in a plane for the first time four years ago, Henrichs said, when she won tickets to Puerto Vallarta in a radio contest. His first impulse was to ask Henrichs to give the tickets away, but she refused.

On a slow day, one in which cramped writing doesn't blacken every inch of his calendar, Moses tries to catch part of a football game or run errands. Usually, he prefers to be busy, though.

Henrichs spent the first two years of their courtship following Moses to every event. Now, she's more selective.

"It's impossible," Henrichs said.

Moses gets his energy from helping people: perhaps the most wholesome high a man can chase.

"You never get off that high," he says. "Do you see why I do it?"

• cqThe Advocate of the Month honors someone who gives back to the Crossroads community in an extraordinary way. To nominate an Advocate, call 361-574-1222 or e-mail newsroom@vicad.com.

• Print
• •
• Share
  • Share this item

    Send this to a friend

    Share on FaceBook

  • Grab the link

    Copy and paste the link:

  • Blog about it

    Blog about this page.

  • Close
• •
• 2 Comments
• •
• Favorite
• •
• Report error
  • Thank you for your submission.
    Error report or correction

    Contact name (optional) Contact phone/e-mail (optional)  

    
  • Close
• •