Editor's note: This is the first in a series of holiday season columns by Kevin Cowherd and Susan Reimer highlighting people in the Baltimore area who exemplify the spirit of The Sun's annual Spirit of Sharing program.
I WENT looking for a Thanksgiving story because the newspaper was full of depressing articles about cops being gunned down and knucklehead administrators lousing up the schools, and I needed to get my mind off all of that, which is when I heard about Tricia Wilson.
The first thing you should know is that she won't spend today stuffing herself silly and waddling over to the couch to chat with family members or watch football on TV, as so many of us will.
This morning she'll be out in the cold in Greenspring Valley as a volunteer at the Turkey Trot to benefit research into Crohn's disease and colitis. (She herself has Crohn's disease, a chronic disease of the digestive tract, for which she takes 700 pills a month.)
Later her thoughts may turn to the holiday food drives and blood drives and cancer research fund-raisers she organizes at work - she's director of corporate communications for Kelly & Associates, the third-party billing administrator in Hunt Valley. Or she may do something with all the other causes and charities she's involved with: Adopt-a-Family, Hands on Baltimore, Operation Christmas Child, Habitat for Humanity - we could list them all only if we leveled another acre or two of forest for newsprint.
But here is why this is such a Thanksgiving story: because few are more thankful for what they have in life than Tricia Wilson of Baltimore.
She does not count herself lucky today for having a big-screen TV or a fancy car or a big house, but for having the simple gift of compassion, the best gift she ever received as a child.
Wilson is 33 now and newly married, but maybe the defining incident in her life took place back in first grade, when she lived in Rodgers Forge and heard about the holiday canned food drive her school was organizing.
She went home that day and looked in the pantry and asked her mother, a divorced mom struggling to raise three kids, which cans she could donate.
"You can take one can - pick out a vegetable and take that, no more," her mother replied.
There was something in her mother's voice - was it tension, sadness, frustration? The little girl couldn't be sure. When you're 7 years old, you don't stop to dwell on this stuff. You take a can and carry it to school the next day and it makes you feel good about yourself for helping others.
Not long after that, Tricia returned home with her mother and two brothers from a visit to her grandparents' house and found boxes of food scattered about her living room, dining room and kitchen.
She grew frightened and started crying, thinking robbers had broken into her house. But her mother explained that robbers don't break in and leave things, they tend to break in and take things.
It was at that moment, Wilson says, that she learned that she and her family were among the "needy." The can of vegetables she'd donated earlier might even have been in one of the boxes scattered on the floor.
"My mother worked so hard to try to make our lives as normal as possible," Wilson says now. "So when we went to school, we seemed as normal as possible. ... My mother could not possibly afford to let me take a can of food. But she let me because she knew it was important to instill in me the value of helping others."
So that's where all this comes from, this overwhelming need to help others, to do something to alleviate all the suffering you see and hear about in this world.
And when you're this driven to make a difference, your frustration level just red-lines when you sense apathy among those who have so much to give to the less fortunate.
That's more or less what happened in the mid-'90s, when Wilson worked for Blue Cross/Blue Shield in Owings Mills. She was the editor of the employee newsletter and already pricking the social consciences of her co-workers, constantly promoting events for the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, Christmas in April for poor families, blood drives, you name it.
But these were not always met with - how should we put this? - unbridled enthusiasm and support from her fellow employees.
"There were 1,500 people between the two buildings and we'd be lucky if we collected 60 units of blood," she said. "I just couldn't believe people didn't care. [But] people always had excuses."
The annual canned food drive was another event that did not exactly end with the trucks groaning under the weight of tons of food.
"We were collecting nothing. Nothing!" she recalled. "Four or five boxes. I was so embarrassed! I remember calling the Maryland Food Bank and saying: 'We're getting nothing!'"
Well, this was just about driving Tricia Wilson nuts. So one day, she sat down at her computer and wrote a story. It was a story about a little girl who donates a can of vegetables to help feed the hungry, only to find out that she and her family have existed at times largely on the charity of strangers. What was it Red Smith, the late, great sports columnist said about writing? It's easy - you just open a vein and bleed.
The words came gushing out of Tricia Wilson that day. She wrote the whole thing in a half-hour and published it in the company newsletter, in a section called Expressions, where employees could share their feelings.
"I was scared of what the reaction would be," she recalled. "There were all these fears of people not believing you or thinking you made it up."
Instead, a wonderful thing happened.
"The response was overwhelming," Wilson said. "It was unbelievable."
Boxes and boxes of food poured in, over 50 of them, enough to fill a big white van.
"And people were coming by my desk, calling, e-mailing, leaving voice-mail messages saying how fabulous it was that I wrote that piece and thanking me for [revealing] myself that way," she recalled.
She hadn't told her mother, Beth Matthews, she was writing the essay. But once it was published, she mailed her a copy. A few days later, Matthews called her daughter in tears.
"She was upset," Wilson recalls. "She was so sad that we had to grow up that way."
But Wilson explained to her mother that her essay was a tribute to her, a tribute for never letting the hard times beat her down, for persevering and raising three kids when others might have given up.
It was Tricia Wilson's way of saying thanks.
For the one can of vegetables - and everything else.
Spirit of Sharing
Now in its third year, The Sun's annual Spirit of Sharing campaign raises funds to help needy families in the Baltimore area during the holiday season.
The campaign, administered by Baltimore Sun Charities, a fund of the McCormick Tribune Foundation, runs through the end of December. For every dollar contributed, the foundation will contribute another 50 cents, meaning for each dollar raised, $1.50 will be donated to local nonprofit efforts such as shelters, food banks and fuel funds. Administrative costs are covered, so that 100 percent of all money raised will be distributed to those in need. Donations are tax deductible.
To donate, send a check payable to Baltimore Sun Charities to: Baltimore Sun Spirit of Sharing Campaign, P.O. Box 62150, Baltimore Md. 21264-2150. Or you can donate online at www.sunspot.net/ spiritofsharing.
Every donor (except those who wish to remain anonymous) will be acknowledged in The Sun. The Sun also will publish the list of charities that receive this year's Spirit of Sharing grants.