New orphanage just a start for dad\Late daughter showed what's important in life

Monday, December 27, 2004

Second in a two-part series

By STEVE DOYLE Times Staff Writersteved@htimes.com

Steve James didn't go to Kenya, Africa, intending to become a hero.

All he wanted to do was meet Newton, the little boy his daughter had helped save from starvation, then hustle back home to Alabama.

But after seeing the crippling poverty in the east African nation in March 2002, James, a nurse anesthetist at Huntsville Hospital, couldn't walk away.

Kenya is one of the world's most desperate places. Adults rarely reach their 50th birthday. Some 900,000 AIDS orphans - enough to fill a city Birmingham's size - wander the streets.

"It's the greatest problem, in my mind, anywhere," James said last week. "It's monumental. It's biblical."

James, a 49-year-old cancer survivor, knew he couldn't fix Kenya's problems alone.

So he made a slide show.

He took his gripping pictures of Kenya to church. To Cullman Regional Medical Center, where he worked at the time. To Lions Club lunches, nursing homes - any place with a crowd.

Most people who saw James' presentation wanted to help. They'd give a couple of quarters, a dollar bill, a $10 check.

Before long, James had raised $25,000 and formed a nonprofit corporation, the Brittney James Child Fund, named for his late daughter.

The charity's logo is two pairs of hands holding up the world. The white hands represent Brittney, who died in September 2001 at age 19. The black hands represent Newton.

Between her sophomore year in high school and her sophomore year in college, Brittney gave hundreds of dollars to Newton through the Christian Children's Fund, a hunger relief agency.

Staying busy kept James from grieving so much for Brittney. He organized a medical mission to Kenya in September 2002 to mark the first anniversary of her death. Seven friends volunteered to go with him, including a doctor and a nurse.

James also convinced Cullman Regional and nearby Woodland Medical Center to donate 20 tons of surplus medical equipment to Kenya's Ojele Hospital, which couldn't even afford baby blankets.

New moms covered their infants with bubble wrap.

Hot, sobering

Months earlier, James spent $2,000 flying a pallet-load of supplies to the little hospital. This time, he paid $6,000 to have a much larger load, including bicycles for all 58 hospital workers, shipped to Kenya's seedy port city, Mombasa.

Dock workers there often loot incoming boats, but everything arrived safely.

James and his friends spent two weeks volunteering at the hospital, showing doctors how to use ultrasound machines, cauterizing tools, fiberoptic surgical headlamps. Then they drove to Newton's village, Naro Moru.

It was a hot, sad, sobering trip. Everywhere you turned, AIDS.

But James felt God had led him to Kenya for a reason. Ideas somersaulted through his brain.

He had to do more.

James and his wife, Greta, raided their retirement fund to help Ojele Hospital build a modern patient wing and operating room. (The first baby born there was named Steve, in James' honor).

They paid to send a teenage girl - the oldest of 17 kids from a poor family - to boarding school. They bought a cow so Newton's family could have fresh milk.

They worked with their former church in Little Rock, Ark., to pipe clean river water two miles to Newton's village so farmers could irrigate their corn and beans.

"As you drive in, everything is brown and dead," Greta says. "But now there's this little island of green."

Still, Steve James wasn't satisfied. He was haunted by images of a man he'd met named Victor. Victor was in his late 20s, skinny as a walking stick, dying of AIDS. He'd asked James - begged him - to take care of his children, Victor Jr. and Stancey, when he was gone.

"I'd given just about all my money away," James said. "I just told him I'd pray about it, and we'd go from there."

A grand idea

Those prayers spawned the grandest idea yet: An orphanage where Victor Jr., Stancey and other homeless kids would never again have to worry where their next meal was coming from.

It came together quickly. During his third trip to Kenya in September 2003, James met Fred Otieno, a local pastor. He agreed an orphanage was badly needed and offered the use of two abandoned church buildings.

James, who by then had raised more than $40,000 for his Kenya relief work, had never felt more sure about anything. He shelled out $6,000 to have the buildings renovated.

"At that point," James said, "we were really doing something Brittney would be excited about."

Today, there are shelves for textbooks donated by the Cullman school system, and a stout barbed-wire fence to foil cow and chicken thieves, and a mural of Jesus in the classroom that doubles as a cafeteria.

When word circulated on Easter weekend of this year that the 10-bed orphanage was ready, more than 200 parents showed up to hand over children they couldn't afford to feed.

The first two beds went to Victor Jr. and Stancey. Another went to a young boy found tied to a mango tree.

'I can take more'

While James was thrilled about the orphanage - called Marindi Children's Home of Grace - he hated turning away so many needy kids.

Orphanage staffers soon rearranged the buildings to house 32 youngsters.

"It was like 'Schindler's List' on a tiny scale," James said. "I kept thinking, 'Give me more kids, I can take more.' "

Not sure where he'd get the money to keep the orphanage running long term, James went to friends in Cullman and Little Rock. He quickly found sponsors for all 32 kids at the shelter.

Their $75 a month pays for food, school uniforms, guards, teachers, cooks and caretakers. Keeping the orphanage open may get a bit more expensive in 2005:

The village is about to get electricity.

Brittney's Place

James isn't done.

He and Greta, a stay-at-home mom, recently bought four acres next to the orphanage - enough room for two more dormitories, a computer lab and a medical clinic.

But first comes Brittney's Place, a guesthouse for visiting relief workers, who now sleep in fleabag motels or bunk with local families.

The Jameses figure seeing the dream through will cost $80,000 - a huge sum for a start-up charity. But they're determined to do it, even if it means moving to a smaller house with a smaller mortgage payment. The children of Kenya - and Brittney's memory - deserve that much, they say.

"Brittney thought you should be able to see people's faith in actions," Steve James said. "Being able to care for poor children, that gets past all the superficial things and gets down to what's really important in life."

A committee of one

Brittney James inspired her parents, and their efforts are inspiring us Tuesday, December 28, 2004 Huntsville Times

Steve James, a nurse anesthetist at Huntsville Hospital, is not a Bill Gates-type, loaded with billions of dollars. But he and his wife aren't letting lack of wealth stop them from giving their time, energy and money to help needy people in the African nation of Kenya.

And they've made this commitment because their late daughter, Brittney, didn't let her youth or lack of money stop her from helping a Kenyan child named Newton.

Times Staff Writer Steve Doyle told their story on Sunday and Monday. If you missed it, you missed one of the more inspiring stories to grace the pages of this newspaper. It's so inspiring, in fact, that it's worth going on-line to www.al.com to read both of Doyle's articles.

Six years ago, then 16-year-old Brittney James began sending $24 a month to a Christian charity so that a Kenyan child named Newton would have food to eat. Then a student at Cullman High School, Brittney worked after school for three years to earn this money. Tragically, after leaving Cullman to attend college in North Carolina, Brittney died.

Fortunately, like many compassionate visionaries, Brittney's dream of helping Newton didn't die with her. Her parents, Steve and Greta, picked up where Brittney left off.

They formed the Brittney James Child Fund, a non-profit organization that is helping rural Kenyans to get health care, clean water and electricity. The fund has helped to transform two buildings donated by a Kenyan church into an orphanage for some of Kenya's many children who have lost their parents to AIDS and other scourges.

(The Central Intelligence Agency estimates that 1.2 million Kenyans are infected with HIV or have contracted AIDS. The average life expectancy is 45 years old.)

Steve James has visited Kenya four times and has seen first-hand the needs of its rural towns. Each time, he has recruited support from the Cullman Regional Medical Center, his former employer, as well as Woodland Medical Center.

Thanks to North Alabama's generosity, Steve has been able to outfit one rural hospital with surplus medical equipment such as heart monitors and surgical supplies. On his second trip, a doctor and a nurse were part of his small entourage of volunteers.

Steve and Greta James have sponsored a teenage girl's boarding school education. They have bought a cow so that Kenyan children would have fresh milk to drink. And they plan to do much more.

The Jameses are worthy of the acclaim we normally reserve for athletes and entertainers. They have turned Brittney's death into a gift of love for those in need, a gift that Brittney as a committee of one had already begun giving. To their credit, Steve and Greta James are not letting her dream die.

By David Person, for the editorial board