Hot Springs said goodbye to Pam Bland today. For 34 years Pam Bland gave direction to
First Step, Inc. First Step develops
resources and provides care and opportunities for special needs individuals
from birth through adulthood. When Pam
started her job First Step had 11 employees and a handful of clients. When she retired a year ago, First Step had
1100 employees a couple of thousand clients and has spread to other counties in
Arkansas. Four of her friends and
colleagues spoke at her funeral and described something of the incredible
person Pam was. By all means, Pam was a
difference-maker. I want you to know her
too, so I’m attaching some of my comments from the funeral service.
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At the 2013 commencement speech at MIT, Drew Houston, the
founder of Dropbox said:
When I think about it, the happiest and
most successful people I know don't just love what they do, they're obsessed
with solving an important problem, something that matters to them. They remind me of a dog chasing a tennis
ball: Their eyes go a little crazy, the
leash snaps and they go bounding off, plowing through whatever gets in the way
… So it's not about pushing yourself;
it's about finding your tennis ball, the thing that pulls you.
Pam found her tennis ball.
And if she hadn’t been willing to snap the leash and chase it down
relentlessly, if she hadn’t been that bulldog that grabs hold of your pant-cuff
and won’t let go till you noticed her and heard her out, the lives of so many
people and our whole community would be diminished. She saw a need. She felt it on a visceral level, and she took
it on with the ferocity of a mama-lion protecting her cubs. There’s just something about people like
that, isn’t there? There’s something
that causes us to take note of what they are doing. I read about a small town church burning to
the ground one night. Most of the
community were there watching it burn, watching the volunteer fireman do their
best to save the foundation. A prominent
church member noticed his neighbor next to him, sort of looked down his nose,
and said, “Hmm. First time I’ve ever
seen you at this church.” The neighbor
replied, “First time I’ve ever seen it on fire.” Pam was a woman on fire for the
disabled. A lot of us watched her burn
for a long time. And her passion set
fire to many of you for the same cause.
And here’s the deal: Pam didn’t just see the cause; she saw
the individual. She saw the individual
that many would rather ignore. These
people matter. These people are not
accidents, not mistakes, not rejects or factory-seconds. Our disabled brothers and sisters are people
of worth, created in the image of God, with all the dignity and meaning that
goes with it. God gives them to us to
bless and to be a blessing. That’s why
Pam always steered First Step away from only taking care of the disabled to
providing them the training, the resources, and the tools to take care of
themselves to the upper limit of their capacities.
Pam saw the disabled as Jesus sees them. In Jesus’ story of the judgment in Matthew
25, he describes the hungry, the thirsty, the inmate, the impoverished, the
stranger, the sick, as “the least of
these brothers and sisters of mine.”
Not the least in Jesus’ eyes but the least in the eyes of most of
us. Many of us view such needy people as
helpless and even a burden. In Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge is
asked for a donation to help the poor at Christmas. “Don’t we have poor houses for such people?”
asks Scrooge. The solicitors reply, "Those who are badly off must go
there. Many can't go there; and many
would rather die." To which Scrooge
declared, "If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease
the surplus population." Though
most would never say it, that’s the way many look at the poor, the needy, and
the disabled. We are too quick to
evaluate people not in terms of being but in terms of doing. That’s not the way Jesus looks at the
them. They are his little brothers and
sisters. And Jesus said in that parable,
“When you love and help them, you love
and help me.” Whether she thought
about it consciously or not, Pam saw Jesus in those she served. And every time she served them, she served
Jesus.
Pam has set a wonderful example for us all. My prayer is that all of us will look at the
needy and the disabled through Jesus’ eyes, through Pam’s eyes. And maybe we could be difference-makers too.
