Out of the Cold: It’s compassion first for Glenn’s crew
I met Glenn Leman, for what I thought was the first time, a little before Christmas at the modest office space, tucked into a corner of St. Mary’s Elementary School, that serves as headquarters, or rather hearthstone, for Hamilton Out of the Cold.
I’ll tell you. It’s not Jasper Park Lodge, the resort/golf course in Alberta where, until recently, Glenn spent his spring/summer/early fall months, as the club golf pro.
But there was fudge on the table. And Janice Ormond, looming up (petitely) from her desk, like our lady of the pantry, painted the room with her smile. So there’s nowhere Glenn would rather be, though he also wishes there were no need for Out of the Cold.
Janice made the fudge. Of course. This is what OOTC does. They feed people. Food ... and, more; hope, companionship ... for the hungry of a whole city. The larder is full.
She introduced me to Glenn, and the first thing you notice, if you’re expectations have been shaped around the past record at OOTC, is that he’s not a nun. He’s not even a woman. He might not even be Catholic.
I say this because his predecessors as executive director were Hamilton OOTC founder Sister Carol Anne Guay and Sister Nancy Sullivan of the Sisters of St. Joseph. He’s only the third ever ED in its history (they’re continuing this year to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their founding in December 1997) and he’s the first lay person.
And I suspect Glenn is also the first golf pro (unless the sisters have scratch handicaps) to head up the organization, which feeds breakfasts and dinners to those who come to it through participating locations, mostly churches where the meals are offered, though the program has no religious affiliation.
“I’ve just recently stopped calling myself ‘new,’” says Glenn, who took over from Sister Nancy in late 2016.
Glenn started volunteering at OOTC five years ago. He’s from Hamilton, got a degree at McMaster, worked in business here but for many years he’d be out west for big chunks of each year with his golf pro work.
“One year I came back to Hamilton (after the golf season), and I just wanted to give but didn’t know where to apply myself,” says Glenn. Someone told him about OOTC.
The feeling there, the lumps in the throat. The impact was instant and kept building. OOTC has that effect. Janice, who’s been OOTC staff for 11 years (“she’s amazing,” says Glenn), was going to fill in at the office before teachers’ college. She never left.
On top of the need to contribute was the debt that he felt, says Glenn, almost in passing, to community, experiencing as he did the power of love and giving growing up with two brothers, now gone, who had muscular dystrophy.
And this is where the safecracking fingers of my memory felt the tumblers fall into place. Leman. Of course. Shortly after I came to Hamilton in the early 1980s I did several stories on the Leman brothers Michael and Craig, their father Ron and the fundraising they did for MD research. I must have met Glenn when he was but a teenager on my visits to the Leman family house. It all came flooding back. That wonderful family. This city. It keeps doing it to me — two degrees of separation.
Glenn and the OOTC were concerned earlier this fall when donations were down. Then things started coming through; the Mischa Weisz Foundation with a generous gift, for instance, and the ArcelorMittal Dofasco Employee Donation Fund And the hugely successful OOTC’s Ride for Refuge in September.
OOTC also receives generous support from the Catholic school board, diocese, Ancaster Film Festival, and such providers of food and other materials as Lococo’s and Rifle Range Road Fortino’s, and it has a shelter space partnership with YWCA.
Then there are the volunteers, 400 of them, preparing and serving 28,000 meals a year, including an “incredible team,” says Glenn, of retired police officers to receive guests.
Glenn so appreciates the legacy the Sisters left of ensuring, above all, “dignity and respect” for guests, and guests can be anyone, no questions asked. And we don’t need to be reminded how cold is the cold they’re coming in out of.
“Compassion is the hallmark of the program,” says Glenn and it’s written all over his face and Janice’s and their team.
I could even taste it in the fudge. Benevolicious.