Stories without end

A problem with the Giving Fund is that it tells stories without endings.

The cases shorthand complex lives into 80 words or so while revealing no identities.

Single mothers in high school, families crippled by hefty medical bills, recovering abuse victims who can’t cover basic expenses.

The campaign, which the Stamford Advocate and Greenwich Time runs over the holiday season, has told thousands of such short stories since it launched in 1983. The stories become so familiar that some readers mistake them for wellintentioned fiction.

So allow me to reveal a couple endings.

I only learned a few years ago that the requests do not come from clients of Family Centers and PersontoPerson, but from staff members who recognize needs that could elevate lives if met by donations.

Gregory Hauck, who manages Family Centers’ housing programs, explained that clients never know they are among the cases we publish in print and online.

“You don’t want to build their expectation and anticipation when there is no guarantee they are going to get it,” Hauck explains.

Hauck saw two of his cases fulfilled by readers before Christmas.

One involved a client on a fixed income who struggles to pay the rent, so Hauck was able to deliver a check that gave them a small step forward.

The other paid for a brake job for a client, one of their few who actually owns a car, albeit “an old one.”

“The car is a lifeline for him, because he spends so much time alone in his apartment,” Hauck says of the 70yearold man.

The donation becomes two gifts, one for the recipient and one for the staff member who delivers it in person. It’s a surprise wrapped as a routine visit.

“That is pure joy for me,” Hauck says. “To see them light up and be so grateful.”

I’ve thought a lot about readers who question the authenticity of these stories. Perhaps it’s why, in an increasingly cynical age, most of the donations come not via a few keyboard clicks, but from older readers who clip coupons from the print edition and mail them to a P.O. Box like it’s still 1983.

It turns out that Hauck has given even more thought to the storytelling than I have.

“We are living in times when people question what is fact and what is truth. I’ve always said that a story should always be grounded in fact. While it is not their real name, the circumstances are fact,” he says. “Sometimes good stories reveal more truths than facts.”

I ask him to share some of his own narrative. He pauses to consider whether to tell “the Irish version or the German version.” As a writer of that descent, I appreciate the quandary.

He opts for the more efficient option. It doesn’t come as a plot twist that he was an English major (at Yale).

“Like Cole Porter and James Dean” he hails from Indiana, but arrived in Connecticut at 13 and never left. He lives in Redding in a house built in 1772, down the road from the last home of another guy who liked a good yarn, Mark Twain.

Then he tells a story. Like the Giving Fund ones, it is nonfiction. Family Centers often conducts what they call JIT (“Just in Time”) interventions to help clients out of a crisis. There are also what he refers to as “Memorable Moments,” opportunities to do something special.

His client was a women in her 50s suffering from “serious mental issues” and experiencing loneliness. Hauck called on a friend at a Darien salon who treated her to a day of pampering. After three hours of having her hair washed and colored and more, the woman started crying.

“What is it? Why are you crying?” Hauck asked.

“I feel like a little girl on Christmas morning,” she replied.

Hauck recognizes that what might be a fleeting moment in another life meant a lot to this woman. He verbally punches the words “emotional impact.”

Our conversation drifts with my queries about literature that resonates with Hauck. He builds somewhat dramatically to his big reveal — “Jane Eyre.”

We discuss author Charlotte Bronte’s feminist themes in the 1847 novel, and the book’s radical approach to structure and storytelling. It doesn’t resonate with me until later how this sidebar exchange applies to the Giving Fund.

“(Bronte) lets the truth speak for itself. (The novel) doesn’t manipulate heartstrings,” Hauck explains.

Yes, the Giving Fund stories are true. Whether they tug at heartstrings or not, the endings are in the hands of the readers.