Man, 94, repays 80-year-old favor

OAK PARK HEIGHTS, MINN. — When someone does something nice for Les Heggernes, he doesn’t forget. Which is why, at 94, he’s repaying a favor he received 80 years ago.

“I had a disrupted childhood,” he said, a polite way of noting that things were horrible at home. When he was 14, he found a safe haven in a St. Paul boys club that was part of what is now called the Union Gospel Mission Twin Cities.

“We could play basketball there,” he recalled. “They’d give us soda and a cookie, and there were counselors who would listen to our problems. So I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for the mission.”

That soft spot has manifested itself as a one-man charity drive. Heggernes collects towels and toiletry items — including shampoo, soap, toothpaste, razors and hair spray — for the 400 homeless people for whom the mission provides shelter every night.

Heggernes calls his project the Boutwells Bountiful Bath Baskets, a nod to the Boutwells Landing senior community in Oak Park Heights where he has lived for 13 years. Most of the donations come from his fellow residents, although, as word-of-mouth about his campaign has spread, outsiders have started to make contributions, too.

Once a month, he and his son, Mike — whom he calls “both my right- and left-hand man” — pack up the donations and deliver them to the mission’s donation center in St. Paul.

“Dad has always tried to find somebody or some place to help,” the younger Heggernes said. “And that’s how he raised his five boys.”