Offering hope: Parents’ example leads Bill Bickel to help homeless families

Photo caption: In a lighthearted moment, Holy Family Shelter director Bill Bickel, left, pretends to take a cracker from Tonika Mitchum, the 1-year-old daughter of Jolanda Mitchum, second from left. Tonika and Jolanda reside at the shelter. Tonika is being held by Nigisty Christos, Bickel’s administrative assistant.

By John Shaughnessy

Some memories of childhood never leave us. They stay with us through the years, guiding the way we live our lives, the way we lead our families and sometimes even the careers we choose.

So it is with Bill Bickel. As he talks about his childhood and his family, he paints a picture similar to the ones that the late American artist Norman Rockwell used to create.

In Bickel’s childhood memories, there is the street where he grew up, overflowing with kids who were always available for another game, another adventure. In Bickel’s childhood memories, there is his family of 10 led by his parents, who showered their six sons and two daughters with love and patience.

It was a world where faith and family mattered, where love and hope reigned.

As you listen to Bickel talk about his life as a child, you begin to understand how it inspires his work as the director of Holy Family Shelter and Holy Family Transitional Housing, part of Catholic Charities Indianapolis.

The childhood influence is there when the 45-year-old Bickel talks about one of the success stories at the shelter for homeless families. It’s the story of the young mother who was born into a family of drug users, who became one herself and ended up homeless with her children because of her drug use.

“She never looked at the drugs as being the cause of being homeless until she came in here,” Bickel says. “She began a recovery program, we did a monitoring of her and she began working on the employment end. She quit drugs, she ended up employed and she now has a home. Her kids got their mother back, too.”

Bickel’s childhood influence also comes through in his story about two other residents who came to the shelter for help—a single father and his son with special needs.

“The father went through a messy divorce,” Bickel recalls. “He has custody of the child. In the midst of the divorce, the father has a car accident. He loses his job. He loses his housing. He’s here for six to seven weeks. Then, in two years of living in our transitional housing program, he paid off $15,000 in debt, which came from the accident he had. It’s remarkable how hard he worked and how hard he tried to keep his family together.”

Bickel shares each of those stories with emotion and awe—two characteristics that also mark his memories of growing up in South Bend, Ind.

“I had a great childhood,” he says as he sits in his office at the shelter. “In many ways, as I point back to my childhood, my single greatest influence was my

parents. I don’t know how they did it. They had an unlimited supply of patience and love for all of us, as they still do today.”

As the third oldest of the eight children of William and Marian Bickel, he has never forgotten his parent’s love and patience. He’s just made it a part of the atmosphere of family and faith that he tries to create as the director of the shelter.

“The entire ministry of the shelter is that we as parents are our children’s greatest teachers,” he says. “The

shelter’s ability to keep the family together is a natural part of our mission.”

Building a home for the suffering

A fierce wind whips outside the Holy Family Shelter on this late autumn afternoon. The day began with a wind chill factor of temperatures in the teens—a harbinger of the bitter winter weather that Bickel knows makes being homeless an even greater hardship.

Inside the shelter, a small sign receives prominent display in Bickel’s office.

The sign reads, “Compassion is not bending toward the underprivileged from a privileged position; it is not reaching out from on high to those who are less fortunate below; it is not a gesture of sympathy or pity for those who fail to make it in the upward pull. On the contrary, compassion means going directly to those people and places where suffering is most acute, and building a home there.”

That’s what the archdiocese did when they opened the Holy Family Shelter in November of 1984, Bickel says.

“At the time, there was no place in the community where a homeless family could remain intact,” he says. “Starting this shelter was a very dignified approach to the family unit—to keep them together.”

Twenty-two years later, more than 8,300 families have made a home and started a story of hope at the shelter.

“Why they come here is wide and varied,” Bickel says. “Who comes here is wide and varied. We’ve had a couple of law students, a dentist and folks with engineering degrees, all the way down to folks who have dropped out of the eighth grade. All walks of life, all races.

“In some ways, those who serve families have a PR [public relations] problem. You see the guy panhandling outside Circle Centre Mall or at a highway exit, and

people think that’s the homeless issue in Indianapolis. When you see the mother of three get off the city bus downtown and go to clean the bathrooms and make the beds at a five-star hotel, you may think she’s poor, but she isn’t homeless. But she lives at Holy Family Shelter with three kids.”

Starting a journey of compassion

As he helps those families, Bickel tries to walk in their place, firmly believing that, “There but for the grace of God go I.”

Bickel’s journey to Holy Family Shelter began in 1992 when he returned to Indiana after working three years at a mission in the country of Peru—a time when Hispanic families

were also beginning to arrive in Indianapolis at increased rates.

“My sister lived here and I was visiting her,” he recalls. “My intention was to go back to Peru, but I responded to an ad in the paper for a case manager here. I speak English and Spanish, and there were not many bilingual social providers. I also had Third World experience, which was helpful in a homeless setting.”

He spent five years as a case manager at Holy Family before joining Clarian Health’s Homeless Initiative Program in Indianapolis. Then he returned to Holy Family Shelter in 2001 to become its director. He is in his 15th year of serving the homeless.

“He works like almost 24 hours a day,” says his administrative assistant, Nigisty Christos. “He’s the janitor, he’s the director, he’s the case manager. He is kind, compassionate and very understanding of people’s problems.”

No one knows that better than Rocio Camacho. In 2003, she was living in Denver with her then-11-year-old son, Luis, who suddenly turned seriously ill from a kidney problem. When a Denver pediatrician believed Luis needed dialysis treatments, the doctor searched for a

hospital that would help Luis. The doctor found one in Indianapolis—Riley Hospital for Children.

Seeking a place to stay in Indianapolis, the mother and son were turned away at every door until they came to Bickel’s attention. Bickel gave them a home at the shelter. He continued to provide a home while Luis had dialysis treatments twice a day for 18 months at Holy Family. He was also one of the leaders in the effort to raise the $75,000 that the mother and son needed to pay for the transplant in which Rocio gave Luis one of her kidneys in 2005.

Rocio smiles when she talks of Bickel. She also calls him one of her angels.

Others have noticed his impact. For three years, William Moreau has worked with Bickel as a fellow board member of the Coalition for Homelessness Intervention and Prevention in Indianapolis.

“Bill’s work in helping the homeless is nothing less than extraordinary—perhaps saintly,” Moreau says. “When Bill speaks about the day-in, day-out

successes—and inevitable failures—of working with our homeless neighbors, he is never paternalistic or patronizing. He speaks about them the way someone speaks about a family member or colleague.

“He never seeks any sympathy, never seeks any praise. He just lives the Christian example.”

Facing frustration, keeping hope

“You have to come in with a mindset that this is a ministry and a mission,” Bickel says. “When you’re in the human service end of things, you have to come with that first before everything else. These are fragile, vulnerable families. You have to understand that first.”

That understanding guides Bickel as he directs the shelter that has a capacity for 22 families, a shelter that is constantly full.

What keeps him continuing his efforts for the homeless after 15 years—an extraordinarily long time in a field where burnout is high—is a combination of a sense of purpose, a self-deprecating sense of humor and a sincere appreciation for the 14 staff members he leads.

“To be around people who are committed and innately passionate about working with the poor keeps me going,” he says.

So does the hope that he can make a difference in the life of another family, from the single woman with a baby to the family with two parents and 11 children.

“We don’t want to be a Band-Aid approach,” he says. “That means advocating and educating about what can be referred to as basic life skills—appropriate budgeting skills, appropriate parenting skills. We help with housing, employment, children’s services, nutrition,

substance abuse counseling and enrollment in schools.

“The goal is permanent self-sufficiency. For one person, it may be overcoming a physical issue that lets them keep employment. For a 30-year-old woman, it was getting a GED [general education degree]. For her, it’s a sense of the future.”

Bickel glances in the direction of another sign in his office. This one reads, “Lord, help me to live each day so that at the end of it there is nothing I cannot share with you, nothing for which I cannot give thanks.”

At the end of another day, Bickel shares his experiences with God. He also gives his thanks. Then he heads home to his wife of 16 years, Flor, and their

15-year-old daughter, Susie. He tries to give Susie all the love and patience his parents gave him. He tries to emphasize the same foundations of faith and family that he grew up with, that he tries to pass along to the families at the shelter.

Still, at the end of each day, he also has a feeling that is part frustration, part wish.

“I thank God for my family and for my household,” he says. “The ability to be able to go home at night, every evening,

is profound for me. It also adds to the frustration that we still have the issues of homelessness and the division of wealth

in our society. You get discouraged that pervasive homelessness persists in this country. You ask yourself, ‘Why does this continue in the wealthiest nation in the world?’ ”

The question remains.

So does Bickel’s commitment to giving all families a sense of the hope he first knew as a child. †