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Tag: Living on Welfare

A Personal Reflection: The Shame of Welfare Glasses

Bruce Gerencser 12 Comments

I grew up in a poor home, one that, at times, vacillated between dirt-poor and existence-threatening poverty. Up until I was fifteen, Dad always worked, be it as a salesman or a local truck driver. Mom, on occasion, would work, but her severe mental health problems precluded her from maintaining steady employment. Mom and Dad divorced in the spring of my ninth-grade year. Mom tried to go back to work, but eventually gave up and signed up for ADC — aid for dependent children. From that point forward, we were a welfare family.

While my siblings and I were in school, the State of Ohio provided Medicaid coverage for us. Medicaid covered medical, dental, and eye care. I have many stories I could share (and shall over time) about being on welfare, complete with the embarrassment of being refused medical/dental care and being shamed for using food stamps, but today I want to share a story about getting my first pair of glasses.

In the spring/summer of 1971, I played baseball for Jacques Sporting Goods in Findlay, Ohio. I was never a great player. Now that I was playing with and against kids who played for local high school teams, my lack of hitting skill was quickly exposed. I was, however, lefthanded and a fast runner. I suspect it was for these reasons that I made the team — barely. I was the kid at the far end of the bench, a player or two ahead of the water boy. Good enough to play, but not the kid you wanted at the plate when the game was on the line.

Typically, practices were held at Rawson Park, located on Broad Ave. One day, I was fielding flies in right field. I was having an awful time seeing and catching the ball. After more than a bit of grief over my horrible fielding, my coach suggested that I get my eyes checked. Sure enough, I needed glasses.

bruce gerencser 1971

Mom made me an appointment to see an optician that took Medicaid insurance. After checking my eyes and determining I was nearsighted, the welfare box was brought out for me to choose a pair of frames. No wireframes. No stylish frames. Just frames that screamed to everyone you went to school with that you were poor and on welfare.

As you can see from my ninth-grade school photo, my black cheap plastic framed old-man’s glasses didn’t go with my complexion and bright red hair. I was so embarrassed, but what could I do? My vision was such that I needed glasses to do my school work, and more importantly, play baseball.

After being endlessly ridiculed over my welfare glasses for several weeks, I decided to hustle up enough money for me to buy an age-appropriate pair of fashionable wirerimmed glasses. This put an end to me being a poster child for “welfare.”

bruce-gerencser-1975

The picture of me above, taken in Arizona, shows me with my wirerimmed glasses (and my white belt, burgundy polyester pants, and white shoes — which you cannot see). In the first picture, I stood out, for all the wrong reasons. High school was brutal enough without painting a metaphorical target on my body. Thanks to me playing baseball and basketball, I wasn’t treated as harshly as other welfare kids, but I did receive enough ill treatment to remind me that I wasn’t part of the in-crowd (my Fundamentalist religious beliefs and practices didn’t help either). As I write this post, my mind goes back to the experiences of several of my fellow poor classmates. They didn’t have sports to give them a bit of respectability. They were daily bullied and marginalized, routinely preyed on by entitled “rich” kids.

Fast forward to 2022. Families on welfare have a hard time finding medical/dental/eye care. Currently, families need to drive 30-60 miles for dental care. There is a local “welfare” clinic in Bryan, but clients often must wait weeks and months to see a dentist. Try telling Johnny with a throbbing tooth that he has to wait a month to see a dentist. Such lack of access, in my opinion, is immoral.

Several days ago, Polly told me a story about one of her fellow employee’s recent experience getting glasses for her young son. The children have Medicaid insurance coverage. After the eye doctor determined the boy needed glasses, it was time to choose a pair of frames. Out came the dusty “welfare” box with its spartan selection of cheap, plastic glasses. Fifty years after my eyeglass experience, nothing has changed. Opticians could provide better, more stylish frames, but they don’t. Why should they, right? If the state of Ohio wants poor children to have stylish frames, it should pay providers more. Fair enough, but opticians could provide nicer frames for patients on Medicaid. Sure, it might cost them a few bucks, but thanks to frames now being sold (cheaply) online, we now know that eyeglass providers have been making a killing for years. (We buy our glasses and prescription sunglasses from Zenni Optical, saving hundreds of dollars, all without sacrificing quality.)

The young boy in question dutifully chose his welfare glasses. Fortunately, his mother also had eyecare insurance from work. This allowed her to choose a stylish pair of glasses for her son. Of course, she had to pay money for the nicer glasses. Can I scream now? Mom did the right thing for her son. Not that many years removed from high school, she knows how students can treat those who look different or are wearing the scarlet W on their faces.

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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Reliving the “Good Old Days”: Do You Have Any Change?

Bruce Gerencser 5 Comments

somerset baptist church 1983-1994 2
Our hillbilly mansion. We lived in this 720 square foot mobile home for five years, all eight of us.

Several weeks ago, Polly and I were reliving what we call the “good old days.” The “good old days” span the first seventeen years of our marriage, including the eleven years I spent pastoring Somerset Baptist Church in Mt. Perry, Ohio. Somerset Baptist, for a few years, was a fast-growing Independent Fundamentalist Baptist congregation, developing from a handful of attendees to over two hundred in attendance. Located in rural Southeast Ohio, in the northernmost county of the Appalachian region, Somerset Baptist was made up primarily of poor blue-collar workers or people who were on public assistance (it was not uncommon to find food stamp coupons in the offering plate). The highest total annual offering was $40,000. Most years, the offerings were in the $25,000 range. I pastored Somerset Baptist full-time, receiving what meager salary the church could provide, supplementing my income with jobs pumping gas, delivering newspapers, selling insurance, and taking in foster children. We literally lived from hand to mouth, rarely having two nickels to rub together.

We mostly drove cheap cars. I did all my own repair work, so I would buy junk cars, repair them, and keep them running until they were worn out. During the “good” years, we bought a new car — a 1984 Plymouth Horizon ($6,000) This car has a story unto itself, which I will tell at a later date. I drove the car for two years, putting 102,000 miles on the car. That’s right at 50,000 miles a year. By the end of second year of the loan, the car was worn out.

Thanks to us having a large family, we were eligible for food stamps and energy assistance. This fact thoroughly embarrassed us. We would drive to Columbus, where no one knew us, to do our grocery shopping. When the government offered free cheese or peanut butter to welfare recipients, I couldn’t bear to stand in line to get it (the “why” is yet another story for another day). Polly was embarrassed too, but she really loved what she called “welfare cheese,” so she would swallow her pride and stand in line with the other poor people.

somerset baptist church 1983-1994
Our son Jaime, and our two girls, Bethany and Laura.

I had grown up poor so I knew a good bit about poverty. Polly, on the other hand, was raised in a middle-class home where new cars, home ownership, money in the bank, and annual vacations were common. Polly’s dad worked for the railroad, and when he got the itch to go to college to study for the ministry at age thirty-five, he found a well- paying job at General Motors’ Pontiac Truck and Coach plant which enabled him to study without depriving his family. Neither of us knew the first thing about handling money responsibly. Both of us thought a life of poverty was God’s will for us, so we hunkered down and endured. Boy, did we endure!

Polly and I had six children during our years in Southeast Ohio. The first child’s birth was covered in full by insurance. The next five children were covered by state medical insurance. All told, we had private health insurance three of the first seventeen years of our marriage. The rest of the time, we either did without — thank you, oh Great Physician — or were covered by state medical insurance.

In 1989, we purchased an old, beat up 12×60-foot trailer and parked it fifty feet from the church building on the far end of the church parking lot. By then, the church had stopped running its four bus routes and attendance was less than one hundred. There were eight Gerencsers by then, so try to imagine us all living in 720 square feet. Try to picture the amount of laundry and pails of soiled cloth diapers Polly washed. Polly and I had one bedroom, the three oldest boys had another bedroom, and our daughters and youngest son had a bedroom the size of a large closet. Playing, for the children, meant going outside. Our children were four-season players, complete with bread bags on their feet in the winter so their feet didn’t get wet. Somehow we survived. That’s what Polly and Bruce Gerencser and munchkins did — we survived.

Our youngest children have very few, if any, memories of our “Somerset days.” Our oldest sons, however, have lots of memories. They, themselves, could write a book about their experiences as the pastor’s children living in the poverty-sicken hills of Perry County. To this day, my oldest sons remind me that Christmas comes in March. As children, they got very few gifts for Christmas, and most of the gifts they received were courtesy of their grandparents — my father excepted, who never sent one card or gift, ever. Christmas, then, was when we received our federal income tax return. Thanks to the earned income credit, we yearly received a large tax refund. We used this money to pay bills and buy our children clothing, shoes, underwear, and a few non-essential gifts. This was the one time of the year we had a large sum of cash. The rest of the year was spent raiding change jars and searching cars for spare coins. Ah, the good old years.

Several weeks ago, we had one of those oh-so-rare occasions where we were very low on money. Polly often laughs and tells me that I have a knack for pulling money out of my ass! On this particular day, my ass was broke. We needed bread and I had a hankering for a grilled steak. The checkbook was empty and I had $6.00 to my name. Off to Bryan we drove, stopping at Chief — a local grocery company — to see what we could get for $6.00. Polly dug through her cavernous purse and checked places were change collects in the car. She scraped up $1.48, giving us a grand total of $7.48. This gave us just enough money to buy one loaf of cheap bread and a one-pound sirloin steak (split three ways). Woo Hoo!

somerset baptist church 1985
Somerset Baptist Church, Mt Perry, Ohio, Bruce and Polly Gerencser and kids, 1985

As we got back in the car, both of us laughed about our change-fueled forage, reminding us of our days in Southeast Ohio. The good old days, we both said. I added, yeah except for the fact we are driving home in a $30,000 automobile, a car that cost more than most of our other cars combined.

The “good old days” certainly helped to make us into the people we are today, but neither of us has any desire to relive them. We are grateful for Polly’s job and its benefits. Above all, we are thankful that our children escaped the poverty of their youth and have solid, well-paying middle-class jobs. Some of them are in management positions, and all of them, save one, own homes without wheels. They, too, have fond memories of their days living as sardines in a 12×60-foot trailer, but they have no hankering to relive those days. Instead, they regale their children with stories that almost sound unbelievable — that is, except to we who lived them.

About Bruce Gerencser

Bruce Gerencser, 61, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 40 years. He and his wife have six grown children and twelve grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist. For more information about Bruce, please read the About page.

Bruce is a local photography business owner, operating Defiance County Photo out of his home. If you live in Northwest Ohio and would like to hire Bruce, please email him.

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