Tracy Keagle doesn’t see challenges, she sees opportunities.
Most recently she has picked up a torch that often has been in her grasp. She wants to help people, with the magnitude being much better defined than it would seem on the surface.
Feeding people is a first step, of which she already has made definite plans, but it goes much further. Ultimately Keagle would like to break down barriers that exist here — and most everywhere else — because of financial, social, racial and religious divides.
Feeding first, though.
With no one apparently well-equipped to manage the garden across Jackson Avenue from Allen County’s Law Enforcement Center, Keagle has been given her head to cultivate the many mini gardens that for several years have provided fresh produce for inmates. This year what grows there will benefit clients of Hope Unlimited that among other things gives assistance to abused children and adults. Some will be enlisted to assist and learn gardening techniques.
That would seem enough for even the most rabid gardener. Keagle is just getting started.
Elm Creek Community Garden will open to the public Thursday and an inordinate share of plots will be Keagle’s to tend.
“I talked to Val (McLean, who with wife Carolyn own the garden property) and he agreed to let me have a full row of plots,” she said, except for one on an end that has been reserved several years. Gratis use came after Keagle explained she intended to give away what she grew, not sell it. Keagle also will be given access to plots not rented that in the past were taken by grass.
“‘Who’s going to help you,’ Val asked me,” she said. “No one. I’ll do it all by myself,” with maybe a little time out for meals and sleep.
Keagle scoffed at the idea of being overwhelmed. She is known for hard work, dedication and perseverance.
Her fervor for filling empty tables came from a conversation she had with a Chanute woman last Christmas season. The woman told about “adopting” kids in Chanute and that seven of them said all they wanted for Christmas was food in their houses.
“That got to me,” Keagle said. And when something piqued her interest, the wheels and no hills are too steep.
“I’ll make sure kids in Iola have food,” she said, with genuine resolution impossible to mistake.
AMONG HER first contacts were the five women who answer phones for Connectors. When someone calls about a problem, they do their best to put them in contact with someone who will help — “things like how to get to a doctor or pay utilities or rent,” she said.
Connectors have developed a data base that gives them a leg up, but, without any criticism, Keagle said she wanted to go a step further, not just give someone needing help a phone number to call. “I want to help them” in person, she said.
That immediately led to her arrangements with Sheriff Bryan Murphy for the downtown garden and the plethora of community garden spaces.
Talking to Georgia Masterson, whose efforts through Circles Out of Poverty have been curtailed by funding woes, she found someone sympathetic to her cause, and “willing to do the paper work I hate to do.”
