If I were ever to start — or join — a fan club, it wouldn’t be for some Hollywood star (one blessed with great looks and a good memory) or athlete (God-given talents with dogged determination). I would go for the person who sees an injustice, an inequality, a problem, a void and with sheer chutzpah, does their best to solve it. In my book, those are the ultimate heroes. Each and every one of them. Clara Barton and the American Red Cross. Ludwik Rajchman, the Polish doctor and UN delegate who started UNICEF. José Andrés and the World Central Kitchen. Luckily for all of us, the list is very long.

We have more than a few of those shining stars in St. Louis. It’s seems appropriate to highlight some of them now, as this issue is being sent out packaged with our annual charity guide, Sophisticated Giving.

After Jane Crider’s son was born in 1947 with Fragile X, doctors urged her and her husband to place him in an institution. While he clearly had mental deficiencies, they said absolutely not. A lawyer, she convinced the Missouri Department of Mental Health to form a mental retardation program for St. Charles County children. Then she helped persuade the St. Charles County School District to start its first special education program. Jane Crider founded the Boone Center Workshop in 1959, which provided jobs for the handicapped and mentally disabled. She helped get the county tax that resulted in the establishment of Community Living for the Handicapped passed. In 1978, she started the mental health Council of Lincoln, Warren and St. Charles counties, later renamed (in her honor) the Crider Center for Mental Health Center.

On a visit to a senior center in St. Louis in 1982, Marylen Mann and Margie May were horrified to see older adults whiling away hours in a room doing crafts, playing bingo — basically not doing nothing much more than getting older. Starting with a small grant received from the Mid-East Area Agency on Aging and an assist from the May Company, the women founded OASIS Institute. Today, more than a half a million people in 250-plus communities in 23 states are or have been involved with OASIS (Older Adult Service and Information Systems) with its outstanding lifelong learning, wellness and volunteer programs.

Betsy Reznicek had worked for several local nonprofits when she realized there wasn’t an organization to help people in need find furnishings. Be it an abused woman escaping a horrible husband, a homeless person turning his or her life around, a woman recently released from prison or someone fighting their way out of poverty, they may find a home but had nothing to put in it. So Reznicek opened a furniture bank and dubbed it Home Sweet Home. In October of 2015 and armed with a rented truck, borrowed warehouse space, two staff members and a donation $3,000, the organization made its first delivery to its first family. Today, the organization partners with 50 different charitable organizations to provide gently used or new furnishings to more than 1,000 families a year and since the beginning, Home Sweet Home has “re-homed” over 450,000 individual household items to families in need.

In 2016, Jessica Bueler read an article in the Riverfront Times about four Syrian teenagers who were living on Hodiamont Avenue (undeniably one of the city’s most desperate areas) and who were attacked outside their apartments. After contacting members of the community, she was able to talk directly to the families to find out what they needed most — and it was the basics: shampoo, soap, toothpaste, etc. She started a toiletries drive on Next Door Neighbor platform and Bueler was immediately overwhelmed by the outpouring of local citizens. When she realized that those immigrants were living in crime-ridden, bug-infested squalor, she started a GoFund Me campaign to help them move into safer housing. Her initial effort has morphed into Welcome Neighbor StL and has helped more than 600 immigrants from 11 countries. Now they pair volunteers with the refugee families, teaching English, as well as organizing super clubs and catering events. The women cooking up and dishing out those dinners keep 100 percent of the profits.

Of course, I could go on and on. There are the parishioners at St. Peters Episcopal Church in Ladue who started Haven of Grace; Sharon Rohrback and Robin Kinney, the founders of Nurses for Newborns; The Saint Louis Crisis Nursery, a collaboration between the Junior League of Saint Louis, 100 Black Women and Deaconess Hospital, among many, many others. You will find more examples within the pages of Sophisticated Giving 2024.

Archimedes is oft quoted saying: “Give me but a firm spot on which to stand, and I shall move the earth.” The individuals who take up the mantle of aid are the real fabric of our society. They give hope to the hopeless and support to the needy. They are moving earth — and they are, without question, my heroes.

To read the 2024 Sophisticated Giving Charity Register click here,

A Note From Christy Marshall, Sophisticated Living St. Louis Editor