What Difference Do It Make? by Ron Hall Page A

Different as Me came out, he has sold more than three hundred paintings.
    Art had made a difference for Don Thomas too. In fact, it had been his salvation.
    After his mom died when he was a teenager, his dad raised him. A proud Marine, his dad numbed the pain of his loss with alcohol, and Don was left alone a lot. “By junior high, I was making bad decisions, drinking, being cavalier about relationships with girls,” Don says. “It’s amazing I didn’t get myself in trouble for fathering a child too young.”
    Fortunately, a high school art teacher reached out to the young man and helped him find a different path. “To be able to draw what I was feeling and seeing, to express some of my anger—I believe it changed my life.”
    Don went on to become a principal at a prominent Saint Paul commercial architectural firm while also pursuing fine art as an avocation. Every year around Thanksgiving, his firm would pass the hat among the employees for donations to the mission; then management would match those donations and write the mission a check.
    But something about the way all that was handled bothered Don. “In the end, I thought it was a little disrespectful,” he says. “It was like we were saying, ‘We’ll give you the money, but we don’t want to see your people or hear about what you do.’”
    So, in 2008, Don toured the mission and found himself amazed at the dedication of the staff, at the work being done.
    There were addiction recovery classes and classes on life skills such as parenting, budgeting, and computers. There were job skills training programs and connections to agencies that could help with transitional housing.
    After his tour, Don knew without a doubt that writing a check just wasn’t going to be good enough for him anymore. He had to share with these men, give of himself, make a difference.
    That’s when he piped up and offered to teach a class on art.
    Now he found himself in a roomful of homeless men, sharing a little about his own tarnished past and how art helped him cope with the pain and heartache of his mom’s early death.
    â€œI have no clue why art works, why it helps,” he told his world-weary audience. “I’m not a therapist. All I know is that it’s powerful for me. And if I can give any of that to you, to be able maybe just to see the world a little differently, it will be worth it.”
    The following week, about a dozen men returned. One guy in the program, Dave, was a real talker. Dave liked to draw, but he liked to talk even more. He came for a couple of sessions, but after the third, he walked up to Don and said, “I really appreciate what you’re doing, but I’m not going to come in anymore. I’ve decided to focus on another part of the program.”
    â€œThank you for telling me,” Don said, wondering whether he hadn’t made the class interesting enough.
    Later that day, though, one of the mission counselors told Don, “Dave’s an addict. It was an enormous step for him to come and let you know his plans. Most guys in recovery just drift away.”
    Somehow, Don’s commitment to teaching the men art had inspired Dave to honor that commitment by taking responsibility—something addicts rarely do.
    Don remembers another man, Alex, an alcoholic who was extremely talented at a particular style of drawing.
    After Don complimented his work one day, Alex asked him, “Do you think I could make money at it?”
    â€œWell, your stuff looks like tattoo art,” Don said. “I know a guy who gets eight hundred bucks anytime someone uses one of his drawings for a tattoo.”
    â€œMaybe I could do something like that,” Alex said, adding shading to a dragon figure he was drawing.
    Alex didn’t come back the next week . . . or the next Later, Don heard he’d started drinking again. Still, their conversation suggested a glimmer of hope.