The greeting card’s message isn’t unusual at this time of year:
“The gift of love,
“The gift of peace,
“The gift of happiness . . .
May all these gifts be yours
This Christmas”
Each is decorated with an original drawing by one of a host of volunteers of all ages — from 5 years and older — living around here, in other parts of the commonwealth, and beyond. Church bulletins, homeschooling newsletters, word of mouth, etc., alerted them about taking part.
The card is a folded piece of 8 1/2-by 11-inch paper. Dozens of volunteers look at them, count them, and put them in envelopes for countless trips by volunteers and staff members to the Bellefonte Post Office.
Nearly 20,000 of these Christmas cards go out to confined populations in many of the 27 Pennsylvania prisons and penitentiaries participating.
But this major project isn’t what the public sees at CentrePeace, 3047 Benner Pike, outside of Bellefonte. Visible six days a week, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., is a 15,000-square-foot store with thousands of donated used items. Housewares crowd the second floor, furniture the ground-floor — dotted (as of this writing) with such surprises as an ornate church podium and a pinball machine.
Each operating day, volunteers and helpers/learners from the approximately 2-miles away Centre County Correctional Facility (five to 10 are on-site at a time) transport a sampling to the parking lot out front, advertising what’s inside.
“We would never be able to do anything without the store,” says executive director Thomas Brewster. Buyers of items donated by this “very generous community” have brought CentrePeace close to self-sufficiency.
“Ninety-seven percent of revenue comes from the sale of furniture and household goods,” says Brewster. “As a partner agency, we receive a small amount of financial support from the United Way of Centre County.” That is “unique in the nonprofit world. It allows us not to have to depend on government funding.”
With CentrePeace for half of its 20 years (“I’ve loved every second”), Brewster has seen “significant growth.” CentrePeace more than doubled its space about a year and a half ago, moving from 3013 Benner Pike, where it had been for 15 years, to the present location.
The next growth will be in-house, hopes the executive director — a Pine Grove Mills family man originally from Butler, who earned a l986 undergraduate degree in international business from Slippery Rock University and a 1997 graduate degree in counseling psychology from Penn State and whose far-flung pursuits include graduate work at Rockview State Correctional Institution and study and work in Osaka, Japan.
That growth would be construction of an education center for those released from the county prison.
“It would be a safe place to come” — leading, it is hoped, to not being seen again (as inmates). The goal is to “reduce recidivism” — reduce “going back to old habits” and being incarcerated again, within generally three years.
Negative learning put many there in the first place, Brewster believes. “If you tell someone they’re bad often enough and long enough, they begin to believe it.”
The cost of incarcerating each person for a year, he notes, is between $25,000 and $50,000. And, he says, there are about 250 in the county facility, nearly 50,000 across the state.
CentrePeace has become a feature of Centre County — known for putting inmates of CCCF (historically, the old jail behind the Centre County Courthouse) to work repairing torn/broken donations, as well as in helping to heft big pickup donations.
It emerged from a social cause in 1975. That year, three members of the University Baptist and Brethren Church in State College — Marie Hamilton and venerable fellow members Rose Cologne and Ann Cook — began teaching a course at Rockview on “Creative Conflict Resolution.”
Soon, Hamilton decided that “if she could raise money, she could provide more services to individuals who were incarcerated.” She approached friends, beginning a pool of sales items. She christened the group “CentrePeace,” and it was incorporated as a 501c3 charity in 1994.
History repeats itself. “As revenues have grown, we have provided services,” says Brewster, who continues to teach “Creative Conflict Resolution” at Rockview — adding on the recent adjacent State Correctional Institution at Benner Township. He also has started a “PrayerMates” pen-pal program, in which an inmate and a local resident correspond.
Brewster and three volunteers teach his new course on entrepreneurship at CCCF. It fits the “life skills” he focuses on, to “hopefully benefit them when they leave.” The course “has been received very well.”
He likes to tell attendees, “If you can’t find a job, make one.”
Team teaching with him are volunteers he praises: Dr. Jack Matson, distinguished Penn State professor emeritus of environmental engineering; Dr. John Bellanti, retired “life coach” psychologist; and Efrain Marimon, an attorney and a Penn State College of Education faculty member.
Of course, the letters and cards are another positive. “For many,” says Brewster, “the Christmas card will be the only piece of mail they’ll get all year.” Responded a previous recipient: “ ‘This card gave me hope where I had none.’ ” Within the state, “We also send birthday cards to everybody on death row.” This especially emotional mailing goes to 180.
Inside his office, Brewster “tinkers” when he can with the ailing pinball machine. There are other tinkerers, as well as sorters, in the basement workshop. Upstairs, on the ground floor, a cashier checks you out. There are 50 to 75 volunteers — teenagers to 80 year olds. Besides Brewster, the other paid, full-time staff members are office manager MaryAnn Stringer, Bellefonte; showroom manager Greg Piper, Pleasant Gap; shop supervisor Gary Hartley, State College, and master upholsterer Kaye Skies, Bellefonte. Together they constitute “a family,” Brewster says.
For shoppers, “You never know what you’re going to see in here.”
Years ago, he cleaned up a 4-foot-by-38-inch piece of bronze art (knight on horseback) found in a barn and believed worthless. After research, he set the price at $2,900. It’s still there.
Last summer — certain that late State College mayor Bill Welch would endorse such a community continuum — I phoned CentrePeace to donate our double bed. Half the two-man crew that came was a tall orange-clad CCCF guy, who smiled his goodbye. The bed has a new home.
Years ago, twin hand-carved, 10-feet high Indonesian pillars were donated back to CentrePeace. At $2,195 for the pair, they probably still stand inside the entrance.
“There’s a story behind everything,” says Brewster, remarking on the soup-to-nuts inventory that makes possible an unusual outreach.
