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Gift of Warmth: Absent father inspired woman to buy $1,000 worth of sleeping bags to give to the homeless
Photo by Monica Young
Juanita Langlais of Kernersville won $1,000 in an online essay contest. With the money, she bought 40 sleeping bags and donated them to the homeless.
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Published: January 29, 2010
"Someone's father, someone's brother will be getting one of these sleeping bags. I want to think someone is out there helping my father, too."
When Juanita Langlais was 2, her father left her family.
Nineteen years ago, she discovered that her father was homeless and living in Illinois. She tracked him down and brought him to North Carolina to live with her.
"He lived with me for two months. I came home from work one day, and he was gone," Langlais said.
Her father later called to say that he just could not transition to life off the streets. It was her last contact with him.
"I don't know where he is or if he is alive or dead. I've looked for him," Langlais said.
That personal connection with homelessness is what led Langlais to make an unusual request when she entered a giveaway contest this holiday season. For the holiday-wish essay contest, she wrote that she had her own gift because her four adult children -- three sons and a daughter -- were all coming home to Kernersville to be with her and her husband, Bob.
She wrote that she would use her $1,000 prize to buy sleeping bags for the homeless.
Langlais wound up winning the contest, which was offered by the Web site www.WIGIX.com, an online site for selling goods and services. More than 1,340 people voted for her entry. Winning the $1,000 provided Langlais an indirect way to give her father a Christmas gift.
"Someone's father, someone's brother will be getting one of these sleeping bags," she said. "I want to think someone is out there helping my father, too."
She chose 40 green Teksport sleeping bags online from Dick's Sporting Goods. The sleeping bags weigh 3 pounds and are suitable for temperatures that drop to 35 degrees. Langlais chose the bags based on typical North Carolina weather conditions. She has given away blankets before, but she felt that sleeping bags could be used as tarps and blankets as well as for sleeping.
The sleeping bags are being distributed by the Bethesda Center for the Homeless in downtown Winston-Salem while the annual Point in Time census count of the homeless population is taken.
"We and other service providers assemble teams of volunteers to go out and count the homeless that have chosen not to come to a shelter, said Clyde Manning, the director of development for the Bethesda Center. "They may be camped in the woods, in abandoned buildings, or in their cars. The volunteers will take these sleeping bags and distribute them to those who do not have adequate covering and choose not to come to a shelter.
"The timing of getting these sleeping bags from Juanita is ironic, actually."
The coincidence of the timing struck Langlais as fortuitous, as well.
"This was supposed to be a Christmas wish, and here we are at the end of January. Yet, it's the right time with the census count, which I had no idea was going on. And the cold weather is coming,'' she said.
"I'm so glad these sleeping bags will be helping people. Being homeless is not a choice. The homeless are part of the human race and are forgotten about most of the time until you see one."
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