Big donations for new shelter are announced

By Shonda Novak

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Saturday, May 05, 2007

The children it houses are in a world of hurt and need. A 2-year-old in a full body cast. Babies addicted to crack. Youngsters who don't know basic colors or numbers. Teens who have never seen a dentist. Angry adolescents, some with suicidal tendencies.

The Austin Children's Shelter does its best to meet the emergency needs of the estimated 300 abused and neglected children who come through its doors each year, even as space and budget constraints force it to turn away more than 100 some months.

Now, two key donations have been made that will help the shelter help more children.

The money will go toward a new campus, with construction to begin this fall on the eastern side of the 700-acre site of the former Robert Mueller Municipal Airport.

Opening in the fall of 2008, the campus will house five cottages and three services buildings and will join homes, shops, offices, the new Dell Children's Medical Center and various social services agencies.

The Beaumont Foundation of America, a nonprofit charitable organization, is donating $1 million, the single-largest cash gift so far. The money will pay for a program services building, including pre-school, medical care, offices and meeting space.

Also, Central Texas resident Martha Kutscher and her niece, Kathryn Kotrla, are donating 70 acres near Jonestown to the shelter. Proceeds from the sale will translate into a $700,000 gift to pay for a new cottage, the Kotrla-Kutscher house, for infants and toddlers.

The new gifts put the shelter about two-thirds of the way toward its capital campaign goal of $10.9 million, leaving $4 million more to be raised.

The campaign, chaired by Gary Farmer, officially kicks off June 1.

The new shelter campus will allow for the care of about 580 children a year, with better recreational and educational opportunities, separate accommodations for boys and girls and expanded services for youths who need longer-term care in a residential setting.

The new shelter will be part of Rathgeber Village, after local developer and philanthropist Dick Rathgeber.

Rathgeber, whose wife, Sara, is on the shelter board, donated land worth $3.6 million to provide a home for the shelter and other organizations, including the Scottish Rite Learning Center for children with dyslexia and new facilities for Family Eldercare and the People's Clinic.

The Rathgebers' donation will build Cocina Sara, to house the shelter's kitchen and laundry.

Crowded houses

The Austin Children's Shelter has been providing temporary emergency shelter for abused and neglected children at two homes near downtown; one house opened in the late 1980s, the other in August 1998.

On a recent month, the shelter had nine children in diapers and had to turn away 15 others for lack of crib space.

Shelter officials say they are looking forward to having more space, including two medical examination rooms instead of a single closet-sized one.

In recent years, the shelter has seen an increase in admission requests. In 2000, the main reason the shelter had to reject children was lack of space. Last year, children were also turned away because they needed a level of care beyond what the shelter could provide.

So far this year, the shelter has had to turn away 381 kids; many had to wait long periods before finding a safe place to stay and had to leave Central Texas.

"I don't think the general public realizes how traumatized these children have been and how intense their needs are," said Rosanna Garry, the shelter's deputy director of programs and operations.

Children are referred to the shelter by Child Protective Services. They typically come from homes where substance abuse, poverty and/or mental illness are prevalent.

Many go on to live with foster parents, with varying degrees of success. And more children are returning to the shelter after a failed foster-home placement.

Private gifts grow

The shelter and its staff of 65 will operate this year on a $3.4 million budget, and the share of public funding is shrinking.

Sixty-four percent of the 2007 budget is from private donations, with the rest coming from state and local government. Five years ago, most money came from the government.

The Topfer Family Foundation has been a key shelter supporter, donating about $830,000 during the past four years.

"Child abuse is a depressing part of society that everyone doesn't want to talk about," said Richard Topfer, a foundation board member. The first time he visited the shelter, "I literally left and went to see my kids and gave them a hug," says Topfer, whose 7-year-old twins were 3 at the time.

The Beaumont Foundation grant will come from unclaimed money from Beaumont trial attorney Wayne Reaud's $1.2 billion class-action settlement with Toshiba Corp. for allegedly selling laptop computers with faulty disk controllers. The fund had $276 million last year.

For its first few years, the Beaumont Foundation focused on providing grants of technology equipment valued at $63 million to schools and other organizations.

In 2006, five years after its founding, the group expanded its focus, with grants for health-care services to American Indians, money and support for food banks and clothing for children in foster care.

Frank Newton, president and chief executive officer of the foundation, says Texas ranks low in the dollars it spends on health, housing and education of its children, in foster care and otherwise.

"At the most fundamental level, no society can claim to be worthy of continuing if it doesn't ensure the basic health and security of its children," Newton said.

Rathgeber approached the foundation about making a donation, offering it "an opportunity to be significant," for a cause near and dear to Reaud's heart.

Rathgeber also was pivotal in the donation from Kutscher, a native of Taylor who now lives on a ranch near Jonestown.

Kutscher's niece, Kotrla, is chair of the psychiatry department for the College of Medicine at the Texas A&M Health Science Center. Kotrla had read about Rathgeber and his philanthropy and sought his help with her aunt's estate planning.

In return, Kotrla and Kutscher wanted to do something for Rathgeber.

Rathgeber said he responded: "You don't need to do anything for me, but you might want to consider leaving a legacy that you passed through this Earth, and one way to do it would be putting your name on a cottage at the children's shelter."

The $700,000 Kutscher/Kotrla gift will come from the sale of 70 acres of ranchland that Kutscher and her husband, Joe, bought for $50 an acre in 1950 and raised Herefords on.

It's now worth about $10,000 an acre, Rathgeber said.

Two weeks ago, the Rathgebers hosted their seventh annual appreciation for the shelter's 200 volunteers at their Tarrrytown home.

Publicly, shelter officials doled out awards to volunteers who go above and beyond.

Privately, they praised Rathegeber, saying words couldn't convey how thrilled they are about the new planned campus.

"Without Dick, it wouldn't have happened as quickly, I venture to say not in the next 10 years," said Oliver Smith, the shelter's board chairman. "But in fact, we were blessed by having Dick."

snovak@statesman.com; 445-3856

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/05/05/5childshelter.html

Emphasis added by H4K Editor