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Friends: Jim & Rachel

The Impact on Other Lives

It was suppertime at Camp Victor, the Gulf Coast bunkhouse where volunteers are bedded and fed in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. Jim Hoepner volunteered to offer a brief devotional word. From the recesses of his memory, he called up a phrase to share at that moment:

“A life is not important except for the impact it has on other lives.”

These are the words of Jim’s first sports hero, Jackie Robinson, the African-American baseball player whose debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers broke the baseball color line. Robinson’s words and his life story reside in Jim’s heart and mind.

“He was subject to great acts of hatred,” says Jim, who stakes his life on fairness and justice. “Even when I was little, I never liked dominating, bullying situations. I like the underdog. Everyone has the right to be heard and treated fairly,” he says.

Through meal sites and mission experiences, city council meetings and personal activism, Jim has grown in discipleship rooted in God’s love and mercy. He has learned, as author Philip Yancey writes:

“…Jesus reduced the mark of a Christian to one word: ‘By this all will know you are my disciples,’ he said, ‘if you LOVE one another.’ The most subversive act the church can take is consistently to obey that command.”

It began for Jim, more or less, at the corner of Kirkwood and Iowa. “I was one of the first people to have a drug problem,” Jim says with mock seriousness. “My parents drug me to church. I did not enjoy it. It wasn’t fun. I got nothing out of it. I completed confirmation only to satisfy my parents.”

But years later, Jim unearthed his confirmation Bible. On those pages and in church life with his wife Linda, something began to change. The words of Jesus — words that call us to love one another — “started to mean something to me.”

Jim and Linda, both employed then at the Rock Island Arsenal, organized church volunteers for the Salvation Army meal site. “I saw this wonderful middle-class community. And there were people who didn’t have enough to eat. I saw families come in with little kids and this was the meal they were going to get that day.”

Then one day Jim was reading the bulletin of the Methodist church they attended at the time. “Volunteers needed for a medical mission trip to Haiti. Call so-and-so.”

“I had no medical background. I didn’t know this person. I didn’t know anyone else going. I didn’t know where Haiti was. And I didn’t like to travel,” Jim quips. Something was happening here. Something of God.

In this Caribbean country, one of the least developed and most politically unstable nations in the world, Jim “saw people living in squalor, people who would walk miles and miles for the chance to see a doctor. And I also saw more smiles than I ever saw in Davenport, Iowa.”

A life is not important except for the impact it has on other lives.
When Jim retired, he started attending Davenport City Council meetings regularly. “I was an angry citizen,” he recalls. Simmering over the city’s response to the 1990 flood, Jim carried along his commitment to fairness and a willingness to listen. City officials noticed his positive activism.

So for a dozen years and running, Jim has held an appointed position on the Citizens Advisory Committee, charged with recommending distribution of federal community development block grant funds to non-profit organizations. “This has opened my eyes to homelessness, domestic violence, child abuse, AIDS, mental health issues, hunger, and nutrition problems of senior citizens in our city,” he says.

Jim is also St. Paul’s representative on the Thomas Merton Inc. board, a local ecumenical effort to feed the central city’s hungry people.

Spiritual foundations propel Jim into political activism. He believes that Christianity has plenty to do with peace, justice, and works of love. It’s why for years he daily updated a sign in his front yard documenting the number of people killed in the Iraq War. It’s why he made his participation visible at a local caucus. But he avoids red-blue, liberal-conservative labels. “I think you can be a Christian within a wide variety of political beliefs.”

“Jesus tells us that when we’re doing for others, we’re doing for him,” says Jim. “I think our faith leads us to look to the well-being of others.”

Jim is not exactly skilled in home improvement. But last month, with 38 other St. Paul people, he joined in a reconstruction mission for families impacted by Hurricane Katrina along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. There he met Laura Mae Moore who lives with her daughter and two grandchildren. A tree had destroyed part of the roof in their very small three-bedroom home. Even after the hurricane damage was repaired, the family struggles.

A crew of St. Paul people painted rooms, constructed a new bathroom, and cleaned up the Moore yard. Over lunch breaks and painting chores, Jim connected with crewmate Rachel Marty. Laughter broke out, knocking down barriers. Jim and Rachel discovered something when they stepped out of their own comfort zones — that in acts of love for others, a 64-year-old retired guy and a teenager can find friendship with one another.

So it was in the Camp Victor dining hall, during a St. Paul mission trip, words of faith, fairness, and servanthood rang out: “A life is not important except for the impact it has on other lives.”

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"Let me keep my mind on what matters...which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished. " ~Mary Oliver