By Cathy Spaulding
Bonnie Brown must pay the same high gas prices other Muskogee residents do when she spends $40 a week filling the gas tank of her 1989 Oldsmobile.
She must budget for the same rising milk and bread prices other shoppers do when she uses food stamps to buy groceries for herself and her son, Thomas.
“The Department of Human Services gives me $50 (a month) in food stamps to feed two people,” the 44-year-old unemployed mother said.
Challenges Muskogee residents face with rising fuel, utility and food costs are magnified for the Browns and hundreds of other Muskogee residents living in poverty or on food stamps.
Muskogee charities say they’re seeing more people coming for help. For example, Amber Young, women’s director at the Gospel Rescue Mission, said the mission is feeding twice as many walk-in clients at its dinner than a year ago.
“We fed 12 people Friday, 22 people Thursday, 29 on Wednesday,” she said. “We cook for 35 people.”
Salvation Army case worker Angela Lott said the number of people seeking meals went from 20 to 40 a day, just over the summer.
“Our food bank had served 15 people a month, we did that number in the last two weeks,” she said. She said she had 15 applicants for utility assistance and 10 for rent assistance.
“There has always been a problem with poverty, but there has been a change of people,” said Sally Weiesnbach, director of the Ark of Faith charitable ministry. “Now it’s not just the homeless, not just the former inmates. It’s touching families in which both parents have to work to get by. Now, with everything going sky high in prices, they need help.”
Families need help even in a town that the Council for Community and Economic Research ranked as the sixth least expensive urban area in the United States.
Yet, a 2005 study by the Oklahoma Department of Commerce showed 26.3 percent of families in the Muskogee Public Schools District, and between 17 and 22 percent of Muskogee County families are living in poverty. The 2008 poverty level set by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development was $10,400 for a one-person household; $14,000 for two people; $21,000 for four; $28,400 for six.
The last U.S. Census report from 2000 showed 1,469 Muskogee families — 14.6 percent of the population — living below the poverty level. For families with children under age 18, the figure jumped to 22.3 percent.
The Oklahoma Department of Human Services reported 11,901 individuals in Muskogee County receiving food stamps. That’s 16.7 percent of the estimated county population of 71,018. Surrounding counties have an even higher percentage. For example, 19.8 percent of individuals in Adair County residents received food stamps.
George Earl Johnson Jr., communications director for the Oklahoma Department of Human Services, said children constitute more than half of the Oklahomans receiving food stamps: 320,000 out of around 600,000 individuals for the fiscal year ending June 30.
Those on food stamps must use them to pay increasing food prices, Johnson said.
“Right now, a gallon of milk costs more than a gallon of gas,” he said. “And even at discount stores, there is no more 25-cent bread.”
Weiesnbach, who has operated the Ark of Faith since 1981, said she is getting more clients she calls “the working poor.”
“Now we have utilities increasing and gas increasing,” she said. “I couldn’t believe how the price of fruit went up in the past two weeks.”
Brown, who lives on Social Security disability income, also gets food from the Muskogee Food Pantry, First Baptist Church and the Ark of Faith when the food stamps run out. She said she buys store brands, not the more expensive brands when she can.
She said she does what she can to cut other costs, but it’s not easy.
Noon on a summer day and the only light in Brown’s apartment is that which streams through windows or flickers from a portable television.
“I keep the lights off to save electricity,” she said, adding that she also keeps the air conditioning turned off.
She said she doesn’t use her dishwasher because it leaks.
“It’s easier doing it by hand,” she said.
The Browns have no phone.
As her fifth-grader son returns to Grant Foreman Elementary School this fall, he will carry many of the same folders and other school supplies he had last year, she said.
Brown said she goes to a nearby Laundromat to wash clothes and spends about $20 in change to do five loads.
She said she spends about $40 a week to put gas in her car.
“I go out every three days to look for work,” she said. “The challenge is that they need skills that I don’t have. I can do factory work, I can take care of kids. I can do a little bit of nurses’ aide work in a nursing facility.”
She is registered for the Workforce program and Oklahoma rehab, she said.
“I can still work. There’s just so much they can count as income,” Brown said.
A 2007 Oklahoma Department of Commerce study of the workforce in far eastern Oklahoma showed that out of a population of 236,784 adults, 145,616, or 61 percent were employed, 11,396 could not find work and 3,798 were disabled or unable to work. Other groups included retirees, students or those who do not work outside the home.
The study was made among adults in selected ZIP codes in Cherokee, Creek, Haskell, Hughes, Mayes, McIntosh, Muskogee, Okmulgee, Rogers, Sequoyah, Tulsa and Wagoner counties.
Brown said the last job she had for any length of time was at a day care center six or seven years ago.
“I volunteered for a year as a library assistant at Grant Foreman, putting library books on the shelves,” she said.
Brown said she pays $255 a month for her subsidized two-bedroom apartment and that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development pays the other $210.
The apartment is neat and well furnished, mainly with decorations and furniture that belonged to her mother who died six years ago, she said.
One wall in Thomas’s room is decorated with awards and certificates he got from school. A bright boy with two pet turtles he got from his father’s property and two hermit crabs, Thomas can recite long passages from movies he has seen.
Brown said the boy has been on the “B” honor roll at school.
Grant Foreman Elementary counselor Joanne Myers said poverty can have some effect on how well a child does at school.
“It depends more on how they are taught at home whether it’s going to affect them positively or negatively,” she said. “If the parents are working to make ends meet, they probably have less time to spend with their child.”
Myers also is counselor at Ben Franklin Science Academy in the far west part of Muskogee. Grant Foreman is in the southeast part of town.
“So, I see the situation at both ends of the city,” she said.
The situation is the same on either side.
According to the Muskogee Public Schools Child Nutrition department, 76 percent of MPS students are on free or reduced lunches. The list said 72 percent of Grant Foreman students and 84 percent of BFSA students are on free or reduced lunches. Whittier Elementary has 96 percent and Rougher Alternative Academy has 98 percent on free or reduced lunches.
All Muskogee schools are above the estimated state 2008 figure of 55.5 percent.
“If the children are starving, we’re going to feed them,” Myers said. “If they need clothes, we’re going to get them clothes. There’s not a year that goes by that we don’t have to find clothing for them. Some of the kids who come to school don’t even have electricity at home.”
She said she hasn’t seen the situation change in the 18 years she has been with Muskogee.
“But we always have more well-to-do-parents always asking what supplies they can give to the school,” she said. “The Exchange Club helps us, and the Wedding Ring Class at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church takes five or six kids out and buys a wardrobe. We work as a community to get kids what they need.”
Brown said she is grateful for the help she receives from the Ark of Faith and other sources.
“I just keep believing some things will get better,” she said.
Area food stamp recipients 2007
Population Persons withfood stamps
Adair: 22,317 4,435
Cherokee: 44,910 5,692
Haskell: 12,155 1,960
McIntosh: 19,899 3,206
Muskogee: 71,018 11,901
Sequoyah: 41,356 6,435
Wagoner: 66,313 5,085
SOURCE: Oklahoma Department of Human Services
Muskogee poverty status, 1999
• Families living below poverty level: 1,469, 14.6 percent
• Families with related children under 18 below poverty level: 1,142, 22.3 percent.
• Families with related children under 5 below poverty level, 690, 32.7 percent.
Source: 2000 U.S. Census.
Education levels
Highest level of education among working adults in far eastern Oklahoma, by percentage.
• Less than high school: 3.0
• High school: 24.3
• Some college: 30.9
• Associates degree: 7.4
• Bachelor of Science degree: 17.4
• Bachelor of Arts degree: 11.7
• Postgraduate degree: 5.2
Source: Oklahoma Department of Commerce; Muskogee Development Corp.
