Super Mom to All
I am currently working on a personal history for a local charity, Bea’s Kids, and it’s founder, Bea Salazar. In 1990, Bea was a divorced single parent with a ninth-grade education raising five children without any support. She worked five to six days at a local factory on the graveyard shift. By day, she was super mom cooking and cleaning for the family, helping the kids with their homework and ferrying them around to after-school activities.
“I was working for Mostek United Technologies and made about $11 or $12 dollars an hour which was very good back then especially for a woman without education. I used to go to work at 11pm, and I would get off at 7 or 8 in the morning.”
It was a busy full life, but instead of crumbling under the weight of the demands placed on her, Bea and her children were thriving. Then one fateful day Bea had a terrible accident at the factory. She fell off the machine she was working on and suffered a separated pelvis and several slipped discs. Bea spent weeks in and out of the hospital and underwent several operations. Eventually, it was determined that she was permanently disabled as a result of the accident and would never be able to return to work.
“I went from supermom to nothing. And since I have always been a proud woman, this proudness started to disappear.” Bea’s pride was replaced by depression. One day she was so depressed she was considering suicide. She actually thought her five kids would be better off without her.
In the blistering heat that summer, she was taking her trash to the dumpster in the apartment complex when she saw a small boy eating a piece of dirty bread out of the trash. When she took the bread away from him, he started to cry because he was so hungry. Bea took him to her apartment and made him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and sent him on his way. The next day there was a knock on her door and Bea found a group of children standing at her door. “We heard you were giving out peanut butter and jelly sandwiches,” said one of the children.
Bea brought all of the children in and made sandwiches for them. The bread and peanut butter and jelly was about all Bea had to feed her own kids, but she couldn’t say “no” to the hungry children. She realized most of the children in her low-income apartments were in the school lunch program and since they were home for the summer while their parents were working, they had nothing to eat all day. Bea welcomed them all into her small apartment that summer. They sat on the floor, played games and watched the only movie she owned,, The Little Mermaid.
“We watched that same movie over and over all summer, but they never seemed to get tired of it,” says Bea.
When school started in the fall, Bea thought her mission was over. She would miss the children, but at least she knew they were being fed. Until one day she heard a knock at her door again to find a crowd of children standing outside.
“Can you help us with our homework, Ms. Bea?”
That day was the beginning of Bea’s Kids. After more than twenty years, there are now four centers operating in low-income apartments in the Dallas area. The children receive a healthy snack, get help with their homework, learn study skills, and receive one on one mentoring from volunteer tutors.
Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton recognized Bea for her volunteer services to her community. She received the “820th Point of Light” award from former President George Bush in 1992 and the “President’s Volunteer Action Award” in 1993 from President Bill Clinton. She was also featured on the Oprah Winfrey show and in the inaugural issue of O Magazine.
In 1996, Carrollton-Farmers Branch School District recognized Bea by naming a school in her honor, Bea Salazar Transition School.
These awards and recognitions and awards mean a lot to Bea, but what matters most to her is the impact that Bea’s Kids has had on the lives of so many children. She looks through her photo albums and proudly points out the children who are now succeeding in life.
“There’s so much we all can do…We can make such a big difference in children’s lives because the need is there – a big, big need. All we have to do is find it.” Bea Salazar
