Community should rally for new center.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Last fall, when getting a tour of the Pearl Buck Center on West Amazon Drive, I remember thinking: They need to blow this place up and start over.

It was small and falling apart and reminded me of a Rodney Dangerfield line from "Caddyshack":

"You must have been something before electricity."

So I was thrilled to hear that on Sunday at the nonprofit organization's annual benefit dinner and auction at the Valley River Inn, plans will be announced to either build a new center or find already-built space for a move. (A more formal and public announcement will come in mid-April.)

"Every human being deserves respect, a place to belong, a place to work," says Jeanne Savage, vice-chairwoman of the Capital Campaign Committee.

The current setup - the Amazon center and the work center in the industrial area of west Eugene - offers only a reasonable facsimile of such.

Walk through the work center, as I did Tuesday, and you'll find about 80 people crammed into an area that's better suited for about half that. And this is the more "together" of the two sites.

"The Amazon structure is literally falling down," says Executive Director Ed McDunn. "We spend money fixing the roof after it rains - it leaks like a sieve. Truth is, we got 50 years out of this place, but it's time to start over."

Indeed, it's time to continue what's an incredible legacy for an organization that cares for, and about, people with developmental disabilities and their families.

In the 1940s, Lisl Waechter, whose Jewish family in Germany had fled Hitler's wave of terror in the late '30s, founded a school for developmentally disabled children in Boston. Moving to Eugene in 1951, she found nothing of that nature here; such folks were placed in "institutes." So she rolled up her sleeves and started her own. In her living room.

Eventually it became the Pearl Buck School, named for the Pulitzer- and Nobel-Prize-winning author, most noted for the novel "The Good Earth." And less noted for having a developmentally disabled child.

Waechter, who died in 2001, asked permission of the author to use her name for the school. Buck said she would be "honored."

The Emerald Empire Kiwanis Club spearheaded a community drive for a new school building, completed in 1959. The school closed in 1990 to comply with a public mandate that special education students be integrated into the public school system.

It's now used as a preschool for children of parents who are developmentally disabled. The work center, about eight miles away, provides jobs for adults - everything from shrink-wrapping garden hoses to folding letters to bagging screws.

A new center would allow the preschool and work center to be on the same grounds, cutting down lots of eight-mile trips for clients and staff members. "One site will increase efficiency, lower costs and provide a safe and fully functional workplace for our clients," McDunn says.

The new digs - to be about double the size of the two current locations combined - will cost in the $5 million range. Already, $700,000 has been pledged and the Amazon location has been sold for $500,000. When the work center is sold - perhaps in the seven-digit range - the need will be about $2.8 million.

At the work center on Tuesday, 22-year-old William Perkins shows me his methodical style of folding letters. And proudly points out, "I got a check for $108 last week!"

That's the kind of pride and dignity Pearl Buck's clients need. Deserve. And are getting.

What they don't need is a staff preoccupied with outdated buildings that are becoming safety hazards.

It's time for a new home. Time for a community, as it did half a century ago, to rally for those who deserve a place to belong.

More information: Call 484-4666. Or online: www.pearlbuckcenter.com.