MINISTER GRATEFUL TO WELFARE SYSTEM REVEREND'S FAMILY AIDED IN CHILDHOOD.

Byline: ALEX DOBUZINSKIS

Staff Writer

CASTAIC -- The welfare system gets its share of criticism, but a Castaic pastor sees it as worthy of praise for helping his family escape poverty years ago.

When the Rev. Thomas Cizmar, 52, recently gave the opening invocation at a county Board of Supervisors meeting, he compared the help his mother got in work training and public assistance to the Gospel story of Jesus feeding a crowd of 5,000 with only a few loaves of bread and some fish.

Cizmar's father, Ralph, became disabled with muscular dystrophy and diabetes soon after moving to the Los Angeles area in 1964, and his mother, Ann, had to support seven children with just a high school education.

The family depended on the county for welfare benefits for 12 years.

"I think it was an incredible, very helpful safety net," said Cizmar, who is pastor at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Castaic. "But the system can be bogged down into holding people into poverty."

Cizmar said the county helped his family escape poverty by training his mother to be a licensed vocational nurse, which she did for 16 years until she retired.

The seven children went on to successful careers of their own, with Cizmar becoming a pastor and his siblings pursuing their own career paths: guidance counselor, school principal, X-ray technician, solar industry worker, worker at a gymnasium for children and environmental safety technician.

But times were bleak when the family was poor and living in Pacoima. Cizmar remembers eating plenty of oatmeal, because it was all they could afford, and he said his mother had to work scrubbing floors and taking in laundry.

Yeheskel Hasenfeld, a professor in the school of public affairs at UCLA, said the welfare system has changed from the 1960s and '70s. A family staying on welfare for 12 years is unheard of now, because the limit is five years. And it's unusual for recipients to get intensive training in occupations such as nursing, unless they do it on top of whatever work requirements they are under, Hasenfeld said.

Cizmar said the system could be improved if public benefits could be scaled down rather than completely eliminated when a recipient started work. He brought up the example of his own father, who struggled to complete a college education but could not take a teaching job for fear of losing his disability pension.

Ralph Cizmar's muscular dystrophy ate away at his muscles, and eventually the World War II veteran needed to take insulin injections for his diabetes in his stomach because that was the only area of good muscle mass on his body, Thomas Cizmar said. Doctors only expected Ralph to live to age 48, but he shattered those expectations and went to college, taking some courses with his son, Thomas.

After nine years of intermittent studies, Ralph Cizmar got his bachelor's degree and his teaching certificate at age 60, Thomas Cizmar said.

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The Rev. Thomas Cizmar, pastor at the Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Castaic, compared the help his mother got in work training and public assistance to the story of Jesus feeding a crowd with only a few loaves of bread and some fish.

David Crane/Staff Photographer