Bread for the World Remembers Connie Wick
Bread for the World honors the memory of Connie Wick, who passed away in November 2007. Wick was a longtime grassroots leader and the president of the Bread for the World local group at the Robin Run Retirement Community in Indianapolis, IN. See video excerpts from Bread for the World’s 2006 interview with Connie.
Wick came to the attention of fellow Bread for the World advocates nationwide in 2004 after she wrote a letter to her senator, Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), supporting funding for the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) and global HIV/AIDS programs. Soon after she sent the letter, Bread for the World President David Beckmann was attending a White House signing ceremony when he had the opportunity to talk with President Bush about the importance of full funding for the MCA. The president called over two key senators, then-Majority Leader Sen. Bill Frist (R-TN) and Sen. Lugar, and asked them to help secure the funding.
Just after this conversation, Sen. Lugar said to Beckmann, "You know, I am just now responding to a letter from a constituent, Connie Wick. She is saying just what you are saying, that we should fully fund the MCA, the AIDS initiative, and not cut funding for ongoing programs of assistance to poor people."
"I was again impressed by the power of Bread for the World members," said Beckmann afterward. "The chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had just been asked by the president of the United States to help get full funding for the MCA, and what immediately came to the senator's mind was a recent letter from an active constituent—Connie Wick."
In addition to her Bread for the World activism, Wick worked for environmental and civil rights causes, dedicating much of her life to winning improvements in public policy. Throughout the 1970s, for example, she led a volunteer effort that was successful against the odds in saving the local Wildcat Creek, in the path of a proposed U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dam project. The dam appeared to be inevitable when Wick became president of the local environmental group. She and the group collected 20,000 signatures, organized bus trips to visit lawmakers in Washington, gave tours of the targeted areas to community leaders, and educated themselves on the technical aspects of dam-building.
"When we started to make headway, the power structure kept wondering where our money came from," Wick told fellow Indianapolis Bread for the World activist Fran Quigley last year. "But we didn't have any money. We just had a lot of volunteers, a lot of hard work, and a lot of community support."
She remains an inspiration to activists everywhere.
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