The little thrift store with the big heart

By Kathleen Stocking
Sun contributor

Samaritans’ Closet, a plain brown house over the bridge in the village of Lake Leelanau, is becoming a destination thrift shop. On this particular day the chartreuse leaves of the willows and poplars are just beginning to show. The red twig dogwood is redder than usual and the maples are a dusky ruby and pink. Cardinals call, “Teacher, teacher,” in the marsh along the narrows.

People come from a radius of more than a hundred miles just to shop. It’s not unusual on any given day to have shoppers from as far away as Harbor Springs to the north, or Grand Rapids to the south. These are people who frequently take day trips to the Leelanau Peninsula for work or recreation. They’ve grown accustomed to making Samaritans’ Closet one of their regular stops.

Thrift shops have become trendy and Samaritans’ Closet is one of the trendiest. Many first time shoppers say they heard about it from a friend and repeat shoppers say they need to come often just to make sure they haven’t missed something.

Artists the world over are known to frequent resale and thrift stores to find inspiration and material. The Leelanau Peninsula is home to many artists and several of them, like David Grath of Northport, come to Samaritans’ Closet on an almost weekly basis. Tom Woodruff, another Northport artist, comes to buy clothes “for a giant” he says. He’s big and tall, but adroit, and manages to walk through the crowded aisles like a ballet dancer.

Cici Chatfield, whose brother Malcolm has an art gallery in Leland, is a frequent visitor as is their mother, Amy Chatfield. Amy had an upscale dress store in Leland for years and when she comes in with her friend, Laurie Naples, she’s in her element talking about which colors are most appropriate to the season. Sisters, Becky and Cookie Thatcher, have been known to drop in just to see what’s there. Cookie once found a suit jacket for her husband, something for a special occasion on short notice and she said, “It saved us $500 and he even wore it for another event, too.”

The painters buy old frames and canvases for their work and the sculptors find all kinds of diverse materials: metal, glass, ceramic, fabric. Artists who like to make clothing or other fashion items — and this includes Susann Schaberg, one of the volunteers, who gives back a portion of the proceeds from her artwork — find things at Samaritans’ Closet that can be repurposed.

Lori Park, an international artist who has sculptures at Sotheby’s in London, comes in the summer. Last year she bought some donated beach glass and blue yarn and made a maritime sculpture which is now part of her “Navigation Cycle” currently on display in Marrakech. Because a volunteer talked to her about the beach glass sitting around in the wood chips near the building — beach glass donated by some other artist — that meant something to the sculptor. It was information about “provenance” to use a fancy word. It was a human connection to the other artist, to Samaritans’ Closet, and to the Leelanau Peninsula. It brought the world into better focus. “Visiting Samaritans’ Closet was one of the highlights of the summer,” Lori wrote in an email. “All the volunteers are angels dropped from the sky.”

The mix of personalities among the volunteers, as well as the shoppers, is part of what makes it fun to come to Samaritans’ Closet. There are ladies from farm families; Cristi Bardenhagen of Bardenhagen Strawberries volunteers at Samaritans’ Closet. Ditto Couturier, whose family has a plumbing business, is there sometimes. There are retired teachers, social workers, nurses, and homemakers. There is every kind of ethnic and racial type among the volunteers — African American, Hispanic, Native American, Asian, Lithuanian, German, English; and the typical American “Heinz 57,” as Julie Nowland, a new volunteer described herself — and this is true of the shoppers, too. This is the natural diversity of democracy. It’s like San Francisco right here in Leelanau County. It’s part of what makes it fun to work there and fun to shop there.

Marti Paquette, a retired teacher who worked at the Leelanau School when her husband Ed Paquette was the headmaster there, is a volunteer who researches donations that might have value as vintage items and sells them on eBay with all proceeds going to Samaritans’ Closet. Mary Ann Duperon, who lives just down the road, worked at Burwood in Traverse City for many years, before they closed, and volunteers several days a week. Volunteers can work as much or as little as they wish. Former television journalist Cindy Landers, who now runs the Glen Arbor Farmers’ Market, only has time to help with the fashion show. Here’s the partial alphabetical list: Christi Bardenhagen, Patty Barnes, Joe Bottenhorn, Sara Brubaker, Bev Clem, Cathy Cooper, Ester Cordes, Lucy Crandall, Bea Cruz, Cindy Dean, Mary Ann Duperon, Ruth Elliott, Jane Evans, Sherry Forton, Dee Glass, Tara Gosling, Peggy Hanford, Dan and Anka Harkness, Linda Janman, Kitty Knight, Jay Littell, George Merino, Carol Munoz, Nancy O’Neill, Teddy Page, Marti Paquette, Shirley Ranville, Phyliss Richard, Mimi Sayre, Marilyn Scott, Diane Speas, Gretchen Sprout, Kathy Stachnik, Cindy Standley, Ann Strand, and Gay Thomas.

Ann Strand, a retired buyer for Macy’s likes to arrange things in the dish room. She talks to the dishes in an Alvin and the Chipmunks kind of falsetto as she places them in displays. “There you are, my pretty little darling. This is where I’m going to put you!” It’s her way of entertaining herself, and of course the other volunteers and costumers. “I’m having fun, Ann says. “If this wasn’t fun, I wouldn’t do it.”

Kitty Knight says that working at Samaritans’ Closet “feeds the soul.” A retired make-up artist for the up-scale Jacobson’s Department Store in Detroit and Ann Arbor, she and her husband have a beautiful summer home on Lake Michigan. This day the turquoise and dark blue waters of the lake are covered with whitecaps. The clouds are forming and reforming into magnificent shapes. While a cold wind whips up the water out her front window, and the sun comes in and out, Kitty, who looks to me like pictures of Glinda the Good in the Oz books, is in the loft preparing all the clothes to be modeled in the Samaritans’ Closet’s Spring Fashion Show. Photos of circus acrobats are on an easel next to her sewing machine; when she sees me glance at them, she says, “My family on my father’s side were trapeze artists.”

Kitty says she learned the love of helping others from her mother. “My mom was the sweetest person in the world. She grew up during the Depression in Detroit. She didn’t go to her high school graduation because she didn’t have a nice dress. She graduated,” she says, “but she was very poor and knew she didn’t have clothes good enough to attend the ceremony.” She pauses and looks out at the fierce weather over the lake. “My parents went through half a dozen cans of Maxwell House Coffee every month. I can still remember those blue cans. That’s how many people visited us. They were always welcome and they knew they were always welcome.”

People who enjoy helping others are healthier and happier in their lives, and live longer and live better, according to Susan Pinker, writing in the Wall Street Journal on December 19, 2015, citing a study in Primary Health Care Research & Development. Dr. Michael McCullough, a psychology professor at the University of Miami, was quoted in Pinker’s Wall Street Journal article as saying, “Research is really good that volunteering is good for health. Emotional state to social contact to feeding back into health behavior — it all makes sense.”

Samaritans’ Closet is a vital part of the community. The community news that’s shared there — the stories of families, the small talk about the weather — helps people develop a narrative for their lives; and this is as true for the shoppers as for the volunteers. And the natural diversity and warmth that’s found there gives one a broader, more compassionate, and more sophisticated perspective on the world.

What is the secret to the success of Samaritans’ Closet? The answer is simple: the volunteers and the way they treat people. They treat each other with kindness and respect. They treat the people who donate with kindness and respect. They treat the people who shop with kindness and respect. And the joy with which they do it, and the joy they generate in others by doing it, is palpable. That’s the “ambience.” That’s the reason someone would drive from Grand Rapids, just to drop in and say “hi” and maybe buy a coffee mug or a blouse. One’s faith in people is reaffirmed by a visit to this small brown house on the Narrows at Lake Leelanau and that always makes it worth the trip.

This year the annual Samaritan’s Closet Fashion Show will be held from 11 am. to 2 p.m. on Thursday, June 2, at the Leland Lodge. Samaritans’ Closet is a 501c3 nonprofit and all proceeds go to worthy causes on the Leelanau Peninsula such as Migrant Education and the Leelanau Laundry Project. Tickets are available by calling 231-256-2026.

Award-winning essayist Kathleen Stocking has two Michigan best sellers, Letters from the Leelanau and Lake Country. Called a “rural seer” by the New York Times before she left Michigan to work in the California prisons, she has now written a third book, The Long Arc of the Universe — Travels Beyond the Pale. This book, based on global travels of the last 20 years, represents her attempt to understand the larger world, including several third world countries, in relationship to the Leelanau Peninsula. The three books represent a trilogy: village, state, world.