American Scene a Tale of Five Warm Coats

By Jack E. White/New York

Fifteen apparitions have I seen;

The worst a coat upon a coat-hanger

-- WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

A similar conscience-stirring hallucination seized stockbrokers Larry Doyle and Terry Scott, management consultant Sheena Laughlin, computer scientist Parviz Kermani and record-company executive Bill Shaughnessy as they went through their closets. Hanging there were winter coats they had not worn in years. Doyle's gray-and-black herringbone was of an elegant European design that he now considers a bit flashy. The vibrant blue of Laughlin's five-year- old down coat had begun to fade. Kermani's dark blue raincoat had become too tight. Shaughnessy thought the brown trench with the bright red lining was starting to look like Columbo's. Scott had purchased a new, gold-colored overcoat to replace the sturdy dark gray mohair that sheltered him through years of commuting from Fairfield, Connecticut.

Conventional wisdom says New Yorkers are afflicted by compassion fatigue, the dispiriting belief that since nothing will solve the problems of the poor and homeless, nothing should even be attempted. But the disease, if it exists at all, does not extend to owners of winter coats during the Christmas season. Far better, these five and tens of thousands of others have concluded, for their unused garment to be on the back of some shivering soul.

The same vision came to Elizabeth Yanish Shwayder, a sculptor from Denver, 11 years ago. Visiting her daughter in Toronto, she learned of that city's annual coat drive, which collects used winterwear and gives it to the needy. In 1982, as Denver suffered through a horrific winter storm, Shwayder brought the concept home. Seven years later, the coat drive had become a Denver institution, and Shwayder decided to go national. Her first target was New York City.

Shwayder contacted Suzanne Davis, who worked for the J.M. Kaplan Fund. The foundation, in turn, enlisted the New York City police department and New York Cares, an innovative organization whose philosophy, according to executive director Kenneth Adams, is to create ways "for time-starved but civic-minded New Yorkers to take part in hands-on volunteer projects so there are no more excuses." This effort to combat compassion fatigue mainly involves scheduling activities like manning soup kitchens after regular business hours so that potential do-gooders can pitch in. But, Adams stresses, the key is for volunteers to feel they really make a difference in the lives of the downtrodden. The coat drive was ideal. It keeps its promise to give the coats to needy people in a matter of days. Donors can get a warm, cozy feeling inside by simply cleaning out their closets.

It worked even better than Shwayder hoped. In its first year the New York coat drive distributed 10,000 winter coats. This year the goal is 75,000. The coats are collected in boxes at police precincts and bank branches, at more than 50 companies and at major commuter points like Grand Central station. There New York Cares has set up a display of coats from such celebrities as New York Knicks star Charles Smith (a towering blue worsted) and Mayor-elect Rudolph Giuliani (a staid gray tweed) to tweak the conscience of suburbanites. The coats are turned over to 200 agencies around the city to be given to those who need them. New York Cares says it costs less than $1 a coat.

Doyle's herringbone, along with the coats of Scott, Kermani, Shaughnessy and Laughlin, winds up at Our House, a social-services center attached to St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Chelsea, where condominium-dwelling yuppies coexist with derelicts who call a cardboard box home. Our House's director, Pamela Bradley, says this year the center has given 600 coats to people for whom "having one can make the difference between making it through the winter or freezing to death." Outside the church 20 men and women wait patiently in a cold drizzle for the doors to open. They will be admitted one at a time to choose among scores of coats arrayed across the pews.

All five coats are taken in less than 15 minutes. Kermani's raincoat and Shaughnessy's rumpled trench are snatched up by a man who will not give his name. Another nameless man struts out the door, his dishevelment suddenly transformed into dapperness by Doyle's herringbone. Clarence ("Larry") Locke, 56, lives in a welfare hotel on the Upper West Side. He pulls Terry Scott's gray mohair on over his tattered lightweight jacket and finds it fits him perfectly. "I am a gentleman, you know, and now I look like one," he says, running a hand over the thick material. And, indeed, he does.

The most exuberant recipient is Sondra Richardson, a slender 34-year-old woman who lives on the sidewalk in a shipping container with her fiance Perry Turner. Her only coat is a bedraggled red corduroy. She slips on Sheena Laughlin's blue down and, proclaiming that "I used to be a model," strikes a series of runway poses. "Sheena, God bless you, honey, and have a merry, merry Christmas and a beautiful New Year," says Sondra, then zippers up the ! coat and scurries out, on Perry's arm, into the damp and bleakness of the December afternoon.