Philip Herzog and Bambie Wurzberger

[00:02] PHILIP HERZOG: My name is Philip Herzog. I am 25. Today's date is May 11, 2022. We are in the good old Ozarks in Missouri. My interview partner is the extraordinary Bambie and we know each other because we are colleagues at the council of Churches of the Ozarks.

[00:22] BAMBIE WURZBERGER: My name is Bambie Wurzberger I am a little bit older than Philip. Today's date is Wednesday, May 11, 2022. We are from the Ozarks in Missouri. I am with Philip Herzog. He is my work partner.

[00:47] PHILIP HERZOG: Bambie when I first heard about you, new at the council, everyone said Bambie is this extraordinary relationship builder and a friend to everyone that comes to serve at our food pantry. And of course, I got to know you, and it's been a privilege because you're so charming and worked so hard. But then I found out more about your story and just the ins and outs of your journey to the council. So could you share just how you first came to the council of Churches? What was that beginning like?

[01:17] BAMBIE WURZBERGER: So I am a recovering addict, and I first was introduced who crossed lines, which is an agency of the Council of Churches. By having to do community service to pay some restitution for some bad decisions I made, it was probably, I can look back now and see that God had a hand in putting me there. It was my first opportunity to be of service to somebody else without expecting anything in return. And I'm not gonna lie, I was a little bit addicted to it, like, just being able to help somebody in their time of need just because it was the right thing to do. I recall enjoying it so much that I begged and pleaded for them to give me a job. I had no experience, had really been living on the streets for several years before that, before I decided to get clean. I didn't even know how to type. I barely knew how to turn a computer on through God's grace. Several months after I finished my community service, I got a phone call asking if I was still interested. While I was doing a little dance and jumping up and down trying to act coy, I said yes, I would still be interested. I started at cross lines on October 9 of, I'm sorry, October 5 of 2009. And I started out there just kind of being over the other people that had to do community service. If you want to talk about somebody starting on the bottom and working their way up, like, I can give you prime examples. I loved it. I loved everything about it. I still do after all these years, it was through. Cross lines is sponsored by 34 different churches, so I get a bird's eye view to all these different denominations, and being somebody who didn't have any kind of religious background, it was intriguing to me to hear these people talk about Jesus and what Jesus can do in their lives. And I think that that was God's hand in working me to getting me to a place where I finally decided it was time to find and follow Jesus. So I am now, after all these years, I now am the pantry coordinator. What that means is I oversee the operations of handling the clients and handling the in house volunteers for the food pantry. And I handle all of the ordering of food. I kind of handle the cross lines, food pantry operations, everything. Shy of any of the financials and things like that, I get to spend the money and feed the people. So it's kind of a. It is definitely a blessing for me to be able to do what I do on a daily basis.

[05:09] PHILIP HERZOG: And one thing I love about you is that you're a great unifier. Right? And so it's whether we're people of faith or just the ozarks in general or just our country as a whole, now is not the most straightforward time to unify anyone. So what is it about you that makes you such a great unifier in your role? Because we have people that come from all over of faith. Not of faith, people who've lived here forever, people who just transplanted. And you are the connection that helps them serve other folks in need. So how do you unify?

[05:44] BAMBIE WURZBERGER: I can say that I believe that because of the past that I have lived through and survived, it has blessed me with an ability to relate to almost every walk of life, whether it's the person living under the bridge or whether it's the person that's got this six figure job. Not that I have any experience with a six figure job, but, you know, there's a saying in this outside group that I'm a part of, that religion is for people afraid of hell, and spirituality is for people who have walked through it. And today, for me, those coincide. But it hasn't always been that way. I've. Some of the things that I have went through has brought me to the place where I am today, and I haven't always been as comfortable with everybody as I am. But when I get in there and I see these people that are just like me who have had different experiences, but they still struggle, we're all one paycheck away from being homeless or destitute. We're all just trying to get through this thing called life. You know, I think that part of my role is it's not my job to see through other people. It is my job to see other people through. So that is. That's kind of my internal motto. You know, I used to be a person that was very judgmental and critical, and that was more to how I looked at myself than any other body, anybody else. And it's odd, because when I got to a place where I finally started accepting me for who I am and where I come from, that I was able to accept other people for where they are. And it's such a stress reliever not to have to feel like I need to control everybody's situations and lives. I can just appreciate and love them for where they are and who they are.

[08:14] PHILIP HERZOG: Talking about addiction or just suffering or like you mentioned, judgment or compassion versus. Yeah, just being present and serving where you can, when you can. When people talk about addiction or things like that, are there certain ways they talk about it that ever cause pain or make you think it's not quite right? Because that's not actually the story.

[08:38] BAMBIE WURZBERGER: It used to. It used to bother me a lot. And you can tell the difference between somebody who is ignorant to the disease of addiction as opposed to somebody who has either had a family member or is an addict. So I used to get very irritated when people would talk about the disease of an addiction not being a disease at all, but I a corrupt or bankrupt moral framework. You know, an addict is just like anybody else. The difference is when you go out to the bar with your friends, even socially, and have a glass of wine or a beer, the difference between somebody who is not an addict and somebody who is, is the addict will never stop with one. Innately, they are inable to like, they just need more. Today I try to fill my time with the more aspect in different areas. If I get a little squirrely in my head and I need something to do to retrain my focus, one of my favorite things is just to go out and pick up trash on the side of the road. Like, it's not anything that is going to get me notarized or credit, but it gives me a moment just to be out in nature and I'm doing something without expecting any result other than to make the world around me to look better. It can get you out of just about any kind of negative mood you can be in. I do take the opportunity at times to try to educate people on addiction. Sometimes they are so far out there in their judgments that it would stress me out more by trying to explain to them what is going on than it would be helping them to understand. Some people can be pretty set in their ways. I'm pretty open about where I come from. I didn't used to be that way either. I was very guarded about it. I didn't want to be judged for where I come from. But I'm not ashamed of being an addict anymore. It's because of who I am and where I came from that I'm able to do the things that I do today and am able to help some of the people who have never dealt with food insecurities be able to look at the people who are struggling with it. Now. I can bridge that gap there a little bit just to give them some inside understanding of what it was like. And it's rewarding to me to be able to see almost like a flower blooming or a light coming on where they're like, oh, you know, they finally have an understanding. It's very difficult when you have no experience. You know, it'd be like trying to tell me how it feels to fly when I've never been in an airplane. You know, it's the same. It's the same aspect.

[12:00] PHILIP HERZOG: Is there ever a response you've had when someone finds out your story for the first time? Like, any responses that have just stuck with you?

[12:12] BAMBIE WURZBERGER: Um, I. None that really well. Today, one of my volunteers came into my office, and she said that she had just read my story in that annual report, and she kind of embarrassed me a little bit. I mean, not in a bad way, but I. She said, you know, I've always thought that you were pretty amazing. She goes, but until I read your story, I had no idea how far you'd come. And that made my heart feel good, because I did spend a lot of years with that negative enigma of, you know, because people sometimes put an addict in this category, like a thief or a liar or, you know, less than. And so I try to guide people in a way to where if they look at the addict on the side of the road, you see them all over town. We don't need to be judging them. We need to be praying for them, because this might be that addict's. Last night, you know, one of my volunteers says that we may be the only face of Jesus that people get to see. And so she followed it up with, maybe today I'm the grumpy face. But that impacted my soul when I heard that, because until I got to cross lines, I'm sure that when I was a little girl, my family took me to church. But I don't really. I didn't really have any kind of ideas or aspirations about that. It wasn't until I became a member of the council of churches through cross lines that I actually got to see the face of Jesus in these people around me and to get an understanding of what that even meant. So that's. It's pretty easy to. When my volunteers come in for the first time, they just want to check us out. I always stop them at the door before they cross the threshold and I tell them, look, I just want to warn you now that there is a good possibility you will become addicted to this place if you cross this threshold. And it's so funny because I would say 80% of the time, they wind up being repeat volunteers. And some of them are permanent. Some of them are there four and five days a week, every single week. I think we have the most loyal, dedicated volunteers I've ever seen anywhere. It's just, it's amazing. And that lets me know how important and infectious it is to be doing God's work. You know, it's so hard not to get, not to crave it.

[15:21] PHILIP HERZOG: I love, you know, what you shared of, yeah, you're a volunteer. Just a reaction. So many times you hear people say something along the lines of what you say matters so much, which of course it does. Of course, but how much you make a person feel says so much more than what you truly say to them. And it's true. Your volunteers? I think my first day on the job, when I was getting to know your team, everyone said I volunteered at least eight years, ten years, 15 years. Someone said 18 years, which blows my mind. And you've been working officially for the Cross lines how long? How many years?

[16:00] BAMBIE WURZBERGER: It was twelve years in October.

[16:02] PHILIP HERZOG: Right. Do you remember your very first day when you were coming for the community service? Had you ever been to cross lines before?

[16:08] BAMBIE WURZBERGER: No.

[16:10] PHILIP HERZOG: Do you remember what was going through your head when you walked up the first time?

[16:13] BAMBIE WURZBERGER: Actually, I take that back. I came as a client once, still an act of addiction, and had no idea what was going on. And it was just kind of, I was in and I was out. There wasn't anything remarkable or memorable about it. And that had been many years ago. And so then when I come in to do community service, it was originally we had clothing. Back then we had a little clothing store. And so the community service workers were in charge of going through the clothes, getting rid of anything that had holes or stains, and then hanging up everything else. And then one day they needed us to carry groceries out. And that was the eye opener for me when I was carrying these groceries out for these seniors that could not carry. And then I went to the office and I said, how about if we start carrying everybody's groceries out? Could we start doing that? And they were like, yeah, I don't care. And so we started doing that. And it's funny, because now, all these years later, I have incorporated that into what we do. Like, just that little extra step. These people are already going through so much, you know, and it's coming up on the summertime where everybody's hot, and then you add hunger to that. So why can't we go a step further and just for 1 hour, excuse me, for 30 minutes or 1 hour, you know, while they're here visiting, checking out our resources, why can't we make this a work free zone for them so that for this time that they're here, they get waited on and served. So we do that. We load their cars with the groceries. We help them with their food orders. We do everything that we can to get them to a better place, if only for a few minutes.

[18:30] PHILIP HERZOG: So when you were talking about your story some, too, how is it that you got to the Ozarks, to Springfield? Did you grow up here or did you move here?

[18:40] BAMBIE WURZBERGER: I grew up in Willard. I was adopted. And my family that adopted me were absolutely amazing. Loved me as though I were their blood child. I moved to Springfield when I was 16. I had some bad situations going on, and my family didn't have an understanding of addiction, and that's how early I started into it. So my mom moved me to Springfield. Try to do the geographical change. And funny story that no matter where you go, there you are. And it wasn't the society and it wasn't the people I was hanging out with. It was me and my own insecurities and, you know, my lack of love for myself that fueled my addiction. So.

[19:55] PHILIP HERZOG: What would you say is your best, your best advice when you've helped people? Because I know you helped many people, whether they're dealing with addiction or just anything else, when things are just tough. What's your advice to help folks get through.

[20:13] BAMBIE WURZBERGER: For me, when things get. When I feel like my back is against the wall, I like to do a little gratitude list. It's incredibly difficult to focus on negative things, bad situations. It's really hard to focus on the negativity if you're focusing on the blessings. And I tell that to my girls that are under me, that look to me for guidance in getting and staying clean. My volunteers at work, they all pretty much live by that as well. Look to Jesus. Look to Jesus. And, you know, it is one thing to look to Jesus, but I think it's also important just to acknowledge the blessings that we have. The sun is shining today. We had a week full of rain and just muck, and, you know, the sun is shining, the flowers are blooming. There's all these things that we can look at to find the. The beauty in life today. I read a passage somewhere one time that, and this is ad libbing, but it was to find the beauty in life, to hear the laughter of others, and to be grateful for where you are. These are the things that hone in on God's will. So if we can find these things and incorporate them in our world, you know, then we can be living in God's will instead of self will, which is the core of the disease of addiction, is the triangle of self obsession, you know, self will, self desire.

[22:11] PHILIP HERZOG: So I know we both have done social work, in a way, for a long time. And, yeah, like you said, there's a lot of history that goes in all these things or trauma and just those differences there. But on your end of being there to support folks just in your time at cross lines or just in general, what are one of the stories that stick out to you the most of a family that you've helped or a specific person that you've seen and been with? Because I know you have many, many stories. One of the first that just come to mind.

[22:44] BAMBIE WURZBERGER: A few years ago, we had a grandmother come in for holiday assistance, and she came in with tears in her eyes. Her. She. The police showed up at her front door with her two granddaughters and was told that her son in law had just murdered her daughter, and she was now the guardian of her two grandbabies. And right before Christmas, and this woman was sharing her story with me, and I started bawling with her, and we hugged and sat on the floor and just cried it out for about ten or 15 minutes. And then I probably got her some assistance. That same woman came to cross lines just a couple of weeks ago and would not leave. It was raining, it was bitter cold outside, and she stood in. She stood in the rain to show me pictures of her grandbabies and how they're straight a students and she's got a job, and she's out of this trailer that had a hole in the floor and couldn't hold heat. And she said, I just really needed to get a Bambie hug from you. I hear that a lot. Bambie hugs. It's the craziest thing, but. And so I, you know, I pulled her inside, and we just hugged, and she said, I want you to know that it was because of you that I made it through that time. It was because of you that I found the strength in me to keep on going. And I didn't do anything. You know, I just held her for a few minutes to let her know that somebody heard her. And so for her to come back and just smiling and happy, you know, it just. It just. I don't have words for how amazing it is. It brings tears to my eyes. And I have several families. You know, I've had. I have multi generational families that I've seen the babies grow into the parents and have babies grow into the parents. I've got a third generation family. Little girl is four years old, and every time mom and grandma come to get food, they knock on my office window and hold up the baby. And, you know, it's just. It's so hard to disassociate, and I don't know that I would even want to. Like, I have days where a story just hits me in the heart, and I have to sit there and cry it out for a minute, and then I have days that just bring a smile to my face, and I wouldn't trade one for the other. They're just amazing, you know, people are just amazing if you take a minute. I had one client. She was a cankerous woman who I almost had to ban from cross lines. She would come in with her cane and just be shaking and yelling and belligerent, and the volunteers were getting scared. And it happened several times. And I finally called her, and I said, look, I can't have you back in cross lines again. I can't do it. Why not? And I said, because you're rude and mean to the volunteers. She goes, you just don't know me. I said, all right. And something spoke to me, and I said, all right, tell me a little bit about yourself. And she spent probably the next 20 minutes telling me about all these tragedies that she had lived through. And I was like, okay, okay, we can work on this. I had to lay some ground rules. Like, you can't yell at my volunteers and you can't slam doors. But. And that relationship built it. Built to where she would call twice a week just to talk. She didn't have anybody that would just listen to her. And it was oftentimes a lot of complaints and grumblings. But she would always crack a little joke here and there, and that made it all worthwhile. She passed away last month, and it's been. It's been an adventure with her, and she will be missed. I mean, the relationship that myself and a couple of other volunteers just took the extra five minute phone calls just to let her know that somebody was here makes all the difference. Makes all the difference.

[28:20] PHILIP HERZOG: I know you started saying that your role is program pantry coordinator.

[28:27] BAMBIE WURZBERGER: I'm the pantry coordinator.

[28:28] PHILIP HERZOG: Pantry coordinator. And yet, as you've said, so many other things also describe what you do, your many things. What other words describe just who you are and what you do.

[28:47] BAMBIE WURZBERGER: I have a volunteer whose wife is making me a shirt that says I'm not bossy. I'm aggressively helpful, and I think that describes me to a t. I'm very people and task oriented. I like to get the job done and make sure that everything is taken care of. But I also like to sit and have conversations with the volunteers and with the clients. And we have community service workers that still come, and they will always hold a special place in my heart. I'm an enforcer. I'm a protector. I do not allow anybody to be disrespected or belittled. It doesn't matter. I don't allow volunteers to talk that way to clients. I don't let clients talk that way to community service workers. Like, I just don't allow it. And I get very protective over these people. The volunteers are here to be of service. Why wouldn't we protect them? The clients are here because they are struggling and they're hungry. Why wouldn't we protect them? I think that I am. I'm mothering. I like to make sure that everybody is taken care of and they have what they need. I'm the in house gardener. It seems I've been. I've just recently discovered that I'd like to have my hands in dirt and to see if I can bring something on the brink of death back to life. It's exciting. I am probably the loudest person at cross lines, and I'm okay with that.

[31:01] PHILIP HERZOG: Which comes in handy. It's a very big place.

[31:04] BAMBIE WURZBERGER: It is. I do not need an intercom.

[31:07] PHILIP HERZOG: And it should. Shouldn't go without saying. You're wearing a very floral shirt, which is just full of life and color, and it's certainly representative of spring. And so much of what you've shared, too. You've talked about so many characters in your story, and you've mentioned family or kind of your circle in a few ways, would you say? I'm just curious, how would you define family?

[31:33] BAMBIE WURZBERGER: So family to me is so much more than blood. I was adopted, and so blood. You know that saying, blood is thicker than water? It doesn't apply to me. I think in a way, I was blessed to be adopted because I have an ability. If I care about you and I love you, then you're my family. I don't care if we share a sibling or even a distant relative. And I'd say the people at cross lines are my family. I'm with them. Some of those volunteers, I'm with more than I am with my husband, and I care about them and I consider them family. And we talk outside of work. And, you know, the people I work with, again, I'm with more than I'm with my actual family, and I care about what happens to them. So family is a big deal to me. I don't know that I have a lot of friends, per se. I have a lot of family. So if you're in my friend zone and we're close, then, yes, you are my family and you are stuck with me.

[32:59] PHILIP HERZOG: You're there. There's a quote I recently heard which always makes me think of you. Mother Teresa essentially said, you know, I'm paraphrasing as well. It's a success, or it should be a goal in life to extend the circle of your family a little bit every day, which I think is certainly something to do. What is it that in your whole experience, you're kind of a. You just are a gold medalist in doing this, of extending that circle? What's your advice for folks who just don't know how to extend the circle or have tried and failed or have tried and have been hurt in doing that?

[33:40] BAMBIE WURZBERGER: So I do deal with that. It does take risk to reach out and love somebody new. It does take risk. And we were just talking on the way over here that you don't really grow until you step outside of your comfort zone. Yes, we can be closed off and isolated, and we will never have to worry about heartbreak. We would never have to worry about that. But we would never have the opportunity to feel love and to feel happiness and to feel community and those things. I mean, as humans, we're hardwired for that. So I don't know. I have lived on both sides of that street. I have. I have lived where, in my distorted perception through drug use, that it was safer in my mind's eye not to be around people because they could hurt me or they could steal from me or, you know, because that's what drugs and alcohol do. They distort your perception and distort your reality. When I got clean, I started going to a recovery program, and they're huggers. They are huggers. And I was so put off like that, I almost didn't go back. I was very uncomfortable with people being in my bubble. Like, this is my space, and you are invading it. And it is. It's quite hilarious to look at me now compared to then, because I am a hugging fool. I should make a hug committee. The pandemic was incredibly challenging for me because don't touch, don't look, don't talk, don't, don't, don't. And I think I. I battled depression through that time because I need that socialization. You know, we, as the volunteers, when the churches come in, we are just now getting back to holding hands when we do the morning prayer, and not everybody does it, but, oh, my goodness, when the ones that do actually do, and then we all say the Lord's prayer together, it is almost like a song, and it just melts my heart.

[36:28] PHILIP HERZOG: I love that you mentioned the Lord's prayer, too, and you mentioned it even earlier, how you define God's will in your life or just what love looks like, what faith looks like. And the Lord's prayer says, thy kingdom come, thy will be done. So if a wrap up question is this maybe whether someone listens to your story in a year or 100 years from now or 300 years from now, they be in the Ozarks. What are the things that are kind of like the timeless things you'd want someone to know about your story? Like, what. What are those defining traits that you're like, this is what someone should know.

[37:08] BAMBIE WURZBERGER: I think that I would want somebody to know that we can start our journey. Overdose. At any given point, we. It doesn't matter how far down in the depths we fall, we can climb out of that ditch and we can find a new way to live, and we can learn how to open our hearts back up. And, you know, it's. The definition of success is the belief or expectation. I'm sorry. The belief of hope. Hope is the belief or expectation of success. And I have hope today. You know, I think if that was the legacy that if I died today, I would want my legacy. That's what I want my legacy to be. That I went from being unemployable, unlovable, to being somebody who believes in giving love unconditionally. No matter where you come from or how you got here. Like, we all just need that. That somebody to believe in us and encourage us to move on. And I am not perfect, by no means. And I don't claim to be, and I'm certainly not a role model. But I do hope that I can be a better version of myself today than I was yesterday. And I do hope that if somebody is needing just a moment of reprieve, that they know they can come to my house or they can come to my work and just have a moment. Thank you.