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SOUL OF AN OPTIMIST
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Published on September 12, 2004
Byline: Susan Swartz, Press Democrat
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HAVING SPENT MUCH OF HER LIFE HELPING OTHERS, BECOMING A POLICE CHAPLAIN MADE PERFECT SENSE FOR PAMELA MOORE
Pamela Moore holds fast to an Anne Frank belief that people are good at heart, even while focusing most of her career on the sad, dark aspects of life.
She's spent years battling discrimination and hate crimes and worked with troubled youth and the homeless. Now, at 53, Moore has signed up to become a law enforcement chaplain.
Like others in the all-volunteer Law Enforcement Chaplaincy Program, she accompanies a police officer to the homes of crime or accident victims.
"It's very moving to be with people when they find out their loved one is not coming home anymore," Moore said.
Becoming a chaplain was a logical next step for Moore, who has had a long career in the helping professions.
The former New Yorker, now a Guerneville resident, is a national program director for the Anti-Defamation League, the civil rights agency that monitors anti-Semitism in the United States and abroad. In New York she ran a mediation program for inner-city youth and worked as a nurse.
In Sonoma County, she's worked on various human rights projects and, as a breast cancer survivor, she's organized a Christian-based retreat for women with cancer to be held in October.
"Pamela literally puts her heart in her work, whether it's volunteer or professional," said Lorene Irizary, who as head of the county's Office of Commissions worked with Moore on forming "hate free" committees in different cities.
For someone who spends so much time on grim realities, Moore maintains an amazingly sunny personality and a ready grin that takes over her whole face.
She was raised to choose work "that feeds the soul" and to focus on the positive.
"I think there's more goodness than bad," Moore said. "I've seen very few bad-to-the-bone types in my life. I also think people want to be positive and right now we're exhausted by negativity.
"One thing you learn in all these fields is that things are cyclical. During tough economic conditions people's frustrations bubble to the surface. But I remain optimistic that we have many ways for people to bridge their differences."
Building faith
Moore's optimism is rooted in her strong religious faith. Three years ago she became a deacon in the Episcopal Church, which allows her to put "Reverend" in front of her name and preach at the Church of the Incarnation in Santa Rosa.
She agrees it's a challenge to be an optimist, given world events including the war in Iraq, a nasty political year and a recent run of local front-page horrors.
She shares the community's grief and shock over a murder, a freakish fatality, the death of a child.
"I'll read about some tragedy in the newspaper and then look at the roster to see which chaplain was called out that day," she said. "It can be very tough. Sometimes we have to debrief each other. We need chaplains for our chaplains."
As to how to answer the impossible questions that often come from a victim's family, she said, "I think everyone has to ask why horrible things happen. And none of us really know."
She used to try to offer up a reason to family members questioning why a loved one had to die. "I don't do that anymore. I realize now that to come up with a reason may not be soothing at all. What is soothing is to be listened to, to have someone put their arm around you."
The chaplaincy training taught her the importance of simply being there for someone.
"They told us, `If you can't improve on silence, don't.'"
J.R. Young, executive director of the Law Enforcement Chaplaincy Service in Sonoma County, said Moore is a natural.
"Our job is to comfort the suffering, to show compassion and caring in situations that are normally very tragic," Young said. "And that appeals to Pamela."
In one recent assignment, he said, Moore and another chaplain went with police officers to inform a young family that their wife and mother had died in a car accident on the way home from work. Moore's task was to take the children into another room and play with them while the father dealt with the shocking news.
Chaplains wear a clerical collar and a chaplain badge on their sleeve, but they're not supposed to preach.
"We don't do religion," said Young. "Obviously if someone wants to pray we don't say no, but we don't say, I'm a Baptist and this is how we do it."
The move west
Moore moved from Queens, N.Y., to Sonoma County in 1990. "I was 39 and started thinking where I'd want to be when I retired," she said. "I thought it was better to pick a place while I was still working where I could build a network and friends."
She has family in the Bay Area and fell in love with the Russian River area one June morning.
"It was sun-kissed and dewy," she recalled. "I come from central heat and central air. I thought how good it would be to wake up where the pace is sweeter and slower, to go out on my own deck with a cup of coffee."
She rented a house in Monte Rio and has since bought a Guerneville townhouse that she shares with her dachshund puppy.
Admitting to an urban squeamishness, she enjoys the river but only for the view. "I don't swim in anything that has life forms in it other than humans."
As a black woman, Moore had concerns about moving to a basically white community even though she grew up in one on Long Island. There was one uncomfortable incident that occurred when she was visiting a white friend in Sonoma County.
"I had this odd interaction in a store with a clerk who kept following me and asking if she could help. But it wasn't in a helpful way," Moore said. "I felt like I was being watched or under suspicion and I left the store."
She told her friend, who marched into the store and told the manager she didn't want her visitors being treated disrespectfully.
Moore uses the incident to illustrate the shadowy discomfort of racism.
"Racism isn't always blatant and that's the part of it that is very wearing," she said. 'You're on your guard all the time. It's like being a woman and having to worry about what's safe and what's not in ways that a man doesn't."
She gave Sonoma County six months, to test her comfort level, and decided to stay. "There have only been a couple of other times I've felt `Oh, dear, what's this?'"
Understanding racism
Irizary said Moore's personal and professional knowledge of racism made her invaluable in working with the county to set up hate-free community action committees.
"Pamela understands the dynamics of victims and her approach is always to put people at ease," Irizary said. "She can talk from a personal perspective as an African American woman. She can talk about going into a conservative community and knowing when it feels safe and when it doesn't. And she has great expertise as a national trainer on these things."
Moore's job with the Anti-Defamation League is as associate director for law enforcement resources, work she can do mostly from her home computer with occasional trips around the country to lead anti-bias training.
"Law enforcement has to be sensitive to the changing demographics in their community," Moore said. "A big part of their job is community relations and dealing with ethnic differences, especially in California, where there really is no majority anymore. There are people from some cultures who see a police officer at the door and expect that someone in the house is going to be taken away and never be seen again."
Early this year Moore won a New York Festival award for an interactive movie called "Hate Comes Home" for high school groups, which she helped produce for the Anti-Defamation League. Also this year she received a Woman of Color Humanitarian award from the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors and the Women's Commission.
Faith lifts her up
Moore grew up Roman Catholic, dropped out of the church at age 14, missed "the routine of Sabbath" and became an Episcopalian in the late 1970s.
Now that she's a deacon, her sermons "tend to be around the human condition. I don't give answers but I talk about the challenges in keeping faith because the reality of life is that it includes suffering, pain and inexplicable events."
Sometimes she relates a personal challenge, which includes being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2001.
"I graduated from seminary in June, and in August I had a mammogram. Then there was Sept. 11. Then I was ordained on Sept. 16 and on Sept. 21 doctors found a malignant mass. I was, like, `What?'"
The experience made her more directed.
"I suddenly felt freer and I could say no to what I didn't want to do," she said. "It's that cliche about life not being a dress rehearsal. In my belief system you get only one shot at this."
She makes time for simple pleasures. She goes to the farmers markets, dances around the living room with her dog. She likes swing music. She looks forward to the "haunting beauty of winter when you get to put something in the crockpot and sit and watch the rain."
And she trusts that each caring and compassionate act brings a positive result, even though she sometimes wonders, "Am I really making a difference?
"That's when I tell myself, `It's a time-released thing.'"
You can reach Staff Writer Susan Swartz at 521-5284 or sswartz@pressdemocrat.com.
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