A Million and a Half Strawberries:
The Clara Barton Story for All Ages

By Jolinda Stephens
Director of Lifespan Religious Programming
Unitarian Universalist Church of Monterey Peninsula
Carmel, CA

It is goodness that seems to define Universalists. They always seemed to be people of good hearts who were always helping others. Today I'm going to talk about Clara Barton.

Does anyone know why Clara Barton is famous? That's right, she started the American Red Cross in her house, and she got it started by pestering the United States President until he just finally gave up and created it. It was easier than arguing with Clara Barton.

By this time Clara Barton had a long history of helping others and winning impossible arguments. When she was fifteen, she started teaching school and had students nearly as old as she was. She won the boys over by playing baseball with them. They saw that she could hit, pitch, and run bases at least as well as they could.

During the American Civil War she helped supply the battlefields with food, water, and first aid, and she had to win arguments there, too. Field officers were sure that women didn't belong in battle and tried to keep her away. She wrote about that attitude in a poem:

The women who went to the field, you say,
the women who went to the field; and pray
What did they go for? just to be in the way! —
They'd not know the difference betwixt work and play,
What did they know about war anyway?
What could they do? — of what use could they be?
They would scream at the sight of a gun, don't you see?
They would faint at the first drop of blood, in their sight.
What fun for us boys, — (ere we enter the fight;)
They might pick some lint, and tear up some sheets,
And make us some jellies, and send on their sweets,
And thus it was settled by common consent,
Of husbands, or brothers, or whoever went,
That the place for the women was in their own homes,
There to patiently wait until victory comes.

Clara Barton won that argument. She won it because when the army couldn't get supplies to the field or hurt soldiers to the hospital, there was Clara Barton, doing what no one else could. Never flinching, never running away. Always in the middle of things.

Where have you heard about the Red Cross recently? That's right; they are helping the Gulf Coast residents who lost homes during Hurricane Katrina. Did you know that almost exactly 105 years before Katrina, the worst hurricane in our country hit Galveston, Texas? And there was Clara Barton, then seventy-nine years old, the first national help to get to the island city of Galveston.

On September 8, 1900, the island was slammed by a Category 4 hurricane with 130-mile-per-hour winds. It destroyed all but the wealthiest homes, leaving pieces of the shattered houses thirty feet deep and three miles long. Between six thousand and ten thousand people died that night, more than in all the hurricanes we've had in this country since then combined.

When Clara Barton and the Red Cross called on people all over America to help, they donated and donated. Those donations bought food, water, shelter, medical help, and one and a half million strawberry plants. Strawberry plants? Yes, once the rescue effort was under control, Clara asked about what people did for jobs, and they told her that a lot of people grew strawberries to sell. All was lost for the coming year, they said, because plants would have to go in the ground in the next two weeks. How many, she asked. "Oh, about one and a half million," was the reply. Again Clara did the impossible. In two weeks, one and a half million strawberry plants arrived (without the help of airplanes) and were planted. So the survivors had some way to begin to support themselves.

Clara Barton's determination to help others grew from her Universalist belief that every life is precious. We honor that belief today in our first Principle—everyone is important—everyone has inherent worth and dignity. We honor that belief when we follow Clara Barton's example and help others. So what will you think of next time you taste strawberries?