Graham Area Crisis Center celebrates Executive Director Oldfield’s 25th year

The Graham Area Crisis Center celebrated the 25-year working anniversary of their Executive Director, Don Oldfield, Thursday, Sept. 12.

As the Executive Director some of the things Oldfield does includes family counseling for those in the shelter, helping run and pick up food for the Graham Community Food Pantry and partners with churches on a utilities benevolence fund.

“Before I actually came to the crisis center, I had a part time office here one day a week,” Oldfield said. “I did work with what was the child advocacy center at that time, and CPS cases. I always thought Graham would be a great place to live.”

He said a few months after starting his part time work in Graham, the opening came up at the crisis center and a friend put his name in for the job. A few days later he interviewed and was hired.

One of the first women to come through the Crisis Center after Oldfield took the job was now Crisis Center Board President Joanie Edwards.

“I wrote (“God At The Intersection”) and I wrote the book on my experience,” Edwards said. “I was a homeless mother with two children coming through town because I was lost. I stopped at a church and the church sent us to the criss center and that was 25 years ago.”

She and her two children, Dan and Lilly De La Cruz, went on to be one the center’s biggest success stories, according to Oldfield. Dan runs a law firm and is the city attorney in Graham. While Lilly has gone onto to work with battered women and domestic abuse in Iowa.

“Donald has been at the Crisis Center for 25 years and has done a lot of awesome work for a lot of people here in Graham,” Dan De La Cruz said. “He has spearheaded a lot of benevolent causes, (…) the food bank, all kinds of stuff. I’m very thankful for Don and his work with the community and service to folk. There has been a lot of them, myself included, over the past 25 years that have benefited from him and his leadership here in Graham.”

Oldfield said he has seen a lot of changes occur over the last 25 years. He added when he first started the Graham Community Food Pantry was giving food, bought retail, to about 75 people a month. He said, now they give over 150,000 lbs. of food a year to over 900 people a month. The food is purchased at the Wichita Falls Area Food Bank for 19 cents a pound or donated by the local United Supermarket or Walmart.

“The food bank actually uses about 50 different volunteers every month,” Oldfield said. “We don’t have employees over there. When I came here 25 years ago, we had one paid employee that oversaw all of it. Twenty-five years later, we have one person overseeing all that, but the numbers have grown tremendously, the volume of food and all of that stuff.”

Edwards said Oldfield usually is the one who makes a weekly trip to Wichita Falls to pick up for the food pantry.

For the rest of the story, see the Wednesday, Sept. 18 edition of The Graham Leader.