North Providence family avoids long, cold winter
By Michael Brown
Editor
NORTH PROVIDENCE - John and Tracy Delgado met in high school and fell in love. They were married in 1994. For four years, they worked hard, started a family and struggled to put money aside as they moved from one apartment to another, finally buying a house in 1998 in the town where they had both grown up. They felt like they were living the American dream.
Unfortunately, their lives have turned into an American nightmare.
Tracy worked awhile, but now stays at home with Olivia, 2, while two other children attend school. Day care cost her more money than what she was earning. John works 45-50 hours a week as a seafood assistant manager at an area supermarket. At night, he comes home to a house that, were it not for the love inside, is stone cold.
For the Delgados, a proud family deeply resistant to asking for help, the bills began to increase more than John’s salary could pay. In no time, they fell behind on their gas bill, totaling more than $2,700 when service was shut off earlier this year. They managed to make it through the summer, but as October turned to November, even with a recent warm spell, the temperature in the Delgados’ modest, clean home was 10 degrees colder than the ambient air temperature outside.
“As a husband and a father, I’m doing the best I can,’ said John, in a tone betraying anger, guilt and frustration. “It’s just not enough.” Tracy felt just as much at a loss. While John was working during the day, she was calling public and private aid agencies, looking for some help in restoring heat to their home, but unable to give John any good news when he returned home at night. ÒI felt so badly, especially looking at my children. I just wanted to be able to give them a warm bath,” she said.
They have a fireplace in the first floor living room, and used it at night during the recent cold, wet spell. However, when the temperature dropped down to the low 40s at night - inside the home - both parents were scared for the welfare of their family.
“When I walk out of the house at 6 a.m., it’s warmer outside than it is inside,” John said. “What am I going to do in January and February?” Part of the answer came Oct. 31, when Bishop Thomas J. Tobin gave the Delgados a check for $2,700 to pay to have their heat restored. With the state-mandated moratorium on heat shut-offs beginning Nov. 1, the Delgados will have heat throughout the winter.
The money came from the Interfaith Community Dire Emergency Fund, a diocesan-administered ecumenical program to help elderly and low income families with heating assistance and other emergency needs. The bishop made the presentation to the Delgados, who invited him and other diocesan officials to their home to kick off a ‘Keep the Heat On’ challenge. Bishop Tobin pledged to match every dollar of heating assistance sent to the Dire Emergency Fund, up to $75,000. The matching funds, which could boost total heating assistance funds to $150,000, would come from discretionary Catholic Charity Funds and other areas of budget savings from diocesan agencies.
Tracy learned about Dire Emergency while in a program at St. Leo the Great Parish in Pawtucket. She spoke with fund Coordinator Richard Andrade who, after setting up a payback schedule for their heating bill, asked the Delgados if they would be willing to host a press conference at which the bishop could announce the heating fund drive.
While John and Tracy were reluctant to participate because they coveted their privacy, they discussed it further and realized that, with the skyrocketing cost of natural gas and home heating oil this winter, there would likely be many other people in Rhode Island also facing these difficult circumstances for the first time and not knowing where to turn.
Tracy said that the seriousness of their situation confronted her when her son came downstairs one night, having completed his homework wearing gloves.
John said he would wake up at night and “you almost don’t want to leave your bed to go to the bathroom.” The Delgados know that once the gas bill is paid, there is still little they can do to generate the money needed to prevent a balance from accumulating during the winter. “I’ll put plastic up on the windows and do other weatherproofing, and maybe we can find other ways of saving money,” John said.
For now, he knows that his children can have warm baths, and that when the snow arrives, his family won’t have to live in a cold house. “This is the most positive thing that has happened to me all year. I get a sense that I can begin to see daylight,’ John said.
This article originally published in The Providence Visitor.