In Washington: Sticking Your Neck Out

By David Brand

Somehow it seemed wrong to Ralph Flowers to kill all those black bears. Sure, part of his job at the Washington Forest Protection Association was to stop the animals from stripping bark from trees and feeding on the sapwood. Then it occurred to him that the way to a bear's heart was not through the barrel of a gun but through its stomach. So he concocted a recipe of sugar- beet pulp and set out feed troughs in the forests. Immediately the bears began to spare the trees and fill their bellies with Flowers' feast.

Today his work is enthusiastically supported by the timber companies, and, says Flowers, 59, "I can retire with an easy conscience." His experiment, though, cost him $12,000. That personal sacrifice caught the attention of Ann Medlock and John Graham, a married couple who run a small foundation in Langley (pop. 700), on picturesque Whidbey Island, 20 miles north of Seattle. And last year Flowers, savior of the bears, became a Giraffe.

That needs some explaining. The foundation is called the Giraffe Project, and its aim is to recognize people who "stick their necks out for the common good." Risk must also be involved: the chance of losing a job or being ostracized by a community. "Each of these individual acts," says Medlock, "teaches the rest of us important lessons about learning to cope in an unsafe world."

Since the project was founded five years ago, 252 Giraffes have been named, and each has been sent a certificate commending the "courageous actions." Apart from whatever publicity the couple can drum up, that's it. No foundation bequest. No fancy banquet. Its charm lies in its simplicity.

Consider New Yorker Michael Greenberg, who every winter gathers, repairs and hands out gloves to the homeless. Consider Ray Buchanan and Ken Horne of Big Island, Va., who collect farmers' discarded potatoes and deliver them to the hungry. And consider lanky, 6-ft. 4-in. Graham, 46, and petite, vivacious Medlock, 55, who flirt with financial disaster to keep their project going in order to spread the word about good deeds in an unkind world. The object, says Medlock, is to inspire everyone "to stop being an ostrich."

Callers send in their suggestions for new Giraffes to the project's tiny office off Langley's main street, next door to a beauty parlor and across from the volunteer fire department. Many nominations come from 2,000 widely scattered members, most of whom pay $25 a year to support the project's work.

Every month potential Giraffes are scrutinized by ten to 15 of the couple's friends and neighbors. Many candidates spark disagreement, not so much over their causes but over such things as risk and motivation. "What was going on inside the person?" says Graham. "Did the whistle-blower really have an ax to grind? Was the volunteer organizer simply having a good time?" And these heroes must be pure of heart: "We want people who can achieve without resort to meanness."

At a recent meeting, Graham opposed the nomination of a New Jersey battered wife who founded a group to help other victims. Said Graham: "The pain of her experience was so far in the past that I don't see what risk she is taking now." He was loudly and raucously outvoted, and an indignant Medlock threw a cushion at her husband. "One man's Giraffe is another's turkey," grinned Medlock.

If all this sounds very arbitrary, it is. "We're playing God, but then, we can because we invented the game," says Medlock. The result is ambiguities. The project's philosophies of "It's up to us" and self-reliance might sound conservative, but it is the workers for liberal causes who inevitably get recognition: antinuclear proponents, feminists and peace activists.

One supporter of a conservative cause who did become a Giraffe is Kathy DiFiore of Ramsey, N.J., an opponent of abortion. For the past six years, she has opened her home, without charge, to pregnant, unmarried women, meeting her $113,000 annual budget with church and private donations. "We've saved about 300 babies," says DiFiore, 40, proudly.

People like DiFiore are making the sort of impact that a disillusioned Graham was seeking when he left the U.S. Foreign Service in 1980, after serving in Viet Nam, with the U.S. delegation to the United Nations and on NATO's Nuclear Planning Group. About this time, he met Medlock, a journalist who in 1980 was working for Quest magazine when it formed a Giraffe society to reward the intrepid. When the magazine folded in 1981, Medlock nurtured the neck-stretching idea with a little money from supporters and began persuading radio stations to air a short account of Giraffes' achievements, recorded by personalities such as Candice Bergen and John Denver. Today the exploits are regularly broadcast by more than 500 stations.

In 1985 Graham and Medlock, by then married, moved their project from a New York City apartment to Langley. Despite much scrimping, last year the $170,000 budget ended up $35,000 in the red, and the couple were barely able to pay themselves $17,000 each. The project's survival is due mostly to the generosity of 18 foundations and private donors. "It's a profound idea that won't save the world, but might make a lot of folks feel better," says William L. Bondurant, executive director of the North Carolina-based Babcock Foundation, which so far has donated $85,000.

The accounts are in better shape this year because Graham is holding $1,000-a-day seminars for employees of companies like Seattle's Rainier Bank on how to succeed in business by using the Giraffe qualities of caring, sharing and risk taking. Maybe it's a bit much to expect a bank employee to be as fearless as Giraffe L.C. Coonse, a high school chemistry teacher in Granite Falls, N.C., who discovered that an incinerator was producing toxic fumes and, over community opposition, shut it down. How many of us could live up to the example of Carrie Barefoot Dickerson of Claremore, Okla., who financed the opposition to a planned nuclear power plant by mortgaging her farm and raffling handmade quilts? None of us, though, should be intimidated, says Medlock. "There's something each of us can do to make the world a better place."