THE ART OF GIVING - Dick and Ardi Wilson
Like modern day alchemists, Wilsons embrace creativity as catalyst for change
Published On: August 30, 2010
“I view myself a catalyst between active agents,” Dick says. “I like to inspire those people into action, just like a chemist. I really do believe most people have the ability to give of themselves. They just need to get out of their normal mindset. To me that is the art of giving: facilitating that creative process. You are inspiring truly smart, gifted people to give of themselves for a greater good.”
At first glance, the equation of Dick and Ardi Wilson doesn’t look like like it adds up: Dick says he is the shy, business-minded, practical integer, while Ardi adds the variable of kindness, caring and nuance to their relationship. It is a ying and yang partnership that is supportive and complementary, and the catalyst is love.
Dick and Ardi are proud of their teddy bear collection, each one symbolizing a piece of the couple’s history together. Early on in their relationship, Ardi sent Dick a teddy bear with a backpack containing love notes and poems every week they dated, 114 bears in all. As they grew closer to their wedding, Dick saved the last few bears to read when they are older, so he can reminisce about his romance with the love of his life. Embracing and living their passions is the cornerstone of, not only their personal relationship, but also their philanthropic efforts.
Before they married, Dick threw Ardi a birthday party. Meeting his friends for the first time and uncomfortable with asking strangers to purchase a gift, Ardi had a different idea. “So I was making bears at work, and Dick was affiliated with the Dream Factory. I said, ‘Let’s just have everyone bring a teddy bear and we will give them to the Dream Factory. That’s how Ardi’s Bears got started. That first year at my birthday, we collected 193 bears. I thought that was more bears than I had ever seen in my life. I had them all over my office and people were bringing me more. We gave them to the Dream Factory at their Christmas party that year and it was wonderful.” Ten years later, Ardi’s Bears now distributes 10,000 of the toys.
The couple seeks to inspire and collaborate, from the partnership with Citizens Union Bank serving as a collection site in its 28 branches across Kentucky, to Cabo Wabo, collecting bears as an entry fee for their June event. When Dewey Hensley, principal of Atkinson Elementary School, learned that Ardi had a room full of bears with no homes, he distributed nearly 450 bears to the entire student body on the last day before Christmas vacation within a matter of hours. For one little girl, Hensley’s quick action meant she received her only Christmas present that year. “It takes only one teddy bear, and you know you did your job,” Ardi says. “That’s when it’s so special to me.”
Even with your heart in the right place, the couple says, a charitable effort may not always be successful at first. When one of Ardi’s best friends volunteered to dry clean the bears for free, some of the bears came out damaged. The couple reached out to Kentucky Humane Society, which took used the bears as toys for dogs and cats. Ardi thought it unfair to distribute smaller ones, but after the couple was introduced to a connection at Fort Campbell, nearly 500 little bears found themselves in the backpacks of soldiers to pass out to Iraqi children.
Dick takes Ardi’s ideas and motivates various organizations and people to help them find practical, cost-free solutions, a business model he used as one of six co-founders of the Dream Factory. With 38 chapters nationally and more than 5,000 dedicated volunteers, the Dream Factory grants wishes to critically and chronically ill children ages 3 to 18. Since 1980, the organization has granted more than 25,000 dreams with a payroll of zero. Dream Factory is 100 percent volunteer-based, and 84 percent of its donations are used to grant dreams. Overhead costs are kept to a minimum, because Dick and the other volunteers are not shy about asking for anything, from free phone service, to donated office furniture, and even free space in which to work, which Kosair Children’s Hospital provided to them for 16 years.
“Anyone can make a difference by creatively coming up with every day solutions to every day challenges,” Dick says. “You don’t have to have a wealth of resources to be a catalyst for change.” Ardi agrees. “The only resource you need is yourself.”
One key link in the equation is mentoring and educating the next generation of philanthropists. Dick has dedicated the last 25 years of his life establishing mentoring programs at colleges and universities, including a 15-year program at University of Louisville. Through his experiences, he has found that when students are engaged, they can be either inspired or redirected. He challenges them to think out of the box and look at an issue from a different context to find a simple solution. “If you ask a student what they want to be when they grow up, most of them usually do not know,” Dick says. “When you ask them to imagine themselves at 25 years old and going to their job, they can provide specific details. It is because you changed the context of the question from what do you hope to be to who are you.”
The couple thinks the greatest challenge our community faces is properly training and preparing today’s youth for the philanthropic challenges in the future. They have found that when children are exposed to charitable work at a young age, it engrains a sense of community.
Through the couple’s relationship with Tim Moseley at Wayside Christian Mission, Ardi discovered residents there needed socks. She enlisted the assistance of young pageant contestants ages 6 to 20, who collected more than 1,000 socks they distributed to the residents. This simple gesture of kindness had a lasting effect. “You get kids on a drive when they are in first or second grade, with something simple like socks or teddy bears, it teaches them charity and instills it in them for the rest of their lives,” Ardi says. “It can be really simple.”
Like Ardi’s Traveling Gardener Project, the couple plants and nurtures the seeds of philanthropy and community responsibility throughout their sphere of influence, something they believe anyone has the power to do. Anything can be accomplished when someone focuses on what they do best and uses it to make a difference. “You just have to have a big heart,” Dick says.
With big hearts and creativity, they have found that playing the role of charity matchmaker provides them the opportunity to connect people with simple solutions that have an effect on the community.
“Well, this is where we work so well together, and I really do love Ardi desperately, because of all the wonderful things she does,” Dick says. “She has moderated me a whole lot.”
“I keep trying,” she chuckles.
Introduced by a mutual friend, Dick admits that their union has softened his hard exterior over the years; that somehow the ying and yang of their relationship results in a deeper sense of personal involvement in the community.
“We have been very lucky in our lives and we are so happy. We complement each other,” he says. “But the real motivating force with everything we do is to be able to inspire and collaborate.” •
