By Tom Jekel | For The Republic
HOPE — No one has to explain financial hardship to Tim Andrews.
The St. Louis Crossing native, now 59 and a successful East Coast business executive, was born into a home with no hot water and no indoor plumbing. Andrews and his mother Gladys got by financially thanks to welfare programs and the kindness of others.
Andrews has spent his 40s and 50s returning generosity shown to him during his youth with financial gifts to others in his native northern Bartholomew County.
His story begins on Gambold Street, a block north of County Road 800 North in “the Crossing,” as locals call it, an unincorporated town with about 40 homes northwest of Hope.
Gladys Andrews, 42, gave birth to Tim in February 1962. That was 20 years after the birth of her only other child, James M. Andrews, who had entered the Army. Gladys and her husband, James F. Andrews, had separated the year before.
With serious back issues, a difficult pregnancy and the birth of a 9-pound son, Gladys gave up her job of 21 years at the Reliance Shirt Factory in Columbus to care for her young son.
Eligible for welfare, Gladys Andrews received food stamps and Medicaid benefits — on top of $25 a week in child support she received from her spouse, a toolmaker at Hamilton Cosco (now Dorel Juvenile) in Columbus.
Gladys learned from her case worker in the early 1970s that she he was also eligible for housing assistance, so she took out a $4,200 bank mortgage to purchase a 552-square-foot mobile home — with hot water and indoor plumbing — to place on her 0.2-acre property, allowing the older house to be torn down. Her $64.67 monthly mortgage was paid for by welfare assistance.
When they ran short of food, Gladys and Tim made the one-block walk to the general store run by Stanley Rose until his 1973 retirement. Understanding her financial situation, Rose allowed Gladys to purchase food on store credit that she could pay off when she could, “which wasn’t very often,” Tim Andrews said in a recent interview.
After Rose’s store closed, and without a car of their own, Andrews would arrange to ride with a neighbor to buy groceries in a neighboring community.
“The hardest part was getting there — and using food stamps. It was embarrassing, but there was no choice. Ripping food stamps out of a booklet, it was a daunting thing for a 16-year-old,” said Andrews, a Hauser High School student at the time.
But thanks to the food stamps and other help, “we were blessed,” Andrews said.
Also blessed with a curious mind, the young man began to learn about a world outside of St. Louis Crossing — starting with nearby Columbus.
He holds a distinct memory visiting the new Bartholomew County Public Library, completed in 1969. Stepping onto its brick plaza, the schoolboy recalls peering through the “Large Arch” sculpture and viewing a perfectly framed First Christian Church tower, the first example of Columbus’ Modern architecture.
Awed by what he saw, Andrews began to read up on J. Irwin Miller, the local industrialist who headed Cummins Engine Co. and brought architectural and art to the Columbus area.
“There’s something bigger than I know,” the St. Louis Crossing youth began to realize as he learned more about Miller.
In his philanthropic gifts in Bartholomew County, Miller created partnerships, an idea that appealed to Andrews. Through the Cummins Foundation Architecture Program, Miller didn’t pay for buildings to be constructed, but instead paid architectural fees for their design.
Miller’s philosophies began to influence Andrews’ own.
The idea of creating partnerships resonated with Andrews, who in 2003 was hired to run the Advertising Specialty Institute in suburban Philadelphia, a promotional products firm with 450 employees.
That was also when the Hawcreek-Flat Rock Area Endowment was getting off the ground.
“Everybody in Hope knew him because he’s somebody who made it big,” said Bud Herron, a newspaper executive and Hope native, of the 1980 Hauser High School graduate.
Fellow endowment board members thought they should see if Andrews might be interested in supporting their upstart effort. Herron, who had years earlier offered Andrews a newspaper job with the Franklin Daily Journal and knew him, agreed to reach out.
“If there’s any way you could help us, that would be great,” Herron remembers telling Andrews.
The endowment board was not only looking for financial support, but advice — and that was the first of many telephone conversations the two would share.
Andrews became engaged in the endowment’s visualization process and soon offered, “I’d like to make a matching grant,” Herron recalled.
Andrews offered to donate $10,000 a year for 10 years, or a total of $100,000 if others matched his pledge.
“He gave the effort credibility,” Herron said, and Andrews would make occasional visits back home for endowment events.
His gifts included another $10,000 match in 2017. And as endowment assets were closing in on $1 million, Andrews issued a 2019 challenge that he would donate the final $25,000 if the fund hit $975,000 by December 2021.
It did that a year early, and the milestone was celebrated Aug. 21 with a free community lunch on the Hope Town Square.
Contributions of about $140,000 the past 18 years have made Andrews one of the endowment’s two largest donors, along with the late John Cox of Hope.
Interest on the endowment’s $1.2 million in assets is distributed in grants to organizations throughout Hawcreek and Flat Rock townships — this year worth more than $42,000.
A year after making his six-figure pledge to the community endowment, Andrews widened his generosity. A $25,000 pledge in 2004 started the Hope Area Food Bank Endowment, a gesture to honor Rose who had provided store credit or free food to local families in need.
Andrews has since given another $100,000 to the food bank endowment as its largest single contributor. Interest on the endowment’s $160,000 in assets helps fund the Hope Food Pantry’s operations throughout Flat Rock and Hawcreek townships.
“I have been blessed in my life. I’ve had a great career, and have been incredibly lucky,” Andrews said. “As I’ve been able to give back, some in modest ways, some in less modest ways, it’s been a joy and a privilege to do that.”
Around Thanksgiving 2019, when Andrews was back in southern Indiana for a visit, he brought a friend to St. Louis Crossing to show that person where he grew up. During the stop, he came upon Ollie Cowan, who had purchased the Andrews mobile home from Tim’s father and lived there after Gladys, who developed Parkinson’s Disease, moved to Miller’s Merry Manor in Hope.
Cowans, a retired mechanic, was wearing a Vietnam veterans hat marking his service in the U.S. Army during the 1960s.
As they chatted, Cowan said he would be interested in buying the property his trailer sat on if Andrews ever wanted to sell the land.
“I really teared up,” Andrews said, feeling compassion for the former soldier.
Andrews had been receiving $600 a year in rent from Cowan for the land, enough to pay the property taxes and to generate a small profit.
“I just came to tell you I’m giving it to you,” Andrews said he told Cowan, who was moved by the gesture.
Andrews had kept the small property, assessed at $8,800, because it represented the last physical connection between Andrews and his hometown, and between a son and his mother.
But giving away the land was “the best snap decision I’d ever made,” he said.
About 10 months later, Cowan succumbed to leukemia at age 73.
Andrews’ generosity also has spread beyond Bartholomew County.
The Ball State graduate admitted that he hadn’t maintained a close relationship with his alma mater. But in March 2018, he was contacted by new Ball State President Geoffrey Mearns, who requested a lunch meeting in New York City.
In time, the two struck up a friendship and Andrews became impressed with Mearns’ leadership, strategic vision and commitment to Ball State students.
When Andrews learned that the university would open a new Multicultural Center, the alum asked if there were remaining needs to get it up and running. He learned that one of the gaps was funding to pay a graduate assistant in LGBTQ+ studies.
“If you want one, I’ll fund it,” Andrews said, although the size of his gift to the university — announced in February — has not been publicly disclosed.
The assistantship was created with preference for LGBTQ+ candidates who identify as Black, Indigenous and People of Color.
“I was not any of those,” Andrews said. “It came at a time when we were all examining ourselves and discrimination,” referring to outrage over systemic racial injustice across the nation.
“As a white man, I wanted to step in and help,” Andrews said.
In appreciation, the lobby of the new 10,500-square-foot Multicultural Center — which opened earlier this year — was dedicated in Andrews’ name.
“He never forgot his roots,” Herron said of Andrews.
“The community is such a special place in Tim’s heart — it instilled that seed of belonging,” Herron said.
“You’ve got a home where your feet are, and a home where your heart is,” Herron said.
For Andrews, the latter will always be in northern Bartholomew County.
“It was so important to who I am, my values, how I treat people and how I view the world,” he said.
