Cookies, Clothes and Walk Audits -- 2024 AARP Texas Andrus Award Winners Deliver the Goods For Communities

After a 28-year globe-trotting career in the U.S. Air Force as a decorated computer and intelligence systems’ expert, Lt. Col. Dexter Handy (Ret.) settled in Houston in 2004. But it wasn’t a slowing down for him for very long.

A year after Handy and his wife moved into the area, Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, killing hundreds of people and leaving a massive trail of destruction, homelessness and hunger. “I felt the need to get out there and help people,” he said, explaining his start to a nearly two-decade span of volunteerism and community service.

With distinction, Handy has put his leadership, logistics know-how and technical skills to work as a volunteer leader with various non-profit groups in Houston, including AARP. Most notably, he’s brought a stubborn focus and community attention to the importance of creating mobility improvements – particularly pedestrian safety – for the residents of the nation’s fourth-most-populous city.

For his volunteerism and successful community organizing, AARP Texas recognizes Handy as the top recipient of the 2024 AARP Texas Andrus Award for Community Service. The award is given to volunteers who have made significant contributions to their communities. It is named after Ethel Percy Andrus, the founder of AARP.

This year, besides the honors for Dexter Handy of Houston, AARP Texas is presenting Andrus Awards to two additional sets of volunteers in the state. They are:

• Allan and Terri Thompson of Port Isabel, who have organized volunteers around a successful recycling operation, ReNEW Thrift Store, which provides gently used clothing, furnishings and other goods to residents of impoverished areas near South Padre Island; and
  
• Jan Vogel of Houston, the founder of a fast-growing non-profit, Golden Butterfly Bakers, which provides baked goods – most famously 10 varieties of cookies, as well as biscuits and muffins – to dozens of service organizations throughout Houston, including homeless shelters, women’s recovery centers and a prison ministry.

AARP Texas Director Tina Tran described the recipients as a premier slate of leading figures who embody the selfless spirit of volunteerism.

“It is a great honor to recognize individuals who have made lasting and significant contributions in their communities,” said Tran. “These Texans demonstrate through action how sharing their experience, talent and skills brings great benefits to others.”

DEXTER HANDY:
For his part, Handy has organized hundreds of people to hold numerous Houston-area walk audits, which document issues affecting sidewalks, crosswalks, intersections, bus stops and traffic-control devices to help traffic engineers and others understand needs for making stretches of roads more pedestrian friendly. Handy has also adopted numerous new technologies to improve the audits.

“We found that seniors, in particular, want to walk to certain places and to do so safely,” said Handy. “In Houston, they can’t do that right now. We’re a very, very car-centric place. But we’re making progress.”

ALLAN AND TERRI THOMPSON:
Allan and Terri Thompson brought the idea for a thrift store to South Texas from their experience with one associated with a church in southern Illinois. While the Thompson’s started the new store operation, they give credit to other volunteers for making it run.

“I think everybody wants to help deep down,” said Allan Thompson. “Sometimes, they just need an invitation. Helping out just a few hours a week is good for the volunteer and it’s good for the community. I wish people could better understand the impact that donating just four to eight hours a week can do to really help other people.”

JAN VOGEL:
For a quarter-century, Vogel, a retired software designer, had a cookie ministry through her church. She also has a heart for helping the needy. A few years ago, she was inspired to drastically expand her baked goods operation and opened Golden Butterfly Bakers, a nonprofit that now regularly involves more than 20 volunteers.

The operation donates cookies, muffins and biscuits to 12 Houston-area organizations, with deliveries five days a week. They bake and distribute 8,000 cookies, 600 muffins and 800 biscuits each week. Also, twice a year, they provide 2,100 dozen cookies (that’s 25,200 cookies) to a prison ministry.

“It gets a little chaotic around here this time of year,” says Vogel. “With the volume we’re doing now, we have to be highly organized or it just wouldn’t get done. I’m blessed that I have so many great volunteers.”

Vogel understands that most recipients of the baked goods don’t know her or the operation behind the cookies. But she’s confident the cookies are making a difference.

“They know somebody took the time to make these cookies with the best ingredients,” she said. “A lot of these folks feel like they’re forgotten, and nobody cares. Well, those cookies are a way of saying, yes, somebody cares.”

The award recipients will be presented with trophies, and AARP will make a financial donation to a non-profit organization of their choice.

Mark Hollis can be reached at mhollis@aarp.org or 512-480-2429.