By Aaron Vehling

Family Pathways has 950 pounds more food on its shelves, thanks to the efforts of about 50 students and adult helpers at St. Gregoryís Catholic Church in North Branch.

The teens, along with youth minister Dani Rice and Jerome Djam of the Chisago Lakes Achievement Center, participated in the churchís eighth annual 30-Hour Famine, which Rice organized. As the name suggests, they went without food for 30 hours during which they played games, discussed the purpose of the famine and engaged in activities familiar to Djamís home village in Cameroon.

For three hours Saturday morning the kids, already many hours into their fasting, went around the community collecting food for the Family Pathways Food Pantry in North Branch. They also collected about $3900 for victims of the tsunami in Southeast Asia.
On Saturday afternoon they listened to two speakers: Ralph Boudin and Bob Milbrandt, both of North Branch, two men who used to be homeless and who consistently are visiting homeless shelters and providing the unfortunate with supplies and food.

Milbrandt opened his speech with some kind words for the kids at the fast. ìI am so proud of everyone,î he said. ìYou can feel what it is like to be homeless.î

Milbrandt was adopted in the 1950s as an infant. At the age of 12 he discovered this and ìautomatically fell.î

ìI did not know who my real parents were,î he said. ìAll I did was search. I searched through people who were doing drugs and drinking.î

Milbrandt searched multiple states for his birth parents and ended up walking 650 miles to meet his biological mother, he said.
ìAll I ask is that you keep in mind what you are going through now,î said Milbrandt, who is active in the parish.
Milbrandt met Boudin, 68, in church and has been visiting homeless shelters with him. He told the famine participants about the importance of not judging the homeless.

ìWe are exactly the same,î he said. ìThere are people that are homeless in the shelters who are husband and wife, both working full-time but cannot afford a house.î

Like Milbrandt, Boudin was struck with wanderlust at an early age.

ìMy mother died when I was 11,î he said. ìAfter she died I always wanted to drift around.î
Boudin, who has been helping the homeless for 27 years, drifted around the country in the 1950s by riding trains.

ìWhen you ride the rails you get in with a lot of different people,î he said, ìbut hitchhiking in the 1950s was safe.î
Boudin saw Japan with the Marines. Once he became a truck driver he saw Canada, Mexico and all the states he missed, except for one: Alaska.

ìAt 58 I put money in my pocket and went to Alaska,î he said.

He retired in the late 1980s at the age of 51, an early exit from the workplace allowed by his membership in the Teamsters union.
Today, you can find Boudin, who has been married for 43 years, sitting on a bench in Central Park in North Branch. ìI could sit at the bench in the park for the rest of my life and be happy,î he said.

Boudin feels sorry for the homeless he encounters today because of the rampant drug use. When he was homeless, he said, all that he had to worry about was his drinking.

But even if some homeless individuals are stricken with drugs, he said that people should still visit homeless shelters.
ìThe stories you hear down there, some really blow your mind,î he said.

Boudin said ìthere are some very educated people down at the shelterî who end up homeless because of a few bad situations, such as a divorce.

Milbrandt said looking down on the homeless is not the way to go about doing things. ìMost of us are one paycheck away from being homeless.î

Jessica Wethern, 14, a parishioner of St. Gregoryís, said the famine exercise was the second one she has attended.

ìI love helping people and this is a great way to do that,î she said. ìSome people give me a blank stare when I tell them about this, but I think about ëwhat goes around comes around.íî

Wethern was surprised by Milbrandtís story. ìI would never have expected Bob to be homeless,î she said.

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