Wayne Cramer
Wayne Cramer, ’82, isn’t trying to save the world, just one small corner of it that is thousands of miles from home.
Home is Ingleside, Ill., but a big piece of Mr. Cramer’s heart is in Rubio, a town in a remote, mountainous area of Venezuela. Linking the two communities is Andean Aid, a nonprofit organization he founded that serves people in the Rubio area. Rubio is near the border with Colombia, and many of those assisted by Andean Aid are Colombian refugees.
“Our focus is on the frontier states of Venezuela,” Mr. Cramer says, adding that an estimated 180,000 Colombians have fled to Venezuela to escape widespread violence in their homeland. “We saw Colombian refugees as an underserved population.”
The events that brought Mr. Cramer to South America began with a corporate closing.
Mr. Cramer had worked for 25 years for Commonwealth Edison, at the utility’s nuclear power plant in Zion, Ill. When the company announced plans to close the Zion plant in 1998, he decided to take an early retirement offer.
“I figured that retirement packages are not like fine wine,” Mr. Cramer says with a chuckle. “They don’t get better with age. It was the right decision.”
After retiring, “I wanted to try something new,” Mr. Cramer adds. “Our plan was to take a year off, and then decide what career path to follow.”
Fate intervened in 1999, when a onetime co-worker asked Mr. Cramer to assist in database development at Christiansen Academy, an English-language school in Rubio that served the children of English-speaking missionaries.
“He said they could really use someone like me down there,” Mr. Cramer recalls. “That started the ball rolling.” Mr. Cramer had recently turned 50, but he decided to help in spring 2000.
That wasn’t the first time Mr. Cramer decided to change directions. The New Jersey native enlisted in the U. S. Navy, and served six years in the Navy’s nuclear power program. After he started working at Commonwealth Edison, he went back to school, at the College of Lake County, and Carthage.
“It was a good experience for me,” Mr. Cramer says of attending Carthage in his early 30s. Due to his age, “I had a somewhat different perspective from other students. I learned from them, and they learned from me.”
Mr. Cramer remembers Thomas Van Dahm, an economics professor; and Allan Hauck, a religion professor, as two of his favorite instructors.
“Carthage is a great school, and I enjoyed it, especially the two required religion courses,” he says. “My education provided a base for anything that came my way.
In Mr. Hauck’s “Christian Beliefs” class, “he impressed me because his course was filled with content and I never saw him refer to notes. I can still hear his booming voice to this day.”
When Mr. Cramer made his first trip to Rubio, he brought his wife, Susan; and daughter, Amanda. Together the family checked out the possibility of a long-term commitment.
“My wife had never been out of the country, except for going to Canada, so it was a big move,” he says. Daughter Amanda “was apprehensive at first, but she wanted to stay after the trial run.”
After a stay in spring 2000, the Cramer family returned in June 2000 and stayed for more than a year. Mr. Cramer taught economics, personal finance and computer applications at Christiansen Academy, and handled payroll while his wife worked in the office and Amanda Cramer attended classes for her senior year of high school.
“She really liked the school and the country,” Mr. Cramer said of his daughter.
Christiansen Academy closed in 2001, but Mr. Cramer had come to love Rubio.
“We had two blessings, no car and no televisions,” he says. “We spent time in the community, made Venezuelan friends, and came to love the people and their culture.”
The plight of Colombian refugees made the strongest impression. In 2003, 12 persons in Rubio were killed by Colombian paramilitary forces.
“It’s just part of the craziness in Colombia,” Mr. Cramer says. “Some of the violence spreads over to the Venezuelan side. The paramilitary takes it on themselves to punish the two guerilla groups, and the people can’t trust anybody.”
Mr. Cramer has been active in a nondenominational church in Antioch, Ill. He says his decision to establish Andean Aid grew from his faith, and a desire to personally assist the needy people he came to know.
“I was always a little bothered by the philosophy of providing the Gospel to unknown faces in foreign places,” he says. “We meet urgent needs and develop a relationship with the people first. Our vision is to eradicate poverty in this area, one child, one family at a time.”
Andean Aid focuses on serving children, through the Help and Hope Center (El Centro de Ayuda y Esperanza), which assists 300 children.
“We try to get children into school, then help them through the center,” Mr. Cramer says. “We make learning a desirable experience for children.”
Help ranges from building homes for families, to providing uniforms and school supplies. Mr. Cramer paints a dire picture of some perils children face.
“Children as young as eight years old have been conscripted as armed combatants in Colombia,” Mr. Cramer says. “Others have been preyed upon for the sex tourism trade, or sold into slavery.”
Mr. Cramer hopes to build Andean Aid to where it serves 1,000 children.
“I don’t want to grow any bigger than that,” he adds. “We want to keep it manageable, maintain a relationship with children and their families.”
In recent years, Venezuela has seen its own political turmoil with the rise of controversial President Hugo Chavez.
“Every time I go, somebody claims I’m in the CIA,” jokes Mr. Cramer, who works part-time as a business consultant, but he tries to return to Rubio at least once each year. “I’m not tremendously worried.”
Speaking seriously, Mr. Cramer says that as a non-Venezuelan, “my job is to keep my mouth shut” about Venezuelan politics. “I have friends on both sides, ‘Chavistas’ and those who think he’s ruining the country.”
Looking back at the ways his life has changed, Mr. Cramer says that “we tell students today to be prepared to change careers two or more times in their lifetime. I feel like a trendsetter in this arena. I’m astonished at the way my life has turned out since making the decision to take early retirement. It’s been an adventure. I want to thank Carthage College for the fine liberal education that provided the foundation that made the big plan of starting an international non-profit organization seem possible.”