9-Year-Old's Book Drive Takes Page from 'The Blind Side'

Rusty Oddo collected more than 600 books from his classmates when his unselfish heart turned to kids living in poverty. (Photo submitted)

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Life’s pretty good in toney Bloomfield Township, where some of the wealthiest people in America live.

Not everyone has what Russell and Julie Oddo and their family have. It’s a fact, not a boast, and the Oddos go out of their way to remind their sons – Rusty, 9, and Charlie, who’ll be 17 in a couple of weeks – that they don’t have to go far to find people who struggle for basic necessities.

There are dozens of examples, one of most striking half an hour away from the safety and exclusivity of Oakland County’s northern suburbs. A tent city is cropping up near downtown Detroit, a stirring reminder that though the Motor City may be emerging from bankruptcy, not everyone is sharing in the renaissance.

Russell and Julie want to make sure their kids understand the problem beyond startling statistics – about 16,200 of Detroit 680,000 residents, or 2.4. percent of city’s population, are homeless. The Oddos brush up against some of the city’s poorest when they go to a Tigers or Red Wings game or some other entertainment venue downtown, and they don’t want their boys looking through them.

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“They know what’s going on in the city,” Julie said of her sons’ awareness that social, economic and cultural inequality combine to marginalize some groups of society. “As a family, we talk about those things.

“Kids can learn stuff really quickly, and we always try to make sure they understand not everyone is where we are in life. It’s just very important to my husband (Russell) and me that our kids understand that there are families who aren’t as fortunate as we are.”

“The Blind Side” Could Have Been Set in the Bloomfields and Detroit

That sacrifices are a small price for their privilege is a lesson Julie reinforces each time as she asks the boys to pack up jeans they think are old, but still look brand new, or gather other barely used cast offs for charity.

That they’re listening and paying attention – not just obediently obliging their parents, but developing their own charitable hearts – became apparent one day this fall after the boys watched a video of the 2009 blockbuster “The Blind Side.”

The movie, and the real-life story that prompted it, could have been scripted in their back yard.

Pro football player Michael “Big Mike” Oher could just as easily have grown up in Detroit’s impoverished inner city as in the Memphis projects. And instead of at Briarcrest Christian School – the exclusive private prep school that offered the over-sized, under-educated and super-talented Oher a path out of abject poverty and hopelessness – the door might have been opened by one the area’s upscale private schools, like Cranbrook.

Rusty couldn’t get past a pivotal scene: the one where Oher reveals his bed is a couch, when he wasn’t running away from a foster home, that is; and – more disturbing to the voracious young reader – that he didn’t have a favorite book because his crack-addled mother never read to him.

“Are there really kids that don’t have beds and books?” Rusty asked his mom

Yes, Julie answered her son. There are kids without beds or homes, kids with no moms to read to them at night, kids without many of the things that fill Rusty’s room.

A few days later, the movie scene continued to perturb Rusty. Bloomfield Hills Schools’ Conant Elementary School, where he’s a fourth grader, was having a book fair. He realized how many books he had, and thought of the kids like Michael Oher once was, who didn’t have any books, nor shelves to put them on.

He decided to organize a holiday book drive to collect books for less fortunate kids.

“I really like to read, and I noticed that I had a lot books,” Rusty said. “I talked to my friends, and we all thought it would be a good idea to give some of our books to kids who don’t have a lot of books.”

Book Donations “Started Flying In”

He set a goal of collecting about 400 books, one from each student at his elementary school.

He had no sooner presented the idea to school officials before he found himself standing at the front of a couple dozen classrooms selling the idea to his peers. School officials liked the idea so much they approved it as a project for what’s called Conant Cubs in Action, a community service component of the school’s curriculum.

Public speaking was “a bit out of his comfort zone,” Julie said, but students gain leadership skills and develop self confidence by persuading their students of the worthiness of their causes and projects. Rusty was no exception, she said.

The result of his pitch was dizzying.

“The books literally started flying in,” Julie said. “Kids were bringing in bags of books, and in nine days, they collected over 600 books.”

The original plan was to donate the books to Orchards Children’s Services, a Southfield-based nonprofit that works to reunite families in Oakland and Wayne counties with children in foster care. But the volume of books collected was more than the charity could reasonably store and distribute.

So Rusty turned to Detroit Public Schools with an offer to donate 400 of the books, most of them purchased through scholastic book fairs, to help stock shelves in some of the district’s poorest neighborhood elementary schools.

Julie said it was fun to watch her son plot progress on a colored bar graph during those nine days. “His face would light up every day,” she said.

The infectious spread to his classmates and their parents, Julie said.

“When a kid takes on an initiative like this, our little community is incredibly supportive,” she said. “We all know we’re fortunate in how we live. This is a great way during the holidays to let our kids know the importance of donating and giving.”

Rusty says he’s proud of what he and his classmates accomplished. He’s already wondering how he can top the book drive with a charitable effort this spring.

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