National Park Service employee a veteran bell ringer

Nov. 22--TRAVERSE CITY -- Tom Mountz spent a lifetime learning what generosity looks like firsthand.

The National Park Service maintenance supervisor commits three-hours each week throughout the holiday season to ringing a bell for the Salvation Army in Traverse City. It is a holiday tradition Mountz began 21 years ago, but his studies began long before he moved to the Grand Traverse region in 1975.

"I had my introduction when I was 5 years old with my grandfather in Lansing," Mountz said. "It just lets you know people really are generous. I don't know, I just like doing it."

Mountz, on handful of occasions, stood alongside his grandfather in downtown Lansing during the holiday season ringing a Salvation Army bell and collecting donations in the organization's iconic red buckets. His grandfather, the owner of six drugstores, lifted himself out of an upbringing in subsistence farming to become a successful businessman.

"He never forgot his hardscrabble youth," Mountz said. "It just stuck with me as something pretty simple to do. It was fun."

The pair wrapped their feet in corrugated cardboard and shivered together. Many of the people who passed knew Mountz's grandfather, but all of them received a warm greeting.

"What he did as a citizen really stuck with me," Mountz said. "I keep that in mind. I think it's in your DNA."

Today Mountz greets passersby with a wide smile and friendly conversation. During the past two decades those conversations turned strangers into friends. He returned to the annual activity as an adult in an effort to help his two children experience the same philanthropy he performed alongside his grandfather so many years before.

He isn't alone standing outside through the holiday season to raise money for the local branch of the national organization. There are about 120 two-hour bell-ringing slots each day from the start of the red kettle season on Nov.14 until the campaign ends on Christmas Eve. Some of the slots are filled with paid workers -- mostly current or former clients of the Salvation Army -- while others are volunteers.

"Each day we have approximately 120 shifts," said Salvation Army Capt. Daren Spencer. "You multiply that throughout the whole season and that's quite a bit."

The money collected, $177,000 last year, is distributed mostly to community programs in the Grand Traverse region. About 10 percent of the money the nonprofit organization collects goes to administrative costs, said Ruth Blick, director of community resource development for the Salvation Army in Traverse City.

"This is our biggest fundraiser of the year," Blick said, adding that the group set a fundraising goal of $188,000 this year.

Mountz will pick up the bell for the first time this year Tuesday during a shift outside Horizon Books downtown Traverse City. It's a location he likes because of the people he sees. He's clanged the bell in both warm and cold weather and in good times and bad. People both young and old donate to the red buckets, but Mountz notices different habits for each generation.

"The young people today are generous, even though many times it's just a few coins," he said. "There's a high percentage of young people participating. Many of the older people ... many of those people quietly told me when they were young they needed help. Those folks really seem generous."

Either way, Mountz has collected more than $6,000 in his short bell-ringing shifts during the past 21 years.

Most donations stuffed into the kettles are in the form of paper money, usually relatively small amounts, but Spencer has seen some pretty dramatic donations.

One generous donor stuffed a $10,000 check into a kettle on the last day of the fundraiser in Traverse City last year.

"Those things are really neat, but it's the everyday things that make up most of the collections," Spencer said.

The motivation for bell ringers like Mountz isn't how much money they collect, it's more about the people.

"If I walked in their shoes how would I be doing?" Mountz said.

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