From the Fidelity Bank Foundation studio, PBS Kansas Presents One on One with Victor Hogstrom.

This is where the stars of Kansas come to shine and talk about their lives, careers and lessons learned along the way.

This week, my guest is a Wichita native who devotes her time to looking for solutions and helping the disadvantaged.

Mary L.G.

Theroux is her name.

When she grew up in Wichita, people knew her as Mary Garvey, the youngest child of Willard, and Jane Garvey.

The Garveys were one of the city's most prestigious and philanthropic families of the 20th century.

Theroux now lives in San Francisco, where she serves as chairman and CEO of the Independent Institute.

And that's a nonpartisan think tank focused on social and government policy issues.

Theroux is a contributor and host of a new documentary about homelessness titled Beyond Homeless Finding Hope.

It is a 38 minute film that examines the root causes and potential solutions to this nation wide epidemic.

We'll discuss the film and will talk about what fuels her passion for social change.

Will delve into her family's legacy of philanthropy and discuss what it was like growing up in what some have called Wichita's first family.

Mary L.G.

Theroux is my guest for the next half hour.

One on one.

Hello, and thank you for joining us.

I'm Victor Hogstrom and I am delighted to welcome Wichita native Mary L.G.

Theroux to the program.

Mary, it's a pleasure to have you.

Thank you so much for inviting me.

But when people say the name Theroux I don't think people of Wichita know who that is, for sure.

But Garvey is right.

Yes.

So I picked up Theroux in California.

But as long as I was here, I was Mary Garvey.

Indeed.

Yes.

And we will talk about the film that I introduced in my opening.

Uh huh.

In a moment.

So but first, I'd like to talk more about your life here in Wichita.

So let's start at the beginning.

Okay.

So I was born the youngest of Willard and Jean Garvey, six children, and grew up in a very lively household with very dynamic parents.

So we're very fortunate in that we were given a lot of freedom.

We could be outside quite a bit on our own.

But then my parents were very strong role models for us in directing us into positive contributors in the community and in our lives and Dad also raised this very much in the business.

So we were always kept informed of the businesses, attended meetings, even as a very small children, and I was mystified by financial statements and so on.

But it was it was great.

We were exposed to a wide variety of things and pretty much given a lot of freedom to explore what we wanted to do and where we would find our passion with an understanding that we would be positive contributors to whatever community we were involved in.

Is there any one thing that stands out in your mind from the growing up days?

Probably the most stark memory was the year my dad, because we were in the grain business and the US government was selling grain to developing countries who needed the food.

But the stipulation was that the proceeds from those sales were to be used in those countries.

So Dad conceived of something called World Homes, where you use the money with a partner in different countries, including throughout Latin America, India.

I mean, at that time, very, very low developing countries to build homes and homes that people could buy on a very low cost sort of American mortgage system, but would open up homeownership to the poor in this countries under the theory that if people owned property, they'd have an interest in making sure that their government was one that respected property rights and human rights.

And that was going to be one of his ways of helping make the world a better place.

So in the summer of 1965, he took our entire family.

So my mom, my dad, the six children, and then my mother's mother to help out.

And we toured 21 countries and 78 days, including, you know, Pakistan, Kashmir, India, all of the very at that time extremely poor and very definitely different countries from Kansas.

And it was a very eye opening experience for us.

I think we learned a lot just by seeing how people around the world live, which my parents reinforced with with lessons throughout as well.

Well, now, you said that your father was trying to help make the world a better place.

Yes.

What did that mean to you and how did that carry over into your life today?

Well, he did it a lot.

I mean, he did here in Wichita, too.

He would organize homeowners in meetings about how to address issues in their own neighborhoods.

He'd have Saturday morning coffee shop meetings and so on, and was very involved here in Wichita, as well as around the world.

And my mother was, too.

And I think just the example.

Yes, they were he especially would give us kind of lectures, but it was more watching them in action and seeing that, well, that's how you're supposed to live your life.

And I, I think most of us have carried on that tradition quite well in our different spheres.

They established several wonderful opportunities for people of Wichita, the School, a Public Television station.

Yes, this station.

So where were you in the mix?

We know that your sister, Anne Garvey, was very much involved of helping to raise money.

Where were you in the mix of all the the the the establishment of PBS Kansas, as it's known today?

I was pretty young at the time.

I was a teenager.

So I did go around with and to visit the studio to visit an early fund raiser that was going on and so on.

But I actually left Wichita when I was 17, so I was not deeply involved in anything.

Before I left, I was in school and and just doing things, you know, on a on a more casual basis.

So I really didn't get involved in the wider world until after I left Wichita.

So, Mary, what fuels your passion today?

I think very much that motivation to see where I can make a contribution and making the world a better place, make my community a better place.

And community can be defined as a lot of things, including where I am physically in California, but I am now also back here in Wichita trying to help efforts here now.

So let's let's talk about California and San Francisco, where you live today.

Are there some characteristics of Wichita that you would like to see in San Francisco and some of San Francisco's characteristics that you'd like to see in Wichita?

Well, I think the Midwest tradition of very strong civic leaders and particularly private sector leaders who, like my dad, were very involved in the city and and did a lot to provide leadership to improve conditions that he saw.

And my mother was very involved in the local area, especially the local education scene.

She co-founded Wichita Collegiate, that of five of us, attended from the beginning.

And then, of course, she founded Independent School at the age of 60 when she thought another generation would need a more affordable school of educational excellence than college that had become.

And then they were all my grandmother, of course, was very involved in Friends University, which my parents also continued.

So just that strong tradition of civic involvement and civic leadership that I have come to see is much more prevalent probably in places like Kansas and Texas and so on than you see in California.

And that may be because California does have a lot of transplants or it may be the water, I don't know.

But we just don't see that as much.

And that's one of the things we're trying to help identify and cultivate and help people understand that they can be part of the solution.

There is much more of a culture there that the government has to provide that kind of leadership.

And unfortunately, as we've seen in issues like homelessness, the government really isn't prepared to solve that.

It's not what they do best.

So we really have to cultivate more of that tradition there.

What would I transplant here?

Well, the weather is quite good and the scenery is excellent.

Though I do love the wide, I still love the wide open prairie skies and so on.

So.

So you left here at 17?

Yes.

What were your aspirations as a young person as you left Wichita to live in other places?

I'm not sure that I felt an aspiration to live other places.

I was just very impatient to see what was out there and what I could do.

So I went to college for a year, realized that I was probably wasting my time and dropped out.

And then again, my sister and who's been a big influence on my life, was living in California at the time and said, Well, come to California, we'll find something to do.

And so I did moved out there as a college dropout.

I remember pulling out of the driveway here in Wichita and my mother saying, I think truthfully, kind of cheerfully write when you find work.

And I went out to the Bay Area and Anne and I spent a year fixing up a house and selling it before she then moved to England.

And I end up staying there and going to Stanford.

But just I kept getting involved in I won't call college chasing bright, shiny pennies, but I'd see, oh, here's something interesting.

Let me go explore that.

And I drop out of school and go explore that.

And then I come back to school and then I drop out and go explore something else.

It was just, I think, a curiosity to see where I was going to best fit.

Did you have any pressure from your family to come back to Wichita?

No, no.

Our parents were always extremely supportive and and didn't express an opinion on what we were doing, which I think is very rare and didn't give advice, which I think is rare unless sought.

Once I was in business, I would call my father and ask him for advice and he'd give it gently, usually in the obliquely, in the form of a story or a joke or something.

But they were available when asked.

And you are currently head of the Independent Institute?

Yes.

In San Francisco.

Tell us about that institute.

And what do you do as an organization?

Independent Institute was founded in 1986 by my late husband.

At the time I was in business in San Francisco, I had an all delivery grocery business called Grocery Express, but I had always been very interested in these ideas, the ideas of economics and history, and how applying good policies provides opportunities for people and getting rid of bad policies gets barriers out of people's ways.

So when I met my later husband, when he was creating Independent, I had no idea that such an organization existed.

I'd never heard of a public policy research organization, but what I learned about it, I was very excited because again, I was I loved the ideas and I loved the application to which he was putting them to very specific studying what was causing.

Why were we having problems in educating children?

Why were we having problems in health care policy, housing policy and so on?

And they were providing actual answers and more importantly, solutions to each of those.

So I became a supporter.

I became a founding board member when David started with Independent Institute, and then later when I was no longer in business, I started working with him full time and pretty soon I found myself there all day, every day, getting involved deeper and more and more deeply.

We worked alongside one another for 36 years until his sudden passing last year when the the board appointed me as chairman and CEO, which I'm I'm very grateful to be able to carry on his legacy.

And one of the reasons, you know, I'm back in Wichita today is because you produced, helped produce the film?

And the title of that film is called Beyond Homeless Finding Hope.

Yes.

And you brought it to be shown in Wichita.

Right.

Why this film?

Tell us about it.

Well, I got interested in homelessness because I also serve on the board of the San Francisco Salvation Army, another legacy of my mother.

She was very involved with the Salvation Army here.

And I spoke very highly of it, and that's been my experience.

But a few years ago, our board decided to form a task force and create a plan for how the Salvation Army could have a really positive impact on the really horrific homelessness crisis in San Francisco.

And as a policy researcher, I was assigned the task of giving a briefing to the task force of what's driving homelessness.

And importantly, are there solutions that we could apply here and make a real difference?

So I started getting into into it and I just was more and more intrigued and independent, then got involved to produce a study into it, a peer reviewed policy report on the root causes of homelessness.

And again, importantly, the solutions were quickly realized.

Policy reports are great.

I love white papers.

Lots of people like white papers, but a lot of people don't.

And we really wanted to get this information out in front of the general public and and importantly, try to shift the narrative surrounding homelessness in San Francisco.

And this is what you try to get out of this.

What drives homelessness?

Yes.

And what would solve it?

And we'll solve this in in a nutshell, what drives it and what solve it.

There's not much of a nutshell for what drives their policies that that exacerbated, however, and the kinds of policies that San Francisco and most cities, frankly, are pursuing exacerbate homelessness.

And it comes out of it.

The misnomer of homelessness, that people are homeless because they don't have a home.

And so you solve it by giving them a home and then you solve the problem.

Well, people are not experiencing homelessness because they don't have a home.

They're experiencing homelessness because childhood trauma, substance abuse problems, mental illness problems, a whole myriad of things.

And putting them inside does not solve it.

It simply moves their problems inside and they will end up either dying, they die at higher rates house than they do left on the street, or because their problems have been addressed, they fall out of the housing.

So it's a formula you could spend infinite amounts of money on building housing for people and you would never solve the problem.

And that's what we have to help people understand because vast, vast resources are being misdirected to housing and not resources directed to helping people address and overcome the root causes their trauma, their substance abuse issues, their mental illness, and all the individualized things driving homelessness.

So that's why we decided to produce this short documentary that shows that.

So we use San Francisco as the bad example of how to deal with homelessness.

And then we found this wonderful example of San Antonio, Texas, which is providing a model of how to solve it.

And the idea of creating the documentary is to cast a vision for people and communities of it doesn't have to be the way it is.

It can be like this.

Take these ideas, develop them in your community among yourself, get involved in your community, and help be part of the solution there.

So, Mary, we are going to show a clip of this documentary.

Uh-Huh.

Would you set it up and tell us about this portion we're going to see.

This is the part of the documentary that's filmed in San Francisco.

And unfortunately, most of the part in San Francisco is negative because it is still very much the problem.

So we had been filming in the Tenderloin all day walking around and it is a scene that's as bad as everybody says.

It's just it's tragic.

It's it's misery writ large of people in various states of consciousness and and despair.

So I'm reflecting on what we've seen that day.

Okay.

So let's take a look.

It's really hard.

We were walking around today.

In an alley, there's a young man.

Maybe he's dead.

Maybe he's just passed out.

This is the richest city in the country.

Probably.

We're 30 miles from Silicon Valley, where innovation is happening, where new solutions to the 21st century problems are are being created.

You know, we're working on going to Mars.

Behind those tarps are tents that the city calls a safe sleeping site that the city is maintaining.

So it's tents with bathroom facilities with a gigantic sharps container.

And so on.

And it's $61,000 for every tent in there.

Okay.

So you spent $61,000 to maintain somebody in a tent with their problems.

Really, we can't come up with anything better than that?

Wow.

Interesting clip.

That brings to mind, though, what is the yardstick you have for measuring the success that this film will bring to your organization and to the issue of homelessness?

Well, ideally, it's going to help people understand better what why people are experiencing homelessness and importantly, why and how they can help them get out of it.

So, again, we're doing screenings around our community here in Wichita and in other communities, hoping to inspire local individuals and community leaders to talk about, is this a model that we could apply here?

Is this is something we should come together?

The most important message of the documentary is that the difference between cities that fail with homelessness, like San Francisco and cities that are succeeding with homelessness like San Antonio, is that in the ones that succeed, all of the sectors have come out of their silos and have come together to work together in community, to strategically design and implement the systems and programs that the individuals experiencing homelessness in their community need and it has resulted in San Antonio and other places, virtuous communities that really enable and perpetuate the human worth of dignity of everyone in their communities.

We are such a polarized society today.

So how do you get people from diverse backgrounds and beliefs to work together to actually solve this problem?

How are you doing that?

Well, I'll tell you the reason I'm so optimistic about it is in San Francisco, which is even more polarized than most places.

We've had tremendous success having screenings with this.

And at it bridges any divide because everybody wants to see something done about this.

Nobody likes to see human beings suffering in the streets, whether they're caring about that individual or whether they care about the fact this has destroyed my neighborhood and my city.

And frankly, most people with whom I talk have tremendous compassion for the people suffering in the street, and they're mad at the politicians who have been telling them for years, pay your taxes and we'll take care of it.

They're ready to become part of the solution.

And so they can bridge that because everybody wants to do something to solve it.

And we can overlook our differences in some other issue and come together in our agreement that if we work together, we can solve it.

So, Mary, with your work taken into consideration today, what is the best word now that best describes you?

With everything you've done and are doing tenacious, you have to.

Be.

Yes.

With this.

This is a huge issue.

Homelessness.

Yes.

So what does Mary L.G.

Theroux live for today?

Well, my family, I'm very blessed to have two wonderful sons and their wives and four grandchildren, as well as my Wichita family.

But very importantly, I do I carry on that deep desire to be part of the solution to the problems that I see around me.

And what can we expect from you in the future?

Five, ten years somehow.

We're going to work with communities across the country, solve homelessness, and then we'll tackle.

We're also we also have initiatives and lots of other things, education and health care and so on.

So we'll keep working on those and hopefully we can have some real impact on them as.

Well as the top issue of homelessness.

Well, for me personally, for Independent Institute, we're really we have initiatives going on across many, many issues.

Mary L.G.

Theroux, formerly Mary Garvey, thank you so much for joining One on One.

Thank you.

Very grateful, I appreciate it.

Thank you so.

Much.

Take care.

And I'd like to thank you for watching this edition of One on One.

oneonone@kpts.org is our e-mail address.

If you have any questions or comment.

I'm Victor Hogstrom.

Be safe and I'll see you again soon.