Turning 50 with Kindness

Ellen Elam's family and friends came out to help her achieve her goal of doing 50 acts of kindness on her 50th birthday. Front row, from left: Ana Benitez, Ellen Elam, I.V. Elam, Katy Hole. Second row, from left: Heidi Harrelson, Drew Elam, Joe Colangelo, Kristi Cooper, Jenny Mooney, Debbie Platt, Jesse Deanda, Abby Platt, Robine Hendricks.

Ellen Elam turned the tables on turning 50. Instead of greeting the half-century mark with dread, she chose to make the day meaningful – not only for herself and her family, but for many people she didn’t even know.

Ellen set out to turn April 28, 2014, into a day of “50 Intentional Acts of Kindness.” The idea was that she would spend the day celebrating by doing something nice for someone else, 50 times over.

“Last year, my father had passed away in October, and my sister in September,” Ellen says. “I was extremely close to both of them, and I didn’t feel like celebrating was what I needed to do for my birthday this year. So I tried to think of something I could do that wasn’t a party that would honor them.

“I thought of doing 50 things for other people because one of the things I always tell my son and the people I work with is, ‘If you need to make yourself feel better, do something for someone else.’ It made perfect sense for my birthday.”

That’s how Ellen, president of Office Effects Inc., an office supply and promotional items company, took on the task of finding 50 acts of kindness that needed doing. “I didn’t have 50 things for myself that I needed to do,” she says. So she crafted an e-mail asking family, friends, co-workers, clients and acquaintances to send in ideas to add to her list of acts of kindness to be completed on her birthday. In the note, she explained, “Sure I can drive around and pay it forward at Starbucks, pay the toll of the person behind me, donate something to an organization or even leave someone an extra especially large tip, but I want more. I want to help do something because: It is too hard for you to do, you don’t live here, you don’t have the means, you don’t have the words, you haven’t built up the confidence …or you just don’t have the time.”

Ellen wanted intentional acts – nothing random – so that she could truly affect people’s lives in a trackable way. What ensued was an onslaught of responses with ideas and offers to help. Ellen put together a spreadsheet detailing each act of kindness, who requested it, who it was for, and how it would be categorized (a letter, flowers, a visit).  “I could logistically look at the spreadsheet and figure out what I could do ahead,” Ellen says. “So I arranged for letters to arrive on my birthday, flowers to be sent on my birthday, and I could push ‘send’ on e-mails I had drafted – on my birthday.”

At 5:30 a.m. on the day, Ellen, her husband, their son and about 25 friends boarded a party bus and drove to act out their first deed, bringing doughnuts and kolaches to police officers in Spring Valley. From there, they brought flowers to a nanny – the family she had worked for six years wanted her to know they appreciated her, and they didn’t say it enough. They visited a cancer patient who had lost her job, and they stocked her refrigerator. They went to the Chinquapin Preparatory School, a non-profit, college-prep school for students with limited resources, and gave each graduating senior a gift of computer speakers. “Whatever someone suggested, that’s what we did,” Ellen says.

Throughout the day, friends boarded and got off the bus to fit their schedules. When the sun set, Ellen and her crew gathered at the Houston Community ToolBank, an organization that lends tools to non-profits. They painted tools and the walls of the ToolBank building. Kids who had been in school during the day and friends who were working could join this leg of the celebration. Ellen arranged for coolers of beer, and the act of kindness became a party.

“People wanted to know why I was doing this on my birthday,” Ellen says. “Well, why not? I had all my family with me, and now I’m hearing all these cool stories about how we affected people. Even people who couldn’t be here told me they went to dinner with their father who they don’t see often, someone committed to visiting a retirement community weekly, someone else is sending a cancer patient a card every week.”

Ellen initially said, “Although this will not be the big, crazy, dancing-on-the-tables ... celebration, it will be a day to remember!”

That it was – for Ellen and for exponential others she’s inspired to keep the kindness going.