HARLINGEN — Every day Pastor Bill Reagan drove past Loaves & Fishes here on his daily commute, he felt a tug.
It started in 2009 when Reagan would drop his wife off at work, drive past the shelter, and head over to his office at St. Paul Lutheran Church in Harlingen, where he pastored for eight years before giving in to this still, small voice.
“I would say it, my feeling is that God was putting in my heart to do that,” Reagan said.
It was a recognizable calling. The Cleveland-born father of three was drawn to Harlingen eight years before. In 2009, he was 54 years old, and had by then served nearly 30 years in ministry as a Lutheran pastor.
“I knew I had about 10 years left in active ministry,” Reagan said Friday. “I thought that that’s the way I wanted to spend the rest of my career.”
He gave in to the familiar tugging, the same that led him to Miami, San Antonio, and eventually Harlingen.
Reagan walked into Loaves & Fishes, located at 514 S. E St. in Harlingen, for the first time as its executive director on Monday, Jan. 4, 2010, at 7 a.m. where he felt immediate validation of his mission.
Three young girls were at the shelter that morning near their mother, Margarita, who was holding a newborn baby, Ximena. Reagan spoke to the mom and heard her story.
“Margarita’s husband was arrested in North Carolina on an immigration charge and brought down here. So, she followed him,” Reagan recalled. The pregnant mother packed her belongings and children into their minivan and drove down to be near the father.
“While she was here, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to a daughter on Christmas Eve,” Reagan paused as he worked to stifle tears. “Homeless, just like Jesus.”
“I don’t know what happened in those three days between the baby being born and them going to the homeless shelter,” Reagan added, “but while I was celebrating my birthday, this poor woman was dragging these three little girls and a baby into a homeless shelter.”
Reagan stopped to regain his composure, noting the story’s parallels with faith and “why we’re here.”
On the eve of his retirement, Reagan said that experience was a nod that he was on the right path.
The family faced more troubles — the minivan was repossessed after the money sent to make the payment was stolen — but they were eventually reunited with the father and moved back to North Carolina.
Hundreds like Margarita walked through the doors of Loaves & Fishes under Reagan’s watch the following 11-and-a-half years.
Their needs varied greatly.
“People become homeless for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it’s bad luck. Sometimes it’s an illness in the family; a job loss. Those are fairly easy to fix,” Reagan said.
In the 19 years the shelter existed before Reagan, clients received a bed, hot meals and employment assistance which helped many get back on their feet. Still others would get caught in a pernicious cycle.
“We have people who maybe would’ve been in a revolving door kind of thing. They come to the shelter; they do their time; their time is up; they go back in the street — usually six months, they’re back in.” Reagan said.
It took a few years, but he worked to create a system that offered help beyond the tangible needs.
“I think what we needed to do is we needed to have more of a wraparound kind of service where anybody who may be experiencing poverty or homelessness, if they come to Loaves & Fishes, whatever it is that they may need, there’s something there to help them,” he said.
A five-year federal grant from 2018, donations and partnerships helped the shelter construct a mental health component to serve those who had problems other than financial difficulties.
“A pretty fair number of homeless people are homeless because they suffer schizophrenia, or depression, or bipolar disorder, or they’ve been self-medicating with tobacco, and drugs, and alcohol. They have pretty complex problems,” Reagan said.
He’s most proud of that work, though the shelter grew in other ways under his direction. They expanded the number of meals available and went from serving food five days to every day of the week. An additional location was also opened in Raymondville to feed those in need further up north.
Rent and utility assistance was also expanded under Reagan’s administration, but the program grew exponentially during the pandemic.
“I’ve probably written three-quarters of a million dollars worth of checks to help people — that’s just since last September or August. We never did that much before,” Reagan said.
He estimates the total will be close to $800,000 this year in rent and utility assistance, noting: “Before that it was never more than $150,000 in a year, and rarely that much.”
Even donations outpaced expectations for a year when so many struggled finding and keeping a job.
“People have just been sending checks in,” Reagan shared. “We’ve brought in more money than we had budgeted for the year, so far.”
Not everything went perfectly.
As Reagan prepares to leave, he’s looking back. “I’ve been thinking about various people and how wrong you can be sometimes,” he said.
One 33-year-old man comes to mind.
“All he wanted was bus fare to go back to Wisconsin. I could’ve given it to him, but the policy is unless there’s really some kind of overwhelming consideration — I didn’t think I should do it,” he said.
The man left and boarded a public bus. He had a heart attack there and died.
“He died of a broken heart, I’m sure of it,” Reagan said, breaking down and adding later, “You don’t always know what to do.”
Over the years, he’s had to call the police when things didn’t go well at the shelter. Some arrests were made. Some lessons learned.
Reagan strives to apply the same patience and compassion he extends to others to himself. He’s motivated by the scriptures in Matthew 25 where Jesus talked about tending to “the least of these” — referring to the vulnerable.
“I tell the staff this and I tell myself this — it’s not always easy to do — but when somebody comes into our shelter or somebody comes in to get a plate of food, as far as I’m concerned, that person is Jesus,” Reagan explained.
On Thursday, Reagan will be turning over his keys to his successor, Victor Rivera.
After serving nearly 40 years in ministry, he believes this last decade had the most reach, even though he wasn’t a pastor.
“The community is my church. It has allowed me, not because I’m so good at it,” Reagan said, “but it has allowed me because I can talk about these things and nobody is thinking, ‘Oh, he’s just trying to recruit members for his church.’ Or, ‘he’s trying to convince me not to be a Catholic and become a Lutheran,’ or something like that.”
When Rivera walks into the office next week, Reagan is confident he’ll find a staff ready to continue serving, a picture of baby Ximena he left on his desk, and Jesus at the door.
