Noreen Keating

Age: 60 Residence: Bloomfield Township
Occupation: President/CEO of the Lighthouse of Oakland County
Why honored: For helping needy Oakland County residents secure
food, clothing and shelter

She helps show light at the end of the tunnel

“Even when you’re growing, you still need a mama to fall back on sometimes. And the Lighthouse gives you that.” -- Stacie Cotton, mother of three

poster facing her desk at the Lighthouse of Oakland County throws down a galling challenge: “Who are you to think you can change the world?” Well, she’s Noreen Keating, the Irish-American girl who grew up over her parents’ grocery store in Southfield and acquired a profound commitment to giving back to her community. Arriving at the Lighthouse as assistant director in 1982, she soon rose to CEO, in the process transforming the sort of help — whether food, clothing, or shelter from an abusive relationship — that desperate people can get in Oakland County.

    “There was so little in this community,” says Keating, the no-nonsense social worker who runs the nonprofit organization housed in the dumpy blue building. “You know,” she says, her voice dropping into a tony accent, “this is the wealthiest county in the state.”

    She shakes her head. “But even (Republican County Executive) Brooks Patterson will tell you there are 272,000 poor people here.”

    Facing eviction unless you come up with the rent money? You go to Keating, as did tens of thousands of laid-off auto workers in the mid-1980s. Need food? Last year, 18,000 families ate better thanks to the Lighthouse, while 1,000 were helped with housing and 900 got free medical treatment.

    And soon, once construction is finished on the Lighthouse’s new, 30,000-square-foot building, unemployed parents in the agency’s programs will be able to do their laundry and work on their computer skills at the planned “Bubbles and Bytes” center, while their kids get free tutoring down the hall at the “Kids’ Cafe.”

    These sorts of services, Keating notes, had been well-established for years in big cities where the need is most visible, but lagged in the wealthier suburbs. True to her upbringing, Keating takes little credit for the programs she’s put in place.

    “All it was,” she says, “was replicating somebody else’s good ideas.”

    Others tell a somewhat different story. Pontiac Mayor Walter Moore says Keating has been “a driving force in bringing both financial and human resources to our community.”

    Moore’s assistant, Charles M. Tucker Jr., has worked closely with Keating on a number of projects, including the new headquarters. He calls the bespectacled woman with the iron-colored hair “dynamic and empathetic, a person who knows what it takes to get things done.”

    “Well,” Keating says with a modest smile, “I do seem to have a knack for fund-raising.”

    Indeed, three years ago the Lighthouse won a $1-million donation, matched to the tune of $330,000 by the Kresge Foundation. The organization’s endowment now stands at a hefty $2 million.

    And where does all that money go? Well, a smidgen of it has gone to help lift Stacie Cotton, 31, a mother of three who was homeless just last January. She’s since enrolled in the Lighthouse’s life-skills class, SAFE, where topics range from personal finance to how to buy a house.

    The instruction, Cotton says, is top-notch, but she’s every bit as enthusiastic about the support she gets from the staff and about the chance to hash over personal obstacles with other people in much the same boat.

    “Even when you’re growing,” she says, “you still need a mama to fall back on sometimes. And the Lighthouse gives you that.”

— Michael H. Hodges