No time for suffering

Michele Boston's nails clacked on the restaurant table as she leafed through the notebook of 8-by-10 photos from Haiti. "That's the well-baby area," she said, pointing to a filthy space. "This is the sink, except there's no running water. ... This is the staff toilet; the patients have an outhouse. ... These pictures are not doctored, by the way. ... I remember every one of these babies. Would you believe this baby is over a year old?"

And finally: "This baby, I know, died."

Boston's spiel might sound like a Sally Struthers commercial, except that rather than weepy torpor, Boston is stern and resolute. And instead of merely soliciting donations, Boston and her husband, Jeff, have shelled out hundreds of thousands of dollars to help Haitians. They're on the verge of building a medical clinic for children of Port Salut, on the west coast of an impoverished Caribbean nation.

It's the continuation of an improbable saga that has taken Boston from poverty in the Bronx to St. Paul's tony Crocus Hill area, with supporting roles for cheesecakes, divorce trials and wholesale jewelry shopping.

While medical professionals often work for free in Third World nations via organizations such as Doctors Without Borders, the Bostons are devoting not only a lot of time but a substantial portion of their earnings from several enterprises, most notably St. Paul-based Boston Healthcare Systems, which provides services for the developmentally disabled.

"If you have more than you need, what are you supposed to do with it?" she said, pushing aside the photo album for a Cobb salad. "You're supposed to give it back. I mean, how many cars can you have?"

And she found just the place to give back: a Caribbean nation where the average annual income is $270 and hurricanes regularly ravage any attempts at agriculture.

Just desserts, for starters

Michele Boston knows poverty, having spent her first 15 1/2 years in a three-room Bronx apartment with two disabled parents who slept in the living room. Her father, David, couldn't use his right arm, and her mother, Lillian, was completely deaf in one ear and had partial deafness in the other.

When Michele was in her mid-teens, her father concocted a method for freezing and shipping cheesecakes that eventually earned him a small fortune. She then earned a bachelor's degree from State University of New York, a master's from the University of Illinois and a law degree (cum laude) from William Mitchell. Along the way Boston, 57, consistently worked for charitable causes, mostly tending to children with mental illness or emotional problems.

"I got that from my father, who did many things to help people," she said. "Just offering kindness, warmth, connecting with people. Both my father and mother had a sense of service."

Sara Madsen saw that side of Boston when they met as first-year law students.

Boston specialized in divorce cases ("part of a terrible legal grind") and mental-health laws, which is how she met Jeff, a psychologist, in 1984. He was testifying for the state. They married two years later, and she subsequently left behind her law practice to work for Boston Healthcare, which Jeff had founded in 1982. The company now runs 43 homes in the Twin Cities, provides in-home service for others with developmental disabilities or mental illness and employs more than 350 people.

A 'let's do it' attitude

But it was a side business, their St. Paul accessories store Eccentricities, that brought the Bostons to Haiti.

"We were short on jewelry, and my partner and I went to a show and found this line where 10 percent went to an organization in Haiti," said Michele Boston. "I learned more about the problems there, and went down there in 2005. It was devastating.

"So I called Jeff when I got back to Port-au-Prince [the capital] and said, 'I can't leave here and leave this country behind without knowing we're doing something to help.' And he said, 'What do you want to do?' and I said, 'Build a medical clinic,' and he said, 'Let's do it.'"

Because of an ineffectual central government, Boston said, communities such as Port Salut are run by local chieftains.

"You don't get anything done until you get connected," said Jeff Boston. "You have to win over the local government and the citizens. They've got to know that you're good people."

So the Bostons have sent Haitians to medical, masonry, nursing and engineering schools. They have replaced roofs after hurricanes and distributed food to entire communities. They have established a visitors' center and hope to have the 8,500-square-foot clinic finished by next year.

So far, the Bostons have spent about $400,000 of their own money, with at least that much more to come. They also raised $73,000 at last year's No Time for Poverty silent auction. All it takes to give them inspiration -- and perspective -- is one of their every-other-month trips to Port Salut.

"It makes your problems seem pretty small," said Jeff Boston. "It's been the best possible therapy."