Women and Kids

Returning to Savannah from Louisville, Kentucky where I fell into this line of work, I was already aware that the city would soon be seeing waves of women and children on the streets after Grace House was built. I remember saying this in meetings with other providers of homeless services, the Army of Salvation and Inner City Night Shelter, only to have them respond that it would never happen.

When Grace House was built, there were two resident manager apartments in it for night time staff. I quickly converted these into use for families and they were immediately occupied. The first family was Hank, Heidi, and their two small children. In no time at all, it seemed women and children were everywhere demanding shelter.

So every evening the dining hall would be converted into a mass shelter. Mattress' would line the floor and they would sleep side by side. I remember Board member Cliff McCury coming by one evening and he witnessed a mother still wearing her McDonald's uniform tucking her two children under the covers of their mattress on the floor. He was shaken and learned that the stereotypes of homelessness do not apply.

Soon the Savannah Morning News and the television news stations began to cover the mass sleeping arrangement and the entire city began to learn that half the homeless population are women and children. It reached a zenith when the Sunday edition of the paper showed a large photograph of an eight year old child, blond hair still wet from a shower, sitting on her mattress looking up with eyes the size of moons.

The phone began ringing off the hook with people wanting to help. J. C. Lewis, Jr. who had mostly financed the building of Grace House said that he would again help. So one year after Grace House opened, construction began on the Magdalene Project, Savannah first shelter for women and children! It opened in 1990 to a packed house and the women and children left their floor mattresses for beds.

This Thanksgiving season I am reminded of how much people can be moved to care. And I am thankful to still be a part of something as special as Union Mission in Savannah, Georgia.