Global Lens Reflections on life, the universe, and everything
In Midwest city, everyone has worth
InterServ offers hope to those with disabilities while providing opportunities for the disabled to serve others
By Paul Jeffrey
Published in Response magazine May 2014
Ever since getting hit by a car, David Rockett doesn’t leave home much. The accident left his legs mangled, and although he can move around with a cane, he doesn’t move very fast. At 64 and also wrestling with a blood disorder, he’s on constant medication for pain. Yet he’s not complaining, in part because home care givers from InterServ Community Services, a St. Joseph, Missouri, organization supported by United Methodist Women, visit him twice a week to clean house, shop for groceries, cook food, and, most importantly for Mr. Rockett, listen to him with compassion.
“Before InterServ started working with me, I was a forgotten guy,” he said. “If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be able to get anywhere or keep my house in order. The older you get, the more people forget about you. It’s not that you’ve outlived your usefulness, it’s just nature’s way of letting you go. But these people aren’t ready to let go of me yet.”
Susan Spencer is one of two care givers from InterServ who visit Mr. Rockett every week.
“Our presence in people’s lives often allows them to stay in their own homes much longer, rather than going to a nursing home or care facility,” Ms. Spencer said. “We do a lot for them, but a majority are lonely, and just need someone to talk to, someone to encourage them. As a society we’re way too busy and don’t take the time to talk with people the way we should.”
Ms. Spencer has been working as a home care giver for InterServ for 20 years. The profession is one of the most underpaid jobs around, and she says she’s often thought of going back to school to study nursing or some other career that would allow her to continue to work with people in their home, yet earn more money at the same time. “But I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to spend the quality time with them that I currently do,” she said.
Disabilities don’t stop them
Ms. Spencer’s work is but one example of a wide variety of services provided by InterServ, whose roots in St. Joseph go back more than 100 years (see sidebar).
Many of the programs respond to the needs of people who, like Mr. Rockett, are living with disabilities. Yet InterServ’s ministries also provide opportunities for those living with disabilities to engage the community around them, people like Janice Dilley. The 70-year old woman, who suffered severe back trauma when she fell 16 years ago, now gets around in a wheelchair. Yet every weekday morning she and her husband Harold, who drives their specially-equipped van, can be found packing Meals on Wheels lunches at an InterServ kitchen.
“We’re old, and we live in a senior apartment complex where there’s not much to do. I’m not going to just sit at home. We like coming here and being helpful,” said Ms. Dilley. “Being in the chair all the time might bother some people, but when I think about it, I just think about a lot of people who are worse off than I am.”
When the Dilleys are done packaging the meals, they’re distributed to homes by a network of volunteers, which also includes people with disabilities. Jeffery Yokley is one of them. The 19-year old has cerebral palsy, but that doesn’t stop him
“I like to help people with disabilities, people who are having a hard time. I like helping hungry people to have food. I like to talk to people, and they like talking with me,” he said.
Anna Hurt, a 21-year old woman with cerebral palsy, also delivers Meals on Wheels, and her motivation is both simple and a telling remark about how people with disabilities are often treated.
“I like doing this because people are nice to us,” she said.
At times the lines blur between InterServ’s “clients” and “volunteers.”
James Heater lives at Juda House, a permanent residence for chronically homeless men with disabilities that is sponsored by Community Missions, an offshoot of InterServ. After years of living on the streets and along the banks of the Missouri River, Mr. Heater moved into Juda House three years ago. His disabilities may leave him unemployable, but they don’t stop him from volunteering at InterServ’s Food pantry, which provides boxes of healthy food for the city’s poor.
“During most of the time I was homeless, my life focused just on me, on how I was going to survive. But having a permanent and safe place to live has helped me focus outside myself, and the Food Pantry gives me an opportunity to help others. At the end of the day I can say I’ve done something good. That’s a gift to me from InterServ,” he said.
“I hope that someone would care about me”
Among those who have made possible the permanent housing where Mr. Heater lives is Thelma Wyrick, a retired mental health nurse and president of United Methodist Women at Wesley United Methodist Church in St. Joseph.
Ms. Wyrick sits on the board of InterServ and is president of the board of Community Missions. And she volunteers many of her afternoons at Juda House and St. Joseph’s Haven, another Community Missions permanent housing facility for chronically homeless men with disabilities. She helps them manage their medications but also just spends time listening as the men talk.
United Methodist Women in the area support InterServ’s ministries in a variety of ways, including donating food, helping with mailings, and providing special programs at Christmas. Yet Ms. Wyrick says some of her friends don’t understand her commitment and are afraid to get involved. They might be willing to cook food to bring to the residence, but many don’t want to stay to talk to the men.
“Some people at church say ‘They’re just a bunch of drunks down there.’ I respond that while I don’t drink, I never know when I might end up homeless. And I hope that someone would care about me in that situation. I don’t make judgments. I’m just here to help,” she said.
Ms. Wyrick says it’s important to understand that addiction is a disability. “It effects their ability to earn an income and to have a family that remains together. Many become addicted to alcohol because of post-traumatic stress disorder, whether from their experience in the military or living on the streets. They can’t function the same as before. And I can’t stop them from drinking. But at least when they’re here in the winter I know they’re not going to freeze to death outside,” she said.
Ms. Wyrick’s work with the poor has also taken her to the state legislature to advocate on behalf of the vulnerable. During the last session, for example, she pushed to stop a move to require drug testing for food stamp recipients.
“I’m worried about the effect that could have on children. Kids can’t work to buy food, and they’re not responsible for someone else’s addictions. They often depend just on their mother, but why should they suffer if she makes bad choices?”, Ms. Wyrick said. “I get on my bandwagon about such things. Some of my United Methodist Women friends from the church don’t support everything I say, but they are tolerant of me.”
According to David Howery, the executive director of InterServ and a veteran of such legislative advocacy work, it has become fashionable in the United States to paint the poor as unworthy.
“Yet the social teachings of the church tell us over and over that everyone has worth. That includes people addicted to alcohol or drugs and people with mental illness. The Gospel calls on us to craft a compassionate response to all of them,” he said.
Mr. Howery said one strength of InterServ is that it works with so many sectors of the population.
“We work with everyone from infants to the elderly, with immigrants and youth and families, with people who are vulnerable or poor. You can’t be a servant to them for long before you realize there are inequities and injustice that need to be addressed,” he said.
Mr. Howery says understanding how people can suffer post-traumatic stress disorder without being a soldier is key to understanding poverty today.
“We’ve developed a general acceptance in our society that veterans who’ve suffered PTSD need special help with retraining, with health care and education. They are generally seen as worthy. But what about people who’ve been traumatized by economic hard times, such as workers who’ve been displaced by factory closings? They are of no less worth, and their wellbeing is no less important to the community,” Mr. Howery said. “We value our community not by its stock market value, but by how well people are doing, especially the most vulnerable among us.”
Sidebar: A long legacy of ministry with the poor
At the beginning of the 20th Century, the south side of St. Joseph, Missouri, was booming, becoming the fourth largest meatpacking district in the country. As new industrial slaughterhouses opened up, thousands of poor immigrants flocked to the city in search of work. Women in local Methodist congregations were concerned about how children and families fared in the burgeoning slums, and they pushed their churches to get involved.
Mabel Howell, a professor of sociology at Scarritt Bible and Training School, which was then located in nearby Kansas City, was brought to St. Joseph as a consultant. Her study of local conditions convinced church leaders to open a settlement house, part of a movement in the United States and England in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to bring the church into poor urban areas, allowing middle class volunteers to share knowledge and culture with the poor, thus, so its proponents argued, using daycare, education and health care to alleviate the worst symptoms of poverty.
In late 1909, local Methodists dedicated Wesley House, a rented ten-room house on the grubby south side. Frances Scott, a deaconess, was assigned as its director by the Nashville-based Women’s Home Mission Board, a predecessor to today’s United Methodist Women. She promptly launched a day care program and kindergarten, the first time for both in the city. For a nickel a day, mothers could bring their children early and leave them all day, during which time they were bathed, received a medical examination, and provided with clean clothes to wear during their stay.
Ms. Scott’s ministry wasn’t limited to the building, and she and other trained home visitors–recognized by a distinctive bonnet–moved throughout the slums ministering to the needs of families. Soon the program moved into a larger facility, and volunteers taught popular classes in sewing, cooking and housekeeping to immigrant and poor women and girls. Classes in basketry and whittling were organized for boys. In the evening, youth came to Wesley House to play games. Bible classes took place on Saturday morning and a six-week Vacation Bible School was organized every summer.
A “relief store” was opened, stocked with clothing and other household items provided by Methodist congregations in the area, and in 1921 Wesley House opened a “Milk Station” that provided milk to children of poor families. The ministry also started cooperating with a variety of social outreach programs sponsored by local government agencies and charitable groups ranging from the Salvation Army to the YWCA. The first Girl Scouts group in St. Joseph had its beginnings in Wesley House. By the 1930s, Wesley House was working with immigrants from 19 countries, including Germany, Mexico, France, Armenia, Holland, Turkey, Serbia, Italia, Ukraine, Romania and Ireland.
As the organization grew over the years, its name changed to reflect its broad community base. Wesley House became Wesley Community House, which later became Wesley Community Center. Other denominations got involved, but their participation wasn’t always painless. One conservative Protestant congregation complained that the center’s youth program–housed in a gymnasium and lounge that were added in 1957, and whose activities including dancing–had become a “den of inequity.” A Catholic priest asked his families to boycott the center because it was too Protestant.
All these tensions were overcome, and the program expanded rapidly in the 1960s as the federal government’s War on Poverty made new funds available. In 1971, the agency’s broad base led to its renaming as Wesley/Catholic Services, and it began launching new senior programs and residential housing developments for the elderly and people living with disabilities. In 1974, the agency was renamed Wesley/Catholic/Presbyterian Services. The United Church of Christ was also an official sponsor, but adding them to the name would have made it even more unwieldy. Finally, in 1975 the agency took on a more manageable name: InterServ.
As it has under all its names, today InterServ continues doing what those Methodist women started more than a century ago. It provides daycare to poor working families, food to the hungry, care for the elderly and special programs for youth, including in recent years an internationally famous weightlifting program. Its immigration office helps guide workers from other lands along the path to U.S. citizenship. Throughout all its programs, InterServ seeks to help those left most vulnerable by today’s economy to feel their sacred worth.
And just as Methodist women from across the denomination supported those early efforts, United Methodist Women today remains supportive, providing funding for particular projects and leadership training for the agency’s directors and executive staff.
The Rev. Paul Jeffrey is a United Methodist missionary and senior correspondent for response magazine.