"Moving to downtown Decatur last year with a big German shepherd dog who needs regular walks means that I see homeless people three times a day. Soon after arriving, I got to know Miss Violet. I had gone with church groups to serve meals at homeless shelters over the years, but never knew a homeless person’s name before her. Now I have, as my sister likes to say, a whole set of “outdoor friends.”
A flyer on the bulletin board in the condo building where I live led me to the AHFEID website. I learned about the Snapfinger Road house for the rapid rehousing of homeless men. It seemed that AHFEID needed more houses, so I volunteered to join the board and help scale-up operations.
"I was a supporter of the Oakhurst Recovery Program which offered residential treatment and support for homeless men with alcohol or drug problems until it closed a few years ago. I was a supporter of Just Bakery which offered good-paying jobs and training to become certified food service workers to new immigrants until they shut down. I never joined the boards of ORP or Just Bakery. I figured it was time for me to overcome my aversion to meetings and see if I could help make sure AHFEID continues as long as the need exists."
Cindy Collins started me on the road to caring for homeless people. She volunteered at the Firehouse Shelter in downtown Birmingham, Alabama, and would often see people she knew from there when we drove through the city together. I never thought to ask Cindy why she worked with the homeless but I got an idea at her funeral when she died at age 35. After she was diagnosed with cancer, she went to her pastor and told him she needed to know how to live because she did not have time for trial and error like other people. He did not repeat what he said to her, but I learned that she began to serve as a monitor at the night shelter and enlisted many of the male executives she knew to spend the night with her at the shelter because she “needed” a man to watch out for her as a single woman during the overnight shift. I met a lot of the men she introduced to working with the homeless at her graveside as they came to pay their final respects. I was Cindy’s boyfriend in the last years of her life. She never asked me to join her in working with the homeless, but here I am 30 years later joining the board of AHFEID because helping the homeless seems like the right thing to do.
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