DALE DONG
Joanne Hefernan, member of St. Paul Parish, Akron, serves dessert during a homestyle meal at the Peter Maurin Center.
Joanne Hefernan, member of St. Paul Parish, Akron, serves dessert during a homestyle meal at the Peter Maurin Center.
Catholic Worker connects people to each other
AKRON-It’s an evening out for dinner for the Gibson-Lang family. And they love it—especially Starann Gibson, 4, who, rubbing her eyes in an act of shyness while at the same time dawning a sweet smile and giving a precious little laugh, quietly whispered that she loves the macaroni-and-cheese dinner best of all.
Starann’s parents, Aricka Gibson, 28, and Shawn Lang, 31, both of Akron, had their “evening out for dinner” at the Catholic Workers’ Peter Maurin Center on Akron’s southside. They go as a family to one of the center’s homestyle-cooked meals at least once a week—if not more frequently.
Currently, the center provides free meals to anyone who walks into the center on Tuesday and Sunday afternoons, and on Thursday evenings. The Catholic Worker volunteers serve upwards of 40 “guests,” the term they use to refer to the people they serve, on Thursdays, about 60 on Tuesdays, and more than 100 people come to the Sunday dinner.
“We’re looking to add more times,” said David Conely, an Akron native who a few years ago suffered a period of homelessness and now volunteers as the manager of the restaurant-style Catholic Worker drop-in center.
The Maurin Center, named for French immigrant, Peter Maurin, who, with Dorothy Day, co-founded the Catholic Worker movement in New York City to feed and care for those in need during the Great Depression, is housed in a 1913 brick building that once served as a mortuary and later as a bar and grille. The Maurin Center still maintains the characteristics of an early-20th century pub--complete with a wooden bar, pressed-tin ceiling, and booths that line the left wall. Café-style tables and mismatched chairs cozy up to the large storefront window that overlooks Akron’s South Main Street.
In the Catholic-Worker-movement tradition, all food and supplies at the Maurin Center are donated. Catholic Workers, a completely volunteer movement, strictly trust that the Lord will supply whatever they need for—both for themselves, as well as for what they need to serve their “guests.”
“We never know what we’re going to get, but the Lord always supplies,” said Conely. “One day I realized that I forgot to get onions (for a specific recipe). About an hour later I turned around and found that someone donated onions. When we need it, miracles happen,” he said with a laugh—and to prove his point.
The Center serves Summit County’s homeless population, which reached an estimated 6,600 in 2006—but also serves many low-income and working-poor people. “We see more people at the end of the month,” Conely said, explaining that as public assistance funds run low at the end of the month, more people—especially families—come into the center.
Lang, who is currently living on unemployment after losing his retail job about three months ago, and his family, are an example of this phenomenon. But even when he was working, Lang came to the Center to help stretch his relatively near-minimum-wage paycheck. Lang and his family have been coming since shortly after the center opened its doors in November 2006.
It’s a place “filled with exceptional food and peaceful people,” said Lang.
More than just the delicious food served at the center, even more than his daughter’s favorite macaroni-and-cheese dinner, Lang and his family enjoy socializing with “the loving, caring (volunteers) at the center,” he said, stressing that “You can feel the Lord’s spirit working when you walk through the door.”
Gibson and Lang always talked so positively about their experiences at the Maurin Center that Lang’s father, Eddie, 61, decided to start joining them for the food and socializing. When Eddie Lang joins them, Gibson, Lang, and little Starann don’t have to take the bus to the center; instead, Eddie drives them.
The senior Lang explained that he lives on a fixed-retirement income and the free meals are much appreciated. He, too, just like his son, loves the people who serve the meals. “They are some of the friendliest people,” he said.
Joanne Hefernan is one of the ‘friendly’ people Eddie Lang described. And she’s the one who led the pre-meal prayer on the Thursday evening that she prepared the schnitzel dinner with noodles and gravy. Center meals, which are served restaurant-style, with volunteers acting as waiters and waitresses taking food and drinks to the booths and tables, always begin with the volunteers and ‘guests’ gathering in a circle, joining hands, and saying a prayer of thanksgiving.
Hefernan, a parishioner at St. Paul Parish in Akron’s Firestone Park neighborhood, is one of a dozen or so from the church that volunteers at the Center every Thursday evening.
Hefernan started preparing meals and coordinating volunteers shortly after the center opened. “I’ve found that people are very willing to help us out,” she said. “But we always need more volunteers.”
Beyond recruiting parishioners to help out, Hefernan has also found success in getting Akron-area restaurants to donate food.
“I always ask and I’ve only been refused once,” she said.
Hefernan, with tears coming to her eyes as she talked about the people who need the center’s meals, said that she sees children, such as Starann Gibson, their parents, homeless men and women, even people in their 80’s coming into the center. “We serve people of all ages… I get very emotional talking about this,” she said, wiping the tears. “There are a lot of needy people and it’s such a blessing to serve them.”
Hefernan also added, “not everyone can do this,” as she described the heartbreaking struggle she feels seeing firsthand the faces of those living in poverty. But for those who can’t come to the center to serve, “We always need things like food, kitchen supplies, dishes, silverware, and cups.”
Beyond the meals and socializing provided at the center, Akron’s Catholic Worker movement also operates three houses to help homeless men and women reestablish their lives. Additionally, the Catholic Worker volunteers also work with local social service and government agencies to link their guests with needed, available assistance.
Conely, who lives in the small apartment above the center, said, “People know they can come here 24 hours a day and get what they need.”
For more information about the Maurin Center, of the Catholic Worker movement, Akron’s Catholic Workers created a Web site at www.catholicworkerakron.org.
Brown is a freelance writer.
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