280 Living
280Living.com
December 2012December | Volume 6 2012 | Issue 4
neighborly news & entertainment
A table for all
280 Sound Off
Celebrating the season with those who have no one else
Before area residents attended a public hearing on Nov. 19 where the Alabama Department of Transportation revealed its $15 million plan to decrease travel time down U.S. Highway 280, several voiced opinions about proposed intersection changes. Find out what they said inside.
280 News page 8
Santa’s coming Marlene Lee, far right, welcomes guests like Lana Thompson and Linda West, above, to her table for Christmas dinner each year. Photos courtesy Marlene Lee.
‘Friends don’t happen by accident. They have to be earned.’ Pre-Sort Standard U.S. Postage PAID Birmingham, AL Permit #656
– Donna Francavilla, quoting Marlene Lee
By JEFF THOMPSON Every Christmas season, guests gather around Marlene Lee’s long dining room table for turkey and trimmings. The members of the group change each year – as do the date and desserts – but one constant always remains. Nothing is ever asked of them, except that they leave happy. Her only hope for the meal is that those who are alone at Christmas have somewhere – and someone – to be with. “Christmas is a time of the year when everybody is supposed to be happy, but many people are very unhappy,” Lee said, her European accent striking the consonants of each word. “It’s a time of depression; it’s the dark time of the year. People say, ‘Oh, I am so lonely.’ I say, ‘If you are lonely invite someone.’ It doesn’t take much.” So Lee opens her Meadow Brook home to 20 or more guests each year. She may not know them all, but she treats them like family. They talk until midnight sometimes, celebrating the birth of Christ with good wine and a traditional Christmas menu.
Lee has held this custom since she came to America 36 years ago. At 31, she had left her home nation of Austria and the sunlit mountains she adored for an American professor who “enticed” her away. Now 67, Lee lives in a large house she and her husband built together. Her basement acts as a warehouse for a mess of religious educational literature from their publishing company. She hasn’t sold the business, she said, because her husband asked her not to before he died in 2004. Like many of her guests, Lee is a widow, but the annual crowd of 20 also includes people with different stories of loneliness. She’s hosted a woman who lost her home in Hurricane Katrina, a NASA scientist with no other family in Birmingham and an exchange student from Germany, among many others. But Lee’s hospitality manifests in more than just this traditional, annual burst. Her door never closes, her smile always invites and she refuses to turn her back on those who ask.
See LEE | page 29
Mark your calendars for Saturday, Dec. 22 because St. Nick is coming to a street near you. Find the full schedule for his route with the Cahaba Valley Fire Department inside.
Community page 15
INSIDE Sponsors ..................... 4 280 News .................... 7 Food ............................ 10 Business .......................12 Community ................. 15
School House ........... 21 Sports ........................ 24 Opinion ...................... 27 Faith ........................... 28 Calendar .................... 31
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