Experience of a lifetime

by Kevin Eppler guest writer

I awoke that Saturday morning, oddly enough, before my alann could beckon me from my bed. In fact, I was awake an hour earlier than I needed to be. I guess anticipation simply would not let me rest. The skies on this March morning were painted in a gray mist and I knew rain lurked close behind. Moments later, I embarked to West Virginia for what would become one of the best experiences of my life.

Nine hours and three stops later, we pulled into the gravel and stone driveway of a two-story white trimmed house hugged by a wrap-around porch. The sign in the front advertised St. Andrews Church, but to anyone not from the town of Union, W. Va. (and besides us, everyone was from the town) it was a pretty house nestled in the hills of a beautiful state. From the backyard, we gazed upon the jagged peeks of the Appalachia mountains. Our eyes rolled over the folds of the hills that lay at the mountains' feet. I was mesmerized. My friends were speechless. However, the landscape was not the only thing that would leave us speechless during that week.

We arrived at Union, W. Va. with the intent of helping the needy. I expected to see some sad situations. We expected to see some filthy homes. We expected to see some ragged houses. We did see all that I expected, but I also saw so much more. Every place we found ourselves held within it a tale and a person with a story of their own. Some of the people we visited were members of the St. Andrew's Catholic 1 fhurch. They generally desired some company and new faces. The Catholics, to my surprise, were generally the most financially stable of the town, but there • were only thirty-some parish- ioners. The rest of the community housed single parents, farmers, the jobless and the retired. Most were unemployed. Most were needy.

West Virginia exists as the poorest state in America. Surprising? ·It was to me. I always knew poverty to plague the inner cities where racism and unemployment tainted any hope of success. When I learned the state of true rolling hills and thunderous mountains possessed the worst poverty rate in all of America, I was stunned. I remembered thinking, "This land is too beautiful, the people were too welcoming and kind to be struck with poverty and homelessness." By the end of the week, I realized even these travesties and injustices could not suffocate the beauty of the people and the beauty of the land.

Perhaps the worst sight I worked on was during Tuesday, when I was assigned to a day care center for outside work. My partner for the job, Michelle Paquet, and I arrived early on what grew to be a 70 degree March day. The sky was clear and the sun gleamed through the windows other workers had cleaned the day before. We entered the day care to discover children playing with dirty, broken old toys. The walls were virtually bare with no alphabet , numbers or murals decorating the walls like daycare centers I have seen. Outside, a deflated basketball rested at the bottom of a broken basketball hoop, but a deflated ball could not stop the kids from playing or youthfully attempting to imitate Michael Jordan. Our job was to clean out a storage shed and attempt to reorganize. It sounded easy, until we opened the doors. Dirty plastic blue cots collapsed off their weak supports. Broken whiffle balls and rusty Tonka trucks limped out of the comers. The floor was caked in dirt and the walls were bathed in cobwebs.

When the manager said, "It needs to be cleaned," she meant it needed to be quarantined. A few hours passed. We filled trash cans with leaky soup cans and broken trucks, plastic planes and pencils. Inside the daycare was not much better. I guess the plastic cots were clean inside. The kids ranged from 5 to 9-years-old, but the education left them at 4. They had no crayons, no markers, no pens. No children's songs echoed in through the center, except when I played my guitar. The only consolation I had was that the kids had no idea what they were missing. I left that sight thankful for what I had and sorry for what they did not.

Many days passed like the one at the day care center. We painted a house desperately in need of a fresh coat. We cleaned the garage of one of the only remaining African-American women in the town. We even cleaned an old African-American cemetery dating back to the civil war.

Each job required more than we could provide. We needed a minimum of a week for each sight and we could only provide a few hours.

I left thinking I simply placed a band-aid on a chronic wound that would reopen in a matter of weeks, but as Mother Teresa said, "If I had not started by picking up one person in Calcutta, I would not have gone on to pick up the 46,000 that we did." We each have to start somewhere and Union, W. Va. was a great place for me to start.

by Arlene Smith campus minister

Union happening

A dance of hands

Outstretched in need

Outstretched to help Rhythms of work

Overlapping laughter contagious Embraces tearful

Peaces of understanding

Forgetting differences petty Building bridges

Sharing secrets

Touching heart to heart

Creating dignity

Idealism into reality

Acceptance

Beauty passion of unmissed nature

Wisdom carried home Union happened

Loquitur is established as a forum for student expression and as a voice in the uninhibited,robust, free and open discussion of i~.

Editor

Stacey Caiazzo

Assistant Photography Editor Diane Grimaldi

Photography and Graphic Design Adviser

Don Dempsey

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Photojournalists

Dennis Fohner

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Loquirur is a laboratory newspaper written, edited and produced by students of Cabrini College registered in COM 346, 350, 35 I. 352, 353 and 354. Members of the campus commuoity are invited :o work on or submit stories for publication. Only students regis• tered io the above classes, however, are eligible to receive academic credit. Subscription price is $25 per year and is included in the benefits secured by tuition and fees. Loquitur welcomes letters to the editor. Letters should be signed and the authorship known to the editors. However, if the writer wishes and the editor agrees, the writer's name mav be left off the publication and an inscription inserted. such as "name withheld at the reque~t of the writer:· Letters to the editor should be 'il'bmitted by noon on Mondays.