Returning love for love by Robert Mitchell
hen the van pulls into the parking lot of the Bangor, Maine, Citadel Corps (church), the children jump out and run excitedly into the building and down the halls shouting “Mary! Mary!” They’re looking for Mary MacKay, the young people’s sergeant–major (YPSM). Fifty years ago, she came to the Bangor Corps as a scared victim of sexual abuse, seeking a place of refuge from a cruel world. Her family—already reeling from the sex abuse allegations—lived in an old farm house in Hudson, Maine when life took an unexpected turn. One night, when someone tried to break in, Mary’s mother, Damaris, quickly moved the family to an unfinished apartment over a barn in Kenduskeag, Maine. Sometime later, they moved to Bangor, where her mother was born and raised and she knew people from The Salvation Army. Her mother had once been involved in the Girl Guards youth program. “My mother was familiar with the Army programs and some of the people who were still involved,” Mary says. “At the time, she sent me, my sister, and four brothers to The Salvation Army. Out of the six of us who went, I’m the only one it stuck with. “For me, The Salvation Army became a haven of safety and release. People loved me, people cared about me, and that was something that I had never really had before.” Mary’s family was poor, and she was often teased, such as the day a group of girls threw sticky burdock plants at her as she walked from school to Girl Guards. “I had them in my hair,” Mary recalls. “I had them on
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MARCH / APRIL 2020
Photo by Ashley L Conti
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