By Leonard Teel

The women of Sacred Heart Catholic Church have just finished a year-long work of charity for a group of children who may never attend Mass or a novena.

The children - 93 of them - go to the day nursery at Tabernacle Baptist Church on Boulevard in Atlanta.

“They’re not far away from our church and yet we’ve never identified with them,” explains the Reverend John Mulroy, pastor of Sacred Heart at 335 Ivy St., N.E.

So early this year he prompted the Altar and Rosary Society to get involved. The result: six women, each with some spare time one Monday a month, sewed dresses and pants for the children who attended the day care center.

Last week, Mrs. Eleanor Warren and Mrs. Eva Schnore loaded up the plastic bundles with colored clothes showing through and took them into the nursery while the children, most of them about 3 years old, gathered around the small school tables.

“We got a few extras in,” Mrs. Warren explained as the colored stripes and patterns were unpacked. There were 103 outfits. In addition to the sewn clothes, the women added boys pants from the department store.

Most of the children appeared to be unaware of what was happening. Some girls and boys held up red dresses and blue shirts.

Rudine Hurt, 3 1/2, was puzzled. Monee Lawyer, 3, stood quietly holding the outfit.

Mrs. Warren, who thanked the St. Vincent de Paul Society and others who donated material, said the women were glad to help, and added, “I think the way the world is, it just makes you itch to do something to make a closer feeling.”

Said Father Mulroy: “We’re supposed to be servants and among the things that servants do is make clothes and things like that. We’re making clothes.”

The women who do their sewing on machines in the church’s basement Education Center, are not finished. Their next project? Layettes for the newborn at Grady Hospital.