By Thea Jarvis

Set just back from the traffic that dances down Ponce de Leon Avenue on its way to Atlanta sits an old, once-stately, brick-columned residence.

It is just up from Barnett Street, and if you take the time to glance out your car window, or lean over in your MARTA seat on the way into the city, you might notice a few ladies – perhaps once-stately themselves walking the grounds.

This is the home of the Women’s Union Mission. It’s cornerstone is the simple belief that society’s “peripheral people” can be welcomed, secured, and in some measure, rehabilitated through consistent Christian caring.

The residence began in 1969 was an outgrowth of the Atlanta Union Mission. Since that time it has opened its arms to countless women society would rather forget about – alcoholics and drug dependents, battered wives, unwed mothers, and mental patients.

The concerns of the mission outreach were explored last week at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Tucker. Mission spokesperson Florence Heckworth spoke informally with St. Andrew’s service circle members, as well as representatives from Embry Hills Methodist Church and Holy Cross Catholic Church.

Mrs. Hackworth notes that some of the women leave after a time, more secure and better able to cope because people have loved them. Others choose to stay on, becoming contributing members of the mission family.

“Billy” chose to stay. She came to the Women’s Mission success in turning its residents into productive, caring people. She proudly delivers her own testimonial: “At last I am free – this mission gave me the love of God.” As director of the mission clothing room, Billy takes pride in making those who come to her in their need as welcome as she was made to feel.

The Christian hospitality that Billy practices in one of the reasons why the mission thrives. Another is the fact that the staff respects the residents and insists that the residents respect themselves.

“Regular meals, daily chores, health care, counseling, and abstinence from drugs and alcohol combine to provide an atmosphere that promotes a healing of the spirit as well as the body,” according to members of the mission’s staff.

The Women’s Union Mission is an inter-denominational effort. While it espouses Christian teaching – and actively involves its residents in Biblical study for therapeutic and spiritual purposes – it does so in a spirit of free-wheeling ecumenism. Church groups from all over Atlanta are active in ministering to these women, and the staff itself is a bold mixture of many different Christian affiliations.

Flo Hackworth is the mission’s secretary and activities director. It was her mother, Ruth Bryant, who, many years ago, first encouraged the women of the mission to draw and write about what they saw and felt. Mrs. Bryant’s personal philosophy that “art frees the spirit and heals the mind” is carried on in the art and poetry classes that continue at the mission.

Flo is herself a realist who exudes a joyful confidence in doing the Lord’s work. She admits that when she first came to the mission she found it depressing. But she soon learned that beyond this first impression lay opportunities for hope and healing.

“You feel overwhelmed sometimes, but you stay ‘prayed up’ she smiles, without a trace of the pessimism that she first experienced.

Praying, caring, trusting, the Women’s Union Mission continues to be a beacon to “the least, the last, and the lost” in Atlanta. It is, in one resident’s words, “a place of God’s grace.”