Last year at about this time, Betti Knott was telling a friend that she wanted to change jobs.

Twenty-nine years old, she had worked for several state and city agencies in Georgia as a planner and consultant, coming up with the money and plans to establish halfway houses for former prisoners and make MARTA accessible to the handicapped. But she was restless.

“Somebody asked me what I wanted to do,” Mrs. Knott recalled. “I said, ‘I want to give food to the hungry, shelter the homeless, bury the dead.’”

Her job request was heard.

The St. Vincent de Paul Society was looking for someone to succeed Joe Flanagan as executive secretary. The same friend called, saying, “Well, this is your opportunity, kid.”

A realistic person, Mrs. Knott admits that her courage wavered at the threshold of an open door. She is among the youngest in the country and in the first generation of women to hold executive posts with the Society, which until the late 1960s restricted its membership to men.

“For me, it was sort of like stepping off a cliff,” she said, “I had a nice, cushy job, a nice office in Peachtree Center, a nine to five job. Everything had been very structured, nice and neat. I think I spent the first three months here in terror.”

If that is so, it’s because the Society is doing its job – trying to aid people with problems and doing it on a one-to-one basis without the ease of bureaucratic guidelines and a time clock. The Society, founded in 1833 in Parish, is dedicated to personal service to the poor, “any person to person assistance that promotes human dignity.”

The regional office which has been operating out of 304 Parkway Drive in the Bedford Pine section of Atlanta, has its doors open from nine to five, but the Society’s work there, and in the 25 parish groups, goes on a any hour.

Out of the regional office, the Society administers a day care center and a preschool program in the neighborhood, and three thrift stores in Atlanta neighborhoods. In addition, the Parkway Drive office serves as a food and clothing distribution place, a drop-in point for those in need of money, food, clothes, and other necessities that cannot be handed out.

One of the most basic services provided by the Society’s volunteers is talking and listening, Mrs. Knott said.

“The people who are involved, care, oftentimes at great sacrifice of themselves,” Mrs. Knott said. “These people have just given a tremendous amount, not only money, but giving of themselves. Going out there and spending that time with somebody, going out and visiting lonely people, talking with them, getting personally involved.”

“It’s not easy. It requires a special kind of person.”

Mrs. Knott, who has just completed her first nine months on the job, took over just before Thanksgiving, a season when the needs of the poor are most painfully poised against celebration. She quickly discovered how accurate her job description had been.

She has received phone calls telling her that the Society must come to Grady Hospital’s morgue and claim a body. Society members arrange and pay for funerals and attend the services.

At Christmastime, the food pantry was empty on the 23^rd of December. An emergency appeal was issued, and people responded. In the midst, the phone rang. A child with a cleft palate had been born at Grady Hospital. A special formula was needed to keep the baby alive and the family had no means to pay for it. While Mrs. Knott was on the phone, a woman walked in to donate food and asked what was wrong. “I just don’t know what to do,” Mrs. Knott said, after telling the story.

“The woman started crying, pulled out this wad of money and handed it to me,” Mrs. Knott said.

In addition to the main office, twenty-five parishes have Vincent de Paul groups, who work quietly with people in their neighborhoods, trying to ease financial problems and the pain caused by loneliness, alcoholism, family disputes, and old age.

There are over 200 St. Vincent de Paul volunteers throughout the archdiocese. By the very nature of its mission, the Society can always use more help, and is particularly interested in increasing the number of young volunteers joining its ranks. In some of the oldest conferences, at Sacred Heart Church, St. Anthony’s and the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, there are volunteers who have worked for the Society for decades.

Because it is more “flexible” than many social service agencies, the Society finds itself in the position of being the last resort for many people in need, Mrs. Knott said.

“Oftentimes because of eligibility criteria, other agencies can’t help,” she said. “We receive a tremendous number of referrals from various county agencies. We’ve even gotten referrals from utilities.”

“Our principal limitation is financial,” she said.

Last year, the budget of the Society, was approximately $250,000, and 90 percent of the money was spent on the program and its recipients. Only about 10 percent was spent on administrative costs.

The money comes from donations, including an annual parish collection, from individuals and foundations, and the Society also receives a federal grant to subsidize its day care center. The various parish groups also depend on collections to continue their work.

On a yearly basis, 10,000 to 12,000 people come through the office at 304 Parkway Drive. Mrs. Knott said that this demand is increasing at all parish conferences and at the main office in recent months, as unemployment and inflation affect more families.

“More and more people are having a very difficult time, people who heretofore have been able to make it,” she said. “We don’t have the kinds of poverty problems they have in South America. It’s not on a comparable basis. But we have very many poor people, and suffering people, people who go to bed hungry.”

The works there and at the parish conferences have a kind of gritty realism about their mission, forged of many days when the problems outrun resources, and the occasional people who are con artists.

“Sometimes we do get overwhelmed,” Mrs. Knott said. “We have to step back and say, “We can’t be all things to all people. We can’t meet every need and very often to have to say, ‘No, I’m sorry, I cannot help you.’”

“The people we do help, we want to help well.”