By Thea Jarvis

In October of 1980, a woman who had been living on the streets of Atlanta for about 15 years was raped on West Peachtree Street. She was upwards of 60 years old.

Rev. Bob Bevis, in charge of community ministry at the First Presbyterian Church downtown, received a call from the woman at four o’clock on the morning of her attack. It did not take him long to realize there was nowhere in the city he could bring her for shelter. Grady Hospital offered the only option.

That incident convinced Bob Bevis of the need for a hospitality house for street people in crisis. Joined by Bill Bolling of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church and Rev. Ed Loring of Clifton Presbyterian, Bevis held weekly meetings and formulated plans.

As the winter of 1980 drew on, the crisis intensified. People were dying in Atlanta’s streets from exposure to the severe cold.

On January 12 of 1981, Central Presbyterian Church across from the state capitol building offered the use of its gymnasium for a night shelter. Within 36 hours, Bob Bevis, Bill Bolling and Ed Loring finalized the program and the downtown drop-in shelter welcomed 30 homeless, cold, and worn out people on its first night of operation.

The number grew to 45 and then jumped to over 100. In its three months of operation last year, the shelter received up to 200 men, women and children per night.

“My favorite bag lady in all Atlanta was there every night. She had her own corner,” recalled Betti Knott, executive secretary of the St. Vincent de Paul Society in charge of rounding up volunteers for this year’s effort.

“She’s in her 60s, a little worn down. She spends her days in the library and eats at St. Luke’s (soup kitchen) every day--a very nice lady.”

Many of the women who come to the shelter are forced to play the same survival game as Mrs. Knott’s friend. They are mostly older women who live on the streets. In the winter, when stores close, buses stop running, and churches lock up, they have no place to go.

The shelter also provides refuge for families in need.

“Some have just come into town and are sleeping in their cars,” said Mrs. Knott. “The children are little and scared.”

Men who come to the shelter include new arrivals in the city and those who have walked the streets for many years. Betti Knott observed that “a lot are sick and hurt, mentally beaten down.

“One man had open sores on his feet and wrapped his feet in newspapers. Every night he’d be really careful about cleaning them.”

A place to wash, to rest, to talk to someone, to have a bite to eat is Central Presbyterian’s simple offering. No blankets are cots are available, just a hard gymnasium floor.

“It is totally bare bones--just a warm place to spend the night on a floor that’s safe,” said Mrs. Knott.

This year 400 sandwiches will be served at the shelter each night, along with hot tea. Those who make the sandwiches and brew the tea and staff the shelter through the early morning hours are all volunteers--members of youth groups, church organizations, metro parishes and schools.

They are garnered from around the city by the interdenominational coalition that is responsible for the shelter--the Open Door ministry, the Christian Council, the St. Vincent de Paul Society, the Sandy Springs Interfaith Council, Evangelicals for Social Action and churches throughout the Atlanta area.

This year, Marist School has been one of the first on the list to volunteer in the sandwich-making category. And Father Jim Micelli, who last year spent several nights at the shelter, plans to return this year.

“The shelter introduced me to people who live on the edge--some by choice, most because they are trapped there,” he said of his experience. “Alcohol takes its toll, but many come because they have run out of options and opportunities. You can’t get a job if you don’t have a skill and you can’t get a place to live without a job.”

Those interested in volunteering time at the shelter should know that it involves not the luxury of dispensing charity from a distance, but a real-life, nitty-gritty confrontation with human suffering and desolation.

“This is not a pleasant experience,” Betti Knott emphasized. “These people are often dirty and angry and hungry. We’re not talking about nice middle class people but 175 or more miserable people. There is a real sense of helplessness.”

Rev. Ed Loring, who recently left his Clifton Presbyterian pastorate for the Open Door community that is modeled on the Catholic Worker houses of Dorothy Day, noted that last year’s effort “showed how desperately shelter is needed in the community. There was wall to wall flesh. It was not so much a question of offering hospitality but really an issue of how to shelter as many as possible.”

The urgency of the need, in addition, gave rise to a broad ecumenical outreach that had its own personal rewards for those who participated.

“People from different parts of the metro area were able to take their concerns for hunger, shelter and clothing and make them personal,” Ed Loring explained. “They were able to meet Jesus Christ in a new way--in the body of the poor. There among the volunteers. One of the reasons we can open this year is because the transformations have been extensive.”

Ready to be transformed? Spend a night at Central Presbyterian.