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By Gretchen Keiser
She is such a frank person that it is difficult to talk about
“Mary” by using a pseudonym.
Nineteen years old, with shoulder-length brown hair and direct
brown eyes, she holds her baby on her lap, a boy five months old. He is big,
healthy and eager to be cuddled. Juggling him, Mary says that if it were up to
her alone, she is “not ashamed” to have her real name used in telling
her story. She has had to take the world on alone before. But now Mary is under
the wing of people seeking to give her a measure of privacy and community.
For the last eight or nine months, she has been part of Our Lady
of Assumption parish in northeast Atlanta and under their special care. Part of
that time she was living with parishioners Charlie and Marci Hooper and their
two boys, becoming a member of their family while she waited for her baby to be
born. Now she is in her own apartment, still supported by the parish while she
takes part in a job training program and moves toward taking on the full
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