By Rita McInerney

“Anything positive or on success” is Lena Dorsey’s suggestion for improving the education of her “children” in Bean Creek.

This was her postscript to the list of required high school readings she gave Sally Chrow and Kathy Aparo recently. The women represent the Saint Vincent de Paul conference at St. Ann’s in Marietta which is responsible for setting up a small library in the Bean Creek Baptist Church.

The church is the center of life in Bean Creek, a small community of about 200 black people between Helen and Cleveland, just off route 255. Many families are third generation in the small community of homes along Bean Creek Road and the dirt lanes branching off from it. Lena’s own grandmother was a slave “sent from Mississippi to Tallulah Falls. I don’t know how she got here,” she says.

A small and weathered sign for Bean Creek Baptist Church is the only indication from Rt. 255 that you are almost there. A short distance back from the road Bean Creek proper begins. On a warm spring Saturday people are sitting outside, on porches, on steps, enjoying the sunshine. Children wave to the passing carload of people and old faces peer from the windows.

The small creek which gave the community its name is hidden from the road, winding along in back of the gardens. Local legend has it that a man driving a mule-drawn wagon filled with a load of beans overturned his wagon into the creek. After that beans were supposed to have sprouted along the banks of the creek.

Lena wants the best for people in Bean Creek and spends a lot of time helping them. She has two boys and two girls of her own, one son went to college on an athletic scholarship, and one daughter worked for a time before entering college. More than 60 trophies in the cheerful Dorsey living room have been collected by her son and the children of her sister, Rosie Lee, who shares the cottage.

The problem, Lena says, is that there is nothing for the young people to do in Bean Creek. “There’s no recreation, no swimming, no town for them to go to. It’s too far into Cornelia and there’s nothing for them to do in Cleveland. The sad part is that they grow up and leave, some even before they finish high school.”

Lena, Sally and Kathy have become allies in trying to prepare the young people of Bean Creek for success while introducing them to the pleasures found in books.

Their association goes back to 1984 when the SVDP conference first heard of Bean Creek from Jeannette Housen, who was then in charge of the nearby Covenant Center, a non-profit Christian community in Sautee. That Christmas many families at St. Ann’s “adopted” Bean Creek families. Lena came to the February 1985 meeting of the SVDP and told members about Bean Creek. Jim Needham suggested that the conference give a birthday party for the children. The first one, in April, was held at Lena’s house with SVDP supplying the hot dogs and hamburgers as well as gifts.

“Last July, Kathy and I drove up to visit the children in Bible school,” Sally said. “It occurred to me that it really would be good to start a library for these kids. There’s nothing else in this little community for them.”

Expert volunteer help came from Jeff Backus, an industrial arts teacher at Haynes Bridge Middle School in Alpharetta, a new member of SVDP. He installed the bookshelves, now filled with volumes, in the small 8 x 8 foot room off the church sanctuary. New sets of encyclopedias, dictionaries for elementary, high school and college students, a thesaurus dictionary, “Rocks and Minerals,” Winnie the Pooh,” “Child Care” and National Geographic copies indicate the variety of reading material. Several cartons of books were added Saturday, April 19, when Kathy, Jeff, Sally and her son Chris introduced the Georgia Bulletin to Bean Creek.

Now Sally and Kathy are asking for used encyclopedias, dictionaries and other reference material for the youngsters to use at home. The list that Lena gave them on April 19 included works by Ibsen, Salinger, Cather, Conrad, Austen, Hawthorne, Stowe and Tolstoy that the high school students are required to read.

Bean Creek and Lena Dorsey are synonymous. When you ask about Bean Creek the answer will be “You should talk to Lena Dorsey,” She, some say, “is mother to all these people.” When you ask Lena why she spends so much time helping her neighbors she says she “really started reaching out when I got my soul right, when I found the Lord. I wanted to share with everybody else.”

She says she always worried about people. When her sister Rosie comments that she “can’t say no to anyone,” Lena replies, “I know when you’re using me and when you need me. I just help anybody I can.”

The Dorseys’ next door neighbor, Mrs. Perci Jarrett, at 96 is the oldest resident of Bean Creek. She spends her winters in a nursing home in Gainesville, but comes back to her home when the weather turns warm. Lena and Rosie look after her, welcome her to their home for visits, cook for her and worry when she insists on cooking up a pot of beans for herself because of her failing eyesight. They even hooked up a water line from their well to her house.

Mrs. Jarrett knows what she wants. Last year she wrote on her Christmas list for St. Ann’s SVDP that she would like some “Sweet Dental Snuff.” This request stumped the women shopping for the Bean Creek families. They scoured on the telephone, “Did you get it?” Finally someone found a small tin in a Dunwoody shop. It was cause for elation. Mrs. Jarrett would have her snuff.

Sometime after Christmas, one of the woman from St. Ann’s happened into the country store in Sautee. There, displayed prominently above the counter, was a sign advertising “Sweet Dental Snuff” and a good supply of the product on the shelf.

Lena is realistic. Sally says that she knows some parents would sell their children’s Christmas presents to get money for their own pleasures. So, when the truckload of gifts from St. Ann’s parishioners arrives, Lena makes sure such children aren’t deprived of some Christmas joy. Putting their gifts aside, she invites them over for Christmas breakfast. Then they receive the pants, jeans, shirts, toys and games they requested.

When the women from St. Ann’s visit, Lena likes to walk them along Bean Creek road and the lanes to meet her neighbors and friends. Many live in houses that have been in their families for generations. Some are neat and well-cared for, outlined by trees, shrubs, flower and vegetable gardens. Others are forlorn, shabby and overrun with castoffs in the yard.

Fifteen houses in Bean Creek are scheduled for improvement under a grant to the town of Cleveland from the Georgia Department of Community Affairs. Chris Kenny, field manager for the project being supervised by the Georgia Mountain Area Planning and Development Commission, says the homes, three of which are being worked on now, will be rehabilitated through weatherization, heating and sanitary upgrading. It is not a cosmetic program, he adds.

The church is just before the curve of the road, not too far from where the paved road ends. Plain and white and built into the hillside where Bean Creek has buried its dead for generations, its interior delights first-time visitors. They see a well-cared for house of worship of solid oak pews, pulpit and altar table with “Do This In Remembrance Of Me” carved deep in its rich grain. A vintage Bible, its binding and pages fragile to the touch, is placed before the altar. This is the church where Lena was “saved,” her other home.

“There are just a few of us, but spiritually we are together. We have a good time on Sunday morning,” she tells a visitor.

Good times for the children are limited. Lena points out a clearing behind trees across the road. This was the playing field for baseball and other outdoor sports, taken by the power company for utility lines. The action was contested in court, and the ruling favored the community. But Lena says the power company is expected to appeal the decision.

She is looking ahead to summer Bible school and an outing at the end of the session for the children. She tells Kathy and Sally about her hopes to charter a bus and take the children someplace “different” where they can enjoy themselves for a day away from the monotony of life in Bean Creek. The women talk together among the old and new graves in the little hillside cemetery, stopping to pick up wild violets and trilliums growing among the headstones and rock markers. Sally and Kathy talk about possibilities for the fun day excursion on the drive back to Marietta.

Lena stays at the little church, putting the newly acquired books in place. She wants to be ready for Sunday and her Bible class of pre-school children. She will move some of the colorful books for younger children down from the new library and arrange them on a pamphlet rack downstairs in the room where the church suppers and her Bible class are held. Despite her “nervous stomach” that sister Rosie worries about, Lena will be alright. As she says, “It feels good to know you did what you could.”

(Persons having reference books or suitable books for children and teenagers to donate to the Bean Creek Library can call Mrs. Chrow at 977-1462 or Mrs. Aparo at 977-9064)