By Rita McInerney

(This is the third in a four-part series.)

Sister Carolyn Oberkirch, R.S.M., has many friends among the tenants of Johnson Ferry East and Lenox Summit, two low-income apartments for senior citizens in the neighborhood of Our Lady of the Assumption parish. She also has a much-traveled van, dependable volunteers, anonymous donors, a lot of energy and a determination to make life easier for these aging friends.

Essential to her ministry to the elderly trying to manage on meager incomes are about 70 OLA volunteers of all ages, from youth group members to senior citizens from the Sociables Club. They drive people without transportation to the doctors, to clinics, the bank, food shopping, on outings to the malls, and over to OLA for Mass and parish socials. All of the services are free, a way of helping make life a little smoother or brighter for people who are failing, who are “just getting older.”

“They’re really leery at first about getting something for nothing,” Sister Carolyn says. “Some of them still try to pay me for taking them on shopping trips.” One Baptist couple tithes with her. “We’re the church that helps them,” they tell sister.

Transportation is the elderly’s biggest need. But there are other needs and sister and the volunteers do their best to fill them. Several senior citizens from OLA are Meals on Wheels drivers, and there are about 15 or 20 tenants too old, blind or feeble to do for themselves. In public housing, an apartment that is too dirty could bring eviction, although Sister Carolyn says this doesn’t happen unless the filth is coupled with another serious problem, like drinking to excess.

“When a situation like this arises, the social worker will call us. About four or five of us go in for several house and give the place a good cleaning.”

Some particularly feeble senior citizens have no business living alone, Sister Carolyn says. There are too many hazards including stoves and slippery showers. But many have to live alone. Seventy-five percent of those at Johnson Ferry East, she estimates, are women alone. There are very few couples and very few men. There is great loneliness. “A lot of them have family who do nothing for them.”

She doesn’t want them to sit at home alone. “We really try to work at getting them out of their apartments.” If they’re lonely, she adds, it’s by choice since there are numerous activities offered at the North DeKalb Senior Center located at Johnson Ferry East.

Both Lenox-Summit, two five-story buildings, and Johnson Ferry East, the remodeled Oglethorpe Apartments, are operated by the DeKalb Housing Authority. Over 200 senior citizens live in the garden-type units at Johnson Ferry East. There is a section of the complex for the mentally or physically ill and a smaller area for low-income families.

Inside, apartments vary with the tenants. Jim and Hazel Loyd are surrounded by furniture of an earlier period of their married life. Family pictures are on the walls and a dressing table fills one corner. It had to be moved out of the bedroom, Hazel explains, to make room for her husband’s hospital bed. Jim, a gaunt man in light blue robe, sits in his wheelchair, enjoying the last spoonful of his ice cream from the midday meal.

Ricky, a beautiful baby boy about nine months old, is visiting them. This child of their son, the sweet-faced grandmother says, “has made all the difference in our lives.”

Grace Herner, a widow, 72, and almost blind, lives upstairs in a cheerful apartment furnished in colonial maple. Most of her children live in the north and she says she will “have to decide soon what I am going to do.” She doesn’t think she can live alone much longer, especially after her recent experience. A would-be thief gained access to her apartment while she was downstairs saying goodbye to Father Thomas O’Donnell. He brings her communion each week from OLA. Her screams scared off the intruder but not before he tried to choke her. Her daughter came from New Jersey and stayed with her for a week after this harrowing episode.

Nearby, Clara Harris, a blind woman, 76, enjoys the roominess of the unit she moved into a few weeks ago. It is sparsely furnished but bright, the white walls freshly painted and the floors scrubbed and smelling of the disinfectant she uses. Her furniture consists of a secondhand sofa given her by Sister Carolyn, a worn chair, table and radio in the living room and a bed in the bedroom. These are her worldly possessions. She is happy and thankful that “the Lord wanted me here.”

The tenants enjoy Sister Carolyn’s visits. She listens to their news and what the social worker from the center had to say on her latest visit. This has been Sister Carolyn’s mission for the past six years. “It started out with just me.” Now she is assisted by another Mercy sister, Sister Elise Schwalm, a vocational rehabilitation counselor.

She began visiting the elderly while teaching first grade at OLA. Then she started working closely with the parish St. Vincent de Paul conference. The two activities meshed. Six years later her ministry directly helps almost 125 people, of all denominations, in the two projects. She keeps no count on the number helped indirectly.

Sister Carolyn feels strongly about the ecumenical aspect of the ministry. “I think the reality is that there are so many elderly within our boundaries that need help and are not Catholic. It’s not something we can ignore on the basis of religion. Jesus didn’t ask what religion. In terms of respect it does a tremendous amount for ecumenism and evangelization just to be able to help them. Helping people in need says all you need to say.”

She has a degree in behavioral disorders and emotional disturbances from Loyola, and a background in theological education from Mount St. Agnes in Baltimore. She expects to receive a master’s degree in ethics from Columbia Seminary in Decatur. She has been studying there, “while I work,” for the past five years.

“It’s probably the most appreciative group I’ve every worked with,” she says of the seniors she helps at the two complexes. “They know they can depend on me.”

They show their affection with Easter cards and notes. When a family in the parish treated her to the trip to Italy last summer with the parish group, they collected $125 and gave it to her for her trip. Their card said the gift was “not to be used for your ministry.”

She believes the effort she and her parish volunteers make gives the elderly a sense of dignity, brings warmth into their lives. There is sadness, of course, and “sometimes this gets to me,” but the sadness doesn’t affect her as much as dealing with someone who is selfish or lies. That is rare; in fact, she had only two women among all the people she helps that she had to terminate because of their behavior.

“If I lose my volunteers, I don’t have my ministry." Her people are “fabulous,” calling with offers of help all the time but she needs to have a long list. There will be times when “you can go through 15 people for one person to take someone to the doctors.”

Sister Carolyn and her volunteers work in close cooperation with the DeKalb Community Council on the Aging, a non-profit organization which operates seven centers in DeKalb County with funds supplied by federal and state governments, the Atlanta Regional Commission and private donations.

The council’s Marge Stephens can’t say enough in praise of the OLA volunteers and sister. “She’s on call anytime. They’re our most important and best fans in the neighborhood. They do things all the time for us.” This is more important than ever with the way the funds are being cut, she mentions.

OLA volunteer “Hoppy” Smith does Meals on Wheels once a month and logged 750 miles on his car last year taking people to Grady and Georgia Baptist Hospitals and to the kidney dialysis center. A retiree, he is active with the parish SVDP and figures he spends about three days a month volunteering.

Another OLA volunteer, Marci Hooper, has been driving people to the doctors and on shopping trips for about three years. Sometimes, she says, her passenger might have to sit for several hours at a hospital and she stays with them. “Most are so grateful to have someone to take them. It’s a good experience on both sides.”

Sue Schulte learned about the ministry when Sister Carolyn spoke on service to her RCIA class several years ago. Sister mentioned her need for people to clean for the elderly tenants. Sue saw this as an easy way to be of help. She has been assigned to clean for a nearly blind woman. She also takes her to the doctor, to the hairdresser and visits with her.

Sister Carolyn’s freezer is well stocked, her food sources varied. She might get a call from a warehouse with $2,000 worth of frozen orange juice to give away, a grocery chain ready to donate food in bent cans, cereals or bread, “thing they need to move,” or a restaurant with 300 rolls to unload. She’s on her way in the van.

Nightly she buys unsold fried chicken from the neighborhood delis and day-old donuts from the bakery. “Sometimes they give it to me.” The chicken goes in the freezer, the donuts go with the coffee available at the senior center each morning. This is a fairly recent innovation she introduced. Recently she took out a subscription to the morning paper. Little luxuries like coffee, donuts and the latest news help keep people connected to the world, she believes.

At midday, Monday through Friday, some of the residents come to the center for a meal. Others are brought in from around the neighborhood in the van supplied by the DeKalb council. Diners pay whatever they can afford for the hot catered meals, supplied through the federal nutrition program. Meals on Wheels are also distributed from the center.

A thrift store has been operating at the center since June, 1985. The tenants’ site council operates the store which Sister Carolyn keeps supplied with household items and clothing “from anybody who gives it to me.” Half the store’s profits go to the tenants’ fund which pays for a bus to take them on outings, and half goes to sister’s ministry fund.

One tenant is profiting from the store in a more nourishing way; she’s eating at the end of the month. “Anna’s hungry and won’t tell you,” was the message sister heard from one tenant about another, a woman, 57, on disability. Sister went to the hungry woman on the pretext of needing help in the thrift shop one evening after stopping for the deli’s unsold fried chicken. She gave the woman some chicken and asked her to work three days a week at the store. “The place has never looked so good. And I help her with food at the end of the month. It’s given her new life.”

She makes a special effort to help people not yet eligible for the benefits available for senior citizens. Often the social worker at the center will bring such cases to her attention. One recently involved a man with lung cancer who had no telephone in his apartment and “was petrified” when he had trouble breathing and no way to call for help. Her ministry funds paid for a telephone installation.

She fills other needs from the fund for the poor which is supported from the twice-yearly flea markets she holds at OLA and from gifts from caring parishioners. The flea markets add several thousand dollars each year to help pay for the special requests Sister Carolyn frequently receives from the social worker at the center.

She has purchased contact lens, shower stalls, even a Cannon Communicator for a deaf mute. Like a miniature calculator, this device enables him to conduct necessary conversations by typing out words that have been programmed into the machine.

The network of people who contribute to her ministry includes a man who pays for the gas for the van that already has logged 105,000 miles. The 10-year-old vehicle which seats 12 people was purchased with flea market profits.

Such vehicles are indispensable to her mobile ministry. There are monthly excursions to the malls, the people “love to go out to eat and shop.” There are rides to OLA for Mass, for Sociables’ meetings, for talent shows presented by the youth group, for covered dish suppers, for bingo nights. There are the furniture donations to be collected with the help of her teenage volunteers who also are on call for yard cleanups.

The only church group helping the two senior citizen centers on a regular basis, the OLA ministry to the elderly won the U.C. Penney Golden Rule award for community service by an organization in the spring of 1985. The ministry was nominated for the $100 award by the DeKalb Community Council on the Aging.