By Rita McInerney

Lola Chumbley, an elderly woman living in an old farmhouse outside Dawsonville, had a roomful of guests on Friday afternoon, Jan 2. Her callers, 15 college students and their chaplain, were from up north in Lowell, Mass.

Jim and Rita Lowe, members of Christ Redeemer Mission in Dawsonville, brought the young people over to meet Lola, just as they had done last year when University of Lowell students came to the Dawsonville and Dahlonega areas. They have been coming for four years, during January break, to help the elderly, poor and lonely in this North Georgia area.

For the young Yankees, it was a social and helping visit to Lola, 70, who has lived in the house most of her life, farming it with her parents and brother when they were alive and she was younger. Now she has only her dog, Teddy, for company. He was kept in the back room while the students visited, occasionally barking to remind her he was on guard.

Lola enjoyed her guests and shared with them some of the treasures of her life. She passed around her large-sized Santa, in cellophane wrapping, that plays Christmas songs and has a nose that lights up. She pulled a large black leather handbag out of a crowded bureau drawer and took from its depths, a handful at a time, her collection of souvenir spoons from cities across the U.S. and one from New Zealand. They are catalogues in her head, where each came from and the giver.

When Bill Ward asked her about quilts she pointed to her daybed where, underneath several layers of coverlets, there was a quilt of local origin. Later she dialed an acquaintance to inquire where several interested students could meet a woman who sells the quilts she makes.

Outside the house, Jim Lowe and Jim Polcari, Lowell University graduate student who is assisting Father Paul Garrity, chaplain, on the trip south, were working with their student crew. The job today was to cover the old windows of the house with plastic to keep out the wintry air.

They did a neat job, despite the raw cold, stepping carefully over the loose floorboards on the sagging porch, admiring the old stone well on the porch, long unused, and stepping around the deep holes in the ground around the house. When they finished, late in the afternoon, the old homestead was a snugger place for its lone occupant.

Rita Lowe took a picture of Lola surrounded by the young people. Then the hostess gave everyone a big Golden Delicious apple, shook hands with each as they said goodbye and told her how glad they were to meet her. As the two vans pulled away she stood at her gate waving.

This was the students' first day on the job. In the morning the three girls and five boys staying with the Lowes had gathered, chopped and split wood for delivery to needy people who need the logs to heat their homes. They will be busy with such chores until they head back to New England next week. "We'll do any necessary repairs within our ability," said Jim Lowe, the man who shows the students how the job should be done and works right along with them.

Their volunteer work isn't just done on a January break, Father Garrity said. Chaplain at the university's Catholic Center, he said the young people regularly visit and feed patients at a chronic care hospital, volunteer at a shelter for the homeless in Lowell, and those who are Eucharistic ministers bring communion each week to patients at Lowell General Hospital.

Father Garrity said about 70 percent of the 8,000 students at Lowell University are Catholic and the Catholic Center is "almost a university parish." Lowell, about 30 miles northwest of Boston, is an old New England mill city which has had its economy rejuvenated by construction planning and effort, the priest said.

This is the second year he has made the trip to North Georgia with the students. They started coming south four years ago while Father Fred Guthrie was chaplain. At that time the young volunteers worked in Dahlonega, Cleveland, and Blairsville.

Three years ago Jim Lowe asked Father John Henley, pastor of St. Luke's in Dahlonega, why some of the students couldn't come and work for the needy in the Dawsonville area. Since then, the Lowes have been housing about half the group at their home.

Along with the Lowes, students are housed in Dahlonega with Steve and Mary Gallant and Jay and Roslyn Ripka.