By Rita McInerney

In the little more than a year since she has been in Cedartown, Sister Elizabeth Racko, DC, said her work has expanded tremendously. "I could use an assistant."

Her job titles are pastoral assistant at St. Bernadette's parish, a community of white, black, Hispanic, and Vietnamese Catholics; and director of social ministry for the Cedartown Ministerial Association, an ecumenical coalition dedicated to helping those in need.

At St. Bernadette's, she is involved in all parish activities, works with the women's guild, makes home visits, does outreach to the parish needy and the Mexicans who live out in the rural areas of Polk County.

For the Cedartown ministerial association, she directs Samaritan House which serves the poor of the city and the county. She is director of a soup kitchen operated by church volunteers. She is active in Pilot International, a professional women's service club with a special interest in the needs of the handicapped. The club has donated wheelchairs and braces which Samaritan House makes available on loan to people who can't afford to rent or buy such equipment.

Hazl Brumby, a member of First Baptist, and director of Family and Children's Services for Polk County, is an enthusiastic supporter of Sister Elizabeth and the center. "People would go hungry if it were not for Samaritan House" since there is no funding for the emergency needs of the poor in the agency budget."

"We are interdependent. We make many referrals to Sister Elizabeth. We see sister as an extension of our caseworkers. She visits the people in their homes. It makes a real difference." In the last five years, Mrs. Brumby said, "the little links have flourished" between her agency and the churches. "There is a lot more cooperation now."

The soup kitchen which started five years ago after the closing of the Goodyear plant, the largest employer in Cedartown, still fills a big need. Two women from First Methodist, Dee Amaral and Louise Butler, concerned at the number of people out of work, called a meeting of women from other congregations and proposed the soup kitchen be started to feed the hungry a mid-day meal on the last five working days of each month. This is the worst time for the poor, they knew, when the money has run out and the cupboard is bare.

Now the soup kitchen feeds about 60 people each day it's opened. It is housed in a city recreation building in sight of the charred skeleton of the burned-out Goodyear plant. The hungry line up, elderly men and women from the nearby senior citizen housing or from dilapidated farmhouses out in the country, young mothers with children, a man in a wheelchair, strapping black youths unable to find work.

All of the food served, a well-balance meal, is donated and all the work done by church volunteers. The essence of Christian love and caring is in the large room.

"They expect us to bring up religion," Sister Elizabeth said. "We're a church group and there's a great advantage to sharing faith together." And if someone talks while grace is being said before the meal, the sound of "shhh" is heard.

The small living room of St. Bernadette's rectory is Sister Elizabeth's office several afternoons each week. A typical hardship case involved a Mexican woman from the country whose well has not been operating because of a clogged pump. While friends and neighbors have been bringing water to the family, that source is also drying up. She is accompanied by a woman from the parish who helps the nun and the troubled woman communicate.

As the Mexican woman's small son, nine months old, and her friend's two little girls become more restless by the minute, Sister Elizabeth, in halting Spanish, gently questioned the woman. Then she picked up the phone and called a well digger to get some idea of what repairing the well would cost. That accomplished, she promised to drive out to the remote farmhouse to see the problem for herself.

Many of the Mexicans she helps live way out in the country. They usually have jobs, but because of the language barrier, do not know what resources are available to them.

Her gold-colored Chevette is familiar to town and country people. On her rounds she often stops to visit three poor families to whom she had given chickens to raise. They were the gift of a man who is a generous friend of the Daughters of Charity who also staff St. Mary's School in Rome. With the chickens, the donor also supplied money for feed. A 50-pound sack of mash was donated by a feed store in town. Already, at one fledgling chicken farm, biddies have been hatched. Now Sister Elizabeth is looking into other self-help farming ventures that encourage enterprise.

There are times, she said, when she has to tell someone she can't help. It's hard on her as well as on the supplicant. But, as she gives to them, it lifts her up to be told, "Sister, I know you couldn't give me money, but you have given me hope."