By Thea Jarvis

A recent decision by government and Olympic officials to move site of the planned Olympic stadium has been greeted with relief by friends and staff of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Home.

The new stadium location, on Ralph Abernathy Boulevard between Capitol Avenue and Washington Street, is north of the original site and allows the Hawthorne Dominican free home for terminally ill cancer patients to remain at its present address on Washington and Little Streets.

“I can’t say enough about the good work they do,” Billy Payne, president and CEO of the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games, said of the sisters at OLPH. “The service is irreplaceable.”

Although concerned about the noise and dirt sure to surface during the actual construction of the stadium, Payne hopes to “employ state of the art techniques” to modify these problems.

Additionally, extensive landscaping and carefully planned parking should “create a maximum buffer,” he said, between the new stadium and the cancer home.

The proposed 85,000-seat Olympic stadium will be built alongside the existing stadium in an area now designated for parking. Both the old stadium and a portion of the new structure will be razed after the Olympics and replaced with parking and a park housing the Olympic flame.

“Billy Payne and members of the committee met with representatives of the cancer home and this firm and did what they did to accommodate (the home),” said Kendrick Smith an attorney with Smith, Gambrell and Russell, who have provided legal counsel to the cancer home for many years. It will be “a little bit noisier during baseball season,” said Smith, but far “better to leave it where it is rather than uproot it.”

The home has been at its Washington Street location since 1974. Plans for the Olympic stadium had raised fears for the home’s future.

Sister Mary Regis, OP, superior of OLPH, said outpourings of concern have surprised her. A spate of phone calls from people all over the state indicated how upset people were to think the home might be torn down.

“We’re happy we know where we stand,” said Sister Regis of the latest proposal. Like Payne, she, too, is concerned about noise, but realizes, “It’s the best we can do right now.”

Sister Marian, OP, who attended the Aug. 30 news conference during which stadium site plans were announced, is satisfied that efforts have been made to safeguard the home and the surrounding Summerhill community.

“I’m thinking we can live comfortably with it,” she said. The noise of construction and the two weeks of Olympic activity is short-term, she feels.

“You can live with something” for a little while, she said. “We’re doing our part as citizens of Atlanta.”

Sister Marian is hopeful that OLPH patients will not be disturbed before, during or after the Olympic events. Although patients’ quarters are the closest to the stadium, the fans will be facing north, she said, “cheering away from us.”

An avid baseball fan, Sister Marian said there is minimal disruption from the Braves games now. The fact that the OLPH building is brick and the windows are double-paned should helping reducing added noise from Olympic modifications.

“Our patients are what we’re most concerned about,” she said.

One Religious getting ready to leave OLPH is grateful to put away doubts about the home’s future.

Sister Mary Clare, OP, who has been transferred to the order’s facility in Philadelphia and departs in mid-September, said, “We’re delighted we don’t have to move.”

The location of the home – atop a hill within a community setting, close to the airport and major expressways – is ideal, Sister Clare pointed out, in addition to being “so pretty, so well-made.”

Leaving before completion of the stadium means she has some lingering worry for the patients who have been in her care. She hopes it turns out well, “for all those concerned, not just for us,” she said.