The following article was originally posted in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch by Bill McClellan. View the story here.
McClellan: Breakfast on the bus with Sister Marge
Marge Clifford was born 68 years ago. She was the second of seven children. Her parents were fourth-generation farmers. Maybe their history of farming goes back longer than that, but her dad was the fourth generation on this particular piece of land in Indiana.
As befits people who depend on rain and weather, they had great faith. Family prayers were a nightly occurrence.
After graduating from high school, Marge went to nursing school in Milwaukee. The school, and the hospital with which it was associated, were run by the Daughters of Charity. Marge became a postulant in 1967. She took her first vows in 1972.
She went to Alabama as a nurse in obstetrics. Then back to Milwaukee, then Michigan, Indiana, Alabama again, Chicago and New York. Always working with the poor. Living with other Sisters. In the world but not of it. Devoted to helping others. How odd it sounds in a consumer society.
In 2002, she came to East St. Louis. Soon, she started thinking about money. I would not say she was obsessed with it, but it mattered. She was in charge of fundraising for the Sister Thea Bowman Catholic School. Her actual title was Advancement Director.
In the midst of chaos, the school is an oasis. It’s kindergarten through 8th grade. Co-ed. Ninety percent of the children come from poverty. Ninety-five percent of the grads eventually go to college. By the way, only 6 percent of the kids are Roman Catholic. Many come in with no religious background at all.
Sister Marge sometimes makes it to St. Louis on Sunday mornings. The Daughters of Charity are involved in the St. Vincent de Paul Mobile Kitchen. It’s a school bus that has been fitted with a small kitchen, running water and six tables. Three tables for two are on one side of the aisle and three slightly wider tables are on the other side.
Four kids can easily fit at the larger tables. That’s good because 75 percent of the diners are kids. That’s for dinner, which is served four nights a week. Two Sundays a month, the bus comes to St. Louis to serve breakfast. The breakfast diners tend to be adults. Mostly, homeless adults.
I wrote about the bus in January of 2009. Not about the kindness–kindness doesn’t sell papers–but about the conflict about the bus. You see, the bus used to stop at Lucas Park, behind the library. Or, more to the point, across the street from the New Life Evangelistic Center.
The thinking was, if you’re going to serve breakfast to the homeless, you might as well go where the homeless are.
But by the beginning of 2009, there was a battle raging over the park. The people who had bought lofts overlooking the park wanted to return the park to what it had once been–a downtown jewel. It dated to the days when the riverfront was the engine of economic life and wealthy people had mansions on the western fringes of downtown. Amid these mansions the park featured grassy sloped leading to a reflecting pool.
Then the wealthy left and the area deteriorated. By 2009, the area was coming back. The loft-dwellers looked at the bus, and thought, why are they encouraging the homeless to congregate here?
It was an uneven fight.
So I walked over to talk to the people on the bus. Did they know they were destined to lose? I knocked at the door of the bus, and Gerry Hasenstab, who is in charge of the Feeding Ministry, looked at me and said, “Come on in and get something to eat, partner.”
I explained that I was a reporter.
That is the day I met Sister Marge. She was washing dishes on the bus.
She sent me a note last week. She is being transferred–missioned, was her word–to Philadelphia. She said she would be on the bus in St. Louis Sunday if I had a chance to stop by.
These days, the bus stops under an overpass near St. Vincent de Paul Church on 10th Street on the near south side. A fine location, I’d say. Homeless people have no trouble finding it.
I stood by the door of the bus. “Come on in and get yourself something to eat,” said Hasenstab, cheerfully.
“I’m here to see Sister Marge,” I said.
While I waited for her to take a break–she was washing dishes again–I watched the people interacting. Everybody seemed to be getting along. A lot of the diners knew each other. The servers were solicitous without being condescending. Good vibes all around.
Normally, the bus is staffed largely by volunteers, but Sunday, the staff were all Daughters of Charity. It was their way of seeing Sister Marge off. I can’t think of a more appropriate farewell.