When I was 12, my school participated in a walk for hunger. You got people to sponsor you for so much a mile, and we walked, and walked...I can still feel the blisters on my feet and remember a volunteer at one of the "comfort stops" giving me a brochure hawking some Shaklee cream product for the feet which my parents could buy later. My picture was in the paper with a group of my school chums, walking, and walking. I can still feel the blisters...oh, sorry. Damn, they hurt!
But I digress. At the end of it all, "Mother" Waddles came to our school, in 100 percent lily white suburban Detroit, to accept the proceeds of the day. And she spoke. She thanked us for our donations, and explained her mission, with so much love and concern in her voice for the downtrodden. And that is the exact time that I remember realizing that I am not alone in the world and that there were people worse off than I. And that I could do something to help. And that life wasn't all about me.
So, thank you, Mother Waddles. She's gone now, but I will never, ever forget her.
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For nearly four decades, the Reverend Charleszetta Waddles, affectionately known as "Mother Waddles," devoted her life to providing food, hope, and human dignity to the downtrodden and disadvantaged people of Detroit. Founder, director, and spiritual leader of the Mother Waddles Perpetual Mission, Inc., a nonprofit, nondenominational organization run by volunteers and dependent on private donations, Waddles believed that the church must move beyond religious dogma to focus on the real needs of real people.
"We're trying to show what the church could mean to the world if it lived by what it preached," Mother Waddles told Newsweek. "I read the Bible. It didn't say just go to church. It said, 'Do something.'" In addition to operating a 35-cent dining room on Detroit's "skid row" that serves appetizing meals in cheerful, dignified surroundings, the mission offers health care, counseling, and job training to thousands of needy citizens. Still others benefit from an Emergency Services Program that provides food, clothing, shelter, and medicine. Well into her eighties, Waddles continued to work 12-hour days and to remain on call throughout the night. "We give a person the things he needs, when he needs them," she told Lee Edson of Reader's Digest. "We take care of him whether he's an alcoholic or a junkie, black or white, employed or unemployed. We don't turn anyone away."
Waddles was not content to stop with her 35-cent "miracle meals," however. In order to feel truly useful, and to bring about lasting social change, she had to get at the root of urban poverty. To do this, she needed to expand her mission and enlarge its premises. One day in 1956, while thumbing through a Detroit newspaper, she came across an advertisement reading, "Store for Rent, two months rent free." She immediately contacted the landlord for further details and learned that the ad was misleading–that, in fact, the prospective occupant would have to pay two months' rent up front before receiving the discount–but she somehow managed to convince the owner to let her have the space for free.
This storefront property, located in a crime-ridden area of inner-city Detroit, was the original home of Waddles's church, the Perpetual Mission for Saving Souls of All Nations. Its name was later shortened to the Mother Waddles Perpetual Mission. Fires, financial setbacks, and other problems have forced the mission to move numerous times over the years, but its spirit and goals have remained the same. "We are," Waddles told Edson, "the most unorganized, successful operation in the world."
http://biography.jrank.org/pages/2490/Waddles-Charleszetta-Mother.html
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