Author Archives: LeeAnn Lands
Mimi (Sister Marie) Bodell
One memory I have is John Armstrong, a senior at St. Pius X [Catholic] High School, shoveling debris from the second floor in the main house, shoveling it over the banister down to the first floor. I heard him saying to another teenager, “I really think this is what religion is all about.” Read more
Tom and Debbie Shields Erdmanczyk
Emmaus House filled that gap….we had buses going from Thomasville to McKlatchy Elementary from Leila Valley and Inglewood projects to Morris Brandon. Read more
How many green stamps does it take Ginny Tuttle to buy a bus?
And Ginny Tuttle—her father was Judge Tuttle in Atlanta—was a volunteer who collected 3,000 books of green stamps so we could buy a bus. We bought one of those big Bluebird yellow new buses. One of the first trips the bus took was to Reidsville Prison. Read more
Surplus Food Delivery
Soon after its founding, Emmaus House launched a program that allowed area residents to take greater advantage of the federal surplus food program. Sister Marie (Mimi Bodell) recalled that Muriel Lokey coordinated the program, and that “eventually she had a hundred women going to the warehouse to pick up surplus food and deliver it to the families.” Sister Marie explained that “the people who handed them out to you were all county prisoners, and the guards sat up on the top of the pile of boxes, with their guns cocked. . . . the guards didn’t really taunt us verbally, but they certainly did in their body language.” Read more
