History of Lazarus House

After Brother Tom Petitte, a Marist brother and teacher at Central Catholic High School in Lawrence, spent his third summer volunteering under Mother Teresa in Calcutta during the early '80s, he brought a strong, inspiring message home: "Thank you for being here," the saintly nun told a departing group, "but you really need to go home to your countries and take care of the poor." Mother Teresa may have looked directly at Petitte, the only American in the group, when she added, "Especially in America, where the poor are not only physically but spiritually poor.

Her call rang a chord with Petitte, for Lawrence was a poor community in the process of becoming rapidly poorer.

Once a thriving mill town, Lawrence was built by a philanthropist in 1847 to house immigrant families from Ireland and elsewhere, lured to the New World by the promise of good jobs in the city's mile-long mill, largest in the world.

But times had changed, and the last wave of immigrants -- Latinos fleeing peasant poverty in Mexico and Central America, who came to the U.S. without education or skills -- only to find the last of the mills pulling up stakes and leaving New England for the South and the Third World -- were poorly equipped, at best, to make it in a high-tech society.

By the time Petitte came home with Mother Teresa's adminition gnawing at his conscience, Lawrence was well on this way to its current pitiful status as 24th-poorest city in the U.S. (and the absolute poorest in New England), a decaying town of 70,000 where half the adults never finished high school and 84 percent of its public-schoolchildren live below the poverty line, and where 53 percent of high-school students drop out before graduation, perpetuating the cycle.

What would Mother Teresa have done? Petitte contacted Bridget Shaheen and her husband, who were active in St. Joseph's Byzantine Catholic Church, and in short order they found an old house and opened what became Lazarus House Ministries, seeking to provide the emergency services that were then non-existent for Lawrence's homeless and hungry people. Lazarus House opened in 1983 with four beds and an all-volunteer staff; then step by step, little by little, it grew to meet the need, growing to its present 30 beds and five cribs; adding a soup kitchen, Bread And Roses, which now feeds up to 300 people a day, and an emergency food pantry that provides several days' balanced nutrition to dozens of families each month. Its clothes closet began with a basement room and now occupies two tidy, dignified thrift stores. And, seeing yet another need, Lazarus House now hosts Corpus Christi House, a beautiful, eight-bedroom Victorian mansion that's holding its own in a neighborhood infested by drug dealers, as a residence for people living with HIV and AIDS. There's a pre-school child learning center, a free dental clinic and monthly primary care medical clinic; and an advocacy program with a full-time staffer who works with participants to help them achieve their goals and realize their rights.

Several fundamental principles inform the Lazarus House philosophy and make it stand out from so many other similar ministries doing good work around the nation.

Starting with St. John Chrysostom's counsel, "It is more noble to feed the hungry than to raise the dead," its primary mission is to provide immediate support, food and shelter, to people who have none. But it doesn't work without a contract. Eligible individuals come by referral from churches, social-service agencies, priests and ministers, and upon intake set up a personal plan to get themselves back on their feet. By doing so, they win a three-day "reservation" in Lazarus House. But they must come in each night with evidence of having worked toward their goal in order to earn a renewal; and they may continue renewing for as many three-day periods as it takes to get back into permanent housing, a job, and a good life. Meanwhile, no one must stand in line for a bed or a meal, or wait for a decision only to be denied.

"The goal of Lazarus House is to 'teach people to fish,'" Shaheen said, "but when people are hungry, they can't hear people teaching them anything. So the FIRST thing we do is feed them. Then, when they see how wonderful it is not to be hungry, then we can teach them to fish."

That teaching moved to a new, high level the week of my visit (June 29, 1998), with the first day's classes in an innovative and hopeful new job-training program. Eight students are beginning an intense program that will start with two weeks of nothing but English as a Second Language, moving on in the third week to six more weeks of ESL and specific job training. At the end of the eighth week, this group will form their own company, working for pay as an office clean-up crew, putting in a 30-hour week of work while reserving the remaining 10 hours for ongoing training and frequent counseling to help them get over the back-to-work issues that stymie so many people who've been off the payroll for a long time.

At the end of a year, it's hoped that the graduates will be so solidified in good work habits and experience that they won't be stuck in low-pay cleaning jobs but will be ready to move on to a better job and eventually to a career. Meanwhile, the group hopes to start other small training businesses including a restaurant or cafe, a bakery, and a sewing business.

Lazarus House touches many people's lives, and for the better, and does it with efficiency and love. Its staff of 37 works with an annual budget of $4.6 million, of which less than 1% comes from government funds; St. Joseph's church still provides a tithe, and much more support comes from citizens of Lawrence, and friends, who recognize the work that the ministry is doing. I think Mother Teresa would be pleased.

All the feature stories on @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG's pages are reported and written by Robin Garr, a prize-winning journalist who has visited more than 500 innovative grassroots programs in all 50 states since 1990.