Taking care of our own

Gordon Meriwether
Published: June 25, 2008

It’s Sunday morning and I’m on the road again; this time to Jackson, Mississippi.

These days I am traveling by plane once or twice a week. With all the headaches and crowds, the airlines try to make it as pleasant as possible, but we all, travelers and carriers, only expect it to get worst.

With fuel prices continuing to rise, we may never return to the glory days of the ’90s, when air travel was convenient, affordable and stress (sort of) free.

I suspect I am not going to be able to afford to travel on business or pleasure as much in the future. This week I made reservations for Los Angeles for late July. My flight costs have doubled in less than a month. And now my favorite airline, United, is reporting another layoff, this time 950 pilots.

Times are tough for everyone. Whether you work for United Airlines or a family business in Culpeper, we are all looking out our windows at the economic bear of uncertainty at our door. But there are others in our community who are beyond that. The door is down and they are dealing with the daily struggle to pay bills, keep a roof over their family’s head, and food on the table.

To highlight this uncertainty, I attended the monthly finance committee meting at my church this past week. As stewardship chairman, I see first-hand the impact of this current economic crisis on the ministries of our church.

As families confront the choices to pay the bills, feed the family, or give to the church, weekly giving has dropped in most churches 20 percent. No one has escaped this downturn.

Even the revered National Cathedral in D.C. has begun laying-off clergy and staff and cutting programs.

But what caught me by surprise in this meeting was the report on our discretionary funding. This is the money that the church budgets to help people in our community with these specific needs for housing, food, etc. We are half way through our budget year and the fund is nearly exhausted. Our community support groups, which we also support, are also running short of funds and are sending more families and individuals to us and the other area churches for help.

One of the elders in my Alabama tribe once told me of her experiences during the Great Depression in Baldwin County. As I remember we were inflamed by a discussion of the changing racial times in south Alabama in the 60s.

Frustrated with the biases against the old South that she heard from the younger family members, she looked me in the eye with the passion that only an impatient grandmother can display and said, “Gordon, say what you will, but I want you to know that during the Depression, no one went hungry in Baldwin County. No one. We take care of our own.”

We do the same in Culpeper on a daily basis. Our community has always provided for our less fortunate neighbors in hard times and good times. The difference now is we all are becoming a bit worse off with each passing day. Every day each of us becomes a bit more apprehensive of the future than the day before. That future is here and now for some of our community families with no hope for anything but a continued slide into financial ruin. But like the Depression, these economic hard times will pass. Until they do, however, we must all work to take care of our own.

Today we have a number of organizations in Culpeper County that are doing everything they can to help our community members. They need your immediate help:

-Free Clinic — 825-2252 (medical assistance)

-Helping Hands of Culpeper — 825-7434 (financial assistance)

-St. Stephens Episcopal Church — 825-8786 (food/grocery assistance)

Culpeper Community Development Corporation —825-7434 (housing and rental assistance)

We need to remember the traditions of our past. We are a family in Culpeper, and like a family we look after each other. We take care of our own. We always have and we always will.

Gordon Meriwether is an independent columnist who lives in Culpeper. He appears every other Thursday in the Star-Exponent. E-mail