At one end of a long
dinner table, spread with aluminum pots of tomato and
chicken soup, peanut butter sandwiches, neatly folded
napkins and ceramic bowls stacked on plates with spoons,
three sets of eyes generate an intense energy—an
unbroken concentration. Each takes a turn to say thank
you, a round-robin prayer, words brimming with
perspective.
Keith
is thankful for the rain—which, after a day of
drizzle and downpour. seems like an optimistic gesture.
Terry is thankful for a job promotion. Shawn is thankful
for a December wedding date and mentions a little red
house he wants to lease with his new wife.
No one
mentions tomato soup or warm beds or hot showers or
supportive friends.
That
much seems to speak for itself. It is as evident as the
clanking of spoons to ceramic while conversation bounces.
There
is a comfortable feeling of a family connection at the
dinner table—Terry pours soup for Shawn, and Shawn
passes bread to Keith. There is no blood relationship
between the three sitting at the table at Good Works, an
Athens homeless shelter. But still, they carry on like
siblings, joking and jabbing and bantering over who will
do dishes. At the head of the table is Keith Wasserman,
founder of Good Works, and on either side sits Terry
Boyer, now a volunteer after frequenting the shelter, and
Shawn Dunn, employed at Good Works full-time after
several stays there himself.
“God’s
grace is amazing” Shawn adds later, drying the last
of the silverware. “I went from sitting with my
large army-green duffel bag—everything that I had,
everything that I owned was in that duffel bag. Sitting
in a parking lot at midnight, I hadn’t eaten
anything that day, and wasn’t going to eat anything
that night and most likely was not going to get anything
the next day. Sitting in a parking lot, hunger pains in
my stomach, alone. To working in this shelter, which I
frequented, to renting a house—I’m getting
married in December.”
The
scenario Shawn paints is accompanied by a smile as he
readjusts his ball cap and wrings his hands. His wiry
frame becomes animated in an instant, and his expressions
lull just as quickly. At 22 years of age, Shawn relied on
Good Works for housing and support four times—the
first when he was 17. The cycle of getting a job, getting
into drugs, losing a job and then losing a home is what
left him trapped in what he calls a “revolving
door.”
“You’re
just walking in a circle, and that’s the pattern of
homelessness,” lie explains. “You push the
door, you walk along, and keep in that circle. Other
homeless shelters will let you walk in this circle. But
what Good Works does is put its foot in the door and
stops you.
“Now
granted, you know what happens when you put your foot in
the door,” his eyebrows pull into a mischievous
arch. “It gets smashed and it hurts. But it will
stop the door so you can took at it and see that
you’ve been walking in a circle.”
