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                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 1, 1992                   TAG: 9112310335
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 3   EDITION: HOLIDAY 
SOURCE: Douglas Pardue
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

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NAMES IN '91

Edwina Basham is doing fine.

It's been almost six months since she tugged on the heart strings of Western Virginians with the story of her two-year struggle to get off welfare and make a new life for herself and her two sons.

When her story ran in July as part of the newspaper's series on poverty, Basham was just beginning to make it on her own without welfare assistance.

She was bringing home a smaller paycheck than she would had she stayed on welfare. She didn't give up because of her personal desire to make it, but her struggle illustrated how the welfare system and low-paying jobs trap many poor.

After the story ran, she said, people showered her with small gifts of money and offers of clothes. And the welfare department finally came through with low-cost day care for her boys, ages 10 and 7.

If she'd had day-care help in the beginning, she said, her two-year fight to get off welfare would have been easier. "That's all I wanted in the first place."

She has been promoted to head cashier at Lowe's on Orange Avenue, making $6.25 an hour, and she recently bought her first new car, a 1992 Pontiac Sunbird. But some of the problems of the poor are still with her. She wouldn't have been able to buy the car if her boyfriend hadn't co-signed the loan.

Keywords:
YEAR 1991

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