Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, December 17, 1994 TAG: 9412190054
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
She is in vogue now, from the state capital to the nation's. She is the subject of proposals and experiments and general conversation by taxpayers fed up with footing her bills.
She's got the attention of Bill and Newt - and George.
Kirtley is on welfare.
Give her a forum and she will hammer away on the plight of welfare recipients. She addressed Gov. George Allen's welfare reform commission this summer, delivering an emotional speech about living as a single mother on welfare. Her letters have been published on newspaper editorial pages.
She speaks candidly, using words tinged with humor and bite. But "a lot of people have to find their voice," she says.
Welfare "shouldn't even have the word `well' in there," she says. "It makes you sick. They don't ever give you enough. They keep you in constant fear. I never felt so fearful that what little I had could be taken away."
She laughs at the idea of women on welfare having more children to boost their benefits.
"When I'm making love, I think, 'Gosh, it's about time for me to have another $40 rolling in here,''' she says, smirking.
Yet, she knows there are women whose actions support that belief. A fellow welfare recipient once boasted to Paula of having "another bun in the oven." The woman already had more mouths to feed than food on the table, Paula says.
"At first, I felt contempt for her," she says. "But that woman needed my sympathy, not my contempt."
Paula has worked for more than half of her 33 years. At 15, she had her first job, waitressing at a truck stop.
Reared on a farm in Greene County, she says she always has walked the edge of poverty. Yet, her family despises the way she lives now, dependent on government assistance.
"My mother told me, `We don't ask for help. We've got Appalachian blood running through our veins.'''
Paula came to Roanoke in 1986, referred by a Charlottesville substance abuse counselor to Bethany Hall, a recovery home in Southwest Roanoke for chemically dependent women.
Paula had lost custody of her daughter, then 5. Paula's frequent disappearances and drinking bouts led her mother - who had been living with Paula and sharing in the care of her daughter - to file for and gain custody.
Paula spent nine months in recovery at Bethany Hall. Three months after completing the program, she petitioned for custody of her daughter and won.
Paula worked two part-time secretarial jobs, one for the Roanoke Personnel Department, the other with the Fifth District Employment and Training Consortium.
Still, she struggled financially, tightly guarding every dollar earned. To save money, she used a kerosene heater to warm her small house near Roanoke's Wasena Park. She couldn't afford the $100 minimum to fill an oil tank.
"I was scared to death of the fumes from the heater," Paula says. "I would set the alarm clock to go off every two hours during the night so I could make sure we were OK."
She says she didn't know about public assistance programs.
In 1991, Paula was laid off from her job with the Personnel Department, a casualty of budget cuts. A few weeks later, funding for her other job ran out.
She was five months pregnant with a second child, fathered by her then-boyfriend.
Paula lived for a few months on unemployment. But when those benefits expired, she applied for Aid to Families with Dependent Children, food stamps and Medicaid. She found a subsidized apartment on the fringes of Northeast Roanoke.
The apartment is a roomy three-bedroom, two-bath dwelling that she has furnished, in the past two years, with flea-market finds and yard-sale bargains.
Paint is peeling from the kitchen cabinets. The roof above the second-story bedroom leaks.
The apartment rents for $495 a month. Paula pays $17.
Paula sits in a classroom on the Virginia Western Community College campus, waiting for the instructor to appear.
Her nerves are slightly jangled. A test, she says.
The class is Social Work 300 - Understanding Human Behavior in the Social Environment. It's a required course for people enrolled in a Radford University bachelor's degree program in social work that is offered on the Virginia Western campus.
Paula is in her third year. She expects to graduate in 1996. Student loan and scholarship money pay for tuition and books.
She wants to become a social work administrator.
Paula points to a spot on her arm. She's had her first Depo-Provera shot. Birth control, good for three months. Medicaid paid for it, she says. Though she is not very active sexually, she wants to ensure that she has no more children.
Paula places a printed form on the instructor's desk. The instructor must sign it to verify Paula's attendance, a federal requirement for AFDC recipients who are in education or job-training programs.
"Gotta jump through those hoops," Paula says.
Her chosen major is no accident.
"You become involved in things because of your experiences," she says. "I want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem."
The phone bill is overdue. So is the electric bill.
The $291 monthly AFDC check is nearly expended, as is the $240 in food stamps. She cannot rely on child support from the father of her 13-year-old daughter, Amanda, nor the father of her 3-year-old son, Sammy.
There will be no work-study check this month. Work-study pays only when school is in session. Christmas break is in full swing.
"I'm just grateful that there's heat," she says. "I remember what it was like not to have heat. I'm not taking this for granted."
Paula wonders how some people live on less.
There is such a thing, she says, as being "poorer than welfare poor."
by CNB