Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, November 16, 1995 TAG: 9511160007
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETH MACY
DATELINE: MONETA LENGTH: Medium
The inside of their home was also a mess: The couple's two children had been placed in foster care for neglect. One of the kids had suffered a slow leak in his heart - after drinking from a bottle of moonshine. He was 5.
Curtis, the boy's father, was literally in the last stage of alcoholism. He couldn't get up from a chair by himself. He couldn't keep down liquid Ensure.
``I didn't know what morning I'd wake up and find him dead,'' recalls Sandra, 36.
Lutheran Family Services counselor Patricia Ronk remembers her first visit with the family that year. ``We were talking, and all of a sudden Curtis had to go to the bathroom. When he stood up, we all froze, conversation stopped. Nothing could happen because we were all waiting to catch him.
``He staggered to the bathroom, staggered back and finally sat back down and whew. . . what a relief.''
You won't find what Ronk did next written in any social-work manual. Her family-counseling methods don't come from bureaucratic policies - but from her experiences and her gut.
When Ronk helped found Bedford County's home-based social work program 10 years ago, she made a pledge to herself: ``If it's not illegal or immoral, and I think it'll work, I'm going to do it.''
Ronk literally scared the booze out of Curtis Eggleston's shaky hands.
She said, ``So you want to die? OK, let's get you ready.''
Ronk drafted his will.
She made him fill out the formal paperwork establishing paternity of the two kids - so they'd be eligible for benefits after his death.
``I decided I'd rather live than to die,'' Curtis says, his words still slightly slurry from the years of alcohol. Ronk took Curtis to a doctor, who persuaded him to enter a 30-day detox program.
Curtis Eggleston has been sober since 1990.
When Ronk went to check on the family recently, she found Curtis outside - on an old riding lawnmower, cutting the grass.
He had ceremoniously burned the rubbish from his yard. And from his life.
``See all this?'' he says, scanning his lawn. ``This used to just be brush, bottles, glass, cans, a big pile of dirt over there.
``Now I've got it down to where I want it. I sowed some grass seed, we planted flowers.''
Asked where the family would be without Ronk's intervention, Sandra Jennings speaks up: ``I would have lost Curtis, and I would have been dead right behind him.''
Patricia Ronk is a religious woman of German Baptist faith. She carries a hymnal in her car - in the dashboard where a radio would normally be - and wears the traditional uniform with the apron, cape and cap.
``Growing up, my dad said we were poor,'' the 44-year-old recalls. ``So I believed that was poor.''
But sitting down daily in the living rooms of Bedford's poorest homes has defined poverty in a way she'd never before imagined.
Not until she put her foot through a family's wooden floor did she really know.
Not until she watched a mother shuffle buckets - to catch the dripping rainwater from her leaky roof - did she really understand.
Not until she asked two little kids to describe the house of their dreams did she fully grasp the sights and sounds of poverty: ``The little girl dreamt of having a lamp beside her bed. And her brother, he just wanted a room with a light on the ceiling.''
Ronk remembers the depressed mother who was embarrassed to let her inside the house. Her woodstove was the sole source of heating and cooking. There was just one chair to sit in, and roaches crawled everywhere.
The woman would lose her children to foster care if she didn't move. But she needed public assistance to move, and she wouldn't agree to accept AFDC. A religious woman, the mother told Patricia: ``I need a sign.''
When Patricia responded firmly, ``I AM the sign,'' the woman relented.
Patricia doesn't talk to her clients about God, but she does consider her job ``doing God's work.'' She worries about society's trend to punish, rather than empower the poor. She worries about people in power who can't possibly fathom what it's like to be powerless. To have never even been in a McDonald's.
She worries about people who can't appreciate how far Curtis and Sandra have come. While neither of them work - they don't have a car, nor a driver's license, nor job skills - they have raised two children who are among the family's first high-school graduates.
They have raised two children who are not alcoholics and who are not in jail.
They have, in all probability, broken the cycle.
Copies of the kids' prom pictures, their diplomas, even their birth certificates are framed and on the wall. ``It's what they have to be proud of,'' Ronk said.
Sandra and Curtis are proud of their small miracle. And Patricia Ronk is proud to have been part of it.
She wants you to imagine walking a dirt-yard mile in their shoes. She wants you to think hard about what it means to be ``doing God's work.''
by CNB