THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, December 6, 1994 TAG: 9412060366
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KERRY DOUGHERTY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long : 123 lines
Even Barbara Luzzi can't always believe what she does for a living.
``Sometimes, after I've been on vacation, I have to stop and ask myself, `Do I really sing and play on street corners?' '' she says, laughing.
Yes, Barbara, you do.
On almost any afternoon, Luzzi and her partner, Susanna Murphy, are stationed on the sidewalk outside the Wards Corner branch of NationsBank. An army of two, singing their hearts out for Jesus.
The ladies are wearing the uniform of the Grace and Hope Mission: sincere suits and sensible shoes. Luzzi is the brunette with the medium build; Murphy, the reed-thin white-haired woman. Neither wears makeup or jewelry.
To get the picture, think Church Lady meets Ethel Merman.
``They're out here every week, making joyful noises,'' says Faith Carmichael after stuffing a dollar bill in a red cookie tin on their folding table. ``I don't mind giving to these ladies because I know every cent of it goes to the poor.''
When they are not singing - in voices truer to God than to pitch - they're playing. Each woman plays trumpet and electric keyboard. They take turns standing and sitting, each playing three carols at the keyboard. In coldO weather, they use plastic mouthpieces to keep their lips from sticking to the icy metal of their trumpets.
Not only can they dispense religious tracts with one hand while playing trumpet with the other, both manage, at other times, to play the keyboards with their hands in woolen gloves.
``I remember once going in a department store looking for warm gloves and the sales lady was trying to sell me this really thick pair,'' Luzzi recalls, while Murphy flips through tattered sheet music searching for ``The First Noel.'' ``I told her I needed thinner ones so I could play piano in them. She looked at me like I was crazy. Playing the piano with gloves on.''
Others look at Luzzi and Murphy like they're crazy, too.
``I thought people like you went out with the horse and buggy,'' someone told them recently, eyeing their unfashionable clothes and plain, sturdy looks.
Most of them did. Luzzi and Murphy make up the entire Norfolk mission. Grace and Hope maintains missions in eight other cities with a total of about 30 full-time missionaries.
There is something decidedly old-timey about these missionaries. Their organization dates to the heyday of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. Back when righteous women stormed taverns and burlesque halls saving souls for Jesus.
Then the women worked the waterfront, converting sailors and trying to bring God to the teeming Navy town.
Today, the Grace and Hope Mission, which located in Norfolk in 1926, is based on Lafayette Boulevard.
Luzzi and Murphy's ``street work'' takes them to Wards Corner, to Ford Motor Co.'s Norfolk Assembly Plant on Friday afternoons and to the gates of Newport News Shipbuilding.
The missionaries are still forbidden to marry, drink, smoke or date.
That doesn't mean they don't have fun. Luzzi, 50, and Murphy, 54, are deadly serious about Jesus, but they are quick with a smile and laugh.
They are also ordained ministers. On the street, people often confuse them with Salvation Army people. Others think they are nuns.
``I tell them, we're not nuns, but we're kind of like that because we're single ladies,'' Luzzi says, recalling a recent conversation she had with a nun where they wound up commiserating about the lack of young recruits to their lifestyles. Both nuns and missionaries say girls are reluctant to join a religious community where they can't own a car.
``You tell them it's not a 9-to-5 job and they can't have their own car and they're outta here,'' Luzzi says, smiling and shrugging.
``Well, it's not right for everybody.''
It was for Luzzi. She joined Grace and Hope in 1963 when she was 20.
Her mother predicted she'd last one year.
Thirty years later, Luzzi is still a woman on a mission.
``There were a few times, during the first five or seven years, when I thought about leaving,'' Luzzi confesses.
``You know, you kind of want to have a family and a husband like everyone else. But I really felt the call from God to devote my whole life to his work.''
That she does. The money the ladies collect in their cookie tin is used to buy food for the poor and supplies for their small church and Bible school.
Christmas season is harvest time for the Grace and Hope Mission. While they play hymns and sing throughout the year, it is in December, when their music switches to Christmas carols and the mercury dips below freezing, that they really rake in the dough.
``Most days, if we're out here for three hours or more we can collect about $60,'' Luzzi says, pulling a few bills out of the tin and tucking them out of sight, a technique the police have recommended, to cut down on losses should anyone decide to pinch their tin. ``On a hot day in July we might make $40. And on Christmas Eve day, we're out for at least six hours, and we can make about $200.''
While she is talking, an unshaven, toothless man is picking through cigarette butts in the street, until he finds one meaty enough to light.
He greets the Grace and Hope ladies and exchanges pleasantries.
``He used to be homeless but now he has a place on 35th Street, '' Luzzi confides.
``When we're done for the day I always buy him a cup of coffee and a hot dog. We don't hand out cash, because you can never be sure the people are going to use it for food.''
When she first joined Grace and Hope Mission, Luzzi balked at street work.
``Believe it or not, I used to be a shy person,'' she said, before belting out another verse of ``Joy to the World.''
``Not anymore.'' ILLUSTRATION: BILL TIERNAN
Staff
Susanna Murphy, left, and Barbara Luzzi, missionaries of the Grace
and Hope Mission, play Christmas music at Wards Corner in Norfolk.
Gloves warm the hands of Susanna Murphy on the electric keyboard;
nearby are religious tracts that the missionaries dispense.
BILL TIERNAN
Staff
Barbara Luzzi passes out fliers from the Grace and Hope Mission at
Wards Corner in Norfolk. The mission, which located in Norfolk in
1926, is based on Lafayette Boulevard.
by CNB