ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, August 25, 1996 TAG: 9608230107
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 8 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: BOONEVILLE, KY.
SOURCE: JEFFREY FLEISHMAN KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
The jobless men come every day, finding shade against the brick courthouse and sitting until dusk, when their cigarette embers linger with the fireflies that float down from the foothills and over the tobacco fields.
And every day, just beyond their smoke and their lazy stories, Stella Marshall pushes open the door to her office, hoping for a miracle, but depending on whatever little things the Lord sends her way - second-hand clothes for a poor child, donations for a family beset by rats and a rickety roof.
It is the men across the street, though, who are the focus of Marshall's rage, and her prayers.
``My big dream is to start a school for men,'' said Marshall, president of Workers of Rural Kentucky, or WORK, a group trying to save this small, poor town on the fringe of the coal fields. ``A lot of these men are young fathers. I want them to learn a construction trade, teach them reading and writing. Men around here don't have nothing to do. I want to give them something, so they don't get drunk and beat their wives.''
Where others have given up, Marshall, the daughter of a farmer and occasional moonshiner, plods on. With a budget of $95,000, WORK is building low-income homes, running youth programs, operating a Bargain Barrel clothing store and a T-shirt shop, and investing in a land many regard as worthless.
Riches will never flow here, said Marshall, but lives can be improved - just like WORK's bank account, which had $19.14 in it when she took over in 1989.
The statistics of Owsley County don't make it easy: 64 percent of children are poor, single mothers account for 31 percent of all births, 55 percent of people don't graduate from high school, the divorce rate is one of highest in the state, and, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county's per-capita income in 1990 was $5,791, compared with $14,000 nationally.
Marshall's life gives flesh to such numbers. She married at 14, angering her father, Moody, so much that he shot holes in his handkerchief. By the time she was 20, she had two children. She said her husband, Eddie, was a drinker and, like most men around here, worked sporadically in the tobacco fields. Marshall said she caught him with another woman and left her small wooden house along a shady dirt road after nearly committing suicide.
That's when she met Sister Noel, a nun who founded WORK in 1987. ``She saved my life,'' said Marshall, ``She picked me up and made me believe in myself.''
Sister Noel soon left for Mississippi, and Marshall - who taught herself how to use the computer, learned to write government grant applications and, to the disbelief of her family, flew to New York to raise donations and wound up in charge of WORK.
As Marshall tries to mend her community - she also recently took in a foster child - her personal problems seem to multiply. Her nephew recently completed a jail sentence for manslaughter, but even with Marshall's help he can't find a good job in a county of 5,000 with a 50 percent unemployment rate.
She worries about her daughter, Heather, 17, who dropped out of high school last year and took up with a 30-year-old man, who two years earlier killed his brother in a knife fight. She will have his baby in August; Marshall will be a grandmother at 42.
Last month, Marshall, who has had a partial mastectomy, began making daily four-hour trips to the hospital for radiation treatments for breast cancer.
``Everyone said, `Oh, Stella, you're going to fall apart,''' said Marshall, who didn't drive a car until she was 37. ``But I didn't. Life is sometimes hard, but I have lots to do.
``Worst part of it was one doctor. I don't have health insurance, and he told me the treatment costs $16,000 and he needed $3,000 up front.
``He treated me like I wasn't human, and if I wouldn't have been a strong woman, I would have went home quietly and died. If this would have happened to me 10 years ago, before I learned to speak up for myself, that's what I would have done. But now my inner animal instinct gets me angry, so I'll make it.''
Marshall recently found out that WORK will join other groups on a $750,000 grant to rebuild communities. But she still worries about some of WORK's fallen members, including a woman who was wading across a creek in front of her secluded house and walking to WORK, where she worked in one of the shops. Money and family pressures became too much, Marshall said, and the woman quit and began calling the man with the beeper, the one who sells drugs.
``You know what I think?'' she asked, a little of her old shyness peeking through. ``People in Congress don't understand because they ain't never not had. They've never been here. They're looking from far away.
``I'll tell you why a poor woman has babies. Because a baby is the most joyful thing she can have. She doesn't have money for cruises, no place to escape. So she has a baby and thinks she's escaping.''
Her car's transmission - already rebuilt three times - whined as she cut up a hill. ``I really think people don't want the poor to have a voice. I see it nationally. I see it locally. There are certain families that keep the money all to themselves.
``Welfare doesn't work, either. Food stamps get traded for drugs, and companies get rich selling high-priced cereal and baby formula. I think stores that accept food stamps should be required to hire people on welfare. I wanted to tell Bill Clinton this, but nobody would take me.''
It's the little things, said Marshall, that don't get done that keep the poor poor. ``At WORK, we just try to help. We fill out papers for the illiterate. We go to the government for people who are intimidated by authority. We give $5 loans, make a phone call for someone.
``They're not big things, but they help. I know about it. I'm worse off now than I've ever been in my life. It's hard making a living in a town where so many are on government assistance.''
Back in Booneville, Marshall, who earns $13,900 a year, parked her car across from the men on the benches. Inside the courthouse, the docket was full of the crimes and foibles of poverty: prescription drug abuse, crack dealing, marijuana selling, thefts of things such as weed whackers, guns and jewelry.
Marshall pushed WORK's door open and shot a glance at the men - she knowing their sins, they knowing her strength.
``If I was a preacher,'' she smiled, ``I'd preach to 'em. I believe there's some good in them.''
LENGTH: Long : 111 linesby CNB