161 Years @ St. Mary Star of the Sea in Key West
Since holding its first Mass in 1846, the church of Saint Mary Star of the Sea has been helping people in the far outpost of the Lower Keys. Its nuns treated patients with yellow fever in the 1870s, victims of the USS Maine explosion in Havana Harbor in 1898 and the needy during Key West’s bankruptcy of the 1960s, according to the Reverend Deacon Peter Batty. ”Needs change,” Batty said. “We have been very vigilant serving current needs. God wants us to be flexible. We’re Gumby saints.”
The crisis causing today’s need for many living in the Lower Keys: skyrocketing housing costs. Saint Mary Star of the Sea has created the area’s first Out-Reach Mission. The idea was conceived seven years ago but took five years to become reality. Initial funding has come from the Klaus-Murphy Foundation, which is paying for the first three years of rent and utilities for the mission.
With mostly volunteer help, the church converted an old rundown tire store on Stock Island into a homey place for people of all denominations and levels of need to get food, baby clothes, help finding government services, a friendly smile. And hope. Last month, the mission served an average of 552 people per week. The number has been growing as word continues to get out about the caring place that opened in August 2006. ”This means a lot,” Samuel Kelly, father of a 13-year-old boy and 58-year resident of Key West, said last week as he carried two bags of donated groceries. “It helps me to have food in the house. I’m handicapped…. I can’t work.”
The mission is quite an operation, considering there’s only one paid staff member: managing director Lenny Manrique, a native of Colombia. ”She’s the angel around here,” said volunteer managing director Roger Morse. Under Manrique’s direction, the mission last month gave away 27,311 pounds of food and 54 drug prescriptions. It would not have been possible without 453 hours worked by an army of volunteers, including Gregory DeMott. ”I’ve got degenerative arthritis,” DeMott said. “But since helping here, it’s helped me as well. It’s like a sanctuary. Like Notre Dame.’
This month is especially busy, with the mission providing turkeys for families and holiday toys for children. The people who are helped run the gamut, from the homeless and disabled to those looking for a handout. Some are temporarily needy, such as fisherman Steven Grady, who limped into the mission with a staph infection and a story of riding a shrimp boat here from Louisiana. He left with a bag of food and promised he’d donate $50 when he was back on his feet. ”I’m not usually a poor person, usually have money in my pocket,” Grady said. “Now I’m down and out and people are helping me out and I appreciate it.”
Morse said he knows the mission also attracts “some 22-year-olds who are just lazy. You know some people every once in a while are going to take advantage of you. But you don’t think about them.” Nobody is turned away. Manrique said the mission’s volunteer staff is there to help, not preach or judge. And most of those helped are the Lower Keys’ growing population of working poor families, who are struggling to survive in a tourist haven where gentrification has driven housing costs through the roof while salaries have remained stable.
”We felt if we could help provide good nutrition, it would stabilize their whole living situation,” Batty said. The mission targets working poor families, unlike the church’s soup kitchen in Key West that feeds mostly the homeless. The mission has a large pantry stocked with canned goods, cereal, bread and some fresh fruit. Some food comes from donations from parishioners and others in the community and the rest is purchased from the Daily Bread Food Bank in Hialeah.
Volunteer Akil Roebuck, an air traffic controller at nearby Naval Air Station Key West, filled food bags last week. ”For each family, we try to give them the basic food chain of the pyramid,” Roebuck said. “But if they’re homeless, obviously you can’t give them stuff to cook like pasta or rice. We save that for a family with a stove.” Every person helped is tracked in a computer. ”We learn this guy doesn’t like tomatoes, or this person just had their teeth worked on, so they get peanut butter and Jell-O,” Roebuck said.
Morse made three deliveries of groceries Wednesday to people without transportation. First stop was the home of Conchita Betancourt, a single blind woman. Second stop was to the apartment of Blanca Landa, a mother of three young children. Landa’s husband works, but she hasn’t been able to for months in order to care for their 6-month-old daughter, Lizbeth, who weighed only 2 pounds 5 ounces at birth and spent three months at Miami Children’s Hospital. Lizbeth’s twin didn’t survive.
”One person working hardly pays the rent and electric bill; we need two people working,” Landa said in Spanish. “We are thankful for this food.” Third stop was to provide food for Angela, who did not want to give her last name. Visibly ill from chronic pancreatitis, she said she and her husband are struggling on his $26,000 salary as a warehouse worker. Their rent for a modest apartment above a Key West storefront has risen to $1,800 a month. ”Can’t really afford to move because you need all the deposits, and I’ve been in the hospital five times this year,” Angela said. “This food helps a lot.”
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