Community Cooperation
By Roger Wolcott and Agnes Bryce
The little town of Sandy Spring, Maryland, was at one time a thriving Quaker settlement based on tobacco farming. At present it is a more mixed community but the historic Quaker meeting house still stands, now filled with a large and dispersed membership. Friends House, a Quaker retirement community, is nearby. Also close to town is the Sharp Street United Methodist Church, which was founded in 1822 largely by slaves freed by Quakers before the Civil War. Over the years, relations between the retirement community, the Meeting and the Sharp Street Church have been cordial but rather distant.
When Hurricane Katrina came in August 2005, with its disastrous flooding of New Orleans and other coastal regions, the local papers began to run stories of refugees from the devastation coming into our area. A group of women at Friends House were discussing what they could do to help the situation. Someone suggested that we ask people at the Sharp Street Church to see if they had contact with any refugees. It turned out that the congregation knew of many Katrina victims and included one member who had brought a number of relatives from New Orleans.
Sharp Street Church is small, with limited resources, and was hard pressed to meet the needs of the refugees. Soon, the Social Concerns Committee of Sandy Spring Friends Meeting joined in a three-way partnership with the Sharp Street Church and Friends House retirement community to provide help.
What followed was a frenzy of activity. Money to support four refugee families, a total of 37 people, came from the Friends House Residents Association, the Friends Meeting and other donors. We supplied used cars to the flood victims to enable them to search for jobs and get back and forth for other needs. Friends House has a flourishing white elephant shop, and from this came furniture, other household furnishings and warm clothing. A Sharp Street member offered the use of her car and truck for moving furniture, and transporting people to doctors appointments and school. Eventually, all of the refugees supported by the work of the three groups made new lives in our community.
The people involved in this effort got together for lunches, dinners and meetings. Hurricane evacuees from one family were invited to tell their stories of survival and how they were rescued. The aged mother in that family told of how she had lived on a bridge that was above the water level for several days after the storm, and then was taken to a shelter where she waited for her daughter to come from Maryland. She said that she knew God was going to help the daughter find her. This woman flew into Baton Rouge, Louisiana, rented a car, drove to New Orleans and searched all the shelters until she found her mother. As she greeted her the old lady said “To God be the Glory.” The daughter made arrangements for fourteen of her family members to be flown to Baltimore and she housed them in her home for several months.
As the joint project to help these newcomers continued, many of the women of the Church, the Meeting and the retirement community have developed personal ties. Some of the Friends House residents have been making a practice, on occasion, of attending services at the Sharp Street Church. They are greeted warmly. Also, more organized activities have been arranged: a tea to raise money for the Sharp Street’s scholarship fund held at the meeting house, and a potluck dinner before a concert by the Friends House choral group. The Sharp Street Church reciprocated by bringing their choirs for a special program of gospel music at Friends House.
Our Meeting, like other Friends meetings, strives to build a close, loving community for our members and attenders. This is a goal that we can never fully realize, but reaching out to a local church adds to the quality of our dealings with each other. We become less ingrown and exclusive. This is especially true when we cross a racial divide and, for these two groups, build on a relationship rooted in our mutual history.
Roger Wolcott is a member of Sandy Spring Monthly Meeting in Maryland. He is an emeritus Professor of Sociology at Westminster College in Pennsylvania and has traveled extensively with Christian Peacemaker Teams, Witness for Peace and other groups. Agnes Bryce is a member of Sharp Street Church.
