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By Sean Yoes
AFRO Baltimore Editor
[email protected]
I had an epiphany the other day about Mother Bea Gaddy as I returned from making a food run in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
In Baltimore, there have been only two “bright spots” that I can glean from the onslaught of COVID-19; one, homicides are down and two, people are really stepping up providing food for those in need.
I’ve been very encouraged by the abundance of stories in this newspaper and social media posts announcing food give-aways for people who are struggling during this crisis. Some of these people in need are experiencing homlessness, others have lost their jobs, or have had their hours cut in wake of the national lockdown. However, in Baltimore if you are hungry you can get something to eat. Because of the generosity and tenacity of many, we are blessed as a city.
Decades ago I think Mother Gaddy shifted the spiritual energy of Baltimore when it comes to how we deal with hungry people.
I have no empirical evidence to bolster my argument; this isn’t a scientific hypothesis. This is literally a gut feeling and I trust my gut.
I vividly remember the Thanksgiving when Mother Gaddy decided people shouldn’t go hungry, especially at that time of year. It was 1981 and I was a junior at Walbrook Senior High School when I witnessed the images on television of a woman in East Baltimore who served dozens of people Thanksgiving dinner.
As a 16-year old who had partook with great joy in the bounty brought forward every Thanksgiving by my Grandma Katie, I wondered how Mother Gaddy was going to pull her Thanksgiving miracle off?
But, she did it.
What I learned subsequently was she had allegedly hit the number (as we say) that year for $250 and instead of spending the money on herself, Mother Gaddy decided to feed about 40 people on Thanksgiving Day in 1981.
From that moment of monumental spiritual largesse grew a movement to feed hungry people in the Greater Baltimore area that resonates to this day. And after that Mother Gaddy was known as the “Mother Theresa of Baltimore.” In my mind it is not hyperbole.
A native of Wake Forest North Carolina, she began her work of feeding people in the 1970’s as part of the staff of the East Baltimore Children’s Fund. She allowed her home to be used as a distribution center for food and clothing for poor people. Then, in 1981 she founded the Patterson Park Emergency Food Center. Later that year she fed the neighborhood Thanksgiving dinner with $250.
Since then, Bea Gaddy’s Thanks for Giving Campaign has annually served about 3,000 meals on site, utilizing hundreds of volunteers and has delivered 50,000 more meals for those who can’t get to the center. She and her family (her daughters Sandra Elaine Chandler and Cynthia D. Brooks were also soldiers in the battle against poverty and hunger) and other volunteers, collected and distributed toys to children during Christmas and provided other services specifically for poor people for decades.
Mother Gaddy, who had survived poverty and violence as a child, later went on to be elected to the Baltimore City Council in 1999. I remember when I used to cover City Hall (I had not known she had been elected) I saw her during a council meeting and was actually star struck. I was like, damn, that’s Bea Gaddy. She had already reached mythical status. She died two years later in 2001.
Far from a cunning, calculating politician Mother Gaddy was the literal definition of a public servant.
She served the people.
At the end of the day it is abundantly clear to me, as long as the Spirit of Mother Gaddy and those like her prevail, and it will, when the last punch is thrown Black Baltimore will still be standing.
Sean Yoes is the AFRO’s Baltimore editor and the author of Baltimore After Freddie Gray: Real Stories From One of America’s Great Imperiled Cities.
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