Employee Becomes "Community Servant for a Day"

Note: Media relations associate Sarah McClurg joined student volunteers for one of several January Term community service projects and wrote this first-person account.

When Jen Horton '99 called me about joining an overnight project in Lawrence, MA, I thought "Yes, I will go where no other public relations person has gone and do what no other media relations associate has done!" At 8 am on January 22, primed with a cup of Tailgate Picnic's caffeinated goodness, I met Horton and Molly Deitrich '99.

In Lawrence, we drove past enormous brick buildings that once hummed with the sounds of industry to the Arlington district, home of Lazarus House Ministries, a social service agency that helps the needy with food, thrift shops, and medical and dental care.

Jen, Molly, and I first helped in a preschool, where--to my amazement--children sang the same nursery rhymes I sang three decades ago. Then we worked the soup kitchen's lunch shift, making sure the garbage was properly sorted. Easy work, I thought, until I realized I couldn't say "Food goes in this barrel" in Spanish. Fortunately, Jen was by my side, when she wasn't busy wiping trays for the young and old people the kitchen staff was feeding in shifts. Molly befriended a group of women from her Acton, MA, parish who come every month to lend a hand.

Three hours later, I was exhausted already and happy for a break before our afternoon and evening jobs. People had lined up hours ahead of time for the weekly surplus food distribution, where I gave out day-old baked goods, Jen handed out potatoes, and Molly distributed pasta. That evening we helped serve dinner to about twenty-five people at the shelter and watched a video with residents. About five kids made their way onto our laps.

As I drove back to campus the next morning, I thought about this experience of giving back to the larger world. It felt so good, and I wondered how community service would fare during the College's planning process. I was pleased to remember that President Creighton's inaugural address reaffirmed the College's "historical commitment" to public service and had noted that "we are less about the business of fitting into a larger social order than we are about transforming, making it better." It was a privilege to be part of our community's transformative power.