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Home Opinion

Mission/Keeping warm

February 8, 2023
in Opinion
Reading Time: 4 mins read
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Frances Stebbins

{Frances Stebbins has been writing about Western Virginia events, especially those relating to faith communities, since 1953. She resides in Salem.}

In my mail recently appeared a fund solicitation from the Roanoke Rescue Mission which is observing its 75th Anniversary. It was founded in 1948 by a couple, Gus and Lois Johnson, who came from Chicago where the husband Gus had been converted from a life of alcoholism and destitution on the streets.

     The beginnings of the mission –once called “the City Rescue Mission-“were closely linked with the first years my late husband, Charles H. Stebbins Sr. and I moved to Roanoke to become reporters for the daily afternoon newspaper,” The Roanoke World-News.”

We had no direct connection to the mission, but I learned of it quickly; at 23 and 18 months into marriage to Charlie, I was assigned at the paper to cover “church news.” Because the mission was new in the city and was strongly evangelically Christian –as it still is—its ministries were publicized on the Saturday afternoon page given over to advertising and news about the area’s –white—churches.

In my listing of events relating to the faith communities of the Roanoke Valley, I’d name the pastors scheduled to speak at the evening Bible classes the mission held for those who resided there.

Needing to check my facts against my memories of the Mission, I found two news clippings the late Frank Hancock and I had written about its activities decades ago. My story was done in 1982 with some facts about how the work in Southeast Roanoke began.  At that time in mid-October a banquet was to be held at First Baptist Church in downtown Roanoke to mark the 35th Anniversary of the founding of the work.

The featured speaker was to be the Rev. Nancy Joy Sylvester-Johnson of New York. She was identified as the daughter of the then-director of the Mission, Lois Johnson Bettis, and Gus Johnson. 

The second clipping appeared in July 1986 in a regional edition of the daily newspaper. It included a picture   of Bettis along with her daughter, Mrs. Sylvester-Johnson, and a new granddaughter named Jon Kara. 

The Sylvester-Johnsons eventually moved to Roanoke and took over management of the Mission after Lois Bettis died.  John Sylvester-Johnson later died as the result of a fall on ice.

All this shows the depth of the Johnson family’s identification with the mission through the 75 years. Information that came with the fund solicitation told of the expansion of buildings so that now destitute families can be temporarily cared for in the facilities on Tazewell Avenue at First Street Southeast.

More years have passed, and Lee Clark, once a staff member of the daily newspapers where my late husband and I also worked, is now the CEO of what is called The Rescue Mission of Roanoke. In a recent communication from him, he notes that from small crowded quarters Gus and Lois Johnson found for their Mission 75 years ago, has come street rescue ministry which serves 220 people each night and is recognized as a major organization of its kind in the nation.

And on February 1, 2023, I mark my 70th anniversary of arrival in Roanoke to write for the daily newspapers.

My recent January purchase of 100 gallons of fuel oil , which hopefully will prove to be enough to get me to summer fill-up time in May , causes reflection on how I’ve been kept warm over my lifetime.

 Clearly, there’s no economical way to stay warm.   My deliveries over the past nine months have cost me more than $1,500. 

In the 1930s, when I lived on the edge of a small Piedmont Virginia town, people used mainly wood or coal to heat their homes. There were   plenty of trees about, and those who had forested land would have it cut for their fuel. Others, like my mother, bought several loads of hardwood and one of pine each September. People were employed in sawmills while others kept warm by working in fuel and feed stores. 

Our neighbors, as well as two of my aunts, used black iron stoves for cooking in their kitchens. They kept rooms unpleasantly hot in summer. With a plumbing adjustment, they also heated the hot water.  My widowed mother, preparing meals for only herself and me, chose a smaller cook stove fueled by kerosene which was stored in a tank in the back yard and filled at intervals.

No central heating in many homes I knew when growing up, including ours. Instead, there were wood stoves of varying styles. Used newspaper and some kindling ignited larger chunks of the hardwood to quickly chase a chill.

Moving from country to city for higher education, I left wood stoves behind until 1977 when- -to save oil costs in another embargo time– husband Charlie and I began augmenting oil heat in our Hollins home with firewood from our steep acres. 

And a small electric saw and hatchet taught me a new skill.

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