|
Packaging Hope for Our Community, One Box at a Time
 When Rubye Nabors moved here in January 2000, she had a problem that many Americans would die for.
“I had nothing to do,” Rubye, 88, recalls. “My husband and I had always stayed busy on our ten-acre farm. There was plenty to do in the country, but when we moved to the city, suddenly I was bored.
“That’s when I decided to see if I could volunteer for the Samaritan Center. They were always talking in church about the different things the Samaritan Center needed, so I went to see if they needed me as well.”
When Rubye arrived and began to investigate the Samaritan Center’s sorting area, she was a little daunted.
“There were barrels and barrels of out-of-season clothing that needed to be packed into boxes for storage,” Rubye remembers. “Winter clothes in the summer time, summer clothes in the winter time—I could see right away that the cycle would never end.”
Even so, she didn’t let intimidation stand in her way.
“You tell me what to do, and I’ll do it,” she declared bravely.
The Samaritan Center took her at her word.
Nearly eight years later, Rubye is still making herself useful, helping to pack boxes among other tasks. Whenever her health allows, Rubye treks into the Center, grabs a box, and gets going.
“It isn’t the same kind of busy as staying busy on a farm,” Rubye muses, “but being able to know that every shirt, skirt, and jacket I box could help someone keep their electricity on with the money the Center makes in sales from the stores—that makes it almost as good.”
|
