GREENFIELD — At her 50th reunion at Turners Falls High School, Mary “Chiz” Chisholm’s friend told her she should head over to the Greenfield Common to see the homeless encampment.
Sitting at the picnic table on the Common Monday, Chisholm chatted up those who had found themselves sleeping on the city land since early July. What people soon found out was this Turners native runs a 50-person homeless shelter in Kingston, N.Y., about 20 minutes from Woodstock.
“I felt bad for everybody,” the founder of Chiz’s Heart Street said. “I felt bad for the people who want to use it, and I felt bad for the people who were sleeping there.”
A couple days later, there was Chisholm again, making the 2½-hour drive, to pick up two of the men who had been sleeping on the Common. One them, who goes by the name of Bob, had said on the eve of being picked up that he wasn’t really sure who was going to get him, where in New York he was going or what will happen when he gets wherever he was going, but that, “It’s better than sitting here on this Common.”
Bob is still trying to find his footing, Chisholm said. “It must be terribly disconcerting, for one second you’re in Greenfield and the next second you’re in New York,” she said.
Chisholm wasn’t necessarily looking to pick people up and bring them to shelter. Greenfield Salvation Army Capt. Scott Peabody was the one who helped to persuade her it was a good idea, she said.
It was Peabody who drove a family of six, with four children, who had been living on the Common, to the shelter in Kingston on Thursday. Peabody, who spent all of Thursday driving and assisting the family at the Department of Social Services in New York, saw Chisholm as the blessing.
“For me, I’m a man of faith,” Peabody said, “I don’t take it as a coincidence that that person happened to come by then.”
At the moment, the family of six is staying in a hotel in town before Chisholm’s newest facility opens up. This weekend she will bring the family to her organization’s barbecue.
“People want to feel like they belong somewhere,” Chisholm said. “This is kind of a crazy place, but everybody wants to feel like they belong. This is their home.”
Friday Chisholm watched one of the two people she drove to Kingston fill out applications for work.
“That’s what I think empowerment is,” she said. “It’s allowing people to be the person they can.”
You can reach Joshua Solomon at: jsolomon@recorder.com or 413-772-0261, ext. 264.