A natural beginning
Hike highlights new program to help children without a home

By Cheryl Mattix cmattix@cecilwhig.com
[Cecil Whig, Monday, October 2, 2006 - Page 1]
 
 

Six-year-old Sabrina Whitley couldn’t wait for U.S. Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest to place the tiny tree frog in her hands Sunday.

“I’m keeping it,” she announced as she squeezed her fingers around the jumpy amphibian.

Sabrina was among more than 20 children from Cecil County to attend a picnic and nature hike Sunday at Turner’s Creek Park in Kennedyville hosted by the congressman from Maryland’s 1st District.

Gilchrest even toted Sabrina’s little 3-year-old sister, Emily, on his hip for part of the hike.

The idea for the event was hatched by Gilchrest, a Republican, after he visited Wayfarer’s House in June to deliver a check for $11,550 in community facility grant funds from the USDA Rural Development Corp. to help Meeting Ground Inc., a faith-based homeless advocacy group in Cecil County, buy a new pickup and dishwasher to serve homeless families at the three shelters they operate.

What he saw there — especially a homemade Mother’s Day card penned on construction paper and displayed prominently on a dresser in one of the rooms — moved Gilchrest to invite them to share an experience with nature.

The card read: Dear Mom, I am a boy. When I grow up I will get money. I will buy you a house. Love, Quentine.

The children, all who either currently live or recently left one of the shelters operated by Meeting Ground, were accompanied to the picnic and hike by their mother or a responsible adult.

 
After 16 years in Washington, Gilchrest still seems able to easily transcend into his former role as a history teacher.

“We’re going to go on a half-mile hike today,” Gilchrest told the children as they gathered around a picnic table filled with samples of wildlife they could expect to see on the hike.

“We want to show you what it was like to live here 1,000 years ago when it was just the forest and the Indians,” he said, pointing to cattails, crab apples, acorns, water lily pods, chestnuts, wild cranberries, bird nests and a mussel shell. “They didn’t have a grocery store. This is what they ate.”

Each child was given a plastic bag to fill with whatever they found in the woods and wanted to keep. They picked up mushrooms, frogs, turtles, leaves, berries and corn until their bags could hold no more.

Then the group returned to the shelter for a picnic lunch.

Carl Mazza, who operates Meeting Ground, said this hike is the perfect event to highlight the new After Care program.

Meeting Ground, which has been around since 1981, has focused primarily on sheltering and feeding the homeless population until now.

“We feel it’s time to do more,” Mazza said.

That’s why Meeting Ground staff came up with the idea of After Care, which is designed to focus on the children who have or are experiencing homelessness.

“They suffer gaps in their education and general trauma from the experience, which is hard to overcome,” Mazza said. “Forty percent of the homeless population in the United States are children. These kids have a high rate of repeating that cycle. That’s why we want to help them break that cycle.”

Meeting Ground has been working on this concept for a couple of years, but didn’t have the money to hire anyone to run it until this spring when a private grant allowed them to hire Donna Hitchner part time to be the After Care program developer.

Since starting her job in May, Hitchner has taken the children to free movies at Regal Cinema at People’s Plaza in Glasgow, Del., one trip to the Grand Opera House in Wilmington and five Thursdays at a vacation Bible school.

“The kids are very well-behaved,” Hitchner said.

“One of our goals is to find mentors in the community for these children,” she said. “The children need to know they can make it on their own when they grow up.”

She is actively seeking male and female role models from the community to help raise the self-esteem of these children.

Hitchner has nothing but praise for Gilchrest.

“We certainly need more people like him in Washington, D.C.”

Kaylee Short and Desiree Cathell, both 11-year-old sixth-graders at Bohemia Manor Middle School, agree with Hitchner about Gilchrest.

After realizing how important a job Gilchrest had, the girls were a little star-struck.

Desiree wanted to talk with him after the hike. That’s when she asked him if he could get her a flag that flew over the U.S. Capitol.

Gilchrest smiled and said, “I think I can do that.”

Both girls want to be teachers when they grow up and they loved the hike and the picnic.

“Picking the corn was the best,” Kaylee said.