to help. “I first met Ms. Ivory last year. There was a prob- lem across the street from her house, so I connected her with Dist. 3 Police and her alderman, but she was not getting any help,” said Jerusa. While Helena was fighting for peace in her neighborhood, shock set in when police found a dead body in the field behind her house. The police told her that if she had had a camera in the back of her house, they could have found who left the body. “She again reached out,” said Ms. Johnson. “I again connected her with Dist. 3 and her alderman; again no help. We were trying to get cameras through the city’s Alert Neighbor Program, but not enough neighbors signed up, so she wasn’t eligible.” “Then they found another body,” said Helena. “I knew I needed to get cameras for my safety and to help the community.” So she purchased Ring cameras, even though the cameras were difficult to afford. As a woman who has always done everything herself, it was difficult for her to ask for help, but she couldn’t find anyone to help her install the cameras for a decent price. The strain of this new safety feature was eating into her budget and she was worried it could cut into her food supply, so “You need to build community, and that is what I have always done. This yard is community.” – Helena Ivory, Amani Home Owner
to add her to our senior food box drop offs each Wednesday. She also mentioned her garden, so I was able to connect her with Clean Wisconsin, who installed a rain barrel for her and will install a garden bed soon.” “Everything was wonderful,” said Helena about the connections she made through DC. “Seems like I was meant to be here. I have been here 50 years and I had never heard of Dominican Center. When I found out about what [the Center] does, I was shocked to know such a God- sent was in my community.” Helena retired after 31 years at the VA hospital. Her mother also worked there, and her service there fulfilled her need to help people and allowed her to raise her family as a single mother. When she was working and rais- ing her children, she was always busy, but her family was a team and they worked together and played hard on the weekends. She loved to reward her kids with road trips to places like Great America for the hard work they did at home and school. “We had so much fun, and now they all work just as hard as me,” she said. She worked at the hospital full- time and then took on a sec- ond job to send her youngest daughter to college. She worked second shift at the hospital and the money from her first-shift job at FunJet Vacations funded her daughter’s education. “She was the only one of my kids that wanted to go to college, so I was going to make sure she went,” she said. “It isn’t just the tuition, because she received some scholarships, but I paid for everything. She earned her bachelor’s degree and she didn’t
have to worry about a thing.” With this gracious gift in hand, her daughter went on to earn a master’s degree in social services while working at the same time, displaying a work ethic clearly inherited from her mother. Helena gets her sense of hard work, family and community from her parents. She was raised in what is now Brewers Hill with her 16 siblings and parents. Her mother’s house was the center of the neighborhood. “My moth- er never turned anyone away, she did sewing and cooking for everyone in the neighborhood and my father cut everyone’s hair in the neighborhood. My mom made the most wonderful chicken and dumplings, and our neighbor made beautiful doilies and another neighbor canned to- matoes. Everyone had a special- ty,” she said. “And we all traded, making the community stronger. We all helped each other.” She also talked about her group of best friends from childhood, “The Valley Girls,” while proudly showing off a T-shirt that the group would be wearing at a brunch party at her house in a few days. On the shirt was a photo of friends who have been together since childhood. As she looked in the faces of her friends on the photo, you could see the joy and love in her eyes. She was excited to have her friends at her home in Amani, and she was so proud to bring her community from child- hood to the community she built for her own family. “It started out as just a small brunch and people kept finding out about it, so now it’s going to be a big party. I’ll be cooking for days, but I love having people at my home, in my neigh- borhood,” she said. “I think it’s getting better here.”
she reached out to Jerusa. “I connected her with my
co-worker Mr. Wes, and we went over and installed two cameras,” said Jerusa. “We were also able
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