giving ‹‹ INSPIRING PEOPLE
JOAN C. BROWNING W LEWI SBURG, GREENBRIER COUNT Y Living Ambidextrously COVID redirects one woman’s journey, again.
A Prime Effort Bartini Prime owner manages a massive feeding operation.
“if you are going to live hand tomouth,” Mother said, “you had better be ambidextrous.” There’s an underground of ambidextrous entrepreneurs in West Virginia. Artists of all media: musicians, actors, re-enactors, craftspersons, writers, cartoonists, filmmakers. Farmers, hair stylists, massage therapists. Many, many more. I am part of the underground ambidextrous economy. Here is my story. I was a scholarship student, kicked out of college at 18 because, in Georgia, my skin color was different from that of the people with whom I was comfortable worshipping. I've essentially invented an economic life ever since. West Virginia Institute of Technology became the place that, as artist Colleen Anderson wrote, “called me.” When I returned four decades ago, I created a one-woman bookkeeping service. It wasn't easy and at times it wasn’t fun, but it did allow me to purchase a piece of hillside and eventually pay off a double-wide mobile home. A quarter-century ago, I was in a process of discerning whether I might be called to the Episcopal priesthood when friends urged me to join them in writing autobiographically. Our stories are published in Deep in Our Hearts: Nine White Women in the Freedom Movement by Curry, Browning, et. al., published in 2000 by the University of Georgia Press. This led to another sideline business, speaking at colleges, about a dozen times a year. Some time later, after volunteering for six months for a new nonprofit organization, I
created a part-time job and performed to the board of directors' satisfaction for 13 years. My plans to continue four more years ended abruptly in a power struggle that was joined by the college president, who had kicked me out of college many years earlier. Now ambidexterity was urgently necessary. So I accepted more speaking invitations. In fact, speaking about the lessons learned in the civil rights movement became my ministry. So I accepted every invitation that I could fit into the calendar. Travel expenses had to be provided, and whatever honorarium the host could provide. Some were for thousands of dollars, some were
When Justin Byers and his wife, Kari, heard in mid-March that West Virginia’s schools might close, they immediately
Bartini Prime owner Justin Byers (left) and chef Zachary Smith.
thought, How will kids get fed? The following morning, March 13, Justin posted an offer on the Facebook page of his Morgantown restaurant, Bartini Prime: If the schools did close, the restaurant would provide free boxed lunches for kids every Tuesday and Thursday. Other restaurants chimed in as Governor Justice announced closure of the schools. Every day the week of March 16 to 20, families in need were able to go to a Monongalia County school or to any of more than a dozen restaurants across Morgantown and receive one lunch per child. But the school system saw that daily lunch prep and distribution wasn’t efficient or safe and asked Byers to organize a weekly distribution. Byers quickly pulled together delivery, refrigerated storage, box donations, and volunteers to pack and distribute five days of breakfasts and lunches for 1,500 the following week—and for larger numbers still in the weeks that followed. His work forged connections that will strengthen anti-hunger efforts in the county long after the virus is gone.
hundreds of dollars, and twice the hat was passed to put gas in my car. Recuperating from a two-year debilitating illness recently gave me strength to accept more invitations. I also began actually guest preaching in churches. This winter, beginning with Martin Luther King Jr. Day on January 20 and ending at Edgewood Presbyterian Church on March 15, I spoke 21 times. Six were sermons in Georgia, Tennessee, and West Virginia. Six were presentations to 5th graders in Georgia and Tennessee. Eight were at colleges and community organizations. One was an academic conference. I had seven more on the calendar when the coronavirus grounded me. What am I doing differently because of the virus? Well, I drove to First Presbyterian Church in Dunbar and videotaped two sermons. They are available on the church’s Facebook page and its YouTube channel, and print bulletins and sermons are on the church’s website. Instead of being in person at Grace Episcopal Church in Alexandria, I will experience my first ever Zoom presentation! A cancelled presentation whose organizer spent 16 days in the hospital with COVID-19 and is home recovering his strength is trying to be rescheduled. The income from my civil rights and gospel ministries is not extravagant, but it adds comfort to my retirement. The coronavirus social distancing is not the first time that my financial life hit a brick wall. Now to live up to WV Living magazine naming me a West Virginia Wonder Woman, somehow, I shall survive!
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