City of Refuge ‘going the extra mile’

A few months ago, Pamela Cudd thought the man she now trusts to be the face of City of Refuge might show up in the newspaper.

“He was at his lowest point and I knew it wouldn’t be long before we were reading about him in the papers, in the obituaries,” she said of Little Hawk, an American Indian who describes himself as Cherokee, Sioux and a little Irish. “So we just really took him under our wing and started working with him and moved him out of the (homeless) camp onto the property of City of Refuge.”

Little Hawk, his real name, stayed in a tent for several months. He began tidying up the property, taking out the garbage, picking up trash and cigarette butts and generally keeping an eye on the place. Cudd and her husband, Dennis, gradually started giving Hawk responsibilities.

“From that point he took a leadership role in the ministry,” she said. “He is really the up-front person people see when they walk in that door because he’s there all the time. It’s a nice success story for people to see that if you put out a helping hand to provide stability and a support system for people they can overcome.”

City of Refuge offers food, medical aid, shelter and transitional living assistance for people in need.

Hawk, 58, concurred there was “a strong possibility” he would end up in the obits.

“I spent 35 years in the tree (cutting) business and I’ve been in a lot of car wrecks, so I’ve been busted up and torn apart,” he explained. “I don’t like drugs — not even taking pain pills — so I drank to ease the pain.”

But he admitted there came a time when he “got tired” of the drinking, too. Although not a Christian — Hawk said he follows the religion of his “fathers” — he prays and plays a traditional prayer flute.

“This is a Christian ministry, and I have the utmost respect for the Christian community,” he said. “I have made many friends through this ministry.”

Cudd said when she visits the ministry Hawk “might be in there having dinner with a family that’s been sent by one of the other churches and they’ve befriended him.”

Churches are the lifeblood of the ministry that touches 6,500 people a month on a $300,000 a year budget, with 12 area churches currently pulling the load. But there are some aspects of the outreach a budget doesn’t cover.

City of Refuge officials believe homeless families miss out on more than a residence and steady source of nutritious food.

“Thanksgiving or Christmas or Mother’s Day, that is not in the budget,” Cudd said. “We call on our churches and individuals to help us with the holidays. We do special things for our families, we try to not just provide the critical needs like housing, food, shelter and clothing, we try to go above and beyond that. We try to do things for our families that they don’t have the opportunity to do themselves.”

For example, during the summer homeless parents and children were loaded up to go to Fort Mountain for “beach day.”

“You go on vacation, I go on vacation — even if it’s just a weekend getaway — but these families can’t do that,” she pointed out. “Half of them don’t even have vehicles. You and I take that for granted, but that’s a special day for them.”

In the fall, the buses roll again for “trunk-or-treating” to different festivals put on by churches and schools “because our children don’t have an opportunity to do that,” Cudd said.