Some stories stick in your mind long after their publication date. You hope they may have had a similar impact on a handful of readers, too. All the same, you don’t expect them to end up as pieces in an exhibition. Yet the issue that included Carol Hodgson’s article on a young woman called Lamaryet (Summer 2008) will be included in an upcoming exhibit at Delta State University, on the work of the Box Project.
Carol’s piece chronicled the connection she and Jim (Biology, Emeritus) forged with Lamaryet and her family through the Box Project. The Hodgsons were one of many sponsors who committed to mailing boxes of needed supplies to Mississippi families living in rural poverty. Carol always made sure to include a selection of books matched to the children’s ages, and encouraged them to persist in their education. Lamaryet listened: Her graduation from college was the occasion of our article. Four years on, Carol reports that Lamaryet went on to earn her master’s degree in chemistry and biochemistry from the University of Southern Mississippi. She now works in the university’s chemistry research lab.
Here’s the text of Carol’s article from that Summer 2008 issue:
MISSISSIPPI LEARNING
Come May, Jim and Carol Hodgson (Biology) would normally have been looking forward to Commencement at St. Norbert. This year, however, they had to miss. They had promised instead to see another graduate cross the platform—a promise made10 years ago when they first encountered a Mississippi 12-year-old named Lamaryet.
The Hodgsons came to know Lamaryet and her family through the Box Project, an organization that matches sponsors from across the United States with recipient families living in rural poverty.
Before heading south to her graduation, Carol shared the story of their relationship:
Joy, the mother, was 39; her daughter, Lamaryet, was 12, and the son, Jonturius, was six when we were first matched. They live in Shaw, Miss, a small rural town in the Yazoo delta. While this area contains some of the world’s best cotton land, it is also home to some of the most impoverished people in our nation. Many live in tar-paper shacks without running water, indoor toilets, kitchen sinks or electricity. Some of the adults can’t read or write. For most, it is a life of despair.
Each sponsor family is encouraged to learn as much as they can about their family, the region, and their family’s culture. Fortunately, all the members of our family can read and write, and we were able to exchange letters from day one.
The program involves sending a box each month of needed supplies such as food, clothing, school supplies, books, cleaning supplies, household items, and health and beauty aids.
One must always bear in mind when mailing the monthly box how little the recipient families have. So, when I sent a box that first Thanksgiving, I packed all the ingredients for a pumpkin pie along with a bowl, mixing spoon, measuring cups and a tin to bake it in.
Of particular importance to me during the last 10 years has been providing Lamaryet and Jonturius with books appropriate to their ages—the classics, geography, history, biology, but also books about and for African-American children. And so each month I made sure to send at least 10 new books to them. I like to believe that reading also encouraged them in their studies at school and broadened their social and cultural awareness.
Jim and I drove down to meet Joy and her family over spring break in 1999. It was our first trip to Mississippi and it was an eye-opening experience. The poverty; the living conditions; the dirt streets and rubble-strewn appearance of the decaying towns was worse than most of the places we’ve visited in developing countries such as Panama, Peru and the Philippines.
How can a state be so backward? There’s no one to help these people. The dishonor of hunger, poverty and prejudice in the U.S. is something all Americans should be educated about.
Yes, in some of the larger cities, entry-level jobs exist. But if you’re too poor to own a car, and if buses or trains don’t service the place you live, how are you supposed to get to the town where the jobs are? The vicious cycle of poverty entraps most who live there.
Our recipient family has always shown an interest in learning. Joy [Lamaryet’s mother] understood the importance of an education. And during our 10-year relationship, she eventually received her GED. But it was her dream to see her children graduate from high school.
Education is one of the core values of the Box Project, a way of empowering low-income families to get off welfare, and something that really appealed to Jim and me.
In all my letters each month, I stressed how important it was for the children to become educated, to seek higher education as a way of helping themselves toward a better level of self-sufficiency and better-paying jobs.
I always told Lamaryet – she is the one who more than anyone else in the family was the most education-orientated – that she could do whatever she wanted, be whatever she wanted.
Life served many lemons to Lamaryet. Several years ago, after Joy finally landed her first job and put a down payment on a trailer home for herself and the children, she (Joy) was diagnosed with schizophrenia, a terrible disease that threatened to destroy her family not only psychologically but fiscally as well.
During this difficult time, Lamaryet kept the family together, getting odd jobs where she could while still attending college, and doing all the cooking, cleaning and grocery shopping. Unbeknownst to me until a few months ago, Lamaryet also used her scholarship money to make the monthly mortgage payments on the trailer. It was a time of despair for her, a time of assuming the role of mother, something no full-time college-age student should have to do.
I encouraged her not to give up college even if she had to drop down to only one or two courses a semester. And she never gave up. Lamaryet is graduating from Delta State University in Cleveland, Miss., on May 11, 2007 with a major in chemistry. Her goal is to attend graduate school.
Through the years I promised her that if she graduated from high school and then college, Jim and I would be there to see her walk across the stage and accept her diploma. Lamaryet seized the day and the world is hers. We will be there and I couldn’t be prouder of her if she were our own daughter.
