In a place where every one seems to know everyone's first name, heads bowed on Sunday — over steaming cups of hot coffee — to remember one of the regulars who died in his sleep a short time ago at the Crossroads homeless shelter.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — In a place where every one seems to know everyone's first name, heads bowed on Sunday — over steaming cups of hot coffee — to remember one of the regulars who died in his sleep a short time ago at the Crossroads homeless shelter.
The man they knew as "David" couldn't string the words together to make a sentence.
But, as Pastor Jack Jones, recalled him: he could play piano like Elton John, guitar like Jimi Hendrix and sing like golden-voiced David Crosby of Crosby, Stills & Nash. (As a tribute, Jones' brother, Tom, played Van Morrison's "Moondance" on the piano.)
But this was not a funeral. It was a celebration of camaraderie amidst struggle. And the kindness of strangers who do not remain strangers very long.
"Miracles are happening all the time. All the time,'' Jones tells the men and women, gathered on this Sunday before Christmas in their hooded sweatshirts and donated parkas, with the tags still hanging down, at the Mathewson Street United Methodist Church — as they are welcome to do every Sunday — for a friendship and prayer breakfast.
"I look at it like this: where we are today, we don't always have to be. You know that?'' said George Haney, 57, a worship leader, soloist and man in recovery, who speaks from life experience. Why is he here singing on this Sunday? "Psalm 100 says 'make a joyful noise' ... The good Lord just pointed me in this direction...."
Pastor Jack, as he is familiarly called at the church, explains: We worship in a Christian tradition every week," but for some "the meal itself is the worship."
He also tells a visitor he is conscious of not wanting to lay the religion on so thick it might discourage people from coming to the church along Mathewson Street for the food, the camaraderie and a helping hand. ("We tell people [to] take what they like and leave the rest ... If what they want is to eat the food, and leave all the religion aside, then they are welcome to do that.")
Volunteers scurry about with trays of scrambled eggs, ham, pancakes, home fires and fruit on china plates. Some Sundays the breakfast draws 250 to 300 people.
The slicing and dicing and peeling — and egg cracking — begins at 5 a.m. with Scott Budnick, a 41-year-old father of three and home contractor, at the helm. The church, on its website, describes Budnick as "the heart and soul of the volunteer group'' that hosts the 8 a.m. Sunday breakfast.
He was in Pastor Jack's youth group more than 20 years ago. When Jones put out a call for volunteers on Facebook, he was among the first to respond.
As "a popular Little League coach out in Rumford,'' Pastor Jack says, Budnick "recruited a ton of volunteers and resources. People would bring food over to his porch. [Somebody] would take responsibility for the sausage. Others would stay up the night before making the pancakes. Others would bring the syrup every week."
Among the many other volunteers: Joann Capaldi, 52, of Warwick, a middle-school secretary who spends her Sundays ladling food and cleaning pots in the church kitchen; Howie King, an engineer, who also works in the kitchen alongside his 13-year-old son; and Roger Williams University Prof. Becky Spritz, who helped collect and wrap Christmas presents.
On this day, Pastor Jack singled out 74-year-old Luigi Montanaro — who currently lives in a homeless shelter run by the church district — for praise.
"We figured out that he's been cracking eggs in that kitchen ... for the past three years" — applause — "and he cracks 60 dozen eggs times 52 [weeks] times three [years], which we figured out is 37,000 eggs ... He's my hero."
A Vietnam War POW, Montanaro says: "I got lucky. Of the 26 guys that I was captured with ... only eight of us made it."