For 50 years, Christian Help has been finding ever better ways to get donated food, clothing, housewares, and emergency financial assistance to those in need.
In the 1970s, Sister Thecla Shiel, an Ursuline nun and principal at St. Francis Grade School on Beechhurst Avenue, rallied a group to create an organization that would help people in need. Christian Help, Inc., (CHI) opened across the street at 9 Beechurst in March 1975 to offer a free clothing store, a food pantry, and more. Sister Thecla wanted to motivate empathy and generosity, she told The Dominion Post, “by helping to develop a greater awareness among Christians of their responsibilities and their opportunities for building a socially just society.”
Necessities given freely to people in need—that was the idea. It soon included assistance paying utility bills, buying gas, and getting prescription medications, a program of what we might today call radical love. The names of the core founding group are familiar still: In addition to Sister Thecla, there were Frances and Dr. Charles Cremer, Louella Crynock, Marge Foster, Beverly Laurita, George Markusic, Evelyn Prager, Sister Frances Schaf, and Barbara Soccorsi.
Sister Thecla is recalled as an eminent force for good. A senior nun who grew up in nearby Grafton, she had attained considerable influence in the church as an educator and had chosen Morgantown as her last site assignment, Fran Cremer recalls. She was driven by Pope Paul VI’s 1971 call to action, “emphasizing equal opportunity, that everyone should have the chance to realize their potential,” Cremer says. “Also, ecumenism—all people working together regardless of faith. She spearheaded Christian Help in a way that made people want to join with her.” The Cremers and other whole families pitched in, staffing the store, making deliveries, meeting the needs.
Sister Thecla ran CHI until about 1982, when Sister Mary Brendan Conlon took over as executive director. Sister Brendan was a dynamo, her successor, Rich Schlameuss, remembers. “She never stopped moving,” he says. “I was so impressed by her.” It was during this period that Beverly Laurita, who was the first volunteer coordinator, and the Laurita family gifted its property on Walnut Street to Christian Help. The four-story former Loving Furniture building has been the organization’s downtown anchor ever since.
Sister Brendan left Morgantown in 1994 to start another Christian Help in southern West Virginia. When Schlameuss took over, CHI was still offering the free clothing store, the food pantry, and emergency financial assistance and had added a furniture and appliance exchange. He recounts the genesis of another program that’s helped thousands.
“A young lady came in for assistance, I think bus tickets. She needed them for job interviews, but she kept not getting the jobs.” Her wardrobe didn’t present her at her best, he says. “So we gave her a voucher to go to Walmart to purchase something nice. She went to another job interview and immediately got hired. I thought, ‘We have nice clothing here—what if we set aside the best?’ ” The Women’s Career Clothing Closet was born and, a while later, the men’s.
Schlameuss was followed by Francis Conrad in 2001 and, not long after, Cheryl Callen. When the current director, Colleen Lankford, came on in 2018, all of the current programs and events were in place, and her role has primarily been to streamline services and tailor them more closely to client needs. As other organizations created backpack giveaways, for example, CHI began donating its school supplies directly to school counseling offices. And rather than holding its Prom Chic Boutique as an evening event in town, which was challenging for parents, the organization now takes it directly to the high schools. But it still builds on Sister Thecla’s intention, Lankford says. “The initial vision was a more socially just society, and it is still quite literally that today.”
CHI mobilizes an extraordinary ongoing volunteer effort—almost 8,000 hours in 2023—and donations of more than 25,000 pounds of food and $2.5 million worth of clothing and housewares each year. Its four stories of donated items are tidily organized to move them through to the people who can use them. The modest 10% to 15% of the organization’s budget that it spends on overhead puts it among the very most efficient nonprofits, meaning donations do the maximum good.
Despite fluctuations that reflect the rise and fall of the economy and of other social service organizations, many of CHI’s numbers are consistent over time—about 1,000 children received holiday toys in 2010, for example, and about 1,000 in 2023; about $60,000 in emergency assistance was distributed in 2008, and about $80,000 in 2023. One could see that as discouraging, but Lankford doesn’t. She references Jesus’ words, “The poor you will always have with you,” from the Gospels. “People are always going to need help,” she says. “We are here to treat people with dignity and respect and provide for them in a way that’s helpful and immediate.”
CHI is unusual, says Schlameuss, who now lives in eastern Pennsylvania. “We don’t have that in my community. It’s super special to have an organization that’s able to be responsive in a way that government agencies or some other nonprofits can’t.”
Christian Help will celebrate 50 years of meeting needs throughout 2025. Check the web page for activities.
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