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PAGE 2—The Southern Cross, December 5,1974
Being a Farm Worker: ‘This Is What I Do’
Franklin Lee is a real person, but at
his request his name has been changed.
In the past, he said, farmworkers who
have talked to the press have lost their
jobs and/or been put out of their
houses.
BY STEPHEN LANDRIGAN
SODUS, N.Y. (NC) -- Franklin
Delano Lee pulled the blanket tighter
around his shoulders. He was worried
about his arthritis, he said. If he is too
sore in the morning, he has a hard time
getting up and down the ladder to pick
the apples at the top of the tree.
“And I can’t hardly afford no holiday
right now,” he said with a forced smile.
“I haves to wait to I get home for that.”
Home for Franklin Lee (that’s not his
real name) is Haines City, Fla. But since
mid-August he has been living on a fruit
farm near Sodus at the heart of upstate
New York’s apple-growing belt, which
stretches along the southern shore of
Lake Ontario, roughly from Buffalo to
Syracuse.
He is one of several thousand
agricultural workers - most of whom
are black -- who come to the area each
year to work the apple harvest.
“Yes,” he said, “my mind’s on goin’
home, soon as we done picking. I don’t
like the cold. Don’t mind it so much
during the day, but when I comes back
here at night, I wants to be warm.” He
shivered slightly as he spoke.
Lee and his wife Marva live in one
room of a long barracks-like building
that houses a half-dozen migrant
farmworker families. The only heat in
the room comes from a two-burner gas
stove in the corner. But even with both
jets at their highest, they are meager
competition to the icy drafts that slip in
around the door and the windows and
up through the cracks in the floor.
“It gets so cold in here some
mornings,” Mrs. Lee broke in, “that the
water in the bucket freezes across the
top. We have to melt it first before we
can even make a cup of coffee.”
Water for the Lees comes from a
hand pump near the road, about 100
yards from their quarters. It has to be
carried a bucket at a time from the
pump to the house.
There is no plumbing of any kind in
the camp and the Lees share with the
other families a pair of outhouses
behind the barracks.
Franklin Lee does not like where he
is living, but, he said, he has lived in
worse.
“When I first came north, the only
place I could find to stay was an old
chicken coop. I couldn’t even stand up
straight in it. And when it rained, I tell
you the smell that came up out of the
floor was something awful.”
Asked why he comes back each year
and puts up with conditions like these,
he stated flatly; “This is what I do. In
the winter I pick oranges in Florida. In
the summer I pick apples in New York.
It’s what I do.”
Lee quit school in 1952 when he was
14. “Believe me, the school they let us
go to was not worth going to anyway,”
he said, referring to the segregated
school he attended. “So I started
coming north with my brother.”
Three years later the brother was
killed during an incident that erupted
when he tried to enter an all-white
tavern. Lee kept coming north on his
own.
Like many migrants, the Lees live
largely hand to mouth. Living in two
places, trying to feed their three
children, who were sent home to
Marva’s mother in Haines City at the
opening of school, rarely allows for any
savings.
At different times, said Marva, they
have thought about settling year-round
in New York state as do about 400 of
those who come each year to work the
harvest, according to figures kept by the
state department of labor.
Jobs and job-training programs are
more plentiful in the north than in
Florida. But the Lees are hesitant to
endure year-round the poor housing
conditions they face while here on the
season.
They have seen, they said, how their
friends have decided to resettle in New
York, get good jobs, get their children
enrolled in good schools, and then be
forced to live in sheds, garages, barns,
and vacant migrant camps designed for
seasonal use only.
“There’s no black man can buy a
house in Sodus, Wolcott, Williamson, or
any of these towns around here,” stated
Lee, “even if they ain’t fit for dogs.
“Now these folks don’t mind us
coming to pick their apples, long’s we
go home when we’re supposed to.
“They don’t mind us living near
them, long’s they own the houses. You
see, that way, they can keep a control
on us.”
Lee’s point was underscored by the
filing of a half-million dollar law suit by
a group called Hope Village that has
tried unsuccessfully for seven years to
build 25 low-cost houses for resettled
farmworkers in the neighboring town of
Huron.
Hope Village, whose case is being
argued by the NAACP, is charging that
racial discrimination on the part of the
town’s' officials - all of whom are white
- has kept the project from being
granted a building permit.
A long, costly court fight is feared,
and in the meantime people like
Franklin Lee have no where to go.
“And people get all shook up,” said
Lee with more than a trace of
bitterness, “if a couple of us gets drunk
on a Saturday night. You’ve got to do
something to keep from thinking about
what’s going on around here.”
Lee himself doesn’t drink. He attends
the Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Lyons,
N.Y., while he is here on the season.
“It don’t have to be the way it is. The
white folks is only bringing themselves
low by treating us so bad. Don’t get me
wrong, though. There’s a lot of white
people around here that treat us good.
Some of the farmers really look out for
their help. Some people been working
for the same farmer for years.
“But what makes me so mad is that
these decent folks see the others is
doing wrong, and then they don’t do
nothing about it. The Gospel of Jesus
they read in the white churches must be
a whole lot different from what I see in
mine.”
Franklin Lee was up and pacing the
floor of his cramped quarters. He said
he always got angry when he started
thinking about “the way it is” and he
didn’t want to talk about it anymore.
Before he sat down, he walked over
to the water bucket that was on the
counter near the stove. He looked at it,
swore and then smashed his hand
through the thin layer of ice that was
forming at the top.
Blessed Sacrament Bazaar
OFFICERS OF THE BLESSED SACRAMENT
Home and School Association are shown looking over
items scheduled for sale at the annual Bazaar and
Chicken Supper. They are: (left to right) Frances
Fogarty, President; Ann Lowery, Vice President;
Secretary, Jo Ann Glenn; Treasurer, Harriette Gaudry.
(Photo by Harry DeLorme)
Blessed Sacrament Church of
Savannah will hold its yearly Chicken
Supper and Bazaar on Saturday,
December 7, starting at 5 P.M. In
addition to the chicken suppers, which
will cost $1.25 (child’s plate) and $2.25
(regular), there will be numerous
handmade articles in the Christmas,
Boutique, Green Thumb and Variety
booths.
There will be homemade cakes and
cookies, a White Elephant Booth, Bean
Bag Throw, Grab Bag and other
activities. For those who are unable to
remain for the bazaar, a take-out station
for chicken suppers will be in operation.
Members of bazaar committees have
been working on projects under the
guidance of the following chairmen:
Bazaar Chairman, Harriette Gaudry;
Christmas Committee, Lil Harrisson,
Joyce Kemp; Cake Booth, Pearlie
Cosgrove; White Elephant, Burlie Wilson
and Barbara Lutz.
Bean Bag, Liz Garvin; Grab Bag,
Madeline Getti; Ticket Committee,
Hilde Broderick, Margaret Matthews;
Kitchen Committee, Barbara White;
Frying Crew, Charlie Russo; Boutique,
Kay Lisicia and Sandra Mahoney; Green
Thumb, Sara Ryan, Ann Lanier, Jerry
Fogarty; Variety, Ann Lowery, Jo Ann
Glenn; Publicity, Rita DeLorme.
• Nurses On Duty
24 Hours A Day
»
Supervisor - Mrs. Tina Von Waldner, R.N.
Administrator - Charles Von Waldner
• Individual Care • Catholic Management
Regular Staff With Chief Of Staff
• RN Living on Premises
• Semi-Private Rooms
• Special Diets
5609 Skidaway Rd. Phone 354-2752 Savannah
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SAVANNAH DIOCESE
Liturgy Commission Hears Reports
BY SR. CAMILLE COLLINI, C.S.J.
The Diocesan Liturgical Commission
met November 21 in Dublin, Georgia.
Msgr. LeFrois reported on the
Federation of Diocesan Liturgical
Commissions Convention which was
making preparation for the revised rite
on the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
Stress was put on the importance of
catechesis before the new rite is used.
It was announced that two
presentations on the inner nature and
the rite of the Sacrament of
Reconciliation will be given to the
priests of the diocese in early January
and that on December 12 a Day of
Recollection for the Clergy will be held
in Augusta at St. Helena’s on the
theology and preaching of the Word.
Father Roy Cox presented a paper
>
Readers
Reply
s
Editor:
given to the priests of the Savannah
Deanery on the Rites of Initiation:
Some Observations and
Recommendations.
Father Tom Ryan reported on his
involvement in the Helicon Liturgical
Publication of the new Catholic Liturgy
Book which will contain the order of
the Mass, 300 Hymns, sacraments,
morning and evening prayers from the
PRAYER OF CHRISTIANS. He stated
that no other publication will be coming
out for the next few years and that this
book can be purchased in bulk orders
for $6.95 instead of $10 if it is ordered
before December 15, 1974. The book
will be ready for the first week of Lent.
Members present: Msgr. Marvin
LeFrois, Sr. Camille Collini, Fathers
Roy Cox, Mike Smith, Fred Nijem, Bee
McCormick, Ann Knight, Sr. Ruth
Marie Hensler, Nancy Boatwright and
Father Ton Ryan, Guest, and Margie
Land. Prior to the meeting the members
of the Liturgical Commission
participated in the Celebration of the
Eucharist in the Church.
Please print the following letter in the
Southern Cross if space allows you
relative to the article by Henry
Hutcheson on the very good work of
Pacelli High School students:
I as a priest who served both St.
Anne’s parish and Pacelli am delighted
with their action on school hunger day.
This is not the first time that Pacelli
school has led by its example as Pacelli
students had a school hunger day three
years ago and I expect many times
since.
Some years ago it was not so popular
to fast for world hunger. One could
easily earn the term oddball if not other
names. Hopefully now we are becoming
more educated to the plight of 4
hundred million malnourished persons.
The pain of hunger forces school kids
to have empathy with our starving
neighbors in other lands. What is so
beautiful about Pacelli’s endeavor is that
it means saving the lunch money for a
common fund and then we as Christians
giving it to people, Moslem, Buddhist or
Hindu.
Again, congratulations to Fr. Bob
Mattingly, principal, the faculty and
Pacelli High students. I hope the city
school kids of Columbus will follow
your lead.
(Rev.) Michael O’Keeffe
St. Joseph’s Parish
Waycross, Georgia
CHOOSE LIFE
Give to
BIRTHRIGHT
501V2 Seventh Street
Augusta, Georgia 30904
(404) 722-4357
LITURGICAL MEETING - Pictured above is the group of delegates
from the southeastern dioceses (Region IV) who attended the 1974
Convention of the Federation of Diocesan Liturgical Commissions, held in
Spokane, Washington, October 14-17. With the group, third from the left,
is the representative of the Savannah Diocese, Father Marvin J. LeFrois.
Columbus Knights
The Knights of Columbus Council No. 1019, Columbus, Georgia sponsored a
Marriage Vow Renewal Mass at Our Lady of Lourdes Church on Sunday, November
24th at the 9 A.M. Mass. Reverend Father Edward Frank, Pastor of Our Lady of
Lourdes and Council 1019 Chaplain, performed the ceremonies. Deputy Grand
Knight, Tom Kleinsmith, and Trustee, Mat Byrnes, did the readings. Joe and Sara
Spano, married for 35 years, took up the gifts. Among those present for the renewal of
the vows were John T. and Marie Bryant, who have been married 55 years. Following
the services, a Communion Breakfeast was held at the Knights Hall at 802 Broadway.
Anthony Comeaux, Oscar Abrain, and Harold Perry were in charge of the
arrangements.
LEFT TO RIGHT: Mrs. Joe Cobis, Mr. and Mrs. Mat Byrnes, Mr. and
Mrs. John T. Bryant, Mr. and Mrs. Tom Kleinsmith, Father Edward Frank,
Acolyte James Cunningham at Columbus Marriage Vow Renewal Mass.
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