NEWS FEATURE: Dallas Throws Huge Party for the Homeless

c. 2004 Religion News Service DALLAS _ Operation Christmas Gift 2004, one of the largest gatherings of its kind in this city’s history, brought together churches, businesses and volunteers to throw a huge party for about 8,000 of the city’s homeless and needy. Held Saturday (Dec. 18) at the Dallas Convention Center, the event offered […]

c. 2004 Religion News Service

DALLAS _ Operation Christmas Gift 2004, one of the largest gatherings of its kind in this city’s history, brought together churches, businesses and volunteers to throw a huge party for about 8,000 of the city’s homeless and needy.

Held Saturday (Dec. 18) at the Dallas Convention Center, the event offered a meal, gifts, concerts, prayer, makeovers, photos, medical exams, legal advice and counseling. A live Nativity scene greeted the guests of honor as they entered the hall.


“I used to despise the homeless,” said event organizer and Operation Care founder Susie Jennings as she knelt to wash the feet of a homeless man.

Though petite in stature, Jennings proved gargantuan in her ability to mobilize the city’s faith-based, legal, medical, social service and corporate communities to help the homeless for the holidays.

Dallas homeless service agencies report between 5,000 and 7,000 homeless, but it’s not just a Dallas, or a Texas, problem.

Reports from the National Mental Health Information Center cite mental illness and substance abuse as primary factors for the estimated 700,000 Americans who find themselves homeless on any given night, and name family reunification as an important aspect of combating chronic homelessness.

The U.S. Census and the city’s own homeless studies report that Dallas has less “affordable” housing than any other city in the nation _ a significant factor contributing to homelessness here.

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While the evening was a success, Jennings had to work hard to make it that way. She said it took two years to raise funds to help the homeless, while it took her only a few weeks to raise a similar amount of money for a children’s outreach program.

“It’s arrogant thinking we have when we regard the homeless as smelly, shiftless bums. I used to hate to be around them, but now I can’t smell them anymore,” said Jennings.


“I just need to help them.”

At the party’s petting zoo, Deborah Stanley, 35, held her 2-year-old son Christian up to pet a donkey. She said she was a victim of domestic violence and living in a battered women’s shelter, and certainly reuniting with her husband was not what would help her out that day.

Eric Noble, 39, said he was released from a California prison in February, and came to get “warm stuff” and some free legal advice about getting on disability. He said he was out of touch with family members.

Louise Hendrix, 61, was being fitted with a pair of eyeglasses at the party. From her motorized wheelchair, Hendrix said that, for now, she lives at the Dallas Life Foundation. She said she had been living with her daughter, but the whole family was suffering from bipolar problems, and the situation became impossible for her. The foundation’s services include treatment for her emotional problems.

Several red curtains away, 39-year-old Kim Chapman peeked out from behind a brush of carrot-colored bangs to watch Mary Mpofu, a Dallas church volunteer, paint her nails. Chapman said she has been living in a shelter for five months, ever since her mother sold the house in which they lived. “I talk to my mother some, but I don’t want her to know I live in a shelter,” she said.

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Dave Harlow, 48, shoved several pairs of new socks into his oversized coat pocket. He held a new tent and sleeping bag from the event’s holiday offerings.

Harlow said he has lived under a freeway bridge since last Christmas Eve when he was mugged and stabbed and had his truck, wallet and driver’s license stolen.


He said he used to work in sales but lost his job, couldn’t pay his hospital bills, broke up with his wife, and lost his house in a remodeling grant legal dispute. Now he doesn’t have access to any acceptable identification records to help him over the mound of paper required to get work or disability provisions.

He doesn’t talk to his three grown kids, he said, “because I don’t want them to know how I live, and I want them to have higher standards than this.”

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