Word: gracefully
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...install wiring, put up paneling and dig septic tanks. Over the past six years MadCAAP has recycled old houses for 70 families in and around Canton (pop. 11,500), a courthouse-squared town 20 miles north of Jackson. MadCAAP's aim, according to its unflappable founder and director, Sister Grace Mary McGuire, 57, is to "try and break the cycle of poverty by helping one family at a time...
...Sister Grace, a conservatively dressed woman with gentle blue eyes and short brown hair, helping the poor has been a lifelong ambition. As a child growing up in New York City, she wanted to aid leprosy sufferers in India. She never made it to Asia, but in 1973 her Philadelphia-based religious order, Missionary Servants of the Most Blessed Trinity, sent her to the Deep South. "I never dreamed that I'd be working with septic tanks, wiring, let alone moving houses," she says, "but when people are poor and depressed, you want to do anything you can to uplift...
...workers hoisting the house's concrete steps onto a pickup truck while Anderson and her children pile broken bricks and stack cut wood. Clearance for the move requires approval from a slew of bureaucrats, and Walter Malone, 52, a professional house mover who has completed 30 jobs for Sister Grace, still has a few final forms to sign and fees to pay. "The biggest difficulty is the paperwork," he says, pointing to a glove compartment crammed full of documents. "I got so much paperwork on this thing that if anyone stops me, it will take me 15 minutes just...
...Malone slowly trucks the house from the site, pulling past the Pearl Grocery Mart and onto Route 80. The police escort halts traffic as Malone's son Greg leads the caravan in an attention-grabbing red-bannered pickup. Next come the police, a Mississippi Power & Light crew and Sister Grace, who occasionally slows down to take a picture. Bringing up the rear is Otis Towner at the wheel of the pickup carrying the steps. With hazard lights blinking, the procession crawls past the local U-Haul dealership, gas stations and the post office. Impatient drivers trail behind, and kids...
...This house is one of the best we've gotten," Sister Grace says as she appraises the building. "It is everyone working together that makes this happen. That is love of neighbor. Little by little you take each family and do what...