Last year, Karen Walker could have been among the 1,500 people quietly queuing up at Jim R. Miller Park in Marietta for Thanks for Giving, a program that provides needy Cobb County families with Thanksgiving staples.
Instead, she was a volunteer last weekend for the food drive organized by the Marietta-based Center for Family Resources, helping wheel out grocery carts laden with big boxes of basics for people less fortunate than her.
In a state with an October unemployment rate of 10.2 percent, Walker had faced circumstances familiar to many Georgians. Despite 36 years of accounting experience, she had been unemployed for two of the past three years, holding a temp job the other year that provided some pay but no security.
Worried about losing her condo in Smyrna, she plowed her unemployment benefits into the mortgage and covered the other essentials with what she could borrow. It started to feel, she said, “like a huge trial that was never going to end.”
Then in April, the 56-year-old landed a part-time accounting job at the HoneyBaked Ham Co. of Georgia’s corporate office in Alpharetta.
After spending month upon month relying on the moral and financial support of family and fellow members of Mount Paran North Church of God in Marietta — as well as the advice of a counselor who helped her with “deep, really deep depression” — she’s now feeling cautiously optimistic.
Not that Walker, a divorced mother of two and grandmother of three is back on solid financial footing. She still visits MUST Ministries’ food pantry most weeks for bread and goes to a Cobb public health center because she can’t cover $21 every two weeks for part-timer’s insurance offered by her company.
Even though she hasn’t been able to afford a visit to a dentist in a decade and knows she needs cavities filled and crown work done, Walker gave up an opportunity for free dental services Saturday to volunteer for Thanks for Giving.
She did not regret the sacrifice. “It feels great,” Walker said. “I mean, I’ve been through it, so I can relate to what they’re going through.”
In fact, she consoled one recipient who was near tears, a mother of three teen boys who had recently driven by a food pantry four straight days before finally forcing herself to go in and ask for help.
Walker told her she, too, initially had a hard time accepting charity, but that there’s no reason to feel bad about it. “We’re all God’s children,” she told the woman.
“Everybody doesn’t understand that,” the woman responded. “They look down on those of us who don’t have enough.”
“I said, ‘That’s wrong,’ ” Walker recounted, and she encouraged the woman to “keep the faith.”
That’s not just a saying to Walker, who became a reborn Christian in 1973. She believes God answered her prayers and the prayers of family and members of her church when HoneyBaked called after spotting her resume on the Internet.
How happy was she to get that call?
“You have no idea,” she said, staring at long folding tables as they rapidly emptied of cans of cranberry sauce, loaves of bread, even ramen noodles — 70,000 items in all.
Though finally employed, she continues to live as frugally as she can, putting off shopping for clothes and items she needs for her home, such as bedroom curtains and a microwave. Material things, she said, simply aren’t as important anymore.
“Everything is super wonderful,” she said, “but I still have things to face because I have a part-time job.”
In that, Walker represents a growing trend. The number of part-time workers in Georgia grew during the recession while the rolls of full-time employees declined. In 2006, there were 3,946,000 full-time employees in the state and 572,000 part-time workers. By 2010, there were 3,542,000 full-timers and 696,000 part-timers, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
At least Walker now has enough money for one priority: to put gas in her 2003 Kia Spectra to make more frequent visits to her daughter and grandchildren in Dallas and her ailing 85-year-old father in Jasper.
In fact, her entire family plans to gather today at her dad’s place, and she’s bringing a HoneyBaked turkey and sides.
“I get a good discount,” she said proudly.
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