Mary and John Wages lived well, but not flamboyantly. He was a manager at a debt- collection law firm. She specialized in customer service for an electronics retailer.
Within months of each other, both got laid off.
Now the Gwinnett County couple relies on meager unemployment insurance, food stamps and whatever aid can be provided by the Lawrenceville Cooperative Ministry, a nonprofit housed in a church on Church Street. One recent Friday, Mary Wages sat in the pews with other clients waiting to speak with volunteer counselors.
“I’m not trying to brag,” she told me, “but we were doing well. We had a savings account and a nice house, then all of a sudden — bam! Now, we are just trying to hang on. It’s really hard.”
Last week, it was reported that Georgia had the third-highest poverty rate in the country at 18.7 percent, with more than 1.8 million people counted as poor. As families struggle, agencies like the Lawrenceville ministry feel strained, too.
The Wages didn’t aspire to become poor. It just happened. Mary has handled their situation better than her husband, who, she said, “feels like a loser” despite his desperate search for employment. He shoulders the blame for their sordid state, their fall. His wife, to little avail, tries to assuage him.
When it comes to charity, this couple were accustomed to being donors, not recipients. Now they pick and choose which bills to pay and which ones to let lapse. Mary said she turns to the Lawrenceville co-op only when it’s a necessity, realizing that others are more destitute. Recently, the agency gave her vouchers to buy winter clothes for their 4-year-old and 18-month-old daughters.
“This place has been a blessing,” she said. “It’s real scary when poverty hits you suddenly. It’s a reality check. A slap in the face.”
It’s easy to embrace a skeptical view of the poverty-stricken, especially when you hold down a job with sweet pay. The less sympathetic among us wax and wane about self-reliance, personal responsibility, choice and indolence and how all those things dictate one’s plight.
Yet if you talk to people in the trenches like Linda Freund, director of the Lawrenceville ministry, you’ll soon learn that the misperceptions — deadbeats in search of handouts and those engaged in self-destructive behavior — do exist, but they are minuscule among those who seek assistance. Moreover, people who turn to Gwinnett’s co-ops have to show proof their needs are legit. I’ve spent time aplenty at various agencies. The Welfare Mom who rocks diamonds, totes a Gucci bag and drives an Escalade has yet to appear.
Poor doesn’t automatically equate to shiftlessness. An unfortunate turn of events can befall the best of us, including those who consider themselves responsible. One day life is good. On the next, you face an enormous car repair, maddening medical bills and other unforeseen expenses that come knocking.
In the midst of it all, you lose your job. Just like the Wageses. Now what?
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