Marsha's homecoming, in the end, was not the humbling humiliation she had feared. Instead, it proved to be a new beginning. Feeling a huge sense of relief, she embraced her childhood home, and came to love and cherish it. And most importantly, it led her one step closer to finding her true calling under the guidance of Franki Rutherford at the Carlotta Community Center.
Energized with resolve, Marsha Timpson was determined to find decent employment. She was used to holding down three service jobs a day, but upon returning to the hills she discovered her prospects were alarmingly few. There were no restaurants to speak of in Big Creek and that left only housekeeping - a luxury few people could afford. Reduced to picking up a smattering of cleaning jobs throughout the valley, she was averaging a paltry $10 a day. Even with her indefatigable energy, Marsha was only able to eke out about $300 a month. Rent payment left her with less than $100 for everything else for her family. "We didn't have television or telephone or anything like that," she says. "I had a car but you couldn't go out of town because it wouldn't go up the hills!"
Still, she refused to give up or give in. Then, fate intervened when she secured a job cleaning the War Library. One day after the usual mopping, dusting and emptying of waste baskets, a little girl approached Marsha seeking help to find a book. Marsha not only located the book, but asked the sweet child if she would like it read to her. Tucked in a corner, surrounded by imposing stacks of tomes, the book was read in hushed tones. So successful was the storytelling, soon other children joined in the impromptu reading sessions. Intrigued, the library asked Marsha if she would mind doing it every Friday afternoon. "So I started reading to them and I loved it! The children would come and hunt for me and say, 'read to me, read to me'". The groups started small, numbering perhaps four or five kids, but word, and attendance, grew. And grew. Marsha beams, "I was in my element, like a hunting pup. I was dressing up. I was so into this thing! Well, they started busing them in from Head Start kindergarten and I would have twenty to thirty kids!"
The library readings eventually led Marsha to Americorps and the turning point of her life. Americorps was bringing The Apple Read program to the valley and they needed reading coaches for the children. When Mavis Brewster of Americorps heard of this remarkable woman who was attracting dozens of hill children to the library, she instructed her staff to enlist her. The organization was not allowed to offer paying jobs but had to encourage people like Marsha to volunteer; as an incentive they proposed a living allowance. Marsha, however, was not about to have any part of it. "Well, I had never heard of Americorps," she insists. "Volunteerism and service -- that was a language I did not speak. I worked."
Nevertheless, the organization was so impressed with her that they redoubled their efforts to recruit her. But their attempts to explain the merits of volunteerism fell on deaf ears. Marsha adamantly insisted that she had children to feed and that she couldn't even consider becoming a volunteer. The organization persisted, pointing out that Americorps was about making a difference in peoples' lives. A person like Marsha, they suggested, could change a child's life forever. Even with that bait, Marsha was not biting. "I thought it was a bunch of crap because to me, if you make a difference, you have to do something huge. You had to save, like, 100 lives or something." However, when they told her that her 'living allowance' would be $650 a month, a flabbergasted Marsha quoted the famous line from the film, Jerry Maguire, shouting, "Show me the money!" Convinced and converted, Marsha eagerly signed up, thrilled at the prospect of making more than twice what she was bringing home at the time.
But the money was the least of it. Timpson would be changed forever by Americorps.
Her initiation into the transformational power of selfless volunteerism came in the form of a small boy from the poor hills of nearby Bartley. His name was Jonathan and he had a severe speech impediment making him the target of ridicule from the other children. In retaliation, the youngster would strike back at them and always get in trouble. A loner, he walked around with his head hung low, muttering to himself. His parents were at their wits' end; even Jonathan's teachers had written him off, concluding that the troubled boy had no capacity or desire to learn. But Marsha, seeing the parallels in her own son's disabilities, was determined not to give up on him.
"Jonathan and I had been working on his spelling words," Marsha says. "He'd never passed his spelling test. So, we were doing his spelling words one day and the word was 'us'. You can't imagine somebody struggling with the 'us' but, boy, we struggled with it! But he finally got it right. I said, 'Good, Jonathan, give Mrs. Timpson a sentence with the word 'us' and I'll write it for you." As an incentive, Marsha rose, chalk in hand and walked to the blackboard, poised to write. After much agitated deliberation, the boy finally tapped her on the shoulder and said, "Ms. Timtn, let us dance." Intensely proud and moved by the breakthrough, Marsha wrote the sentence in big letters on the board, then turned to the delighted boy and pledged, "Jonathan, you make a 100 on your spelling test on Friday and, by God, we'll dance"
That Monday at home, Marsha spent the whole afternoon nervously fretting about how Jonathan had scored on his test. As a precaution, and to possibly nudge fate a bit in the boy's direction, she put her boom box in her car and, at 3:00 PM, apprehensively drove to the school. "When I pushed that door open, there stood Jonathan at the top of the steps looking at me." The boy was hopping back and forth, trying to suppress his glee. "Ms. Timtn, Ms. Timtn, I made 100!" Then he threw out his arms toward her. "Let us dance!" Tears streaming down her face, Marsha ran back out to the car, grabbed her battered boom box, commandeered an empty classroom and plugged the machine in. "By God, we danced!" she says emphatically. "Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers had nothing on us, I want to tell you. We danced!"
The joyful incident still resonates with Marsha. "That's when I learned about making a difference - that you really could. And I didn't make a difference in that child's life but I made a difference in that day. And that little difference rippled over. It was amazing because when the kids would go through that door to go down to the bathroom, they saw him dancing with me, their Ms. Timps, so he became like a hero for the day. He was dancing with Ms. Timps! So, they began to look at Jonathan a little different. So it rippled over in how they saw him. And that teacher who told me that I was wasting my time on him saw that he was capable with just a little extra help. So she began to work more with him. So it rippled over into her. Heck, his momma was so excited when I went for a home visit, I thought I was going to have to dance with her because for the first time, they heard something good about Jonathan."
That June, Marsha's stint with the program at that particular school came to a close. At the end of the year school assembly, when Mr. Spencer, the principal, announced that it was her last time, every teacher, parent and student rose to give her a huge, sustained standing ovation. "You have no idea what that did for my heart," Marsha says in a hush. "I can tell you this. I never received a standing ovation for cleaning a toilet from anyone. There is nothing wrong with cleaning for people. But there is if you think that's all you can do."
As she finishes telling us her story, she wipes the tears from her eyes. "Guess I should be just glad I made it this far. I know I have had it bad but there are others a lot worse off than me. My life is easy compared to the others. My job is to make ends meet, make sure there is food on the table and then to help others. The people in these hills are my neighbors." She throws up her arms. "It is that simple, guys, it is that simple."