Releasing the helm of The Ark

By Jennifer L. Johnson
Published Friday, January 01, 2010

After more than two decades directing The Ark, a faith-based help agency, Laura MacArthur begins the New Year as a retiree.

The mother of five children, MacArthur looks forward to getting a chance to do all the things she never had the time to do. Even so, she will miss coming into work, she said.

"I'm leaving not because there's anything wrong or because I'm unhappy, but just because it's time," said MacArthur, 64. "I don't think there are a lot of people who can say that they truly love their job and wake up each morning happy to come in to work."

MacArthur helped found The Ark, a cooperative effort of 35 local church congregations offering support to people who need assistance with basic needs like rent and utilities.

"We're not all things to all people, but what we do is fantastic in the sense of these short-term needs," MacArthur said.

Anyone who comes to the organization can get some kind of help, even if it's not financial. Most of the financial help goes to working people.

More than just money, The Ark gives people knowledge, a referral to another agency like the Athens Area Emergency Food Bank or information about how to cut a telephone or cable bill.

Most of The Ark's clients - or "neighbors" - are single women with children.

"It's how we do things here that matters," MacArthur said. "We do it with care and with respect - even when we say no."

MacArthur helped form The Ark while working as outreach director at Emmanuel Episcopal Church, where she saw requests for help triple in the first six months she worked there. MacArthur saw how local churches struggled to coordinate services and how families applied to church after church for assistance.

"As part of my job at Emmanuel, I looked into the possibility of creating a place for these people to go and get help from all of these congregations," MacArthur said.

Founders worked for nine months to set up The Ark and establish its first headquarters on property owned by Emmanuel, which also paid MacArthur's salary at first. After a year, the nonprofit began renting space from the Athens Area Emergency Food Bank on Barber Street, where The Ark is still located.

MacArthur, a native of Bethesda, Md., with a background in social work, moved to Athens in 1983 so her husband could work at the Navy Supply Corps School.

MacArthur will stay in Athens and focus on her two dogs, spend time outdoors and continue going to the book club started by friends at The Ark.

"The nature of this job is that you create friends. I'll continue to be friends with all the employees and volunteers here," she said. "There have been such great people who have come through The Ark that have made it what it is."

The volunteers are the reason MacArthur never felt burned out at work, she said. Laughing together helped boost their spirits even in the face of the tough situations they handle every day.

Over the years, MacArthur was most satisfied when The Ark came together with other organizations for a project, like helping the Clarke County School District provide clothes for a child in need.

"Yes, we might just be the money part, but what if they didn't have that?" MacArthur said. "We don't get funding from the government so we can do what we think our religious congregations would want us to do in those situations."

MacArthur will be replaced as executive director by Lucy Hudgens, a Rome native returning to the state after spending eight years at Outward Bound, where she was program director of operations in South Carolina.

"Laura has been a wonderful teacher, who has really been able to give me a strong foundation and a background about why we do what we do for this community," said Hudgens. "We will continue to do what The Ark has been able to do for the last 20 years."

The Ark will celebrate its 21st anniversary on Jan. 15 while MacArthur enjoys a late Christmas with her five children and seven grandchildren in a rented eight-bedroom house on Fripp Island, S.C., far from The Ark's Barber Street home.

After devoting two decades to The Ark, MacArthur doesn't plan on checking in on the organization to see how it's faring.

"I have never considered the Ark to be about me because we have so many different committed people," MacArthur said. "The Ark is going to stand on its own - it doesn't need me checking in. I would have failed if it did."


Originally published in the Athens Banner-Herald on Friday, January 01, 2010