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Discover The Humanity of Homelessness, a podcast from Church at the Park that brings you honest, heartfelt conversations with people experiencing homelessness, community leaders, and staff.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 00:01
♪.
John Marshall | 00:06
You mentioned how your own experience in poverty and your own experience of being in survival mode and learning to be resilient yourself changed. Allowed you to care for other people really well and see them I'm curious if you can say more about How your own lived experience helped you care well for people?
Like, how did your own story influence your approach to caring for people.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 00:36
Once you have been really dirty and really hungry, and you see somebody who's really dirty and really hungry, You can relate. It's a whole different world. It's a level of awareness. That comes to you. That you can almost step back into time and feel that hunger and feel that lonesomeness and feel that fear that you're going to be rejected more and the hopelessness of what can I do now? And somebody walks up and says, Come over here and I can make you a... A peanut butter sandwich. You.
Krystal Brotton | 01:23
Hi, this is Crystal with Church at the Park. Thank you for tuning in for this episode of The Humanity of Homelessness, a podcast from Church of the Park in Salem, Oregon. Since 2007, we have created community with our neighbors living outside. Today, we get to offer collaborative navigation, emergency sheltering, workforce development, and supported housing for our neighbors in need. In each episode, we hear from a member of our community who has or is experiencing homelessness. We invite them to share their own story in their own words so that they and we might remember their goodness, their courage, and their humanity. We hope you enjoy the conversation.
John Marshall | 02:05
Hey everyone, John here. Welcome back for another episode of the Humanity of Homelessness. My guest today is my dear friend Juanita Savoy Nash, She is a long time volunteer with Church at the Park and a former board member and a former resident of Village of Hope. I met Juanita way back in 2020 when I first joined Church of the Park. And at that time, she was 80 years young, still living in her van, snowboarding in Arizona in the winters, and returning to Salem for the rest of the time to hang and volunteer with the church. She's had a long and remarkable life, one that includes the very worst of poverty as well as the beauty of stability, which she found through life-giving community and relationships. You'll hear that her own entry into Church of the Park came right at a time when she really needed a place in the world to feel like she belonged. I wanted to capture her story because that experience for her happened before I ever joined Church of the Park and before we were doing any large-scale programming or sheltering. It was when the community was still just a grassroots, ragtag bunch of folks mostly living in Kaskies Gateway Park trying to learn how to be a healthy community with one another. Recently Juanita was diagnosed with cancer which meant that at 85 years old she needed to move out of her van and into our village of Hope Shelter for a few months. Fortunately, her stay was short and she's now in an apartment and as she says about her treatment, she's winning.
So it was important to me to have her as a guest because she has seen every version of Church of the Park from just about every angle. And her presence in every space has been one of intentional care and service. I think she just knows a lot about what it means to endure the experience of being human while finding spaces of goodness and grace. We recorded this episode in her apartment.
Some of the quality of our audio may be inconsistent as a result. I want to warn you that the topic of suicide does come up. If this is a difficult subject for you, please take care of yourself as you listen. And remember the suicide and crisis hotline is 988- I'm grateful for Juanita and delighted that she's my guest today. Please enjoy our conversation.
Well, as I was driving over here, I was trying to think about all the moments that you and I. Well, that I've just gotten to listen to your story and trying to remember if there was ever a time in your life where you would have said the words, I am homeless. Yes. Okay. I thought so. Absolutely. What part of your life.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 04:39
Okay, my father, we lived in Arkansas, and my father got, when the war broke out, My father got a job on the terminal railroad. Because they needed men to supply the forces. And You didn't get drafted. If you worked on the railroad. My father had a really good, well-paying job and he had a young family, three kids. And, He was a drinker. He had enough Native American in him. That He was hooked right away. And he became an alcoholic. And when the war was over, And the boys were coming back from the war, they said, "We gotta get these hard-working boys a job." So they started going through the workers' And those who were problems, they would fire them, get rid of them, give the young men a good job. My father was the first one, very first one fired because he was drinking on the job. And that's when we fell into... Being homeless. That's when we fell into... True poverty in the truest sense of the word at that time. What The boys came home from work.
John Marshall | 06:10
Year was that? Do you remember?
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 06:18
About 44, wasn't it? 45. This was about 45, 46, I was born in 1941, so I'm six, seven years.
John Marshall | 06:25
1946. How old were you? Old. And do you have clear memory of that moment when your family, when your dad lost his job and.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 06:37
I do. I do. I have a clear memory of it because my mother cried so hard. My mother was appalled. When my father was explaining to her why they chose him. And she was appalled. My mother was not a stable person. She was schizophrenic. She was easily Imbalanced. And she had good reason to be on that one because our income was we lost our, we had a nice little house. A little two-bedroom, one-bath house, you know, not rich, but it was a little piece of land and a garden there. Lost everything. Ended up living in a green pickup truck. Three kids. Man and wife. Nothing but a truck. No trailer. No nothing. Now, because my father continued to drink, he didn't get a good job.
So he met up with a friend of his, and they decided that as two families, we would travel together. And work the fields. Living in a pickup truck. What we had was a mattress and box springs in the back of the pickup. And it had a cover over that part. And what we would do is we would pull that mattress top, the top of the mattress out, and slide it under the pickup, and the kids would sleep on the ground underneath the pickup truck. And my parents would sleep in the back of the pickup. Now, this went on for two years. And we started off in Arkansas. Traveled through all the way across the United States. Work in the fields. It was really very interesting because children would be working out in the fields. I yes, we had to.
John Marshall | 08:43
Was just going to ask if you were doing the labor.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 08:46
If you wanted to eat that night, you had to work. And so we picked cotton, we picked up pecans, we pulled cabbage, pulled onions. We did all kinds of children working in the fields. Schools would send out. Truant officers. And they would come out into the fields and they'd go to the farmers and they would say, those kids need to be in schools and you shouldn't be hiring them. And the farmer would always say the same thing. I didn't hire those children. I hired them. That father, that man.
And then as soon as the truant officer would leave, what would happen was the farmer would come over and say, tomorrow you go over to this field over there because the truant officer's already been over there and he's not going to double back and he won't see the kids. So Kind of, sort of.
John Marshall | 09:40
The farmer had a little bit of humanity to help your family survive.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 09:46
Some of them were good and some of them were not. Some of them were very interested in keeping the kids safe and not having harm. But they did things like if a child picked 30 pounds of cotton and an adult picked 130 pounds of cotton, The child only got half of this price per pound that the adults got. Now, not all of the farmers, but some of them. It was the same thing.
So what my father used to do is we'd pick cotton and put it in his sack. But we got full benefit.
Yeah, full benefit, yeah. There were all kinds of tricks in that manner, and people out there on the streets today are doing similar things. In similar ways.
John Marshall | 10:33
There's an ingenuity that's required when you're in survival mode. Yes.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 10:37
Yes. This went on for two years. We traveled across the United States just following the fields and whatnot. Until we came into... Mecca, California. We were coming to work the citrus. It was getting cold. We didn't have the money to buy tires, and we were having flats on the tires because we'd come a long distance and traveled a lot. Because we didn't have any money and we couldn't go any further, we stopped in Mecca. And my father? Who was not egg. A good criminal. He didn't know how to do it. He was not a good thief, didn't know how to do it. He didn't know a lot of the things that the average person would know. There's some tires over there and we'll try to steal one. And we stopped overnight, and he went to try to steal. Of course, they had a camera on it and a light. And as soon as he tried to undo it, the police came and arrested him. What was bad about that is that left... My mother and us kids out in the desert, Mecca, California is nothing but desert. No running water. No food, no nothing. And we were left out there in the desert for three days. End. Daddy had the truck with him.
So anything that we had We were like sleeping on the sand and it was pretty bad. Three days. Amen. Happened to be in the courthouse when my father came up before the judge. And he's telling the judge, my family's starving to death. They're out in the desert, blah, so on and so forth. The judge didn't care about that. And it was interesting because this man said, I can give this man a job and a house where he can work every day and he can bring his family in and they'll be taken care of.
You know, it's got running water and toilet and everything. And the judge said, go ahead and take him. He said, I'll pay his, you know, I'll pay the bail and that he can work that off for me. And he did. Which is a very good thing because we needed help. We were destitute. No money, no nothing. And the car was done. The truck was shot. It was old when Daddy bought it. We were eaten mostly out of what we were working with. If we were pulling onions, we had onion soup, and there'd be cabbage and turnips, and everything comes in at the same time. And most of the farmers would allow you to take enough food for you to cook a soup, a meal of some sort. And so this is one way that we kids, this is where I learned to love veggies.
Anyway, Harold Inslee was his name. Harold Inslee. And what he did was he took my dad and gave us a house. On a ranch. And my dad worked with animals and drove tractors and worked in that hot desert sun. And Harold Inslee turned him into a slave. My father was a slave. And at one point in time, Harold said, you know, I paid you back, but my family, my kids need so many things. I need cash to buy them decent school clothes, and they need shoes. I went to school two days with no shoes. And Being a poverty-ridden child, I went to school in dirty clothes. We were very dirty. I could work in the fields for two, three, four days before we could have water to wash her. And we only had like two dresses anyway. And so I was ridiculed and made fun of, and so were my sisters.
You know, we were very outcast at the school and the teachers. And I'd walk by. I've always had a bladder problem. I wet the bed until I was 13 years old, every night. Every night. And if you think that mattress underneath that drug didn't stink. And my sisters hated me for it because we all went to school smelling like pee.
Yeah. And it was hard. You learn how, that's when I learned how to fight. A second oldest.
John Marshall | 15:07
Out of how many total children?
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 15:09
At that time, there were just, there was three and my mother was pregnant with my, her fourth child.
John Marshall | 15:15
Ultimately, how many siblings did you have?
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 15:17
Eight living.
John Marshall | 15:18
Yeah, and you were the oldest.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 15:19
Second oldest. Second oldest. I had one sister older than me, and she was The ideal child that every parent wants. She was good. She was well-behaved. She minded well. She did everything right.
That's why I was so... Radical. And in order to get any attention at all, I had to act out, and I did. I acted out. Anyone would have had a difficult time raising me. Because I was very strong-minded and determined, even as a child, just for nothing but a pat on the head.
Yeah.
John Marshall | 15:54
At that point, was your family in California for good?
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 15:58
We had to be. We had no other choice. We couldn't go anyplace. Daddy didn't have another job. He was working on this ranch. And, Stayed on that ranch until 14 years old. There was never enough money to do anything. Right. Never enough to buy clothes for kids or anything.
John Marshall | 16:22
I'm curious if you have any memory of that. Period of your life where you felt like you got to be a kid I mean, was there any part that Yeah, there was play.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 16:33
Was play? Just a normal kid?
John Marshall | 16:36
There was joy. There was...
Something other than survival or.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 16:41
Work. The survivable. Yes. I can remember, especially when we were still in Arkansas. And Grandpa was around. He was a minister. Assembly God minister, and Grandma was around. Yes. I got to be a regular child. Early on. It's later on in life that the hardships began, and I could just be outgoing and running and playing. I had cousins around me, I had friends. We had a decent home, you know. Plenty of food. There were no hardships at that time. Birthday party like everybody else. We were very similar.
You know, in family. Yeah, there was a period, I guess, from the time I was first born until Dad lost his job on the railroad. That it was a normal life.
John Marshall | 17:40
Yeah. So after your dad chooses a new job and leaves the Inslee Ranch, Where does your story go from there into adulthood?
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 17:50
At the age of 15, I married to get away from home. I was a freshman in high school. There was a little park there in Mecca, California, and kids used to come and play. It was a very tiny, very small park. And I met a boy by the name of Gerald Nash. He was from Arkansas, and he'd had a hardship similar to?
John Marshall | 18:13
Was he in California.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 18:14
Yes, he's in California. He's in Mecca, California. They left Arkansas because he was a sharecropper. And when you're a sharecropper, you get what's left over from what the farmer takes, you know, and you do all the work.
John Marshall | 18:29
So you meet Gerald.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 18:30
So I met Gerald, and I turned 15, and he turned... At 17, we got married. Left home. He went to work for a spender oil company.
You know, the white uniforms, and they checked your oil and did everything nice. You know, we were married four years, five months, and 29 days.
Yeah, that was difficult because he was a religious man. When I met him, church going, his whole family, church going, and we had commonality there. But he turned 21. And when he turned 21, bars, alcohol, running around with the guys, a life that he had never known before, and he was exposed to it, and running with women, and yeah, it was pretty ugly. After he turned 21. Up until that time, we were Not too bad.
John Marshall | 19:30
And then after that marriage...
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 19:32
After that marriage, I was on my own for a while. Quite a while. Didn't want to be. I had two children.
John Marshall | 19:41
Okay, so you and Gerald had two kids.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 19:42
Together. Yeah, two girls. I was pregnant whenever he... He got into trouble. Because of alcohol with the Standard Oil Company. He was living high on the hog, drinking and running around with women and spending money. But he just... Got carried away. And when he found out that they were going to take that away from him, rather than be embarrassed, He walked off and left me pregnant with my second child. And so my sister and her husband took me in and helped me out until I gave birth to the child, and we went back to Arkansas... Because you can live cheaper there. And so we went back to Arkansas, which didn't work for me. But I went to work in the Arkansas Tuberculosis Sanatorium. As a nurse's aide. And they started, they introduced me to nursing. The field itself.
John Marshall | 20:43
Yeah, and this would become your career.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 20:44
Yes, this would become my.
John Marshall | 20:46
Career. So from that moment of moving back to Arkansas, starting work at the tuberculosis center. At what point after that do you fully become a nurse and are in a career? Is there, like, do you go to school? Or do you have any formal training?
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 21:02
No, at the tuberculosis sanatorium, they teach you basic fills, how to take a blood pressure, how to take a temperature, you know, and I work there. But I couldn't keep my kids with me. I had the two kids because you had to live. In the sanatorium. And I had to pay for, I made $100 a month, and I gave every penny of it to the babysitters. Who my sister's in-laws, you know, it was pretty ugly. And this was no way to live. I wasn't living. I lived away from my children, taking care of people. My children were over here. Meanwhile, My mother and father are in Southern California. They were living on a different ranch. But it was still a ranch, but at least he made more money. He could at least buy his own food. I came back out to California, Southern California, brought my kids.
So when I came back, I had enough skills to get a job as a nurse's aide at Indio Hospital, Indio, California. But I had to walk to work about two miles. Each way. I like to work, and this is down in the desert, hot. Cold, wind blowing, sand, get to dirt, get to work and dirty. But I made it and I made enough money to rent a very small apartment and barely feed the kids.
And then that's when I rang that butch's voice. He's the one who gave me. The education. He and I. Lived together for about a year and decided to go ahead and get married. They make a commitment because I wasn't comfortable with that living together. And that's when I went to school, got an education, went to college, started college of the desert, you know. I did well in the field. I think it's because of my past determination to make it through the day whenever you're working in the fields and you're dirty and you're rejected and you're made fun of and the hardships and you're homeless and everything's against you and you just set your mind, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it, I'm going to make it through the day. You learn to do that and then it transfers over into your work.
John Marshall | 23:20
Resiliency becomes part of your DNA.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 23:22
Yes, it does. And I don't mind being poor. Because of the experience of being hungry, being overworked, being dirty, being rejected, I can help people.
John Marshall | 23:36
Yeah, you have a natural compassion and empathy.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 23:39
It just was. Practically bred into me in my life.
John Marshall | 23:45
And I've seen that myself. When you met Butch, how long were you two married?
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 23:50
18 years, I think, 19.
John Marshall | 23:52
And were those 18, 19 good years? Was there poverty still? Were you... Okay. No.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 24:00
No, he was a good worker. He went to work for, when he got out of the Navy, he went to work for Ma Bell Telephone Company. And he was successful there. He had a good career. And I was working at Indio Hospital.
And then, surprisingly enough, I was doing well at the hospital. Went from being the lowest, every new nurse is the lowest that there is, and then your children's section, and you work in that for a certain period of time, and then you go to the emergency room and you work that section type so that you're well-rounded nurses. And I did that enough times to where I became quite a Later on, I became a healthcare educator. Okay. For us training nurses' aides and providing... Continuing education to the RNs and the higher-ups and whatnot, educationally.
John Marshall | 24:59
And at what point in your life did you land in Oregon?
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 25:03
Okay. What happened was my first husband and I got back together. My second husband, Birch, hate He and I got to where... He was very dissatisfied, so we separated. And during the separation, my first husband, Gerald Nash, heard that we were separated and gave me a call. And said, let me come talk to you. And I said, no, you stay out of my life, blah, so on and so forth. I led them nice home. Had a good income, you know. And didn't want to be trashed anymore. I had enough of that. But he finally convinced me, and we got back together. He said, nope, I'm trying to straighten out my life. He said, so we have to get married because I can't live with you. I was working in, we moved to San Diego where I went to work as a healthcare educator down there. Then, It was kind of interesting. He had a business of his own. And he sold welding supplies to the Navy in San Diego. Nice business going.
And then some of the Navy people and the big corporations decided that they were paying too much for $500 toilets and $300 coffee pots. They stopped buying anything from anyone. They only bought from the big corporations. What that did was put all the small businessmen out of business.
So, when they shut down that, the business, Jerry and I decided, because we had just been married a very short period of time, gotten back together, trying to get to know each other again. We decided to come to Oregon and, came up here and I applied at Oregon State Hospital, put in my application, and put in an application over at McLaren Hospital. Because they were advertising they needed nurses in the...
John Marshall | 27:06
This was the youth facility.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 27:08
Yes. Yeah.- But I did well at McLaren. I met Roxy Cooper, who She and Bob... I can't think of his last name right now. It'll come to me. I had gotten together and they had started sex offender treatment. Program. And they were working with the Oregon State Hospital. The mental institution. What's the name of the doctor? The one that was in the movie. And they made that movie right there.
John Marshall | 27:39
I mean, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is No kidding.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 27:41
A movie. That's it. That's it. The doctor. The psychiatrist who taught me.
That's going to be all sex offender treatment. So I became sex offender treatment specialist. Facilitated groups for murderers, rapists, and child molesters. Fascinating job. Never was Bill. And you learn how to handle people. I had already kind of knew how to handle people from working in the hospital and teaching and doing things. But I really learned how to handle people. - Sure. - And so here I am in Oregon, And I had a good job. Loved it. I got sick. I had, they thought I was going blind. Pseudotumor Cerebriac. The choroidal folds back my my eyes were folding down and Not doing good. Can't see. Can't see color, all kinds of problems. And you can't be working with... Criminals. Who would love to assault you.
John Marshall | 29:10
If you can't see?
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 29:11
If you can't see. Yeah.
So, yeah, I got retired. Early. And went to live with my daughter. Coming back down in Southern California.
Yeah. But I could never settle in there. I could never settle in. I could never settle in. I was so unhappy. I spent all my time at the bingo hall, miserable. I'm accustomed to doing things. You're active.
Yeah. But I went to see a doctor in Huntington Beach, and he did some laser surgery, and it worked.
John Marshall | 29:50
Yeah, so you regained your eyesight.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 29:52
I got back what I had lost. I did not ever go completely blind... Living with your daughter doesn't work very good. It really doesn't. And as soon as I got my Social Security card, disability. Set up. I left Southern California and came back to Oregon. Thank you.
John Marshall | 30:25
Is that the point that you moved into your rig and started living out of your.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 30:28
Vehicle? Well, kind of, sort of. I went to Georgia. I didn't come from a family. I came from a litter. Eight of us were all over. And now we have all multiplied. We've all married and had five kids each.
So it's really big. But I have a sister in Georgia, and her husband's very smart about things like vehicles and whatnot.
So I went and spent Christmas with her, and her husband found me this phone. White rig, and that's what I needed. That's what I wanted. I wanted the freedom. To be on my own and to do whatever.
So they found me this rig.
John Marshall | 31:06
It's like a camper.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 31:07
Van. It's a camper van. In 1995, Dodge Ram Coach House. An older one, but I got that in came back across the United States, and I came up here and fell into Church Park. Church with?
John Marshall | 31:21
Park. That was my next question is, What's that introduction like? And what was it about Church of the Park that you fell in love.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 31:28
So what happened was I... I came up and I had not yet tied up with all my friends and everybody.
So I pulled in the Cascade Park and I met a whole bunch of people there. And they said, well, I'll tell you what, there's a guy by the name of DJ and he brings over peanut butter and sandwiches into the park. And he gives us water. And sometimes he has soda pop and maybe an apple or an orange or something. And I said, well, I'd like to talk to him. And John Yerler, was one of the first people that I met. And he and Leonard were very friendly to me and very nice. We became friends. And I stayed there in the park because at that time they were. They didn't like it, but they didn't run you out either.
And then I kind of got to know some of the people. I met DJ and John Dockerman. They were all there, so many of us. I was in a little bit better shape than most of them because I had my Social Security income. I hadn't gotten my retirement yet. And I was... I was living a good life because I was free, very free, but I needed purpose. I had way too much time on my hands, so I started kind of helping out the guys, and we'd talk about doing this and the other.
And then when they got the building, and Yarborough, Dockum, me, there were just a number of us, started working. Hanging out there and doing things. And it just kind of built itself, you know.
And then DJ says, well, we're going to get more, we're going to start passing out food, real food. You mean like baskets?
Yeah. Well, you do the books and you bring it in. And we just sort of organized ourself. We just did it.
John Marshall | 33:17
Yeah, one of the things that I think is fascinating and beautiful about the Church of the Park story is It was, it never, seemed to me to be this project about people who lived in houses coming to fix and save and rescue people who were living outside. An opportunity for people who were living and camping side by side to figure out how to actually serve one another. And build this really unique grassroots community of trust and safety and mutuality in the very context that was Yeah. Traumatizing.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 33:54
When we had first gotten inside that building, we were tickled because we have a place to pass our food out. And you can make your peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. We were still taking them and passing them out in the parks. And giving people, taking people water, doing it because it was something to do it with a purpose. It was a reason. We were helping those that we knew what it felt like to be thirsty and that sort of thing. One day, Dave Materia said to me, he said, we ought to grow some corn. And I said, I know how to do that. I'm a master gardener. I know how to do that. And he said, well, let's plant it over there. I said, no, that's not a good place to plant it. Let's plant it over there. And he says, okay, you're going to be in charge of planting corn. That's how it came about.
John Marshall | 34:41
And then you, yeah, then you started the community garden.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 34:44
Then I started the garden. There was a man, and I can't think of his name right now, but he had a farm out there and he had a big, had a lot of trees and he grew berries for a living. But he had this mill where he could mill. And he said, okay, here's three trees. He told me, come on out. Now he's going to church, a church in the park, you know, occasionally, not every time. He had a regular church, but he came out there. And he says, tell me which tree you want. And I said, that one there. And he said, okay, I'll cut you the wood. To make a raised garden bed.
So we started with one. And planted corn in it because Dave Mercurio wanted some corn.
John Marshall | 35:23
- He needed some corn.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 35:24
Okay. - Some corn.
And then one at a time, they just kept going up. He kept saying, "I've got more trees. "We'll cut down more trees." And that's how that started.
John Marshall | 35:34
Still a little bit at a time. Just a.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 35:36
Little bit at a time, no big deal. No big deal. But it became a pretty big deal. Because I joined the Master Gardeners here in Oregon and I was working with a food chair, them. I started working with them because I had all these veggies, you know, and just... And it wasn't just me. John Yarbrough was carrying boxes of...
John Marshall | 36:05
Right. It was a community.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 36:06
Project. It was a community project. We were entertaining ourselves. We were doing something besides... Sitting around feeling sorry.
John Marshall | 36:15
For ourselves. And what I hear in your voice is that it was dignifying to each of you participating. Yes. Because not only was it something to do. It was helpful.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 36:24
It was very helpful. And we had a church, a small group of people who help each other and help anybody that they can. And we did a great job with each other. And we still keep in contact with each other. A lot of us do.
John Marshall | 36:40
It's amazing to watch how relationships that get formed in that really unique context where you there is no other agenda except to be together. Yeah. How those relationships are then become built to.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 36:55
Last. Yes. Yes, and under the most unusual circumstances.
Like John Yarbrough and I, probably least likely people you ever met, you know, to be good friends. But I talked to him today and, Some of it. Is irreplaceable in my mind. When I didn't have a family that I wanted to be around, when I didn't have a purpose. It was a reason. And it helped me more than it helped forms, but I helped. I used to do things like drive people over to their doctor's appointments, a simple thing like that. A simple thing like getting somebody who has no vehicle, no method, and very down, take them to their doctor's appointment. Little things like that. Makes you feel good.
John Marshall | 37:47
Yeah, you're reminding me the text of Scripture that Church of the Park uses as its foundational text is the story in Luke 15 about when you invite your friends in or when you host a banquet, don't invite friends and family. You know, invite the poor, the lame, the crippled, those who can't pay you back. And the punchline of that story is you, the one doing the hosting, doing the serving, that the reward is yours, not actually the one. That's right. And... And your experience seems to confirm that the participation in service, like the movement towards caring for another human being. The hook. Is this thing that seems to transform us.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 38:29
-
John Marshall | 38:30
And that's what I have fallen in love with Church of the Park is there's this. Yeah. There's this premise that we're not just trying to meet needs, we're actually trying to heal human beings. By inviting them into community where they can experience the dignity of service. The dignity of caring for each other, the dignity for seeing that this person in front of me is fully human and that has to mean that I'm fully human too. And The magic is in.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 38:58
That. The magic is there. And the most lasting relationships. I have one friend. He and I became friends because he used to listen to me. He used to listen to me and I used to listen to him. He was never good-looking. He was never rich. He was never well-educated. His wife died. And he was very lonesome, and he was out there by himself, and he and I kind of talked to each other. To this day. We not only talked to each other on the phone, but up until the time I started chemotherapy, I took him to breakfast every Sunday morning because it was a solid something that we formed out there in that park. In that part, working together.
John Marshall | 39:45
Earlier, you... Mentioned how your own experience in poverty and your own experience of being in survival mode and learning to be resilient yourself. Allowed you to care for other people really well and see them I'm curious... If you can say more about how your own lived experience helped you in the Church of the Park, environment care well for people?
Like how did your own story influence your approach? To caring for people?
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 40:21
- I don't think I really talked about my poverty and my hardship and a lot of that stuff, But... Once you have been really dirty and really hungry, and you see somebody who's really dirty and really hungry. You can relate. It's a whole different world. It's a level of... Awareness. That comes to you. That you can almost step back into time and feel that hunger and feel that lonesomeness and feel that fear. That you're going to be rejected, you know, more. And the hopelessness of what can I do now? And somebody walks up and says... Come over here and I can make you a... A peanut butter sandwich.
You know Once it's been done to you can really relate to that. And that's why so many people stayed there. Because if you really look at it, we became a pretty stable group of people. My own hunger, my own... My mother was schizophrenic and Native American, and we were dirty. We weren't just dirty, we were filthy.
So when I see someone who's in clothes, I used to do their laundry for them. Somebody take their clothes and just take them to the laundry and wash them out and bring them back and hand them to them and not expect anything in return. This is something... It occasionally happened to me.
Somebody would be kind. I had a teacher be kind one time. She told me, bring me your dirty clothes and I'll wash them for you. And she took them home with her. She washed them, brought them back, and I changed the interim the next day at school. And I didn't stink for a change. That's what gave me the idea. To do some John Yarbrough's laundry. It was your own The kindness that was done on me.
John Marshall | 42:16
Experience of receiving kindness.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 42:23
I was able to repeat. Because I knew about it. But if you're not, if you have no kindness done on you just grow hard. And angry.
John Marshall | 42:36
Heard that from others who've shared their stories on the podcast that their experience of you know, consequence and punishment only made them harder. And it was the people in their life who were able to say, I'm still willing to care for you and love you and support you that actually made any difference in their life. And I am thinking about the various... Stories that people tell about people who are living outside about people in poverty, the stories that are less than kind. And my own observation is that a lot of those stories come out of a lack of awareness. And so I'm curious... If you were to sit down with someone who had no idea what it's like to be poor or to experience homelessness. How do you help someone start to build awareness that might allow them to be more kind.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 43:32
I don't know that you do. Not really, not deeply, not myself, or at least I don't have an awareness of how to do that. I don't think that you can talk somebody else into an experience you almost have to feel some of it yourself. In order to be able to talk to somebody really about it. It's different. It's a different emotion than love. It's a different emotion than hate.- It's an emotion of... I don't even know the name for it, but there is a name for it. I just don't know what it is.
John Marshall | 44:12
Would you call it empathy?
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 44:14
Yes. Yeah, empathy is a good one. Close. It's close. That's an emotion.- That's kind of narrow, the experience itself is bigger. - -Living knowledge, yes.
John Marshall | 44:26
Yeah, the actual like, -Lived knowledge. Yeah.
So then, What message would you give to someone who has a really negative view of our neighbors who are living outside? How do you invite them? To move towards some ounce of empathy.
Like, how do you break down something?
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 44:50
How do you draw them in? Yeah. How do you draw them into understanding and comprehending?
John Marshall | 44:56
Or like, what do you just wish people knew better about poverty and homelessness.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 45:03
That there's a helplessness There are areas where you are so helpless you actually cannot help yourself. And unless somebody else does. You just sit in misery.
Sometimes there is not a way out. Sometimes there is no way up. Not by yourself. Not alone. Unless somebody helped you. With a word, with a kindness, with a dollar, with a sandwich, with just a friendliness. Without that, you're You become suicidal. I've been suicidal twice in my lifetime. I have attempted suicide twice. And the hopelessness of life. When no one turned to me and said, here, let me help, you know, put armor on my shoulders or anything. I don't know that you can verbally communicate. People... I cannot comprehend how down other people are. You can't see it. You don't necessarily feel it unless they express it to you.
Sometimes you can tell by the look on their face and their attitude, their body language. You can see they're really hurting really down, but difficult. Difficult.
John Marshall | 46:19
One of the things that I note we are trying to do well at Church of the Park is create spaces where community can exist so that individuals who are in that place of hopelessness.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 46:32
Yes.
John Marshall | 46:33
Can kind of relax and their nervous system can move out of survival mode. Yeah. And they can start to look around them at people that they trust and can count on.
And then they go. I think maybe I actually have a chance at a better life than I have. And you got to experience... A couple of weeks of living with us at Village of Hope. I'm curious if you experienced any of that in real time, any of that sort of Community being a healing place.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 47:06
Yes, it is. That was touching and getting in contact with a lot of myself. Who I used to be, how it used to be. I wouldn't take anything for the time that I spent there. I wanted to be there. I really wanted to be there. To be a part of the church and the park and the village of hope is big in my life. It really is. And I will be back.
John Marshall | 47:34
Yeah. Tell me about your relationships that you experienced at Village of.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 47:38
Hope. Yeah. What is her name? See, names are bad for me right now, but she was my roommate. She and I shared a lot and talked. She was very helpful to me in that I'm recovering from this surgery. And she and I shared personal experiences. And I think I helped her to understand some things about poverty because she had not been that poor. She had not experienced a lot of that stuff. And how do you handle it? What do you do when you need a needle and thread and you can't find a needle and thread and nobody's got any and you really do need a needle and thread because this is all you got to wear? How do you sew it up, you know?
John Marshall | 48:24
Sounds like it was a mutually beneficial relationship.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 48:27
Absolutely. Absolutely. She and I became good friends.
John Marshall | 48:31
Yeah. And I wonder if some of that mutual benefit was possible because neither of you were Time to survive.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 48:39
That's all right. Because we were not having to scratch the earth for basic food, water. "Shelter." we were able to open up and share and be friends to each other. When you're in too hard of a survival mode. That determination to, "I'm going to survive this, I'm going to get through either that," and you get to a breaking point where you're either suicidal or you continue to fight. And, I've been there twice. Where I just gave up. I can't do anything. I have no power. Power is tremendous. The ability to do something for yourself. Or someone else. And someone were kind and generous and giving, and I saw People helping each other, even when they didn't want to. The smart-ass remarks that they make to each other. Knock it off, George.
You know, there's more good going on there than what meets the eye.
John Marshall | 49:43
We're coming to the close of my set of questions. I'm curious if there's any other parts of your story or part of your experience with Church of the Park that's really important for you to talk about and share that would help others know who you are in the world and why you are in the world the way that you are.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 50:01
To tell you the truth, I don't see myself the way other people see me, I don't think. I don't think I do. I'm a very small, very insignificant portion of the world here. I do enjoy. Helping others, and I do feel like I have some skills, too. Contribute. I have developed skills, you know, just by living my life as it came to me. " Who I am? I did not do that. I just became who I am because of the experiences that life gave me. Church in the Park. Gave me a purpose in life when I needed. I desperately needed and wanted. And I didn't even know what I wanted. I only knew. That I like people. And always have. And the group that I met and their individual needs and their individual problems and the different things that went on with them taught me nurtured me. Through a period of time in my life, my doing what I was doing was nurturing me. Pass them out peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and a bottle of water. I would love to do that again. I belong. I belong in a church. With people who Need. And want. And are searching for. Because I need and want and I'm searching for.
Yeah.
John Marshall | 51:36
Well, I will reflect back to you how grateful I am that you are part of the Church of the Park family. You have made a difference in my own experience. Really?- And you use the words belonging and nurture to describe your experience. And those are two words that are really valuable to me as I think of my own experience and the way that, I mean, DJ hired me to be the first paid employee. Of Church of the Park. And I remember being so scared. What happened was you and Kelly and Dave and Christie and John and that crew of people that Were around when I joined.
Yeah. Like I was, you were all volunteers. I was the one paid to be there and you were the ones who welcomed me.
Yeah. You made it a place where I got to belong.
Yeah. And that experience then. I think nurtured me into a really true and authentic version of myself. And I know our hope. My hope certainly is that everyone who's living in one of the Church of the Park communities now is experiencing the same trajectory of being welcomed into a place that becomes a healing environment for them.
Yeah. And I don't think that we would even be doing what we're doing if it wasn't for people like you who helped us learn how to do it well.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 53:03
Well, thank you. That's a very nice thing to say. I didn't know that I was leading. I didn't even know that I was teaching. I was just doing.
Yeah. I was just... I was taking care of myself. And through taking care of myself, other people saw me, you know, get some good stuff out of it.
John Marshall | 53:25
Well, in the interest of the you know, name of the podcast, which is the humanity of homelessness. I have 10 rapid fire questions to ask you to get to know your humanity a little bit better.
Some of them are silly questions. Some of them are a little bit more meaningful, but I end every conversation with the same 10 questions for whoever it is I'm interviewing. Are you ready for these questions? Okay. Tawaneeta. Question number one is what is the best dessert?
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 53:55
Pumpkin pie.
John Marshall | 53:57
A genie grants you one wish. What do you wish for?
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 54:02
Health.
John Marshall | 54:05
Would you rather go back in time and meet your ancestors or travel to the future and meet your descendants?
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 54:11
Future. Why? Because I know a lot about the past, and it's not easy. The future's got to be better. I hope it's better. It's got to be better.
John Marshall | 54:24
Question number four, cats or dogs?
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 54:26
Dog's.
John Marshall | 54:28
Apples or oranges. Apples. What is your favorite smell?
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 54:35
Cinnamon.
John Marshall | 54:35
What is one thing you would add to Salem to make it better?
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 54:40
More help.
John Marshall | 54:41
What piece of advice has helped you the most?
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 54:44
Stay with Christ.
John Marshall | 54:46
What is your favorite thing about yourself?
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 54:50
My resilience.
John Marshall | 54:52
Last question. What is your biggest hope for your future?
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 54:57
That I can live long and just be me.
John Marshall | 55:00
Well, I think that you have lived well. For the years that you have lived. I'm excited for the many years to come.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 55:10
Yeah, I should have quite a few. Yeah.
Yeah.
John Marshall | 55:13
And I'm grateful for you. I'm grateful that I know you. And get to experience community with you. Thank you for the way that you love the people around you.
Juanita Savoy-Nash | 55:22
Well, thank you.
John Marshall | 55:31
Hey again everyone, I hope you enjoyed Juanita's story. She's seen a lot of life and even at 85 and in the middle of chemotherapy, still has a ton of life to give to the world around her. I felt blessed to be the audience to her sharing and found myself marveling at her endurance and resilience despite all the layers of her experience that made being human hard. As she reminisced about her first experiences with Church of the Park, I was reminded of what I've heard from so many others who participated in the community around that time. That there was a sort of magic in the air as those humans woke up in their tents and cars among one another and then found within the context of what they called the church an opportunity to serve and be served by one another. To lend what little each had for the benefit of the community. Become more than just those homeless people who lived in the park. This magic can still be found today among our shelter spaces and in the interactions our outreach teams experience on sidewalks and behind bushes and under trees. This magic that says, "I am beloved." And so is my neighbor. And I have to believe that it was the humans who first chose to risk trusting each other with that truth in the context of mutuality that they strove for, that push the boundaries of imagination of what a community that calls itself church could be. To eventually include this version, a multi-million dollar operation sheltering 350 individuals daily across multiple locations of community. Juanita's experience and her reflections years later similarly pull my imagination toward the story of the early Christian church. As Luke tells the story and acts to those first followers of Jesus, trying to build a community that looked like Jesus, We're together. And had everything in common. They sold property and possessions and gave to anyone who had need. They met together every day. They broke bread and ate together. And in the middle of that story, Luke adds the line that everyone was filled with awe. Or perhaps we could say, there was a magic in the air. Father Greg Boyle is a Jesuit priest who leads the community found at Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles. He imagines this awe of the early church to first and foremost be a reflection of care and compassion that those humans had for one another. That this awe was toward one another's humanity. The beauty of it. Particularly the beauty of humans that could otherwise be seen as "other" and worthy of judgment. And the magic is what happens as a result of humans seeing and serving and gathering and giving up possessions and inconveniencing themselves for the sake of one another, especially those they once believed didn't belong. In the year of our Lord, 2026, I long for more spaces that are filled with this kind of awe and magic. May we so resist the stories that tell us that goodness comes through boundary and exclusion. Through domination and hoarding our resources and padding our savings accounts. May we reject the lies that someone else has to become more like us in order for us to be in a relationship. May we risk entrusting one another with the truth that I am God's beloved And so are you. And like Juanita. May we find ourselves. Within the safety of community just when we need it.
Krystal Brotton | 59:16
Hi, this is Crystal again. Thank you so much for joining us for this episode of the Humanity of Homelessness. We hope what you heard serves as testimony that there is always good news to celebrate in hard places, and that all of our neighbors are worth our time and attention. If you'd like to remain connected with us at Church of the Park, please visit our website at churchofthepark.org. There you can find opportunities to volunteer, subscribe to our newsletter and weekly liturgy reflections, and stay in the know about our current and future projects. We have an online portal for financial giving. If you have questions for us or want to connect for a cup of coffee, we have lots of team members who would like to pay for your cup. Email us at info at churchofthepark.org. Again, that's info at churchofthepark.org. You can find this podcast wherever podcasts are found, and it is helpful to us if you subscribe and share episodes that inspire you. Thanks to everyone for tuning in and joining us as we celebrate good news in the hardest, most unexpected places.