Bladensburg Road to Old Bowie; Distance = 18 Miles; People Met = 8
Ky already planned to stay at the Community Church in Greenbelt in the evening and she came in to get us at the end of the previous day when things did not work out in DC. In talking with Pastor Dan Hamlin I discovered that, unlike DC churches, those on the outskirts take their turns housing the homeless with a rotation. The Community Church takes Christmas week.
That’s not all the Community Church does. Of note: once a year they renovate a low income house for someone. Also, they are the leader among UCC churches in CROP hunger walks, raising $17,000 this past year. Pastor Dan is about to retire after 28 years at Community Church and one of his new roles will be an advocate for Church World Service in general and CROP Hunger Walks in particular.
Community Church draws from a vibrant community. Greenbelt came into being in 1937 as a planned community. The focus was on affordable housing and religious diversity, with residents selected to reflect the proportions indicated on the 1920 census. Together they built a community from scratch, creating businesses for all the services needed. To this day businesses like the cooperative supermarket and credit union survive and function as they always have for Greenbelt.
Pastor Dan took immense pride in Greenbelt, emphasizing how their communal focus continues as citizens remain heavily involved in many aspects of the town. We met a few other people with good things to say about Greenbelt during the course of our walk that day, such as Kent and Julie McCullough whom we met at Greenbelt Lake. They were organizers of the Nasa-Goddard Flight Center 10K fun run and were just packing up when we arrived. They particularly endorsed Greenbelt’s care for the elderly. They also alerted us to the commonalities with YES! magazine and Servas with our own journey.
At the Greenbelt Cooperative Supermarket that evening we bumped into John Henry Jones, or I should say he came over to speak with us. As Pastor Dan informed us he is perhaps the most gregarious individual in a town designed for community. Coincidentally, he originally hailed from western Pennsylvania where he once worked on the railroads.
I always tell people at the check-out counter about our journey. People react in a variety of ways, including complete disinterest, but Linda D was virtually awestruck with our journey.
One man backtracked in his car to talk to us today. He asked if I was just in the news, specifically, was I the guy who collected a lot of dinosaur fossils in the area. Nope, not me, but that was better than the few instances on this trip where I was mistaken for an old fossil.
