Mother Waddles: one woman's war on poverty - Charleszetta Waddles, Pentecostal minister aids poor in Detroit

MOTHER WADDLES one woman's war on poverty

The phone rings. On the other end, a mother is calling for help. She has no money, and her little boy is crying because his feet are cold. He has no shoes. An elderly woman listens, then hangs up the phone. After she makes two phone calls, the little boy has a pair of shoes. Once again, Mother Waddles comes to the rescue. This 78-year-old ordained Pentecostal minister, Charleszetta Waddles, has been helping people who can't help themselves for almost 35 years.

"Mother," which is what most people call her, was born the eldest of seven children in St. Louis, Missouri. She left school at 12 to work full-time and became a bride at 14. While in her mid-twenties she moved to Detroit. No stranger to poverty, Waddles raised ten children of her own and in 1956 opened the Mother Waddles Perpetual Mission, Inc., in Detroit and began her one-woman war on poverty. The mission, which is located in a commercial area on Detroit's west side, provides health care, food, job training and placement, and counseling to more than 100,000 people each year. Why does she work so hard? "I read the Bible," explains Mother Waddles. "It didn't say just go to church. It said, `Do something.'"

Waddles, who puts in 12-hour days and is on 24-hour call, relies primarily on donations from people she has aided in the past. Among them is boxer Thomas Hearns, who was once fed by Mother Waddles's mission and now comes back to help. In August her good works were the subject of a PBS documentary appropriately titled "Ya Done Good."

Now an ex-convict is ready to start a new life and turns to Waddles to help him find a job. She uplifts him spiritually, then makes a call. "You'll have a job in the next few days," she tells him. He smiles and thanks her. Ya done good, Mother Waddles, ya done good.

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