Marquita Wilson says she knows the true spirit of love for one’s neighbor. She experienced it herself, she said, with helping hands that got her through teen pregnancy, drug addiction and despair.
Now she’s stepping forward to help others. Her goal is healthy babies and loving mothers as she works with volunteers in a support network she helped found, Hearts in Service: Just for You, and as a member of the national Healthy Start Initiative, run locally through Aunt Martha’s Youth Service Center.
“There’s isn’t much that can surprise or shock me,” said the Chicago Heights grandmother, reflecting on her life. “I’ve done drugs. I’ve lived in shelters. I’ve lived in my car. I know what it’s like to be on public aid and have to go through some of the humiliation they put you through.”
Wilson, 43, grew up in Chicago’s Woodlawn neighborhood and came from a strong family, she said. But she became pregnant her senior year of high school, and the more obvious her pregnancy became, the less the father came around.
Her mother stood by her decision to give birth, but she remembers “riding the bus going to class, I got the looks from the older ladies in the neighborhood. When I was growing up, there was still a very large stigma attached (to unwed mothers),” she said. “It was a different time.”
She delivered a healthy boy, Roger, two weeks after her 18th birthday and dropped out of school to care for him. She became reacquainted with a church friend, Augustus Wilson, whom she married within a year after having the baby. They have been together for 25 years, through drug addiction and past it (Wilson has been off drugs for 23 years, her husband for eight). They are parents of three children, grandparents of two, and foster parents to four.
What Wilson remembers of their early days of struggle was someone interceding more than once on her behalf, positive experiences that led to her life of service.
Looking back, Wilson remembers her mother and grandmother and a network of church ladies fondly. “I wasn’t raised the way I was living,” she said. “I was lucky that I had women who didn’t let me fall through the cracks.”
Wilson recalls a time when she was taking drugs and not going to church, but a woman from church, Dorothy Armstrong, sought her out. The Wilsons, by then a family of six, were living in an apartment. Their marriage was teetering and, in response to her husband’s drug addiction, Wilson said she didn’t care much about herself or her surroundings.
On the first visit, Armstrong talked with Wilson. The second time she came with lunch, a pail, mop and cleaning supplies.
“She said to me, `This lunch is for me, and these things are for you.’ She understood what was going on with me. I didn’t really want to be that way, but that’s the way things were coming out. I didn’t know where to begin, and she gave me directions. All I needed was for her to say, `Start here,’ and I got motivated. I did such a great job that I went out and bought paint and curtains!”
Once she got her life in order and became a born-again Christian, Wilson said she felt ready to give back to society. She got her high-school equivalency diploma at age 35 and dreamed of a women’s support network. When she moved from Chicago to Chicago Heights, Wilson met Jeff Bolden of the Chicago Heights Police Department who was organizing Operation Change through the department, a program that helps teens find a path away from gangs and drugs. With his encouragement, Wilson organized Hearts in Service: Just for You.
Wilson has brought together a diverse group of women who are mentoring others in the south suburbs. Hearts in Service: Just for You was incorporated two years ago (in part so it can be supported by tax-deductible donations), but Wilson said she has worked hard “to make it as non-social-service looking as I possibly can. I’ve been through the social service agencies, and I want very much to have an agency that’s not like that. I try to find someone (as a mentor) who has been there, done that, so that the person asking for help doesn’t feel like someone’s looking down on them. Our programs are non-intrusive, but we want the women to know we’re there for them.”
Wilson has been placed on the call list of St. James Hospital and various women’s shelters. She provided clients with as much material support–clothing, bedding and toys, for example–as she can, but focuses more on the caring aspect.
“She’s constantly looking out for the young, misguided mothers,” said Rev. James Fair of Learning Center Gospel Chapel in Harvey. “She’s constantly giving to the others. You’d think she’s got a whole lot, but she doesn’t.”
It was through her network efforts that Wilson met Pat Albert, former chair of Aunt Martha’s Healthy Start Initiative, who invited her to serve on the Healthy Start Advisory Board.
Healthy Start Initiative, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is working to reduce the incidence of low birth-weight infants and infant mortality among teenage mothers in 75 targeted areas across the country.
“Aunt Martha’s turned out to be the best thing I could have ever done. I’m still doing my support group, but I’m learning so much by sitting on the board,” Wilson explained. “And Healthy Start is kind of after my own heart, partly because of my own experience as a teen mother.”
Within a year’s time, Wilson was chairing Aunt Martha’s Healthy Start Advisory Board and began organizing a two-day Illinois consortium meeting, modeled after a 1998 national meeting she had attended in Washington.
“She really took the ball and ran with it on her own,” said Jim Minor, assistant administrator of Aunt Martha’s Health Unit. “Marquita was the driving force. She made sure it was consumer-focused and was very passionate about it.”
“I was struck by the amount of integrity and personal commitment Marquita put into the conference. She was really participant-driven. . .everything revolved around the young women coming,” said Bob Tanner, division manager for the Health and Comprehensive Services Unit of Aunt Martha’s Youth Services.
Wilson isn’t resting on her laurels, which include an award from the Abby Foundation as one of five women making a difference in the south suburbs. She continues to seek funding sources for Hearts in Service and volunteers at the Chicago Heights Head Start Program. It may seem like a pressure cooker, but Wilson doesn’t look at it that way.
“My suggestion is simple. Slow down. Take care of one thing at a time, not the whole picture. It’s like an onion,” she explained. “You peel off the layers.”
———-
For more information about Hearts in Service: Just for You, call 708-747-5724.
