A story of Hope.

Hope Whitlock, born in 1920, is one of the many the inspirations for A Place for Hope's call to service. But, "Hopie", (as friends and family call her), was the motive the founder of A Place for Hope, Donna Berry drove into a community she knew nothing of. With her own elderly mother in tow, Donna drove to a location that she instinctively knew was part of her 'inner vision' which repeatedly told her to seek this place out...and to help the folk living there.

Mrs. Whitlock was raised the daughter of Chester, SC sharecroppers. She tells us that she worked in the cotton fields most of her life. That memory, she states, is not a happy one.
She is glad to be "out of the fields." She adds wood to the stove in her living room. Joining us in the warmth are several grandchildren, nieces and nephews, in-laws, and neighbors.

Mrs. Whitlock is the mother of seven. She and her husband moved from the cotton fields of Richburg, SC to Rock Hill in 1963. Her four-room home was built by hand from discarded building materials and by whatever means necessary by her late husband. Decades later, ripped screens, broken glass, rusted discarded appliances, and desperate poverty was the landscape. The children see and learn...and try to survive. The residents sleep in shifts because of the limited space in the home. Hope's house is the heart of the Blackmon Road Community, where folks in need stop for a bite to eat, or a drink of water from the tainted well on Archer Drive, or a moment's rest. The door of her home on Blackmon Road is always open.

A steady stream of children, mostly small, and many her own grand-children or great-grand-children, gather around the small wood-stove today. It's about this imagery and its long reaching implications. These young faces tell of the "hope" only a toddler can believe or comprehend.