Progress 2018 -- Making a Difference: Offering a helping hand
By Steve Herring
Published in News on February 23, 2018 5:50 AM
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News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
Lula Newkirk talks with Flo Chambers and Mary Bellamy, Newkirk's sister, as they prepare lunch for Tuesday's Bible study group.
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News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
Lula Newkirk stands in the food pantry of Helping Hands United Mission. Those in need are allowed to come once every six months for a bag of food.
The Rev. Lula Newkirk has no idea how many people she has helped over the past nearly 30 years.
No idea how much food, clothing and comfort that she has provided.
All she knows is that it will never be enough.
"I just hope the Lord will keep me a few more years longer so that I can keep on doing what I am doing and see the people smile, happy and helped," she said.
But even then that is not going to be enough to make up for all that the community did for her family when she was a child, she said.
"No. I don't think I have done enough. I think there is more because I see more people in need," Newkirk said. "Some of those that even didn't help us, they need help. There are a lot of elderly people and a lot of even young people, too, who are in need.
"I get a lot of calls. You need to do as long as you can. I don't feel like I do enough until my time is finished because when I feel like I have done enough I am going to sit down and quit, but I don't want to quit. It's just good to be doing, to be active and to be able to give and be able to see somebody else smile and to make somebody else happy."
And Newkirk hopes that people who have been helped through her nonprofit Helping Hands United Mission will have been inspired and will carry on her mission.
"I hope and pray," she said. "I hope and pray that they do, that somebody, some of them will feel the passion to want to help somebody else because there is a need. There is a need, and people who feel like meeting needs can make a difference.
"I hope we have made a difference in the lives of children, some people who were hurting and who were needy. That is what it is all about. Helping and giving, that's what God did. He loved us so much He gave. He gave us His best. He gave us His Son. So we have to give our best as long as we can. My mother taught us that."
Newkirk's laughter and boundless energy belie her 76 years.
"I am thankful to be as old as I am," she said.
One of nine children, Newkirk grew up on a farm just outside of Mount Olive where she picked cotton, strawberries and greenbeans.
She began working in the field when she was about 7.
"So much, so much of that," Newkirk said. "We could do a lot at 7 years old you know. I wasn't the oldest child though. I was about the fourth."
She could pick more than 100 pounds of cotton a day, and while that is a noteworthy feat she still hated being in the cotton field.
"I used to be out in the cotton field, and I would be praying for it to rain so that we could go out of the cotton field," she said. "I didn't want to pick cotton, but that was our means of survival.
"My mother was sick a lot and couldn't really hold a full-time job. My mother had nine children so we had to get out in the field and work to make ends meet."
Her father went to Philadelphia to get a job to send money back.
"When we were growing up my mother had pretty raised us alone," Newkirk said. "We were without a lot. We were needy. The community, the church family, they helped us.
"They brought food to us, clothing because my mother wasn't able to work. It was elderly people coming and bringing us food. We were never hungry because the community always had food there for us."
She was about 12 at the time.
"I remember those ladies very well bringing big dishes of food," Newkirk said. "We were glad to see that food. They brought chicken. I remember they brought (chicken) neckbones. I have had enough of that. I don't even cook them now. But then that was the thing.
"They would put potatoes in with the neckbones, and it was pretty good then, but I got full of that. They cooked a lot of peas -- black-eyed peas, pinto beans. I still love them now. A lot of baked potatoes."
Nor was the generosity limited to the black community.
The white farmers they worked for knew that Newkirk had a large family and would bring the family food, too.
"We'd go out there on the front porch sometimes, and we'd see a bushel of sweet potatoes," she said. "Oh man, we were glad to see that. We'd bake those sweet potatoes and put butter on them. That was some good eating now. My mother would cook some beans, and she would cook rice every day. She loved rice.
"You'd see big bags of rice, sugar. They would just drop off things. So like I said we were never hungry. We were blessed."
Even as a child Newkirk would sit around and think about the generosity -- how she could give back to some of these people.
She knew they were older than her and would get older.
"I said if the Lord blessed me with a good job, I am going to pay back," she said. "I just used to sit and look at these people come through the door.
"I would say it is nobody but the Lord, nobody but the Lord. I would hear my mother pray. She was a praying woman. She taught us to pray and put God first, to love people, to treat people like you want to be treated."
Both she and her late husband, Edward Carnell Newkirk, are graduates of Carver High School where they were high school sweethearts.
They were married for 39 years and started Helping Hands United Mission in 1994, where they provided clothing, helped people who had fallen behind in heating bills and counseled those in need.
After completing high school, Newkirk want to attend college, but the family lacked the money to send her.
She wanted to get out of the fields even if it meant leaving the state.
The constant bending to pick cotton was hurting her back.
"I did a lot of praying, and my mother did, too," Newkirk said. "She taught us to put God first and to believe God. So I prayed that the Lord would make a way. The way was made, and I went to New York."
She got a job working in a restaurant, but was not satisfied -- she still yearned for more education so that that she could support herself whether she got married or not.
"I was led to go to college to be a nurse," she said. "I went to New York and applied for a grant at the Bronx Community College. They approved it. They granted me the grant to go to college to be a nurse. So I went."
After high school her future husband went into the Air Force, but they continued to stay in touch with each other.
They returned to Mount Olive long enough to get married before moving back to New York so that she could compete her education.
They lived there for 15 years.
"But my husband always wanted to come back to Mount Olive," she said. "I didn't want to come initially because I didn't want to come without a job or profession and not have to go in the fields and try to farm again. That was just too much. I said I have got to do something different.
"I said just stay up here long enough so that I can go to school and get my degree and then we will go back to Mount Olive because I love Mount Olive, too."
He agreed.
When it came time to return to Mount Olive her husband came down first to find them a home.
But Newkirk still wanted to make sure she had a job before she returned home.
She applied to Wayne Memorial Hospital and was hired while she was still in New York.
"So when I came down I had a job waiting," she said.
She worked at the hospital for about two years before taking a job at Mount Olive Medical Park nursing home so that she could be closer to her children as they were going to school.
After 15 years she left to go to work at Cherry Hospital because of the state system's better benefits.
Her last 15 years of nursing were spent at Cherry Hospital.
She retired in 2001 after 31 years in nursing.
Before moving back she said she would often think about the people who made her happy, who did so much for her family.
"They not only helped feed us and clothe us, but to help us smile and to be happy," she said. "To know that you are loved. They showed love and to be happy.
"There are a lot of people not happy today, but we were happy children. We were not worried about the next meal. We just believed God, and we believed that we were going to be fed and we were."
When she returned to Mount Olive, Newkirk still remembered those people who had helped her family -- several of whom were still living.
She went to four of those women and gave back to them and helped them. That included housework. She would cook meals to take to them.
Newkirk said her husband was always agreeable to whatever she felt led to do that.
"We had this barn out there," she said. "I said we can use that little barn. He had all his tools and stuff out there. I said we can use that barn to do ministry. He said OK."
Her husband went to work on the barn, moving tools and covering them with sheets.
She is still using that barn today.
"We have added on and added on and added on to that barn and renovated it to make it look presentable," Newkirk said. "We have church in there on the first Sunday (of the month). We have Bible study on Tuesday. We open Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday for the food pantry, 1 to 4."
To begin with the Newkirks volunteered with the Share nonprofit food program some 30 years ago.
Her husband and others would go to Fayetteville to pick up the food and bring it back to Mount Olive for distribution.
After her husband died, she was unable to go to Fayetteville to get the food and stopped participating in that program.
In the meantime, she had started a small food pantry that began to grow.
Newkirk began to help Area Churches in Action with its Christmas food box program.
When the woman in charge of the ACIA food pantry retired, Newkirk was asked if Helping Hands had would bring it into its food pantry.
She agreed.
That was some 15 years ago.
Another tradition is the Thanksgiving and Christmas food box giveaways
Newkirk has no idea how many boxes have been given away, but it probably numbers in the thousands over the past 15 years.
She also volunteers with Habitat for Humanity and has worked with the Feed the Children program.
"We have done a lot of things in that little building back there, that little barn back there," she said. "But to God be the glory because I mean it has been enjoyable chores. We enjoy doing what we are doing."
"I will do it as long as I am able, and I want somebody else to take it over so I am incorporating my daughter and friends. We ain't here to stay. We are going to go sooner or later.
"So somebody needs to carry on because it is a good ministry, and I just believe that the work of the Lord goes on -- that somebody will pick it up."
Her daughter, Renee, and son, Tim, live next door to her and help with the work of the mission. Granddaughter Sheree Spruill helps as well.
Newkirk's older son, Edward Newkirk Jr., died several years ago.
Her brothers and sisters are very supportive of the ministry.
The community is real supportive, too, she said.
"It has been a rewarding ministry, and I am just so thankful that the Lord blessed us in that little place," she said. "If I had known it was going to grow like that -- I can't see into the future -- I probably would have built a building.
"I believe I would have built it big enough so that I could have a temporary shelter to house at least four or five elderly people who need a place to stay."
As people get older, and their family is gone, they are by themselves and some have to go to a nursing home and lose all that they have, she said.
They have people making decisions for them and have no family or friends.
"I have run into a lot of people like that, and it is so sad," she said.
Newkirk said she would like to see such a shelter developed for Mount Olive.