New Mission Opens Doors With Big Meal for Poor

Among the 450 people who celebrated the debut of the new San Diego Rescue Mission with an early Thanksgiving feast Wednesday sat a prophet named Morton J. Dubey.

“I’ll make a prediction right now,” said Dubey, 47, between generous mouthfuls of stuffing and pumpkin pie. “The (homeless) population will pick up in San Diego County. That’s the prediction.”

It wasn’t the food that moved Dubey to prophecy, but the Mission’s spacious new digs, which opened its doors for the first time Wednesday to San Diego’s poor. Dubey said the smell of the fresh paint, the feel of the wear-resistant carpeting and the sparkle of the new sinks will act like a magnet to draw homeless from all over the country to America’s Finest City to see America’s Finest Mission.

“Naturally, everyone wants to stay at the Hilton Hotels all over the world,” Dubey said. “So this is the Hilton Hotel of missions. Start to get the picture?”

Hardly anybody would argue the point. The Rescue Mission, rousted out of its old facility at 527 Fifth Ave. by redevelopment in the Gaslamp Quarter, has built itself an impressive $2.6-million home of brown, ribbed concrete on the outside and nearly three times the space on the inside at 1150 J St.

Where the old Mission building had 17,500 square feet and 87 beds, the new one has 47,700 square feet and 240 beds. Where it once had two showers and three sinks for people checking in for the night, it now has 10 showers and six sinks.

It has an exercise room, hobby room, central heating and a pool table in the recreation room. There is a stained-glass window with a dove of peace at the front of the large assembly hall, where church services are held.

The mission even has a new name: Life Ministries.

Putting the new building to full use, however, is not possible right now because there is still some minor construction work to be done, said Jim Flohr, executive director. In addition, the mission still owes construction contractors about $60,000.

Although the mission has raised $300,000 in donations since it shut down its old building on Oct. 7, it would like to pay the balance off before it begins taking on people for the night. Flohr said he believed that will not happen before early December.

For now, only resident staff members are bunking in the new building, Flohr said.

So Wednesday’s debut was a limited one, but no one seemed to mind. The mission staff members opened the door in time to allow more than 300 street people and other poor to sit in the chapel and hear a Christian rock band play at 1 p.m.

The pungent smell of hard street life soon overcame the smell of new carpet and paint. Flohr told the crowd he was grateful the Mission even opened its doors at all in time for its 31st annual pre-Thanksgiving meal.

“I began to wonder about it, but my faith never lagged,” he said. The street people applauded enthusiastically.

After a 30-minute program of music and testimony,

the doors at the back of the chapel were opened and the guests lined up to take their places at tables already set with plates filled with turkey, mounds of dressing, bread and cranberry sauce alongside cartons of milk.

“The people are happy,” said Flohr, as he walked around the dining room like a proud papa.

“As you see, we’ve improved our help in the future to them. The dining room is not so tight that they’re elbow to elbow,” like in the former building, he said.

Shortly after 2 p.m., Jack J. Blume, an unemployed custodian from New York, participated in a rite of passage for the new mission while he was busing his tray.

“The first cockroach,” he said, stomping on the creature with his right foot and leaving a streak on the linoleum floor. He shook his head and smiled: “Even in a new building . . . .”

Mission cooks prepared 700 pounds of turkey and 300 pounds of dressing in anticipation of nearly 1,000 people for lunch. About 700 showed for the pre-Thanksgiving meal last year at the old building, but only about 450 came through the door on Wednesday.

“The word seemingly didn’t get around,” Flohr said. “Some came late and said, ‘We just found it out.’ ”

The way Dubey sees it, though, that won’t be a problem for long. The dining room prophet, who said he’s checked out Missions from coast to coast, held his pie crust in his hands, devoured it in several bites and predicted that Flohr and his troops will soon be doing a high-volume business.

“For some miraculous reason, San Diego County built a mission for the men, but what will become of it?” he said. “These men here, they know how to write letters, make telephone calls. They have friends who are mission dwellers . . . .

“The word will get out all over the United States and this place will be overflowing . . . They’re going to need 7,000 (beds) and add stories on,” said Dubey, who explained that in some areas of the country you have to travel “2 1/2 states to find something to eat.”

The prospect of new customers was just fine with mission staff.

“We don’t look at it as a problem,” said Chaplain Price Martin, who came to the old mission building 12 years ago as a drunk but is now taking a correspondence course to obtain his theological degree from a university in Oklahoma.

“We look at it as meeting a need to get lives pointed in the right direction,” he said.

Wednesday seemed like a good start. As the lunch crowd began thinning at 2:30 p.m., transients and other poor people of San Diego who enjoyed the inaugural dinner thanked Flohr and his staff before shuffling of to the streets of downtown’s eastern edge.

Already there was talk about the pre-Thanksgiving meal at St. Vincent de Paul’s, scheduled to begin at 4:30 p.m.