Community’s Charities Flourish in Aftermath of Director’s Slaying : Homelessness: Soup kitchen clients feared rejection after the shooting. What followed seems like a miracle.

The anger is subsiding in this Deep South city where a soup kitchen worker died this summer at the hands of a homeless person he was trying to help.

Volunteerism, in fact, is at an all-time high, charity workers say.

Matt Devenney, 33, was shot June 19 outside the Community Stewpot as he pleaded with a homeless man who claimed to be the governor of Mississippi.

John D. Smith, a 37-year-old drifter, was charged with murder. After the shooting, questions arose about state laws that allowed a man with an extensive criminal record and a history of mental illness to buy six guns from a Jackson pawnshop. The slaying also aroused security concerns for street people.

Now the number of volunteers working to help the destitute of Jackson is at an all-time high, more people are getting help and community services are flourishing, authorities say.

“The response has been nothing short of miraculous,” said the Rev. Molly McBride, who replaced Devenney as director of the Community Stewpot Inc., a church-sponsored program offering meals and medical services to the poor.

“I really do believe that Matt is smiling down at what is happening right now. What Matt prayed about every day is happening.”

“The love overcomes the anger,” said Lollie Holland, assistant director of the Community Stewpot. “The anger is gone.”

The Community Stewpot is marking its 10th anniversary this fall, and Devenney will be remembered with a monument--perhaps a shaded park bench or some other comfort for the people he loved.

His wife, Kathy Schiller Devenney, and their 22-month-old son, David, still live among the poor in a small frame house.

The couple met while doing volunteer work in this city of 200,000, and decided to live among its destitute people.

Kathy Devenney has received more than 500 letters and condolences from across the nation--some from people she has never met. She hasn’t opened them all, she said. She is saving some for David to read when he grows up.

“I still haven’t read all the cards,” she said. “It’s too upsetting.”

In a 1984 essay, Devenney wrote that he wanted to die knowing he had done everything he could to make a difference in others’ lives, particularly the hungry, his wife said.

Devenney, who came to Mississippi after serving as a volunteer in New Mexico, also said in the essay that he knew his dreams of a poverty-free society couldn’t be accomplished in his lifetime.

“We both believed in living out our faith. There are so many problems on the streets,” Kathy Devenney said. “I don’t think there are simple answers to it.”

Devenney, who had a master’s degree in history from James Madison University in Virginia, began as a volunteer about five years ago at the soup kitchen and clinic that serves west Jackson, one of the poorest areas of the Mississippi capital. He was named director last year.

Devenney’s goal, friends say, was to give the downtrodden self-worth, to feed the poor and to teach God’s word.

Don London is one of Devenney’s success stories.

“I was out on the street. I was dirty. I thought that no one cared, just a general wreck,” London said. “Apparently, he saw potential in me.

“He being white and me being black, you don’t expect that kind of thing,” said London, who was given a job at the soup kitchen.

The poor still gather daily at the soup kitchen--housed in a renovated gasoline station--for fruit juice, vegetables and the special of the day, which can be anything from spaghetti to red beans and rice.

They sit at about a dozen folding tables covered with faded checkered cloths. Elderly people, mostly blacks in torn and dirty clothing, chew on toothpicks, smoke cigarettes and reminisce about Devenney.

“We miss him but we have to carry on,” said 73-year-old Rachel Wynn, a former peanut butter factory worker who eats regularly at the soup kitchen. “People have sorrow in their heart.”

When eight churches started the Stewpot, it served six people a day. Now it serves up to 200 daily and counts 51 congregations as members of the program.

Besides the clinic, the Stewpot runs two shelters and the Emergency Food Pantry, which provides a four-day supply of food every 30 days to those who qualify.

“This is the only place they can come to, where they can sit and feel wanted and needed,” said Marymell Rains, another volunteer.

Many of the regulars at the soup kitchen are homeless; many are addicted to alcohol or other drugs.

“We serve with no questions asked,” Rains said. “We try to meet both the physical and emotional needs of the people. We’re able to get some of these people off the streets; break the cycle of poverty and abuse.”

After Devenney was killed, some of the kitchen’s clients worried that they would be turned away.

“When Matthew was killed, the people were afraid to come back because they were afraid of how they’d be treated,” Rains said. “But our coming back reinforced that we were here to stay.”