‘Ray of hope.’ Ministry in Eastern Ky. teaches stained-glass art, helps disadvantaged
David Phipps calls himself an “old thumbless coal miner” after a career running equipment at mines in Eastern Kentucky, but in the last few months, he’s learned to piece together intricate creations in stained glass.
It’s not just art for art’s sake.
Phipps, 58, is a student at Willing Hearts in Harlan County, a nonprofit ministry that helps disadvantaged people financially while they learn to make stained-glass pieces.
When Willing Hearts sells one of Phipps’ colorful unicorns or flowers, most of the money goes toward the $200 a month he spends on medicine for his heart problem.
Phipps said his disability income is $1,535 a month, so he welcomes the assistance.
“It really helps,” he said.
Julie R. Pitts heads Willing Hearts, which has its studio on Main Street in Cumberland.
Pitts, 57, worked 27 years as a corrections officer and administrator in the prison system in South Carolina before retiring in May 2011.
A few months later, she traveled to Harlan County with a group from her church to volunteer sorting and folding clothes at a center that helped needy people.
Something kept waking her up at night during that week. She eventually realized that it was the spirit of God telling her “call it home,” meaning move to the area, Pitts said.
She wasn’t too happy at first.
She had planned on a retirement of travel and fun. She didn’t know a soul in Eastern Kentucky, and it wasn’t clear what she was supposed to do if she moved.
But Pitts had gotten serious about her faith after a “life of disobedience.”
“If I say I believe, this is where the rubber meets the road,” she said of the direction to uproot her life. “This is a leap of faith, and I’ve gotta do it.”
In February 2012, Pitts loaded a pickup truck with her belongings and moved with her dog, a schnauzer-beagle mix named Pepper, to a house she bought in the historic coal town of Lynch, a few miles up Looney Creek from Cumberland.
It still wasn’t clear what she was supposed to do, so she worked at a food pantry that had once been part of the Meridzo Center, a ministry that has several programs in the area.
Another vision arrived about 3:30 a.m., this time about sharing her passion for stained glass as a ministry, Pitts said.
She saw stained-glass work as an example of Jesus putting together the pieces of broken lives to make something beautiful. She saw a way to help people in a place where coal jobs have plummeted and the poverty rate is more than twice the national level.
She even knew the name in her vision — Willing Hearts.
Pitts wondered when she got up the next morning if it had been a dream, but she had dictated a memo about it into her smartphone during the night when she couldn’t find anything to write it down.
Pitts opened the studio in June 2015.
Anyone can take the basic 18-hour course for $50, but there’s no charge for people who have little or no income, or who are disabled or retired.
If students want to stay on after the class and make pieces, the supplies, the studio and continued instruction and help from Pitts are free.
The only requirement is they leave their pieces at the studio to sell.
When the works sell, Pitts puts 80 percent of the money in an account under the makers’ names.
“If the student needs anything — help with paying medical bills, help putting gas in their car, when their food stamps run out and they need more food — we can get them the things that they need,” Pitts said. “It’s a necessity for living is what we use as our qualifying definition of how that money can be spent.”
Pitts handles the books and pays the bills. She considers herself a missionary and the program a ministry to help the community; she doesn’t take a salary.
Her friend Wendy Gregory moved from South Carolina to help with the program.
The students don’t get cash, so the assistance doesn’t affect their eligibility for disability payments or benefits such as food stamps, Pitts said.
Instead, she uses the money to buy money orders or gift cards.
The program paid out $29,478 in benefits in 2017, according to its tax return.
The amount dropped to about $22,000 in 2018, when the studio moved to a larger building that had once been a furniture store. But Pitts thinks the amount of benefits paid out this year will go back up.
Willing Hearts keeps 20 percent of the proceeds from sales of suncatchers, stained-glass windows, ornaments and other pieces to help with expenses, but relies primarily on donations to continue the program.
The nonprofit also owns adjoining properties and rents apartments over the studio, which helps with expenses.
Making stained-glass pieces is painstaking work — cutting the glass, smoothing the edges and wrapping them with copper foil, then soldering the pieces together.
“You realize you don’t just come in here and slap it together,” said Teressa Phipps, who with her husband, Bob, runs an after-school program and coordinates mission work that their church, First Baptist Church in Clarksville, Tenn., does in the area.
“Some pieces are so hard to cut; if you break it, you just want to cry,” said Carla Hatfield, 63, who retired from Eastern Kentucky University, where she trained social workers and other employees for the state Cabinet for Health and Family Services.
It’s common for students to get cuts on their hands. At first, it feels like an “intense paper cut,” but after a while, they don’t notice until they see blood, Hatfield said.
Everyone has favorite objects to make. For Teressa Phipps, it’s a cross while Hatfield likes quilt pieces.
She made one based on an Appalachian quilt pattern called a carnival pattern. PItts mounted it in a wood frame salvaged from a house built in 1892.
Heather Smith, 30, came to the program a few months ago after getting out of an abusive relationship in another state. She moved back home with her 6-year-old son, Taylor.
Smith said she had always been fascinated by stained glass and was glad for the chance to learn how to make it.
As a single mother studying to become a registered X-ray technician, she welcomed the opportunity to earn a little help with her utility bills or groceries if needed.
“It’s also helping me and my son because I’ve got that extra security,” Smith said. “That’s a blessing.”
A woman in Western Kentucky that Pitts didn’t know, who had heard about Willing Hearts, donated the equipment necessary to make ceramics and pottery, so Pitts plans to expand the studio.
She also plans to add woodworking.
Pitts wants Willing Hearts to be part of rebuilding the economy of the area.
“We’ve got to be serving as that ray of hope,” Pitts said.
