In 2011, Bill Moose retired from a career with General Motors and was visiting Warsaw with his wife. They had sold their home in Nebraska and were looking for a place to relocate. Bill was drawn to the area because of the fishing in Truman Lake and Lake of the Ozarks, he said, and to Clinton because of the friendly people.
He recalls calling his father on the phone after talking to a helpful clerk at the Henry County Courthouse.
“I said “Dad, I think I’ve found a place I want to live,” Bill said.
But fishing had to take a back seat after Bill accepted the job of director of Door of Hope, a non-profit that provides services, classes and a support system for couples who are expecting. On Tuesday, April 15, Bill spoke to 35 women at the Christian Women’s Connection lunch about the newest community project being organized under the Door of Hope umbrella: Project Homeless.
The big news: the project is lifting off.
“We have almost got a building,” he said, an announcement that was met with applause, “and we have received a donation of $50,000 to start renovating it.”
The building is the former Henry County Emergency Management Services offices on Washington Street, a.k.a the old Henry County Jail. The “new” jail was built north of the Square, and EMS offices recently moved into the courthouse. Both old and new commissioners have given the green light on repurposing the building for a shelter, and records that were stored in the old jail cells on the upper floor are now being moved out, Bill said.
Warrensburg’s solution to getting people off the streets is called “The Journey Home.” The shelter offers people a base and a place to sleep for 21 days, with the possibility of extensions. The Journey Home also has ‘tiny houses’ available as a next step in the process to getting people back on their feet, into jobs and ultimately into their own homes.
Project Homeless has also been offered property near Clinton where building tiny houses is a possibility, but that’s several years down the road, Bill said.
Establishing a year-round shelter in Clinton has been almost a year in the making. Last May, 81 people from law enforcement, the courthouse, health agencies, churches and other non-profits met at Clinton Christian Church to set priorities based on community needs. Providing a year-round shelter for people who are homeless was priority number 4, Bill said.
When asked how many people are homeless in the Clinton area, Bill said it depends on the time of year, but ranges from 75 to 130 right now, and up to 200 in the summer. People live in abandoned buildings, under bridges and out in the woods. Bill said he has gotten a call from a homeless man who had been living in a tent that had washed away in a rainstorm. Another call came from a young man who was sleeping on the ground behind Beall’s and asked for something to use as a barrier to the cold ground.
“I found an old sleeping bag and took it to him,”Bill said.
Middle-school and high-school students become homeless when their parents become fed up with drug addiction, Bill said, which leads to theft. The teens often end up with Grandma. Bill and his wife took in a teenager who needed a place to live.
“Sometimes all they need is love,” he said.
Homeless kids grow up to be homeless adults, he said. Bill said he has also helped people acquire photo identification cards, which is necessary to register for medical care. Not every homeless person wants help, he said, but some have health issues and don’t know what to do.
“There’s a big need out there,” he said.
Bill said he has heard of pregnant teenage girls sleeping on the floors of public restrooms. A former school teacher in Clinton in the audience said that high-school kids in Clinton who were homeless used to sleep on top of buildings on the Square, throwing ropes over the roofs to climb up and hoist up their belongings.
That was 15 years ago, she said, when no one was ready to face the problem. At the community meeting a year ago in May, the effort coalesced into Project Homeless, and committees were formed to obtain a building and find funding, and to organize services.
After he moved to Clinton, Bill built a house and in 2016, bought a fishing boat. He spent a lot of time in his volunteer job, he said — if the Door of Hope office on Washington Street was open, he was there. But he also made time to go fishing, recalling times the fishing was so good, he and fishing buddies would be reluctant to leave the bite.
One day, he got a call from a homeless couple who said they stopped down at the office several times to find him, but didn’t, and asked where he had been.
Bill knew where he had been. “So I sold my fishing boat,” he said.
Bill said the blessings and joys of his life have occurred since he moved to Clinton. He likes the way the community works together to help others. An audience member commented that Dietz Family Buffet is good about hiring people who need employment.
“God is good,” Bill said. “God is working in our community.”
Bill singled out Darren Huey, who runs Celebrate Recovery, a faith-based 12-step program developed for use in jails. Darren is also director of Forged by Christ Men’s Discipleship Center, which provides a home with a structured environment for 10 men, and never has problems finding jobs for the men.
It was Darren who had the vision for a ministry that would give men a place to make a new start and change their lives while strengthening their faith. Bill said he wouldn’t be talking about Project Homeless today if God hadn’t spoken to Darren’s heart, as well as drawn Bill to Clinton when he was looking for a new place to live.
“Sometimes it’s unbelievable what happens in our community,” Bill said. “I thought I had moved here to go fishing.”
Christian Women’s Connection presented Bill with a check for $500 to distribute to community causes. CWC meets for lunch and a program on the third Tuesday of the month at 11:45 a.m. at First Assembly of God Church, 1506 E. Ohio, Clinton, Mo. 64735. All women are welcome.The next luncheon and program is on May 20, with spring flowers as the theme, door prizes and a speaker on seeing God’s blessings through trauma. Call Shirley Rucker at 417-321-0013 to make a reservation for lunch ($14), which is catered by Melinda Dehn.
