Cranks Creek Survival Center
Rebecca "Becky" Simpson, director
PO Box 32, Route 568
Cranks, Harlan County, Ky. 40820
(606) 573-2812

Becky Simpson, a youthful 63 years old when I interviewed her in the spring of 1990, has rarely been out of this wildly beautiful green hollow in far southeastern Kentucky, and never further from home than the state capitol in Frankfort. Yet her efforts to organize family, friends and neighbors to help themselves have somehow gained the attention of such media as the Louisville Courier-Journal, NBC Television, The Washington Post, Parade Magazine and The New York Times. The result: Donations of money, food, clothing and other necessary items come flooding in from all over the country. Volunteers come down to Cranks and spend weeks, sleeping on floors in unfinished buildings while they help rebuild mountain people's houses. A total of 524 volunteers came last summer, some for 10 weeks.

Simpson and her three sons, who live in separate houses on the property, simply do whatever needs to be done, as she puts it, "to help the needy people."

They find homeless people in the Appalachian hollows and make them feel at home until they get back on their feet, putting them up in one or another of the neat but sparely functional houses they've set up on their land to house volunteers who come in for week-long stays. They distribute foodstuffs as quickly as they come in; a constant supply of clothing comes in from donors all over the country, and it goes out as quickly to residents who come to the Simpsons' barn and select what they need.

Cranks Creek makes good use of anything that isn't used up or worn out: mattresses, stoves, furniture, even wheelchairs, donated by Baptist Hospital in Corbin, Ky.

"When we get in fresh vegetables, we put it on both radio stations, and maybe 100 people will come in the morning," she said. "The hardest part is when we run out before everybody gets here. It's hard to have to say, 'Hit's gone for today.'"

Becky Simpson may have 10 more ideas tomorrow, but for now her largest unrealized dream is to build a home, with appropriate adult supervision, with gardens and cozy rooms for abused children of local families. "It's a sickening sight to see a child being abused," and abuse is all too common among the poor mountain families, she said.

But the worst thing, she said - and this tells it all about the mountain spirit - "If we had the home, they wouldn't have to take the little ones [for foster care] to Corbin or Lancaster. That's too far from home."

"Sometimes it's very hard. I get very tired. The night before last, I laid down, and it took forever, it seemed, to get rested enough to go to sleep. But I can't quit this ... it seems like it's my life."

All the feature stories on @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG's pages are reported and written by Robin Garr, a prize-winning journalist who has visited more than 500 innovative grassroots programs in all 50 states since 1990.

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