Saturday, April 6, 2024, was a cold and blustery day outside the Stop and Shop in Quincy Massachusetts. A cloudy and windy 39 degrees made for a chilling tabling event.
I was there with District Captain William (Bill) Matheson of the Massachusetts COS team collecting petition signatures in the legislative district of Massachusetts Speaker of the House Ron Mariano.
We were about an hour into the planned eight-hour event when I spotted an elderly woman coming around the corner and walking toward the door into the store. She politely said hello and asked what we were doing. She signed the petition before she entered the store. After she had signed the petition, I looked at her section to make sure all the information needed was included. Something out of the ordinary caught my eye.
Some time passed as Bill and I continued soliciting petition signatures from the Saturday grocery-shopping crowd. After a while, the lady came back outside and was passing us by when I called out to her, by name. “Leslie, have a blessed day.” Leslie stopped, set her hand-drawn cart aside, and came up to me for a conversation. She made an articulate argument as to why we need to save our Constitution from being used to destroy our Nation, saying that we need to use the Constitution in order to save the Constitution (an argument many of us are familiar with). She thanked Bill and me for standing out on such a miserable day in order to fight for what we believe in.
When looking over the petition Leslie had signed before entering the store, I noticed that in the area designated ADDRESS Leslie had written NONE. I asked her if she just did not want to give her address. The answer I received rocked me to the point of tears.
Leslie told of how she worked all her life teaching and now, after losing everything during the last economic downturn, she was living on the street. I sheepishly inquired, “So, you are homeless?”
Leslie told me that “homeless” was too grandiose a word to describe her situation. She informed me that even buying the bare necessities was beyond her means as the current economy continues to destroy the lower/middle class. A small pension and Social Security barely allow her to feed herself. Inflation caused by out-of-control spending at the federal level is making it too expensive to even be homeless.
With my heart swollen with love and my eyes with tears, I slowly slipped off my prayer bracelet and gently slid it onto Leslie’s wrist and promised to pray for her continually. Leslie said “God Bless you” to Bill and me, and slowly disappeared in the direction of the corner from where she entered our hearts and minds. When people have asked me in the past, “Why do you fight so hard for an Article V convention of the states?” I have always responded that I do it for my children and grandchildren yet to be born.
We do what we do for Americans of all stations – young and old, rich and poor. Yet from this day forward, I will do it for Leslie! I will do it for Leslie and all the others in her position who can’t do it themselves for various reasons.
