December 1, 2007

• Shirley Larson
  works at night at the Boone County Courthouse. For 21 years, she’s been
  coming in after everybody else has gone, mopping, dusting, cleaning the
  bathrooms, in the big empty building.
  Yesterday, Shirley told me a story about the Christmas spirit.
  "They
  were having a singing over at the Lyric last night," she said. "I stood
  out there and listened for a while, then I went on to open the
  courthouse door, and there was a big, burly guy who passed me outside
  the door. He kept saying, 'The courthouse is closed.'
  Shirley agreed
  with the man, whom she'd never seen before, that the courthouse was
  closed. She said she didn't tell him that she worked there.
  She noticed that a cigarette lighter had been stuck in the courthouse doorway, keeping the door from shutting all the way.
  "What's this lighter doing here?" she asked.
  "So I can get in," the man said. Shirley wondered why the man needed to get in, but didn't say anything.
  "I
  shut the door to make sure it was locked," Shirley said. "Then I took
  my key and unlocked the door and went in.” A few minutes later, she
  noticed the lighter was in the door again.
  

  

  
  Shirley went ahead and
  got to work cleaning. "I was up on the third floor, you know, where the
  judge's offices are, and I heard 'Click — click — click.' I thought,
  that guy is back in here. Shouldn't nobody have been in there but me."
  She
  took some trash down into the boiler room, and saw a sleeping bag and a
  suitcase, and then saw the strange man sitting in a nearby room. I
  said, "Does Judge Moore know you're here?" She said the man never
  really turned around and looked at her, and didn't answer.
  Worried,
  Shirley climbed up the stairs to the third floor to Boone County Judge
  Mike Moore's office and called the judge's secretary, Teri Garrett, and
  told her about the man in the courthouse basement. Teri told her that
  she had heard the man had been sleeping in the gazebo on the court
  park, and that some of the courthouse employees had been letting him
  come into the courthouse and warm up.
  Teri said she'd call the Mike Moore and tell him.
  "But
  Teri, it's cold out!" Shirley said, worried about what would happen to
  the man if he wasn't allowed to spend the night in the courthouse. She
  said years ago, another man had sneaked into the courthouse to sleep on
  a cold night, and one of the judges made him leave. She felt terrible
  when she found out later that the man had almost frozen to death that
  night.
  Shirley has a kind heart. She's raising six of her
  grandchildren on a tight budget, but she likes to help others. She told
  me that there was once a man around town who had some mental problems,
  and she worried about him being hungry sometimes. She told me she’d
  give money to the folks at the Townhouse, and send the man over to the
  café to get a hamburger.
  “Then I'd know at least he'd had a hamburger to eat," she said.
  Monday
  night, with the temperature expected to dip below freezing,
  tender-hearted Shirley was worried the courthouse visitor. She didn't
  have to worry long.
  After Shirley told me the rest of her story, I called Judge Mike Moore and asked him about it.
  "The guy was obviously without a place to stay," Mike told me.
  The
  judge said after Teri called him and told him about the stranger in the
  courthouse, he called Sheriff Danny Hickman and asked him to check on
  the man and tell him he couldn't spend the night in the courthouse.
  "I
  asked Danny to take him to (a local motel). I told him to tell the
  people I'd be up there later to pay for his room," Mike said.
  The judge went to the motel and talked to the stranger, who appeared to be in his 60s.
  "He
  had run out of money," he said. "He said he was from Fayetteville, but
  he wanted to stay here. He was supposed to be getting some kind of
  check in a few days."
  Mike said he talked to the motel managers, who kindly gave him a reduced rate.
   "I
  paid for him to stay until Saturday," Mike said. "I did what anybody
  would do when it was 20 degrees out and somebody needed a place to stay
  warm. I couldn't just put him out in the cold."
  Shirley told me she
  was so relieved — and touched — when Teri told her that our county
  judge had arranged for the stranger to have a place to stay.
  "This
  man doesn't just talk it — he walks it," she said, her voice trembling
  with emotion. "I'm so proud of Mike Moore. If I had the money, I'd pay
  him back. He got that man a good bed, and he's going to be warm. I hope
  the man understands that the good Lord takes care of us."
  The stranger told Mike he was planning to make Harrison his home.
  He
  picked a good place for a home. If you've lived here your whole life,
  you may not realize that every place is not like our little town, our
  county, our Ozarks —  full of people who take the Good Book to heart.
  Like Shirley Larson and Mike Moore. People who don't just talk about
  their faith, but walk it.

  "The King will reply, 'I tell you the
  truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine,
  you did for me.'” Matthew 25:40.
  By Celia DeWoody
  Published Nov. 28, 2007
  Copyright Harrison Daily Times, Inc.

  • 10:32 am
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