Margaret Waage

To the editor,

Since there is none (ghetto) here in Laconia, it seems interesting to write even just a short note about the black ghetto in Stamford, Conn., where I have lived.

After my mother died, I was lonely in the still unsold house in Darien, Conn. I moved in with two elderly, destitute women and another member of the community of the St. Luke staff nearby in Stamford.

We two single, white women named our ghetto house, "St. Francis House," and continued our office work at St. Luke's. We walked home after work — at a dark five o'clock. We went pst black men sitting on doorsteps and car hoods. They had knives in their boots and sometimes guns in their belts. But they never made a move to harm us. Maybe they guarded us.

Did they know that I wrote to raise corporate money for projects to help them and their families? Or was God just very present with us?

Margaret Waage

Laconia