Calvary Rescue Mission starts work on shelter
April 4 was a fitting day for the Calvary Rescue Mission to break ground on a $4 million facility capable of housing 112 homeless men a night.
The nearly century-old former church building at 960 South Third was firebombed by rioters after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King in 1968 a little over a mile away at the Lorraine Motel.
Betty Hatcher and her husband, Milton, founded the faith-based homeless shelter 50 years ago, the year before the assassination, at 863 Jackson.
The South Third building was owned by what was then the Memphis-based Holiday Inn hotel chain and used to sell bedding and furniture, Hatcher said. The firebomb caused the ceiling to collapse, and the building was unused until Holiday Inn founder Kemmons Wilson donated it to the rescue mission.
“In 1972 Calvary moved in and during that time ... we’ve had over 600,000 overnight lodgings, we’ve seen 25,000 men make decisions for Christ, we’ve fed about 1.4 million men, or served that many meals, since we’ve been here,” said the Rev. Bob Freudiger, shelter executive director.
Freudiger said the second Holiday Inn was next door at 980 South Third, in a building now home to City of Memphis Traffic Signal Maintenance & Construction.
The old, 9,000-square-foot building and its chapel, capable of housing 46 homeless men, will remain after the new, 15,500-square-foot, L-shaped facility is completed late this year, Freudiger said.
Churches in the Mid-South representing a variety of denominations support the shelter, Freudiger said.
As Tuesday’s groundbreaking and annual open house began with about 350 people in an outdoor tent, the campaign to fund the new facility had raised $3.1 million of its $4 million goal. A matching grant pledged by The Assisi Foundation of Memphis will help close the fundraising gap, Freudiger said.