Glenmary Challenge

The following story first appeared in the Autumn 2005 Glenmary Challenge.
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Building Church in South Georgia's Onion Fields
Reaching out to serve the needs of Vidalia onion workers
has given life to small mission parishes
By Father Vic Subb

EUCHARIST: Father Brian LaBurt celebrates Mass at a camp for onion workers near Reidsville, Ga. Night-time temperatures during the fall planting season can dip to near freezing.

We turn off the main highway to begin our trek down a winding, dusty road. Two members of Holy Trinity Church in Swainsboro and I are on our way to visit a migrant camp hidden amidst the pine trees of South Georgia. Our van is filled with food, clothes and medicine for newly arrived onion workers from south of the border.

The road ends and, as we make our way a few more yards up a narrow path, the camp appears: one large cinder-block barrack, with a kitchen, divided into about 10 smaller rooms (where families live) and a group of falling-down trailers suffering from years of neglect. This camp, home for about 120 people, has one open shower room, one bathroom and one telephone.

Migrant camps like this one are often located a long distance from the main road. And when you find one, you enter a way of life that few of us ever see or know about. The first impression of Glenmary Brother David Henley when he recently visited a South Georgia migrant camp was that he had entered a Third World country.

The purpose of this day’s visit is to see if the newly arrived onion workers are OK. Do they have food? Are there medical needs? What are their concerns—spiritual and otherwise? After their often traumatic and dangerous journeys, it is reassuring for these workers to know that someone cares—and that the Catholic Church is present to them.

Usually they have been transported across the country for two or three days without food. When they arrive at the camp, they are often faced with some period of idle time before work begins—which means no pay. Since they have no money, they must depend on meals brought in and sold on credit at inflated prices.

For many years Catholics in South Georgia have been there to help with the needs of the newly arrived. The generosity of parishes in the Diocese of Savannah along with the generosity of many who send gifts from around the country allow Glenmarians and Glenmary missions to help these fellow Catholics with food and medicine—and to be present to them.

On a recent trip to one of the migrant camps, I met four men who had bad burns on their legs and feet. They had been transported with 16 others in an RV from Phoenix, Ariz. They were piled, in prone positions, one on top of the other for the cross-country trip—and these four men were on the bottom. They had to lay the whole way, immobile, right on top of a hot muffler.

Two of the burned men, brothers Francisco and Carlos, could hardly walk because their feet had been so severely burned. But the contractor told them to get to work immediately because the onions needed to be harvested. And they did try to work because their wives and children needed money to eat back home in Mexico.

Within a week’s time, however, Francisco and Carlos ended up in the hospital. And, after several weeks of treatment, they returned home to Mexico, still unable to walk without assistance.

Glenmarians have always sought to serve the poor. Father Brian LaBurt, pastor of Glenmary’s St. Christopher mission in Claxton, has long been a familiar sight in the onion fields. He and his parishioners visit often during the spring and fall migrant season. He celebrates Masses in the fields, brings food and blankets and a message of hope.

And Glenmary Brother David Henley’s keen interest in better understanding the life of migrant workers led him to volunteer to work with some other men in the tobacco fields.

It was hot, Brother David reports. Yet the men carrying the tobacco leaves ran from the stalks to the trailer—always under the threatening gaze of the owner who kept shouting, “If you leave one leaf on the stalk, I will beat you with the stalk.” Brother David’s aches and pains after just one day of field work testified to the difficult labor of migrant field workers.

I am always amazed, however, at the sense of community and support among these field workers. “We help each other get up.” “We support one another.” These are the kind of comments I always hear.

In the close society of a migrant camp, there is life.

Reaching out to these needy Catholic brothers and sisters has given life to Glenmary’s small South Georgia mission parishes. And the love and support migrants have received from these parishes over the years has led many to settle in the area. Some of the best lay leaders in Glenmary’s churches in Metter and Swainsboro were first introduced to South Georgia through the onion fields. These include seven music ministers and lay catechists.

The onion fields may not seem like a “field of dreams” to most of us. But they offer hope for a better way of life for these workers and their families back home.

After ministering to migrant workers for 15 years—first in Arkansas and then in Georgia—I have come to greatly appreciate these workers’ deep faith in God, their love of family and their desire to do the U.S. agricultural work that no one else wants to do

When someone asks me, “Why serve the migrants?,” here is my answer: First, they are poor and Jesus commands us to serve the poor. Second, most are Catholic. And, third, I find life in their presence.

My best Christmas experience as a missionary was a Christmas Eve Mass in a chicken coop in Arkansas with pine tree planters. More than 70 men, young and old, huddled in this cold, stark building that they called home. The sense of community, the singing—it lifted my soul to experience the joy of Christ’s birth. It was my first Christmas as a priest.

It is down the road less travelled that we find the migrant workers who put the food on our tables. It is in our hearts that we discover they are our brothers and sisters in the Lord.

Father Vic Subb pastored Glenmary missions in Swainsboro and Metter, Ga., since 2000. He has recently moved to Hartford, Ky., to become the director of Glenmary’s pre-novitiate program.