When One Woman Has a Good Idea and Follows Through.......

an opportunity like Killingsworth can happen.  Corrie Killingsworth was a woman who saw a need and had a good idea, and did something about it.  In the mid-1940's Corrie noticed that many young women were moving to Columbia to go to work or school and were seeking the help of churches to find a place to live.  Corrie thought that these young women would benefit from living in a safe Christian community as a transition from their family's home to living independently.  She first enlisted the help of members of her own church, Washington Street United Methodist. She turned to the Wesleyan Service Guild and the Women's Society of Christian Service -- then she reached across the Columbia District and, eventually asked help from women in Methodist churches all across the state.   

By 1947 enough money had been raised to purchase a two-story home on the corner of Gregg and Senate Streets in downtown Columbia near the University of South Carolina campus.  When the doors opened in 1947 young women from age 18 to 25 came to live in the large clapboard house where they could stay for up to two years.  Rules from the early days of the Killingsworth community were restrictive by today's standards:  no red fingernail polished allowed; no shorts could be worn downstairs; Bible study was held each day at 5:00 pm; and, the house mother was known to don a pair of white gloves and go through the house checking for evidence of dust!  The only major change in those early days was the sale of the wood frame house on Senate Street and a move to a larger brick home one block away that faces on Pendleton Street.

There are wonderful stories of forging long-lasting friendships and indications that the safe, Christian community Corrie Killingsworth designed for young women leaving their natal homes for the "cold cruel world" had exactly the effect she had envisioned.  However, many of those who happily tell of living at Killingsworth in the 1950's or 60's, are also quick to say, "I lived there before.......".

Before what? 
...before 1972 when there were only 2 young women living in Killingsworth with a house mother, a part-time cook, a part-time maid, and a maintenance man......twice as many staff as residents.

...before the Board of Directors had to take a long hard look at what good stewardship would require, and in their first Strategic Planning Process made decisive helpful changes while holding on to Corrie Killingsworth's vision.

...before closing the door on that first chapter which had lasted for 25 years and the beginning of  a new focus for ministry.

Most of Corrie's idea would remain:
Killingsworth would be -- a Christian community  for women from all across South Carolina who were going through major transitions in their lives...... 
The significant difference to Corrie's dream from 1972 and beyond would be the kind of changes that these women were going through.  No longer the "first home away from home" for young ladies.  The changes that future Killingsworth women were navigating were of crisis proportions.

The focus would now be on women who were recovering from various traumatic situations that thrust them into crises.  The Women's Division of the General Board of Global Ministries has described a crisis as a situation that cannot be handled with one's normal healthy coping skills.  Women who had tried to solve their unmanageable lives with drugs or alcohol, those who were fighting the morass of mental illness, those who had been incarcerated and were trying to learn to live free and responsible, women who were victims of domestic violence and/or sexual assault and those who just had nowhere to go began to find their way to Killingsworth.

This process was facilitated by Parker Evatt who was the President of the Killingsworth Board in 1972.  Parker was also the Executive Director of the Alston Wilkes Society, a private prisoner aid agency, so he was aware that there was help available to those newly released from prison to assist in the transition back into the community.  He helped channel some of those funds to Killingsworth for women who had just made parole.  Once that funding was secure, overtures were made to public and private agencies that dealt with treatment of those in crises:  addiction treatment facilities, mental health clinics, psychiatric hospitals and shelters for victims of domestic violence.  Referrals came slowly at first, but within a year, it was clear that there was a need for such a transition home.

In 1972 under the apprehensive eye of the house mother several major shifts in the population "upstairs" occurred.  The first woman over 30 moved in; the first woman who was not white moved in; the first woman who had just been released from prison moved in    and      they were all the same woman......call her Mary.  During Mary's stay she saw the house mother retire, and in 1973 Gail West became the first Executive Director.  Gail's job was to guide Killingsworth through the transition which was no easy task without a framework, without secure funding and without a staff. 

In late 1973  "Mary" was offered the first staff position created at Killingsworth.  Several months after Mary was hired, Gail West moved to Tennessee and in mid-1974 Carol Kneece was hired as Executive Director.  Carol moved to provide job descriptions, personnel policies and a set of house rules for the residents.  As a full-time graduate student in Counselor Education at USC Carol was able to appropriate some of her classroom studies to her experience at Killingsworth.  When Carol received her master's degree in the summer of 1976, she resigned and Diane A. Moseley was hired as the fourth leader for Killingsworth in five years.