news-record.com

Late in 1981, when the Greater Greensboro Communities Responding to Overcome Poverty Hunger Walk was launched, things did not work out as well as the sponsors had hoped.

It rained buckets, and only a handful showed up to walk. A disappointing $120 was all that it produced.

But the hardy souls who dreamed up the idea for the walk were not about to surrender; chief among them Kay Hunt Henson Youngblood. Her leadership and zeal kept the dream alive and led her to be known as the Mother Teresa of Greensboro’s walk.

Youngblood died in August, but her legacy lives on as Greensboro’s 29th annual CROP Hunger Walk Oct. 18 will be dedicated to her memory.

Greensboro is now firmly entrenched as the No. 2 walk among more than 2,000 nationally, and those who have observed it up close agree that no single person has done more to make it happen than Youngblood.

“She is, indeed, the Mother Teresa of our walk,” said the Rev. Mike Aiken, executive director of Greensboro Urban Ministry. “Her passion and commitment to the hungry inspired people from all over Greensboro, especially in the rural areas.”

The Rev. Frank Dew, pastor of New Creation Community Presbyterian Church and Urban Ministry’s chaplain, echoed Aiken’s words about her passion for helping the hungry and added: “Her work was a manifestation of her faithfulness.”

Dew, not long out of Duke Divinity School, participated in the first Greensboro walk in 1981, and one of Aiken’s first acts as new head of Urban Ministry in 1985 was to follow Youngblood’s lead into the walk.

“Kay invited me to stay at her house while I was moving from Fayetteville back in October of 1985,” Aiken said, “and when I went to her house in Summerfield, CROP materials were scattered everywhere in one of her spare bedrooms.”

On the last day she was able to stand, she came for one of her regular visits to Urban Ministry, Aiken recalled at her memorial service. “As she came in, her smile and humble spirit filled the surrounding area with sunshine and joy,” he said. “Kay understood what the love of Christ was all about, and she wanted everyone to experience that same love, too. She was a gentle, humble spirit … a beautiful human being, both inside and out.”

Robert Joyner, a retired Greensboro businessman and active layman at Reid Memorial CME Church, participated in the first Greensboro walk.

“What I remember most was the compassion this white lady showed for us; she was so caring for all of God’s people,” Joyner recalled on the walk’s 25th anniversary in 2005.

Even as she saw the Greensboro walk grow — and last year inch past the $4 million mark in money raised to fight hunger at home and around the world — Youngblood downplayed her contributions, instead giving credit to “all the good people who have walked over the years.”