Genny Nelson served up dignity at the Sisters of the Road Cafe for 30 years

http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2009/12/genny_nelson_served_up_dignity.html

PORTLAND NEWS
By John Foyston, The Oregonian
December 10, 2009, 9:45PM

Genny Nelson is not a big or imposing woman, but she has stared down a drunk brandishing a chair and talked a distraught kitchen staffer into putting down the chef's knife he was clutching at Sisters of the Road Cafe.

When you sense the granitic commitment to ideals that underlies her shyness, you can envision her breaking up two guys going at each other with a broken wine bottle and a hay hook, and standing up to a man about to bust a chair over his buddy's head.

Nelson, 57, will retire Saturday from Sisters of the Road in Old Town after three decades of helping replace the taint of charity with dignity. She affirmed the nonprofit's commitment to nonviolence and the "gentle personalism" of the Catholic Workers movement.

Her retirement celebration Saturday afternoon at Sisters of the Road will happen exactly 30 years after the cafe's opening celebration, a month after Nelson and co-founder Sandy Gooch opened its doors Nov. 7, 1979.

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Sisters was, and is, a place where you can use your food stamps for a meal -- Sisters and Nelson helped make that a federal law. It's a place where, if you lack the buck and a quarter for a meal -- the price hasn't changed in 30 years -- you can work 15 minutes to pay for your lunch or half an hour to earn enough to treat a pal to lunch, and imagine how lordly that bit of generosity might feel to a man who perhaps owns little other than his good name.

"What makes Sisters so special is that how we do what we do is the most important thing," said Monica Beemer, executive director of Sisters of the Road since 2005. "That's Genny's legacy: It's about building relationships and community and challenging the violence within ourselves and society; it's about seeing each other every day and sharing stories.

"Genny's done a great job of institutionalizing that, because nonviolence informs everything we do, and she reminds us to stand up for nonviolence not just when it's easy to do so, but when it's hard."

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Nelson, who's been diabetic since she was 8, is retiring because she's running out of steam. "This is still the best place in the world to work, but you have to have energy and I just don't have it anymore."

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