It was a classic Sister Katherine moment. She was standing on a forlorn stretch of West Pratt Street when three people shuffling past stopped to inquire about the nearly finished building behind her. Eagerly, almost thankfully, she engaged them.
Soon, she said, it will be a place where drug addicts can talk about their demons or just duck out of the chaotic streets for a while. Soon it will be evident why the glass-fronted building is called an Island of Hope.
"It'll be a beautiful spot for beautiful people," said Katherine Nueslein, a gray-haired veteran of the Sisters of Mercy religious order. "And you all are the beautiful people."
For 31 years, Nueslein has teased out beauty from the blight of Southwest Baltimore. She has made it her life's work to help others improve their lives, even as the neighborhood has crumbled under the weight of drugs, crime and dysfunction.
Where some might be tempted to sugarcoat the problems or walk away in defeat, Nueslein, 76, shows no inclination to do either. She remains clear-eyed about the size of the broader hurdles but convinced things can get better on a personal level - this man in recovery, that woman back in school.
"I've been here since '78, and to me it's the worst it's been," the Georgia native said of her adopted home. In a gentle drawl, she ticked off the reasons: "Vacancies, education, jobs, the crime, the drugs, the gangs." The recession? It has only deepened the ruts.
And yet: "In the middle of all this muck," she said, cruising past boarded-up houses in her old Ford Taurus wagon, "we're beautiful."
The Rev. Joe McDonough met her more than a decade ago when they created the Hezekiah spiritual center, which is building the Island of Hope as a place for people to attend Narcotics Anonymous meetings or enjoy moments of solitude. He is impressed by Nueslein's lack of discouragement and by her vast well of enthusiasm - a cheerful endurance he attributes to small, real successes over years.
"That's what keeps her going," said McDonough, "those one-on-one relationships with people that last years and years and years."
Whenever possible, Nueslein connects with her neighbors across her unofficial territory: a rectangle that goes from Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard west to Monroe and from Lexington Street south to Pratt, where Pigtown begins. She makes a point of going inside homes so people will feel proud, and recent hip replacement surgery has barely slowed her down.
