At the Saginaw County CAC, legendary names begin with Al Loveless, Bob Viera and Omowale Art Smith. They continue with Lillie Williams Grays and Annie Graham and Sherry Draine Hannah.
For 41 years, Mary McMath has been side-by-side with all of them, closing her career as the best mentor and assistant that second-year Director Hurley Coleman III could imagine.
Check Mary ‘s employment resume. Next, visit the Community Action Committee’s web page, saginawcac.org, for a list of programs and services. Just about everything will match, because McMath has pretty much done it all since she began as a CAC weatherization secretary in 1981, in a referral via the Job Training Partnership Act, or JTPA.
Modestly soft-spoken and definitely not the boss type, Mary nonetheless became a weatherization manager. Then minor home repairs. Emergency services. Food and nutrition. Housing counseling. Senior citizens.
“Actually I had always thought of becoming a school teacher and a minister,” McMath reflects, “and then I was sent to the CAC, and I’ve been here ever since.”
She is the eldest of eight children of the dearly departed Essie McMath, a day-care provider and evangelist from St. Louis who moved the family north to Saginaw during the 1970s.
Mary graduated from the Beaumont High School in the “Gateway to the West,” and then in Saginaw she worked several waitress jobs to help support her mother and her younger siblings. She also studied in her spare time at Delta College, until her first steps at CAC.
In Saginaw and across the nation, multi-purpose community action agencies since the 1960s have served as the main sources for federal funds to address poverty concerns. Mary says primary traits for outreach workers are “to get to know your customers” and “to put yourself in their shoes, always showing respect.”
Much of her work has involved direct aid to residents, such as providing home insulation materials or simple boxes of food.
At the same time, housing counseling — especially during the crisis years near 2008 and 2009 — went beyond giving and into preservation.
“We helped a whole lot of people to save their homes,” she recalls.
Mary’s favorite aspect of service is her encounters with people, but she also has gained skills through the years in filing the federal paperwork and grant applications that are necessary to keep the funds flowing. Therefore, one of her main ongoing roles as deputy director is to assist Coleman as a mentor as well as an assistant.
“He is an outstanding choice to become our director,” Mary says. “It’s time for the younger people to come in with their newer ideas.”
