Resurrection: St. Joseph Center Continues to Find New Life

Fifteen years ago, St. Joseph Center of Arkansas in North Little Rock needed a miracle. After 98 years of changing the lives of the orphaned, elderly and World War I officers, the Catholic Diocese of Little Rock announced in early 2008 plans to sell the historic 56,000-square-foot building and 63-acre property. Its years of service would come to an abrupt end unless a Catholic organization with a feasible plan came forward.

 

A month later an ad hoc committee, including Executive Director Sandy DeCoursey, created a nonprofit, known today as St. Joseph Center of Arkansas. Two years later, they signed a 50-year lease with the diocese and thus began SJCA’s resurrection story.

 

 

Like any living organism, SJCA is not just one thing. It is made up of volunteers, board members, gardeners, artists, local farmers, tenants, livestock, fresh vegetation, bees and butterflies, all breathing new life each day into the urban farm sanctuary nestled off of Camp Robinson Road.

 

Every day since signing its lease, the nonprofit has lived up to its motto: “We will not quit before the miracle.”

 

“The miracle, of course, is that we’re still here 15 years later, and we’re working hard to figure out exactly how everything we’re doing programmatically fits together and will help launch us into yet another decade or century, hopefully, of service,” DeCoursey said.

 

“We do believe it to be miracles. I think it’s just amazing how God will send people our way when we don’t even know we need them. All of the sudden, a skill set will show up or a resource that was a huge help to us. We always try to be thankful for that and utilize it to move forward.”

 

A HISTORY OF SERVICE

 

Catholic Bishop John Baptist Morris bought the then-720-acre farm to create St. Joseph’s Home orphanage about 4 miles outside of what is now North Little Rock, according to Encyclopedia of Arkansas. Created with brick and stone to mirror an Italian-style villa, the building cost an estimated $150,000. It was constructed by prominent Arkansas architect Charles L. Thompson in 1910.

 

The Benedictine Sisters of St. Scholastica Monastery in Fort Smith were tasked with overseeing and managing St. Joseph’s Home, which also became a school for local children. Sixty-six children moved into the three-story building, growing to serve about 300 orphans and local students by 1914, the encyclopedia noted. It also served as a nursing home for the elderly with no place to go. Throughout 100 years, 116 Benedictine sisters served the home, according to a 2010 article by the Arkansas Catholic newspaper.

 

 

In 1917, with World War I already raging for three years, it became a refuge for officers and their wives, leased by The Belmont Hotel Company due to the influx of tens of thousands of soldiers bursting at the seams at what is now Camp Joseph T. Robinson. The orphanage continued to run but had moved to a Little Rock Catholic church. A year later, the orphanage moved back to its original home and continued to operate until 1978.

 

The sisters did more than become family to the orphans and students. They worked hard to run the farm, orchard, garden as well as raising cows and hogs with the help of volunteers.

 

Ken Bunch of Cabot was born in 1958 to parents who struggled with alcoholism and were unable to take care of two boys and two girls. Bunch, who’d spend less than two years of life with his biological parents, arrived at St. Joseph Home with his siblings. Now 65, the earliest memories were warmth from both a heater and the nuns.

 

 

“I was in the crib. I woke up one night, and I still remember it like it was yesterday,” he said. “I felt this hot radiation coming from this heater. Didn’t know what it was, I just felt this heat, and thought I was burning up or something,” Bunch said.

 

Not knowing what a mother or father was until he was adopted around age 9 by J.D. and Edna Bunch, he learned God’s love from the sisters, whom he described as surrogate mothers to the children in their care. He vividly remembers the late Sister Charlene Lindeman saying things like, “God loves you,” “God has a plan for your life,” and “You are precious in God’s sight.”

 

 

As a young child, he walked out onto the building’s portico to contemplate the divine after one of Sister Charlene’s teachings.

 

“I walked out, and I looked at the stars of heaven, and I thought to myself, you know, God made all of this, and yet he cares for each one of us,” Bunch said. “At that young age, about 4 or 5 years of age, I remember I wanted to know more about the Lord.”

 

These foundational moments would eventually lead the now-married father of three to be a Southern Baptist pastor for 40 years. But his was more than a spiritual upbringing, it was growing up with freedom to explore the grounds and learn about nature firsthand.

 

 

“I remember when I was about 4, Sister Charlene took me and three other children, put us in the old green pickup truck and drove us up to the barn to watch a calf being born,” Bunch said. “And she was just so excited what God was providing that for the children. She wanted us to understand that aspect of husbandry for animal care.”

 

Once the orphanage closed, it transitioned to a daycare and kindergarten for 19 years until most sisters returned to Fort Smith. The last two sisters in residence lived there until December 2007.

 

Bunch, who visited Sister Charlene years later and was an impromptu pallbearer at her funeral, said today he’s happy to see SJCA still “makes connection with human need.”

 

A NEW BEGINNING

 

On May 4, 1976, St. Joseph’s Home was placed on the National Register of Historic Places, but just 32 years later, its purpose was lost, and its grandeur had faded. No longer bustling with the footsteps and heartbeats of the vulnerable, it was instead a spacious meeting ground for Catholic ministries and retreats. But with roughly $110,000 spent each year for utilities, insurance, maintenance and repairs, it was hardly living up to its potential.

 

“I always laugh and say the Holy Spirit blew by, and I forgot to duck because it literally hit me just upside the head,” DeCoursey said.  “This [deterioration] can’t happen. We cannot allow this to happen. It’s just too amazing a place to fade into history.”

 

“So it just sparked the impetus for gathering people together. Again, God brought exactly who needed to be on that first team of folks, the ad hoc committee that gathered to petition the diocese to consider an alternative.”

 

Today, DeCoursey admits to being overwhelmed by the enormity of the task but, one by one, people stepped forward to form the committee that put a plan together to save the structure and grounds. And at no time did the Almighty ever feel that far away.

 

“An anonymous donor stepped forward with the initial $110,000 needed to pay for that first year to give us time to study,” she said. “And I still to this day do not know who that person was, but God bless them.”

 

The committee had a large task ahead of them to revitalize a space that in 2013 had been named by the Historic Preservation Alliance of Arkansas as an endangered historical structure. That year, they created the Farm & Food Innovation Center to focus on agriculture, arts and education. The venture was short-lived, dissolving in 2015, but what bloomed in its place is beyond the dreams envisioned when the committee began its march toward progress.

 

“Some of the opportunities that we provide set the bar pretty high, the expectation from the participants are high. I really believe that attracts people that want to be engaged in a worthwhile effort, that they’re going to see an impact,” DeCoursey said. “That just keeps things really first class, and classes full with waiting lists.”

 

Grants, fundraising and the roughly 200 committed volunteers and 15 board members have grown the operation to include:

 

•  Fit2Live private community garden beds, offering 50 raised beds of varying sizes to gardeners in the nearby community. The garden beds charge annual leases in March and April, with a fee to pay for water usage.

 

•  A Hunger Relief Garden, created in 2015 in partnership with the Hunger Relief Alliance, which provides produce for the Arkansas Food Bank. Since then, 22,000 pounds of produce has been donated.

 

•  More than 50 farm animals live at the center’s property. Peaches, a Great Pyrenees, guards the goats. About six years ago, the farm started an Animal Ambassadors program, with about 20 families rotating shifts caring for chickens, ducks, sheep, rabbits, goats and Peaches. There is also an apiary that produces SJ Blessed Bee Honey.

 

•  The center continues to operate as an event venue, hosting wedding receptions, retreats, training and education classes. It can also be rented for birthday parties.

 

•  In 2021, the center began renting no-hookup RV spaces. A nod to its World War I respite roots, it also opened its center on Airbnb, known as The Belmont Hotel at St. Joseph, for guests who want to experience a natural and historic getaway. Artists can rent studio space monthly.

 

•  Other highlights include tours, walking trails and The Blessed Bee and Butterfly Pollinator Garden. All this in addition to a regular roster of classes, from a Junior Naturalist Camp to Goat Yoga.

 

DeCoursey said the hidden gem at SJCA is the opportunity to stay at SJCA in an RV, which gained popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic, via Airbnb.

 

“There’s such a breadth of opportunity here. And one of our latest ventures, the Airbnb, I think people are still very surprised to hear about that,” DeCoursey said. “It’s slow taking off, but we feel like at some point, once more people know about it, it will be a really wonderful thing to offer the community.”

 

CREATIVITY & REALITY

 

Kevin Kresse, an accomplished Little Rock artist whose work has been exhibited in Arkansas and larger places like New York City and Washington, D.C., has rented SJCA art space, now two studios, for about seven years. In 2021, his 8-foot bronze statue of native son Johnny Cash was chosen to be installed at the National Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol. His design was selected among other artists vying for the honor and is expected to be installed this year.

 

 

“As I pull into the grounds, it’s like my blood pressure goes down. The place is just magical. It’s a complete gem in our community that, unfortunately, so many people don’t know about,” Kresse said.

 

Beyond his art, Kresse has a special connection to the SJCA – his very existence. His parents met there as teenagers while visiting during an annual carnival held for local Catholic schools.

 

“The reason I got out there was I was doing a little demonstration for an event that North Little Rock was having with a closed-off Main Street,” he said. “I was doing a demo, and I left, came back, and there was a note written for me. It turned out it was from Sandy [DeCoursey] saying, ‘Did you know I believe your uncle built the furniture at St. Joseph’s?’ and invited my wife, Bridget, and myself out there. So we went out there, and it turns out that my dad’s uncle, Matthew Kresse, built the cabinets and things.”

 

Kresse has carried on the tradition of leaving his mark on SJCA, having created a statue of St. Fiacre, the patron saint of gardeners, in 2016. It welcomes visitors to the community garden beds. Having a place like SJCA for artists to create is a respite, a contrast to a typical office studio rental space with fluorescent lights and no windows that can “kill the soul,” Kresse explained.

 

“The environment enhances the feeling. … I think that’s why there are so many artists out there that love being there. I’m not unique in that way,” he said. “Everyone should do themselves a favor and walk the grounds. That’s one thing I love to do when I’m working. I may be stuck or whatever, and I take a break, go out and say hi to the sheep and the goats and the cows. It’s just a wonderful reset to go back, and there’s just no place like it around here.”

 

While SJCA is a natural escape for many, the realities of running it are harsh. DeCoursey said despite being blessed by grant programs, donations and a wonderful fundraising team, it costs $330,000 annually to keep it going, a three-fold increase over 13 years.

 

“It’s expensive to keep the doors open and lights on. But we know we do so in part because we are so streamlined in terms of payroll. We have four paid employees, and everybody else is here as a labor of love. Clearly, that’s not a sustainable model,” she said, adding they hope to add more paid positions soon.

 

At the same time, she said as long as people support SJCA and the community thrives from its presence, its resurrection story will continue to unfold.

 

“It’s heartening to me to see a lot of the things that have simply come full circle,” DeCoursey said. “Seeing Bishop Morris’ vision for this to be a place of hope and respite for, originally, orphan children, then to the daycare that grew out of necessity once the orphanage closed, to the retreat center that it was during the years in between to today, St. Joseph Center of Arkansas.

 

“I think it’s taking time to figure out just what that resurrection is going to look like. It’s really starting to take shape, becoming once again a self-sustaining farm, a place of growth and creativity. It’s kind of coming back to life to serve a whole new generation.”

 

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