The cafeteria was crowded, overflowing with more than 400 homeless people, mostly men, celebrating their birthdays. Of course, they all weren't really turning a year older that particular Wednesday -- the two-hour celebration at the Miami Rescue Mission was just a way to bring together a forgotten group living in the streets.
The party was the idea of Marilyn Brummitt, who worked the room not just as the mission's director of community development, but also as a perfect hostess -- hugging the men, some unshaven, disheveled and dirty; offering slices of chocolate cake and kid-made birthday cards and inviting the guests to join the mission's program, which aims to give the homeless their lives back.
'Homeless people need a lot of things, a lot of services, but they also need a whole lot of lovin', and they need to know that somebody remembered they exist,'' says Brummitt. ``They need to believe somebody actually cares.''
On paper, Brummitt, 58, is a corporate type, in charge of running the mission's volunteers, coordinating its community projects and working to raise the $16 million it takes to operate the organization's three campuses in Miami, Hollywood and Pompano Beach, a Herculean effort in these financially stretched times. Last fiscal year, 4,464 volunteers logged 55,682 service hours.
But statistics belie what's really at work here. For Brummitt, her mission work is more calling than career.
A woman of deep faith, Brummitt prays each morning, then drives from her house in North Miami to serve those who are committed to escaping the alleys and overpasses and shadows of South Florida.
Someone loitering on a corner, asleep on a sidewalk, begging at an intersection? Brummitt stops her car to try to recruit another lost soul either to the mission or to some other social-service agency.
In the summer, Brummitt spends Saturdays teaching children's Bible study at the mission's community center for at-risk youth.
During the work week, she spends considerable time looking for creative ways to raise money, recruiting volunteers and shattering the stereotypes of homelessness. She came up with a ''Thanksgiving in March'' event: on Good Friday, the mission hosted a footwashing at which volunteers -- many of them Barry University podiatry students -- scrubbed feet, cut nails and buffed calluses and distributed clean socks to 1,500 men, women and children.
''We wanted to serve a need but also to let people get to know the people they see every day on street corners, people that they may have preconceived ideas about,'' says Brummitt from her office a few blocks from the Miami Mission, 2020 NW First Ave. ``Often they end up seeing more of the similarities than the differences.''
A perpetually high-energy, joyful woman with an exuberant laugh, Brummitt once owned an appliance store in Venice, Fla. She became a widow not long after her 40th birthday, then sank into a deep depression but finally reconnected with God and committed herself to work for the needy. She met a man in Miami with the same passions, e-mailed until e-love blossomed and then moved here to start a new life. First as Mrs. Brummitt, wife of Ronald Brummitt, president of the faith-based Miami Rescue Mission, who himself was once homeless. And second, as volunteer coordinator for the mission, which has been rescuing the least, last and lost since 1922.
''Marilyn genuinely has a heart for the downtrodden. She meets homeless people and starts talking to them,'' her husband says, chuckling. ``The next thing you know, they are at the office asking for Mrs. Brummitt. It happens all the time.''
''In Marilyn you get a bulldog, someone who wants to help people change, who wants to help make things right,'' says Gary Gray, a pastor at Venice Assembly of God, where Brummitt worked in Christian education and finance for six years. ``She gave much more than we ever paid her.''
Brummitt came to the church just five weeks before her first husband died of a heart attack after a soccer game in the fall of 1990.
''It had been a while since I had gone to church. At the time, I didn't know why, but I felt strongly about going to this church,'' Brummitt, the mother of a grown son and daughter, says softly. ``Now, I believe God was preparing me to have something to turn to, to help me heal.''
Eventually, Brummitt started doing missionary work in Haiti and Jamaica and later Thailand. She also began working at the church as a teacher and with people who were struggling financially.
'She was so good at getting people back on track. She was kind and firm. She would tell the people `You don't need air conditioning or cellphones,' but she would also mother and love them,'' Gray says. ``We began to realize that maybe this is what God had in store for her.''
While working with a client on an immigration issue, Brummitt reached out to Ronald Brummitt, then director of the mission's Miami campus.
He helped; they clicked.
The pair married in 2002. She joined the mission and accepted her current position three years ago.
If you talk to the homeless who gather in front of the mission each day at 4 p.m. for a shower and a hot meal, they define the heart of Brummitt's job.
''That lady is here all the time talking about how our lives aren't worthless even when you feel like it is,'' says Roger Ceaser, 52, who has been homeless for six years. ``She is always encouraging us and telling us there are ways to do better.''
An hour into the birthday celebration last month, Brummitt introduced herself to Thomas Sheedy, somehow drawn to his warm, damaged spirit. He explained that his mother had recently died and that he is addicted to crack cocaine. Since January 2007, Sheedy had been living on a patch of sidewalk on Northwest Seventh Avenue in North Miami, everything he owned -- a sheet, six T-shirts and three pairs of jeans -- in a backpack.
After fellowshipping with Brummitt, Sheedy, 50, never left the mission. He says he has been clean since joining the program.
Sheedy used to be among the men in the 4 p.m. line. Now, he helps to manage the line. ''She made me want to do something about myself. If it weren't for Miss Marilyn, I wouldn't be here,'' Sheedy says as he proudly keeps the line orderly. ``That party really wasn't about birthdays and cake. It was about saving people.''
Audio | Marilyn Brummitt, Director of Community Development for Miami Rescue Mission, discusses what she refers to as 'her life's calling' with Miami Herald reporter Audra Burch