Mary Ann’s Place, a resale shop benefitting The Beaman Home, has moved to a new, larger location at 704 S. Buffalo St., Warsaw.
The thrift store previously was on Argonne Road.
Friday morning, the Kosciusko Chamber of Commerce held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for Mary Ann’s Place. Friday also marked the beginning of National Domestic Violence Awareness Month.
Martha Miller, project manager for Mary Ann’s Place, said, “We had another building and it was mostly open for the clients to come shop and we would have a garage sale once a month. With budget cuts, we needed to try something different. So, we made it into a thrift store so there would be more regular income to help.”
Dr. Jennifer Hayes, executive director for Kosciusko County Shelter for Abuse Inc., better known as The Beaman Home, said because the store was so small at the previous location, that’s why they opted to open it up to the public every other weekend. With the new location, it can be opened up to the public every Friday and Saturday.
“We get a fair amount of donations. We just need to be able to continue to get them moving out as opposed to one or two garage sales a month,” she said.
The thrift store has clothes, baby items, household goods, books, movies, jewelry, toys and more. Miller said they will take furniture once they get their shed back. The furniture is given to The Beaman Home clients who are moving out of the shelter and is not sold.
The donations are available at the thrift store for the shelter’s clients who need clothing while they are there, to the outreach clients who don’t live at the shelter but still utilize the services or when clients transition out.
“They can come in and shop, and then the ones who are moving out can come in and get what they need to start over. And if we have it, we give it to them. All free for the clients,” Miller said.
The number of clients assisted by Mary Ann’s Place varies. “It just depends. This past week we had one person moving out, so we were shopping yesterday for household things and I had three come in for clothing, so it just depends on where they’re at. At any one time, it could be none in a week or five in a week. And then some just come in – we give them vouchers – and if they want to come in shopping when we’re open, they just shop and that’s what they give me instead of money,” Miller said.
The store is one way to help The Beaman Home pay its bills. It does receive federal, state and local dollars, but that’s not always predictable or enough. The sales at the store from the public goes back to The Beaman Home.
Hayes said the goal of moving to a bigger space was to help increase the money coming in to help fund The Beaman Home’s programs.
“We would really like to expand our child care program. That’s one of the things we currently don’t have grant funding for,” she said. They have a drop-in child care program for folks going to job interviews or doctor appointments they don’t want to take their children to. “We would like to be able to expand that program so we can do it all day as opposed to drop-in because right now we have to max it out at two hours because we just don’t have the staff for it. But at some point, we would like to be able to do it, maybe not for full-time child care, but for longer drop-in hours.”
Miller is the one paid staff for Mary Ann’s Place, but there are about five volunteers who come in on a regular basis and others volunteer when they have time.
“We have big groups that want to come in a lot of times and they help sort and hang stuff with them doing community service projects and that sort of thing,” Hayes said.
Hours that Mary Ann’s Place is open to the public are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Fridays and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays.
Donations can be dropped off when the store is open or call and schedule an appointment at 574-253-2347. To make a monetary donation, Miller said they should contact Hayes directly. There also is a monetary donation box inside the store. For clients specifically, Miller said she can always use donations of items like toiletries and toilet paper.
She said she hopes Mary Ann’s Place will help continue serving the community by providing clients with their needs and provide the community with clothing and other items at reasonable prices.
The Beaman Home has been around since 1985, and was founded by the Altrusa Club.
“We serve men, women and children fleeing domestic violence or abuse, and we serve Marshall, Fulton and Kosciusko County,” Hayes said. “… All of our counties have been very, very supportive like in the last three years or so. They’ve really started to come around, they understand what we do. We’re doing a lot more outreach in those counties now.”
Deb Cox, representing the Cox family, is the daughter-in-law of Mary Ann Cox. Deb said Mary Ann was a longtime supporter of The Beaman Home and part of the founding crew of The Beaman Home.
“She ran the Prairie View Nursing Home and her nurses would show up late or wouldn’t show up, and their husbands were abusing them and they were like, ‘Why don’t you get out of the situation?’ And (the nurses) were like, ‘I have no place to go.’ So, that’s when (Mary Ann) started investigating and brought up the idea of doing something for these women. That’s how it all started years and years ago,” Deb said.
Vicki Martin, The Beaman Home Board of Directors president and Altrusa member, said, “Some ladies that were in Altrusa then, they saw the need. There was one of the members whose husband was a judge. He saw the need for a shelter because they didn’t have anywhere to take these women. So they founded it, and a lady donated her home and that’s where it originally was, so it’s grown.”
There are 26 members of Altrusa currently. Besides The Beaman Home, Altrusa also founded CASA of Kosciusko County.
There are 16 volunteers on The Beaman Home Board of Directors, one of which is reserved for an Altrusa Club member.
For more information about The Beaman Home, or its needs list, visit the website at https://www.thebeamanhome.com/.
