Steve Jacobs of the Catholic Worker lives a life of service to others

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Steve Jacobs lives a life of pacifism and service, rooted in his faith.

That life, in turn, has provided comfort to countless homeless individuals seeking shelter and food at St. Francis House in Columbia.

The house started as an idea among a group of Catholic Workers at the Columbia Newman Center.

The Catholic Worker Movement, started by Dorothy Day in 1933, believes that people should be peaceful and helpful. They are opposed to war and violence against fellow man.

The group’s first effort in Columbia was the soup kitchen Loaves and Fishes. In 1983, the group rented a space a few blocks away as a shelter.

The following year, they bought a two-story brick house on the corner of Wilkes Boulevard and Range Line Street.

For 38 years, Jacobs has lived and worked in St. Francis House, providing meals and shelter to homeless people in Columbia. He is the last of the original Catholic Workers at the house.

Almost every morning, Jacobs and a few others serve coffee and breakfast. Dinner is served a few blocks down at Loaves and Fishes, which is run out of Wilkes Boulevard Methodist Church.

Mass is held every Thursday, but no one is required to attend to get food or shelter. Currently, Jacobs hosts two men overnight.

Before his career in pacifism, he served as a psychiatric corpsman in the Navy for 2½ years. After those years he decided he was a conscientious objector and got out of the military.

“I realized that I was morally opposed to being a member of an organization that uses violence to solve the world’s problems,” Jacobs said.

He worked as a psychiatric nurse at Truman Memorial Veterans’ Hospital until 1996. He ultimately decided to quit because he was opposed to the IRS taking a portion of his salary, knowing those funds could go to support the Pentagon.

Jacobs has not had another job since and has spent all his time at the St. Francis House. He wears the clothes and eats the food that is donated.

When he began working with the homeless, his background in psychiatric nursing helped him to understand and assist those who were mentally struggling.

Fellow Catholic Worker and lawyer Ruth O’Neill said that Jacobs has a way of helping upset people be more calm and learn to express themselves and be more centered.

In the beginning of his time at the St. Francis House, there were a few more workers living there. They packed as many homeless people in the house as possible. People slept under the large kitchen table, on the living room floor and in the basement on mattresses, Jacobs recalled.

It became too chaotic, Jacobs said, to have that many people. They would argue, fight and abuse substances, so Jacobs would spend most of the nights separating fights and making sure people came back inside.

Now there are no mattresses in the basement and only a few people stay each night.

Jacobs estimates that over the years, thousands of people have been through the St. Francis House doors.

One man, Gary Edwards, came for dinner one evening when Loaves and Fishes was closed, and afterward fell asleep on the couch in the living room. He came every night after that for 20 or 25 years, Jacobs said.

Every morning, Edwards got breakfast and left for the day. He would walk the MKT Trail, through downtown, down Providence Road, all over town, Jacobs said. Then he would come back to the brick house on the corner to sleep.

Edwards sticks out to Jacobs because he typically does not know much about the people who stay with him. Edwards’ family tracked him down even though they lived in Illinois. They told Jacobs that Edwards used to work at an A&W root beer stand and had his own car. The family said that Edwards also had schizophrenia, and when his mental health started to decline, he took off to other towns. He eventually got so far that he did not come home again.

“We didn’t know anything about him for like 20 years. All we knew is that he needed a place to stay ... and we were glad to provide it,” Jacobs said.

Once he was located, Edwards’ family called monthly to check on him. He passed away from an aortic aneurysm in 2020. A framed picture of him sits in the windowsill next to the couch he slept on at the St. Francis House.

Working with the homeless every day for years can make someone cynical or burnt out, Jacobs said.

“It is important to do things that nurture you. You have to get away from it from time to time,” he said.

For Jacobs, getting away means visiting other Catholic Worker communities or protesting. As part of his faith, Jacobs is opposed to violence.

He has been arrested upward of 50 times for protesting outside of things like the construction of a nuclear bomb plant and blocking the road outside the National Guard base in St. Louis. In that instance, he and others had brought humanitarian aid to the base and asked for them to take it to Iraq instead of bombing the country. They refused, so Jacobs blocked the road.

They also showed pictures of civilian victims at an armed forces recruiting station and blocked the entrance, which resulted in getting arrested again, he said.

“We haven’t stopped the death penalty. We haven’t stopped wars,” Jacobs said. “But we have raised consciousness for a lot of people about what it means to be a human and what it means to be a Christian.”

Jacobs’ close friend and fellow protester Jeff Stack said that they also have been arrested a few times for protesting the death penalty at the Boone County Courthouse.

Stack said they attended several vigils over the years and wanted to encourage the use of land to feed people instead of committing genocide.

Jacobs wrote a play that he and Stack performed in the Rotunda of the Capitol in Jefferson City in the 1990s. To protest the death penalty, they had a mannequin and the grim reaper there and performed a play where they ultimately decided to save the man instead of killing him.

More than 20 years later, they are still protesting the death penalty. They stood up and told the judge at the sentencing of Ernest Johnson, who was executed this fall, that they were citizens of Missouri and were opposed to Johnson being killed.

After nearly 40 years of living and working in the St. Francis House and protesting regularly, Jacobs, 66, has no plans of retiring.

“As long as I am a part of the solution instead of creating more problems for people, then I would like to do this for as long as I can,” he said.

Ms. Bond is a city and country reporter for the Columbia Missourian newspaper. This article, originally published in the Dec. 19, 2021, of the Missourian, is republished here with permission.

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