ILLINOIS STYLE: Lazarus House founder discusses her philosophy

By NANCY GIER The (Arlington Heights) Daily Heral

ST. CHARLES, Ill. -- In her cramped office just a few steps above the men's dormitory at Lazarus House in St. Charles, Darlene Marcusson was recalling her adoptive family in Chicago.

"I was born in Augustana Hospital in Lincoln Park and adopted as a baby," she said. "As a child, I often wondered. As long as I was taken and plunked down somewhere, why couldn't it have been at a place that had a swimming pool and ponies?"

Neither her family nor their neighbors on the west side of Chicago had ponies or a swimming pool, and many didn't have the basics.

"When I look back, I think, this is what taught me how to care for people," Marcusson said recently. "The reality was that they were subjected to conditions that were far from ideal. My perspective is different from someone who grew up with the ponies and the swimming pool that I used to wish for."

As founder and executive director of Lazarus House, Marcusson's name is synonymous with the St. Charles shelter.

Under her guidance, in just 10 years, it has thrived and expanded from a homeless shelter that was open only during the summer to an emergency shelter open 365 days a year. It also offers a transitional housing center and an outreach program that provides rent and utility assistance. A women's center that opened last summer offers case management and life skills training.

Some had concerns about the shelter before it opened in 1997, including Jim Martin, a St. Charles city councilman for almost 28 years.

"I was unfamiliar with the problem," Martin said. "But we had our eyes opened. We had a general information meeting at city hall, and Darlene presented a lot of information about the number of homeless in the area. We realized we had a problem.

"We were criticized about allowing a homeless shelter to open in downtown St. Charles. But I'm proud of Lazarus House. The whole program has been a success because of Darlene. She puts all of her heart and soul in it. They don't get any more dedicated than her."

Marcusson's long life of service is rooted in a childhood in which she became a caretaker for her invalid mother, who had diabetes. Her mother died when Darlene was 24. Her father died 15 years ago.

"I'm grateful for my parents; they did the best they could," she said. "But I wanted my life to be different, and I went to a Baptist Sunday school. It was there I learned that Jesus loved me, no matter what."

Marcusson wanted to be more like Jesus, and when she was 15, he spoke to her.

Does she hear his voice?

"Sometimes, but mostly I just know things. What I heard him say was, if you want to be different, you have to do different. So I went about being by doing."

She has lived this philosophy since she was a teenager, when she began tutoring at a YMCA in a gang-infested neighborhood on the West Side.

She was attracted to the civil rights movement, and she considers Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. one of her main inspirations, second only to Jesus.

"When he said that children shouldn't be judged by the color of their skin, I would add that they shouldn't be judged by their bank account, their background or their culture either," she said.

After Darlene and her husband settled in St. Charles in 1973, she worked for the St. Charles Chamber of Commerce and the DuPage Library System, bringing information to the disabled as part of the talking books program of.

She later joined the staff of Hosanna! Lutheran Church, a job she believes she was "called to," and which helped her develop skills she would later use at Lazarus House.

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ILLINOIS STYLE: Lazarus House founder discusses her philosophy: from www.belleville.com