A YWCA membership put homeless woman in good company

Meredith Hahm Moore and her shopping carts full of pots, pans and poetry had become a fixture at the bus stop in front of District Court downtown, but something about the homeless woman profoundly touched Norma Herkes.

Herkes stopped and talked to Moore, struck up a friendship and even watched Moore’s shopping carts containing her worldly possessions when she needed to find a bathroom.

Then, in 2008, Herkes began paying $50 every year for Moore to become a member of the Richards Street YWCA where Moore could shower, use the bathroom, step out of the rain and heat and — perhaps most importantly — sit among the company of other women.

The Richards Street YWCA has nearly 3,000 members but there was no other arrangement like the one between one YWCA member — Herkes — paying the annual membership fee of a homeless person — Moore.

"It certainly is unique," said Kimberly Miyazawa Frank, CEO of the YWCA of Oahu.

Then Herkes got a call from the YWCA that Moore — who was believed to be in her 60s — had died of cancer in a hospital.

"She was quite an educated person, not a druggie, and she was always writing poetry," said Herkes, an 88-year-old retiree who used to work in the documents department of the State Library.

When Moore told Herkes years ago that she wasn’t allowed into the library to use the restroom, "I knew Meredith needed a place to wash her hair, have a shower," Herkes said.

A YWCA employee volunteered to pay Moore’s locker fee to store her possessions as she showered. And Moore soon became a fixture at the YWCA, where she would spend hours with other women.

She followed all of the rules, never caused a problem and "was beloved here at the Y," Miyazawa Frank said. "She just didn’t have a place to live. Here she found a safe place. We’re not a shelter and we don’t try to pretend to provide that. But she was able to visit and feel comfortable with our other members and our staff."

How Moore — a Roosevelt High School graduate — ended up homeless living downtown out of shopping carts isn’t exactly clear.

But Kathryn Xian used to see Moore every day, and heard Moore talk about an abusive, lawyer husband on the mainland who had cut off Moore from her then 9-year-old son.

Moore carried closely guarded legal papers in her shopping carts, Herkes said, that included a restraining order against her former husband.

"She told me the story and I tried to find her son," said Xian, executive director of the Pacific Alliance to Stop Slavery.

While state and city officials were moving homeless people for November’s Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, a friend of Xian’s took Moore in, Xian said.

A month later, Moore was diagnosed with cancer and died on Jan. 16, Xian said.

An intimate funeral of about 30 people was held on the Ewa lawn of the state Capitol on Jan. 29.

"She never caused any problems," Xian said. "It’s a really sad story."

Xian is the director of GiRL FeST Hawaii, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preventing violence against women and girls through education and arts.

After Moore’s death, GiRL FeST Hawaii posted on its Facebook page, "May this story stand as a testament to the wickedness and brutality of abusive and controlling men who have the power of destroying a loving mother through the imposition of poverty and the intentional abduction of children for the purpose of retaliation."

Last month, the organization dedicated its eighth Annual GiRL FeST Hawaii in Moore’s memory.