By Grace Thornton
Correspondent, The Alabama Baptist
Scarlett Dunnam’s son, Mac, died of AIDS in 1994, and nothing has been the same since — not her heart, not her mailbox and not even Alabama’s prisons.
“It was shortly after he died that I attended a meeting that was about AIDS and HIV in the prison system,” said Dunnam, a member of Eastview Baptist Church, Tuscaloosa.
At that point in time inmates with AIDS were separated from the rest of the prison population, so they were stigmatized and alone, she said. “I couldn’t really think of anything worse than having AIDS and being in jail too.”
So Dunnam began to talk with people connected to the state’s prison system and asked if there was anything she could do to reach out to them.
‘Laid on my heart’
“I asked if maybe we could do cards at Christmas, and [a lady within the prison system] said she would be happy to do it,” Dunnam said. “I really felt like it was a need, and I just felt like God had laid it on my heart to do that.”
So Dunnam sent a letter to the editor of The Alabama Baptist asking for individuals and church groups to write Christmas cards for inmates and mail them to her house so she could bundle them up for transport to the prisons. She’s done it every Christmas since then, and Easter too.
And in the past two decades she’s received tens of thousands of cards from all across Alabama — 8,000–10,000 a year, if she had to guess.
“Some people sent two cards, some sent a hundred,” Dunnam said. “Every one of them was special. So many people wrote the nicest, most personal comments inside their cards.”
The whole purpose behind the ministry was just to show the love of Christ to inmates with AIDS, she said. She gave it the name MAC D Ministries in honor of her son, Mac. The acronym stands for “Making Another’s Christmas Delightful,” and it included the card collections along with other ministry to AIDS and HIV patients in her local area.
Big response
She started the ministry with good intentions and high hopes, but she said she never dreamed that so many people would respond to the call for Christmas and Easter cards.
“It’s been a very easy project for people to get involved in, especially people who are shut in,” Dunnam said. “I feel like with HIV people and AIDS people and even with prisoners that sometimes not a lot of people seem to care, and this has been such a great way for a lot of people to show them that they are loved. And if that can help them understand God’s love for them, then that’s what it’s all about.”
Because prison officials requested that the cards not include a return address, Dunnam said she didn’t hear many personal stories over the years of how the cards were received. But she does know that many recipients put the cards up on their walls and they “continued to bless them through the years” that way.
She said it breaks her heart to have to make the decision to stop gathering and shipping the cards, but because of some changes in her family’s situation, continuing the ministry is no longer possible.
Dunnam encourages anyone interested in picking up where she is leaving off to select one correctional facility, contact the chaplain and work out how cards can be gathered and distributed for that facility. The name and contact information of the chaplain can be found on the correctional facility’s website, she said.
Brad Smith, Dunnam’s pastor at Eastview Baptist, said he knows the investment she’s made has made a difference in the lives of others for years.
“One of the things about Scarlett is that she just loves people,” Smith said. “She knows that the prisoners have made some mistakes and made some bad choices, but at the same time she wants to share with them Christ’s love and let them know that they’re not worthless and not forgotten.”
‘I will miss it’
And her commitment has been inspiring to many, he said.
Dunnam said it would be a definite change to not have so many cards ending up in her mailbox in Tuscaloosa.
“I know that I will miss it — and my mailman will miss it,” Dunnam said with a smile. “But I hope that it’s made a difference.”
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