Asks mom if they can helphomeless manBy Steve Huffman
shuffman@salisburypost.com
Charliey Briggs had just exited Interstate 85 onto East Innes Street the other week when she saw the homeless guy standing along the road with a sign in hand.
He had a long, dark beard and blue eyes. “Broke and hungry,” his sign read.
Charliey said she might have passed the man without thinking anything more had it not been for her front-seat companion, her 7-year-old son, John Abram Briggs.
She said her son, a first-grader, read the sign aloud, then turned to his mother and asked, “Do you think we could feed him?”
She pondered the question for only a moment before replying, “Absolutely.”
Charliey drove to the nearby Burger King, where she bought a double-cheeseburger, French fries and a Coke. Then she and her children (her daughter, 9-year-old Madison, was in the back seat) parked at a gas station and walked to the homeless man.
She let John Abram carry the bag that contained the burger and fries. Charliey carried the Coke.
“He was just the proudest little boy with that bag,” she said, her voice cracking as she remembered the day.
As they approached the homeless man, she told him, “My son wanted to feed you.”
She said she told the man he was a child of God, to which he replied, “Without God, I wouldn’t be here.”
She said that as her son handed the man his meal, he bent over and looked the boy in the eyes. “Thank you, little man,” he said.
Charliey said John Abram smiled wide. She asked her son if he had anything he wanted to tell the homeless man.
“Jesus loves you very much,” the boy replied.
Charliey’s husband and John Abram’s and Madison’s father is John. The family lives in Salisbury.
She said John Abram had attended Sunday school at St. John’s Lutheran earlier the day they saw the homeless man.
In Sunday school, John Abram was taught the need to feed the hungry. Charliey said her son took the message to heart.
“If a little boy asks you to feed someone, there’s no way you’re going to say, ‘No,’ ” she said. “I’m so proud of him.”