LEWISTON — Edith McRae was always helping someone.

Strangers, family members, veterans, neighbors. The high school track team. Girl Scouts.

Her seven children watched her dedicate herself to Togus, to political activism, to Lewiston. And they learned.

“It was our whole life,” daughter Mary McRae said.

Edith died in 1989, but in those children her generosity lived on.

For the past 15 years, Mary and other family members have run Edie’s Angels, an all-volunteer group that throughout the year offers food, donated goods and friendship to the residents of Blake Street Towers, a subsidized apartment complex in Lewiston. All residents are elderly or disabled. All are very poor. Many have no family or close friends.

It can be a hard way to live any time of the year, but it’s particularly difficult during the holidays.

“I’ve been alone for a very long time. Getting me out of my home — because I isolate — is a real chore,” said 44-year-old Lucille Bachelder, who has lived at Blake Street Towers for nine years. “When they come, it’s like I’m so happy.”

What was started by a few McRae family members in 2002 has grown to include dozens of siblings, spouses, children, grandchildren, co-workers and friends.

Residents just call them The Angels. 

“That’s the best thing that happens to us all year long,” said 94-year-old Bertha Libby, who has lived at Blake Street Towers for 25 years. “We wait for The Angels to come.”

‘He wanted his hand held’

Edith was never involved in Blake Street Towers and she died years before Edie’s Angels formed, but Mary firmly credits her mom as her inspiration.

For Edith, helping others came naturally. She volunteered with John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign, organized a St. Patrick’s Day parade in the city, led a Brownie troop, helped out at a local nursing home. She regularly baked bread for neighbors in need. She volunteered 10,000 hours at Togus, the equivalent of 24 hours a day for more than 416 days.

“Her life was a lot of volunteering,” Mary said. “She was just always a giving person.”

That example stayed with her children — including Mary, who dedicated her career to helping others by becoming a nurse. She is manager of the cardiopulmonary unit at Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston. 

Mary was volunteering with Catholic Charities in the early 2000s when she first encountered Blake Street Towers. She’d been helping an elderly woman with light housekeeping, errands and medical appointments when the woman moved into one of the 100 subsidized apartments there.

Mary realized other people at Blake Street Towers could use some help, too. 

“Most of them were elderly and the elderly kind of get forgotten at times,” she said.

Mary and two sisters-in-law, Peggy and Michelle McRae, decided to adopt the apartment building. They called their little volunteer group Edie’s Angels in honor of the family matriarch.

Although the trio founded Edie’s Angels, they were quickly joined that first year by others, including Mary’s husband, two children and mother-in-law, McRae brothers Mike and Sean, Sean’s now-wife Lori, Mike and Michelle’s three kids, CMMC co-workers and friends.

That October, on national Make a Difference Day, the group made a meal for residents and provided boxes of food, clothes and household goods.

“I think we needed three or four trucks to deliver everything,” Mary said.

It was so successful that Edie’s Angels made the October event annual. They started helping residents in other ways, like offering to clean apartments, running beano games, hosting dinners and providing donated food.

“We had enough food, at some points, to fill my garage at the house,” Mary said. 

More than food filled the garage. Although residents got their small apartments subsidized, the homes came completely empty, so Edie’s Angels regularly sought out donated couches, tables and beds. Residents had little money for extras, so the angels collected clothes, socks, laundry detergent, paper towels and other items for them.

For a while, the lobby of Blake Street Towers resembled a department store, all things free and gathered by the angels.

“We had so much stuff,” Peggy said.

The food, furniture and clothes were nice and needed, but for residents something else was even more precious: the knowledge someone cared.

“Over the years, when everything else is falling apart, they know Edie’s Angels will be there,” said Carla Harris, resident services manager for the Lewiston Housing Authority, which owns Blake Street Towers.

They also know why Edie’s Angels will be there.

“They don’t do it because they have to, they do it because they want to,” said 61-year-old Eloise Poland, who has lived there for four years.

For years, Edie’s Angels offered hand massages and fingernail painting — a low-key form of personal attention for people who rarely got any personal attention at all.

“There’s one guy that always came to get his fingernails painted,” Mary said. “He wanted his hand held.” 

Deeply appreciated

Over the years, both Edie’s Angels and Blake Street Towers changed. 

Residents watched volunteers’ children grow up and cheered when those young adults returned with their own kids. Volunteers mourned when residents died or grew too sick to live without nursing care and moved away. 

Blake Street Towers turned from an all-elderly apartment building to housing for both elderly and disabled Mainers. But Edie’s Angels continued.

These days, volunteers get donated food from Hannaford, bread from the Italian Bakery in Lewiston and other donations every fifth Friday and bring them to the apartment building, filling a first-floor room with frozen meat, vegetables and canned goods. They host meals a few times a year, including a massive October  celebration that gets residents out of their apartments and sharing a meal — an accomplishment for some residents who are lonely but struggle with social anxiety.

“That one day that everybody is together for once, the room is just lit up,” Bachelder said.

Edie’s Angels create Thanksgiving or Christmas baskets for the residents who are alone and need the help most. In a few days, volunteers will carol in the building, offering hugs and some bags stuffed with food, socks, hats, gloves and little gifts.

Residents started looking forward to it weeks ago.

“It’s deeply appreciated when you’re alone,” Bachelder said.

The angels look forward to it, too.

Mary can imagine what just Edith would say.

“My mom would be doing it with us,” she said. “Then she’d probably be bugging me about why I don’t do it more often. I know her. She’d be saying ‘Come on now.'”

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