A Voice from the Early Days: Mary Johnson

A Voice from the Early Days: Mary Johnson

Mary (right) and a guest at the Women's Inn in the 1980s.

Throughout Pine Street Inn's 50th anniversary, we are sharing stories from those who were here at the beginning. The following excerpt was adapted from an interview with Mary Johnson, a staff member who has worked at Pine Street since 1980.

"I was going to school at Boston State College to train as a surgical nurse. I started working at Pine Street a couple of nights a week in the Women’s Inn.

At the time, the women’s shelter was new to Pine Street – a place for homeless women was not really a focus back then, but was needed. We saw a lot of domestic violence survivors who would come here.

With deinstitutionalization, a lot of people who needed help came to us because they had nowhere else to go. We learned about crisis intervention – that we had to be more intentional and focused in how we were dealing with people who had many different problems.

About 10 years ago, I started working with veterans here. A lot of them did not identify as a veteran because of substance use or mental illness – they were embarrassed. I thought it was going to be an easy transition because I had been working with the homeless population for over 25 years. But it wasn’t. Veteran PTSD is very overwhelming.

It’s hard to get veterans to talk about what’s going on in their life. We had to make sure that they were getting the services and benefits they were entitled to and eliminate any barrier keeping them out of housing.

We’ve had Vietnam vets, Iraqi vets. We’ve had every veteran possible here. We have vets who have physical injuries, missing limbs and are in wheelchairs.

One of my brothers was a Vietnam vet and was affected by his experience. I just remembered the support of my family and how he got through it, and I use that approach in my work." - Mary Johnson