The Next Right Thing
Quietly but surely, Lona Courington has been an major influencer on the Walker County nonprofit scene.
Words by Terrell Manasco | Images by Blakeney Clouse
He squats on the ground, flanked by a half-dozen crushed soda cans, his weathered, coffee-colored hands resting on the knees of his blue jeans. A faded red do-rag is looped around the collar of his dirty white shirt. Below the brim of an old burlap hat, a band of dark stubble covers his jaw—his tired, sad eyes gazing downward, perhaps contemplating his current state. His name is Albert.
Lona Courington nods toward the canvas leaning against one wall of her living room. “It’s called Albert Lives Under the Bridge,” she says, explaining the textured collage of plaster, burlap, fabric, trash items, and an old Wall Street Journal. Her inspiration came from watching homeless men gathering cans in the Destin-Fort Walton Beach area.
“I just had Covid,” Lona says from behind a mask. Curled at her feet is her constant companion, Toby, a Black Mouth Cur who appeared in her front yard in 2013. “He’s just an old farm dog,” she says affectionately.
Raised in the Boldo community, Lona earned a fine arts degree from the University of Alabama and studied public relations and advertising. Her then-husband was a regional manager with Sherwin-Williams, so the family relocated to cities like Mobile, Destin, Fort Walton Beach, Daphne, and finally Knoxville, Tennessee.
After Lona and her husband divorced in 2000, she brought her two boys back to Walker County. For a while, she worked for the Daily Mountain Eagle, ran a custom draperies and bedding business from her garage, then returned to the paper and wrote columns for the Lifestyles section.
In 2005, the Red Cross asked Lona to serve on their board. When the director left, Lona had the opportunity to move into leadership role. “It's God's fault—He gave me so many talents I had to jump around to use them all,” she jokes.
Disaster relief, Lona says, is about coordinating people, but she stresses that volunteers are the key to everything. “The volunteers were the highlight of my whole career. They are the coolest people you’ll ever want to meet,” Lona says. “I had the vision and they made it happen.”
From 2010 to 2014, Lona served as the Salvation Army’s executive director. She calls it “the peak of my career in social services” but recalls the building was in poor condition. “It had rats and a bad roof,” Lona says. “A tornado hit it and took the roof off, which was a godsend. The Walker Area Community Foundation was amazing and helped me find money to renovate. Carpenters for Christ built the interior walls, and we repainted and bought new shelving, lighting, and heating.”
“Albert,” ironically, foreshadowed the birth of the Walker County Coalition for the Homeless. The idea originated while Lona was with the American Red Cross. “People dropped off homeless people and I couldn't go home until I found something to do with them,” she explains. “I called Paul Kennedy and he said arrange a community meeting and do a roundtable.”
While serving as the coalition’s executive director, Lona enjoyed befriending people who are looked down upon because they are homeless or drug-addicted. She says she still cares about them.
“It hurts to love those people because sometimes they die,” she says. “We’ve had some hard failures and some successes. It has been enriching and enlightening.”
For a while, Lona wrote grants at Bevill State Community College. At some point during that period, she remembers teaching art classes. “I just do the next right thing; that’s what I taught my boys,” she says. “Sometimes life is a meandering path and you don’t know where it will take you. When you're trying to figure out what to do, if you can just do the next right thing, God leads you where He needs you.”
Faith is an important part of Lona’s life. A member of Saragossa Nazarene Church, she also hosts a women's prayer group. Each Monday night, “The Pyros Prayers” gather around a fire pit in her back yard and pray for an hour. “Our goal is to see a Holy Spirit fire kindled in our community that will draw people back to God,” she explains.
After losing several friends to Covid-19, Lona herself is now recovering from it. Other health issues have convinced her to retire and focus on her art. Pointing to one item hanging on a wall, she explains it is an elf warrior princess made with a Styrofoam wig head and papier mache. “I do a lot of textured, dimensional stuff,” she says.
Across the room, “Albert” is lost in thought, perhaps hoping the artist will do the next right thing—replace the bridge with a home. 78