By Erica Wright
The Birmingham Times
“Mama Lois” Coleman, who dedicated her life to mentoring young girls and founded of Grace House Ministries, Incorporated, was a community icon when she passed away on March 31, 2019 at age 95.
In honor of her life and legacy, Vernessa Barnes, a longtime friend, penned Mama Lois’s memorial book, “By His Grace, For His Glory.” Barnes will host a book signing on Saturday, May 15 from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at Homecoming Coffee and Books at 3112 Ensley Five Points West Boulevard.
“I was asked to write the book because I was involved with Grace House as far as publicity and I thought it was a pretty challenging quest but I took it on,” said Barnes, 66, “It was a joyous experience because Mama Lois would sit with me and tell me the stories her father would tell and how her mother and father and siblings related to one another… it was a joy to write the story because I got to hear firsthand how things were back in the day and how she lived her life.”
At age 69, and after raising five children of her own, Coleman began a new life mission caring for young girls in need of guidance. She started started Grace House Ministries in the Fairfield community near Birmingham in 1992, acting as a mother figure to the young ladies she mentored.
For over 25 years, Grace House has been providing stable, Christian homes for Alabama girls who have been abused, neglected, or abandoned. The residential campus in Fairfield houses girls who have been removed from their homes and placed in state custody.
“By His Grace, For His Glory” chronicles the life of Mama Lois dating back to early Birmingham before the Great Depression and beyond the Civil Rights Movement.
Mama Lois shares how God helped her overcome the hatred in her heart and allowed her to work with others throughout the greater Birmingham-metro area to establish Grace House, a ministry that would serve the city and generations to come.
Barnes, who was a volunteer with Grace House and has known Mama Lois since 1992, was commissioned to write the book by the former chair of the board, Terry Johnson.
Barnes had been working on the memoir for more than 10 years, often listening to the stories of Mama Lois and writing on and off.
“We would sit together, and she would tell me stories and I would write, write, write and reconstruct it and I would read it back to her and she would correct things or add things,” Barnes said. “It seemed like when she was telling a story and it was being brought back to her then other things would come to her mind and she would elaborate more on the different stories.”
After Barnes’s daughter, Javonti, passed away in January 2018 at the age of 37 and Mama Lois passed a year later, Barnes knew she had to get the book completed.
“I had slowed down my pace and I remember my daughter had told me before she died, ‘you need to finish the book mama’ and so during the pandemic, I pulled it out and finished it,” she said. “It was a challenge, because I had never written a book by myself, the first book I wrote was co-authored… when you’re doing it by yourself you don’t have that inner clock that helps you to stay on target… but I finished.”
The book, published in August 2020 by Apples in the Seed Publishing, LLC in Birmingham, is available now at www.vernessabarnes.com.
