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The calls come every day, 50 to 60 of them from people seeking help.
Louise Williams has never fielded so many calls in her many years as the woman behind the Good Fellows Club.
That's the all-male charity of 1,500 well-to-do business and civic leaders who in about an hour each December raise gobs of money to keep hundreds of the working poor fed, warm and under a roof.
Today will be Williams' 18th meeting of her Fellows - her last.
"I'm 72, and the Fellows need someone young and energetic to come in and take over," she said Tuesday.
Not sure her Fellows will be able to find a more energetic replacement. Her title: family services director. Yet she's the lone paid full-timer, the Fellows' compassionate ear and soothing voice on the other end of the phone.
"Louise can't be replaced," said incoming Good Fellows President Frank Dowd IV. "She's been the Good Fellows 364 days a year. On the 365th day, we all get up there to support her with our money.
"But she's been the heart of the club."
The club started in 1917 in a men's Sunday school class at Charlotte's Second Presbyterian Church. It has evolved into an organization that serves the working poor who often "fall between the cracks at other good agencies," Dowd said.
Club members pay $75 in annual dues that pay for the luncheon, the office and Williams' salary. So every penny raised today will go to help families, Dowd said.
Members bring guests - "but I'll be prodding them, too, to dig deep," he said. "We're not serving a free lunch."
Each year, Williams has spent the money raised at the annual meetings - more than $1.5 million in the past six years - to help people with rent, mortgages, food and basic needs such as heating bills.
At last year's meeting, the Fellows ponied up about $258,000. This year, she has spent more than $260,000, on about 1,800 families "and I'm still spending," she said.
"So I'm spending more than we took in. It's a big gamble, but hopefully we'll raise a lot of money (at today's meeting)," she said. "Or my boys are going to make my budget look bad."
Williams took the job after making a deal with God.
That came late on Sept. 20, 1989, after the Charlotte-bound USAir (now US Airways) flight she was on crashed on takeoff at New York's LaGuardia Airport. Back then, Williams was a 51-year-old general manager of a fancy women's clothing store in Charlotte and had gone to New York on a buying trip.
As she floated in the cobalt waters of the East River with a broken leg and mangled right hand, she made her deal: If she was spared to watch her children graduate from college, she'd give up her glamorous life and give back to her community.
She returned home to a city torn up by Hurricane Hugo, and after a year of recuperating began volunteering at Crisis Assistance in a wheelchair.
In 1991, she took the paying job at Good Fellows.
Since then, she has run the charity with "seven of the best volunteers in the world. They're wonderful. They're devoted. They come half a day and they come year-round. I couldn't have done what we do without them," Williams said.
She often gets notes from the people they help, and some make all the hard work worthwhile. A recent one came from a family of six that the club had saved from eviction. In part, it read: "Thank you for believing in us."
"More than just helping with money to solve that situation, we made that family feel like somebody cared about them," Williams said.
She will continue to care. Dowd said the club hasn't yet found a replacement.
"I keep urging them to look harder," Williams said. "I've devoted my life to my guys - so it will be very hard to leave."
