Hardship and beauty shaped Rene Maxwell

Rene Maxwell always had an eye for beauty. Growing up in Louisville’s Portland neighborhood she found it in the bones of old buildings, the turn of the Ohio River, and the bend of sidewalks around trees and alleyways. But that beauty was tempered by real hardship. Her family never had what they needed and, because her mom had polio and no one in the family drove, they often couldn’t get to what they needed even if it were available. Seven of them lived on about $350 a month in disability checks.

 “We were poor. We were wild kids, six of us, with no supervision. We didn’t have food a lot of the time. We didn’t even own toothbrushes and toothpaste. We washed our hair with dish soap in the sink. We mostly had heat. In the summer we had one air-conditioned room with a quilt tacked over the door to contain it.”

Rene used to take old bricks in the backyard to cobble together little houses for Barbie dolls. “Believe me, we weren’t getting a Barbie Dreamhouse for Christmas,” she said. “Our Barbies were old ones that somebody had cut their hair off already.” But building those houses created for Rene a sense of calm. “When you’re struggling to have just the bare essentials, when you’re under a constant threat of being taken from your mom, there’s so much anxiety. Building those houses was always more about making beautiful things to signify that everything was going to be okay.”

Everything became as okay as it could be when staff at Sister Visitor Center became aware of Rene’s family and began meeting their needs. “I remember the first time we went to the clothes closet. They took lots of time so we could find something we really liked, unlike other places. I felt special and seen, and that’s not something you get a lot when you’re a kid from Portland in shambles.”

Rene said she was changed by her interaction with a woman at the closet who invested herself in finding items Rene actually liked. “She valued me so much. I never realized there were people outside of West Louisville who cared about me. In that moment I thought, “Rene, maybe you are somebody. Maybe you will be okay.’”

Rene recalled that when the family couldn’t get to Sister Visitor Center, the center often came to them. One time a volunteer in his 70s crawled in through a window to deliver food when only Rene’s mom was home and couldn’t answer the door. “Now that’s going above and beyond,” she said with a laugh.

Now Rene donates regularly to Sister Visitor Center because “a five-minute interaction with someone at Sister Visitor can change someone’s life.” And because she knows her gift will “multiply a million fold.”

Today Rene is indeed okay. She and her husband, three children, and three dogs live in West Point, New York, where she owns Studio Maxwell. There she uses that eye for beauty to design homes and rooms for clients looking for warmth, clarity, clean lines, and a little boldness. Looking for a place that feels like everything is going to be okay.

You may watch Rene’s video here.