Ruelas, to move to town and head up
the project.) Wander in on any given
day and you might find a book club
discussion, a Coffee Ladies meet-up,
or a work session for the local geneal-
ogy group among the tables of people
chatting over cups of coffee and plates
of food. The space won an award from
the Texas Downtown Association for
best historical restoration for a town
with fewer than 50,000 residents.
“I can only describe it as a but-
terfly effect,” says Amy Briscoe, who
owns the local gym and a funky resale
shop called the Emporium on Lower
Main. “Once the Ostertags started
investing, everyone else started step-
ping up their game—me included!
Awnings were getting painted, store-
fronts were getting shined up, re-
pairs that had long been forgotten
suddenly got remembered. We saw anewfound sense of pride start to bloom.”
While Mount Vernonites have a
healthy appreciation for their past,
they embrace the new too. In 2006,
a recruiter for the local hospital was
trying to lure Dr. Jean Latortue, a Hai-
tian native who had become a general
practitioner in upstate New York. He
and his wife, Marie Coq-Latortue,
agreed that Mount Vernon, which they
could barely find on a map, was not for
them. But the recruiter kept pushing,
even buying them plane tickets so they
could see the place for themselves.
The couple’s plan was to show up
and say thanks but no thanks. “Our
minds were made up,” says Marie. But
once they got to town, something sur-
prising happened. “Before we knew
it, in unison, my husband and I re-
sponded that we would think about
it,” says Marie. They moved to Mount
Vernon several months later. “God had
a bigger plan, and we were part of it,”
she says. When the hospital closed in
2014, the doctor couldn’t bear to leave
his neighbors without medical care, so
he opened the Franklin County Rural
Health Clinic, with Marie heading up
the local assisted-living facility.
“You can come to a small commu-
nity like this and your individual ef-
fort actually makes a huge difference,”
says Shannon.
Michael and Kathrine Lee chose
Mount Vernon as the home base for
their Pure Hope Foundation, which
helps victims of human trafficking
Friends connect at Watermelon Mills. get a fresh start. The Lees bought aReader’s Digest
100 july/august 2019