Come this morning, the heavenly balcony overlooking Ruby, S.C., figures to be one jampacked venue.

Certainly, Willis and Glennis McBride will be there, along with Marshall and Daisy McBride and, of course, Aunt Queen McBride. And you can bet Joon Moser's wings and halo will be rustling as he jostles for position with Hattie Moser McCoy, her 11 children, 74 grandchildren and 120 great-grandchildren.

Yes, it's more than probable that all of them - Thomas McBride's parents, grandparents, aunts, cousins, ancestors - will be looking down as he stabs a shovel into the baked red earth of his hometown and breaks ground for a "faith-driven" project: a retirement village for blacks and whites, a community based on mutual respect and dignity built on land that not so long ago seethed with racism.

Standing on holy ground

It's five days before Aug. 18, but longtime Denver businessman Thomas McBride is thinking ahead. He's thinking about standing on the site of the McBride Village at Ruby - 40 acres where his grandfather was a slave and his father worked like one; 40 acres that in a few short years will be home to 400 senior citizens, offering them residence, medical care, a lake to boat in and fish from, orchards to enjoy; a continuum of comfortable Southern lifestyle in their twilight years.

McBride is also thinking he just might have to stand barefoot.

"Yes, I believe I will take my shoes off because I know, I know, I'll be standing on holy ground," he says. The baritone voice that wraps itself around you like a soft blanket starts to waver. "I'll have to do this right because they'll all be looking over that banister down at me."

It's been five years since McBride, 71, realized his dream of buying some of the land where his ancestors were either slaves or sharecroppers. Five years since the idea of creating a place of peace and comfort for aging folks, of creating something good, moved past the embryonic stage and began acquiring flesh and sinew. There were stumbles along the way, times when he wondered if he could honor his family's past and his birthplace's future.

"But every time I got discouraged, I knew I just had to pray a little harder," says the man who is a deacon in his church. "You know, this is not my project - it's been God's project from day one. I'm just God's gofer."

A pause. The blanket unfurls. "Y'know, sometimes God shows up in strange places, like Ruby. But he always shows up on time."

Or sends help. Maybe in the form of an underwriter who is financing the $36 million project.

Or maybe help in the form of Paul Beigh.

Alchemy and inspiration

The idea for a retirement community in Ruby may have been McBride's, but it was Beigh who stretched it into a village. The architect from Southern California was introduced to McBride by the latter's daughter, a nurse who was caring for Beigh's wife, a recovering cancer patient.

From their first meeting, the two men developed a relationship that was pure alchemy. Each spoke the other's language. Each shared the same inspiration.

Years later, on the cusp of the groundbreaking, Beigh would say, "This development really has its roots firmly implanted in a couple of spiritual precepts. Redemption, reconciliation and restoration - those are our bywords, the keystones of the project. We're not embarrassed by that, and we're not shy to declare it."

After a pause, Beigh adds, "This whole project is really intriguing if you think about it. Thomas is black and I'm white, but there's no such thing as race involved in this project. We're stepping forward together."

Or, as McBride insists, "This isn't a black story or a white story. It's an American story."

Part of that story will be told via the memorial to be built on the grounds, a tower visible from all vantages that will be, says Beigh, "dedicated to those who spent their lives - and maybe lost their lives - on that property. People who were part of its heritage."

In addition to housing, a community room, a restored lake, a restored gristmill and productive orchards, the village will have on-premises health care facilities, including registered nurses and what the Web site calls a "medical emergency response system."

Health care was a crucial component of McBride's vision. His mother and father suffered the agonizing loss of their first eight children, none of them ever drawing so much as a breath because of, McBride is convinced, a virtual absence of doctors in the isolated, rural poverty of segregated Ruby.

Even more recently, just about a year ago in fact, McBride felt his own wrenching loss due to inadequate medical care.

In memory of Joon

"We lost Joon. He's been gone about a year," says McBride, talking about Clarence "Joon" Moser, the cousin who was more like a brother. It was Joon whom -Thomas would play with when he visited family in Ruby during summer visits from Ohio, where he had moved with his parents and sister when he was 4. The two boys would hurl rocks at wasp nests, shinny up the pecan and magnolia trees, swim in the nearby spring.

McBride believes that Joon died because he lived too far from good hospitals.

"That's why we have to have medical facilities," he says. "We're going to have doctors' offices there, first-class. For Joon. That's part of my calling."

That calling will begin to take form sometime next year, when construction begins.

Today, it all gets put into motion. When a black dreamer stands in front of the living and the dead and plants a shovel into the earth. And even if the weather forecast is "mostly sunny," no one should be surprised if it starts to rain a little from out of the clear sky. Because if you think a certain gofer might get emotional, just imagine how many tears might be falling from heaven.

meadowj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2606

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