Cchftalk

Ted Hewson was officially the first executive director of the fledgling organization known as Christian Community Health Fellowship, or CCHF. CCHF was birthed in southern Mississippi around 1980, but it moved to Philadelphia shortly after its first national conference in 1982. Ted was hired as the first director, but he eventually handed off most of those duties and became part of an early team along with his wife, Patty. Patty had served as a nurse at what eventually became Esperanza Health Center in Philadelphia. David and Libby Caes then took over director responsibilities, organizing conferences and serving as editors of the Health and Development newsletter. Ted and Patty are a wealth of stories and history from the earliest days of CCHF. They were gracious enough to meet me at Esperanza on a Sunday afternoon last summer, and here's a recording of our visit together. In its early days, CCHF was small, under the radar, and largely unheard of. Conferences drew just 30 or 40 people, and the organization had