Two years ago, Anita Dunham and Grace Blackstone were single mothers with a dream that looked like it had come true.
That dream -- helping their community by creating jobs -- had taken shape when their fledgling black-owned company, A & G Cleaning, won a contract to pick up trash after Orioles games at Camden Yards.
The deal gave them a six-figure working budget, and the company employed at various times as many as 300 people during the course of the 1992 baseball season -- most of them desperately in need of employment.
"We have taken some young boys who have lived on the street, that haven't had any kind of education, were on drugs, and eliminated those three things out of their lives," Ms. Blackstone said then of the company's rag-tag work force. "And now they are positive and trying to do better."
But the lucrative Camden Yards contract has disappeared, after a dispute between A & G and the company that hired it. Another important contract, calling for A & G to clean Memorial Stadium for the Baltimore CFL football club, also has vanished, after a quarrel with team owner Jim Speros.
Today, A & G maintains some smaller jobs, but there are no more stadiums to clean.
The company's work force has shrunk -- to fewer than a dozen full-time employees. Despite some regular jobs, such as cleaning the Howard County District Court building, the company has fallen $12,000 in debt to the IRS.
Its survival could depend on the outcome of a lawsuit against Mr. Speros.
"If we don't win the lawsuit, I don't think we'll be able to stay in business," Ms. Dunham says. "We'd probably go bankrupt."
And their dream of helping the community would die.
The dream began in 1991 at an anti-drug block party in East Baltimore. Ms. Blackstone, 37, had organized the event, and Ms. Dunham, 31, had volunteered to help. They became friends, bonded by their beliefs in uplifting the community.
The two single parents pooled their resources to buy a house in Harford County. They decided to use the $200 left over after settlement for another venture. At first they thought about starting a nonprofit organization, but decided they could employ more people by starting A & G Cleaning.
The company's big break came spring 1992. Harry M. Stevens Management Services Inc., the primary cleaning contractor for Camden Yards, needed a minority subcontractor to pick up trash around the seats. After a tryout, A & G won the $160,000 contract over two other companies by cleaning its part of the stadium faster.
That contract enabled Ms. Dunham and Ms. Blackstone to employ dozens of poor Baltimore-area residents, including many recruited from the local unemployment office and the Veterans Administration. Some were living on the streets. Most just needed a break.
Terry Davis, 40, an A & G employee, is typical. He was unemployed and recently divorced when he started working for the company.
He had child support payments to make and, working out of a temporary labor pool, had no way of making them. But in July, he heard about an opening with A & G.
"When I first started with them, I was down and out," Mr. Davis recalled. "Now I've got my life back on track financially, mentally and spiritually."
Through such employees, A & G served as a profit-making venture and social experiment. But the profit-making dried up.
Toward the end of the Orioles' 1993 season, several months before the company's contract expired, Stevens and A & G became embroiled in a dispute over the company's work at other locations.
Roland Hayden, vice president for Harry M. Stevens Management Services, says Stevens lost faith in A & G after discovering that Ms. Blackstone had punched time cards at the Baltimore Arena and Camden Yards on the same day.
Ms. Blackstone says she punched in at both locations for 20 minutes one afternoon, costing Stevens an extra nine dollars. "We were locked out of work. It can't be over nine dollars," Ms. Blackstone says.
She claims A & G was locked out of Camden Yards because Stevens demanded to take over her company's books. When she refused, she says, former Stevens president Don Rankin vowed, "You will not work in Baltimore again."
Mr. Rankin did not answer several telephone messages.
Memorial Stadium
A & G did find work again in Baltimore, taking its employees uptown to Memorial Stadium. At first, Mr. Speros seemed like the company's savior -- he could make up for some of the revenue lost from the Camden Yards contract.
But the problems started before the 1994 CFL season even began. In June, A & G cleaned up after contractors renovating the stadium. By mid-season, A & G was claiming that Mr. Speros had paid only for part of the work.
The dispute escalated, and after the fifth game of the season, Ms. Blackstone discovered that the lock on A & G's storage closet had been cut off. A new one had been put on.
Mr. Speros denies taking A & G's supplies and says the company failed every post-game inspection, once taking four days to complete a one-day job.
"This wasn't brain surgery," he says. "All they had to do was clean up bathrooms and pick up trash."
Today, the dispute has spread to court, where A & G recently filed a suit seeking $38,000 from Mr. Speros. The company has acquired some key allies -- state officials have threatened to hold up a $400,000 loan and $100,000 grant until Mr. Speros settles the lawsuit.
"In today's world, you can't expect people to do the right thing because it's the right thing to do," says Luwanda Jenkins, the director of the Governor's Office of Minority Affairs. "Sometimes you need a little leverage."
Mr. Speros says he owes A & G only $3,250, but acknowledged that he probably will have to pay more than that to settle the suit. "I feel like I'm being discriminated against. This is not fair, what [Ms. Blackstone's] trying to do, and she knows it."
Fair or not, A & G's fate hinges on the lawsuit. The company has found some jobs, but nothing as lucrative as the two years at Camden Yards.
"It's just this small stuff, it's not 40 hours a week like at Camden Yards," Ms. Blackstone says. "There were games every day."
The handful of A & G employees who remain know they're fortunate.
Mr. Davis had experience cleaning floors so when A & G lost the Memorial Stadium job, he moved to the Howard County District Court building.
"I took it, and I'm still here, thank the Lord," he says. "I was one of the fortunate ones that got something out here."
Mr. Davis is one of the reasons why A & G's owners put another $41,000 of their money into the business rather than declare bankruptcy. He is one of the products of the dream.
"The main thing that keeps me going is I can't put more people out of work. They depend on us," Ms. Dunham says. "If I don't keep these people employed, I was in it just for the money. I wasn't in it just for the money, I wanted to help the community."