“Let the Midnight Special shine the light on me.” In the late 1960s, Credence Clearwater Revival covered that folk song, not too long after the Tennessee Volunteer football team won a national championship, a group that had on its team Dr. Mitch Mutter, a local Chattanooga physician. That song was about imprisonment, but it was also about shining a light of hope. Dr. Mutter has been in Chattanooga for decades, and Mitch has been a part of shining a light right here in our community.
You may have encountered Mitch through a number of ways. You may know him through his work as a cardiologist. You may know Mitch through college football, or from his wife, Carol, who taught many Hamilton County attorneys as a law professor at the University of Tennessee. You might have connected with Mitch through his work to curb opioid abuse in the state, or though his medical volunteer work in Hamilton County. You may have gotten to know him through vegetables in his garden, or like me, through his work with an organization he founded in 1997 to fight childhood malnutrition — the Children’s Nutrition Program of Haiti.
This year, CNP Haiti marks its 25th anniversary. Mitch had the idea to start CNP after a tragic incident that happened while he was on a medical mission in Haiti. A child, who was suffering from severe acute malnutrition, was brought into the hospital where Dr. Mutter’s team was working. The hospital and the medical workers were limited in how they could treat the child. That week, there was a horrible bus accident and the injured were brought into the hospital and placed on the floor to be treated. As chaos surrounded Dr. Mutter, he learned the young child suffering from malnutrition had passed away. Mitch wept as he tried to help the new patients laying injured from the bus accident.
When Mitch returned from Haiti, he declared he would never go back to “that God-forsaken” country. He soon had a change of heart, and could not stop thinking about the child who was lost. He had to find a way to keep other children from having the same fate. Mitch traveled the U.S. to meet with public health and medical experts in an effort to start an organization to conquer childhood malnutrition in Haiti. He knew feeding programs were only a Band-Aid, and medical treatment was extremely limited, and in most cases, not attainable.
Dr. Mutter knows something about poverty himself. He grew up in rural Northeast Tennessee in a lower income family. His parents were deaf and also did not speak. He had several siblings. Mitch knew any program he started had to be one giving people dignity, something uplifting, something allowing a person and their family the ability to be self sufficient. That is exactly the mission of CNP Haiti — to educate young mothers in how to provide their children the proper nutrition with the food they are able to obtain themselves. In the region of Leogane where CNP works, the childhood malnutrition rate has fallen from 25% of the population to just 4%. That is a remarkable number.
CNP Haiti, under the leadership of Mitch Mutter, has weathered floods, hurricanes, a devastating earthquake and political unrest. My faith teaches us to be light bearers — people who spread compassion, generosity and hope. Dr. Mitch Mutter is one of our community’s light bearers, and CNP Haiti is a light stand. As the song says, “shine the light on me. Shine the ever loving light on me.”
Chris Devaney, a Hamilton County resident and partner in the public affairs firm Poplar Group, is a board member of the Children’s Nutrition Program of Haiti.