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AI: And then what, what happened next with your work after that?

EH: Well, I, it, daycare is a real grueling situation, but I ended up with sixty-five staff in five buildings, 150 children. I had monthly reports to write, and, but people enjoyed hearing, because it was fairly new and it was, everybody was really concerned. And, and it had to be a fast-developing program, because everybody was having to go to work. But when I retired in '86, daycare had almost quadrupled, even at that point, because everybody was going to work, and everybody had to have daycare. But it's a good thing that they had this nucleus start. Ultimately, when I left there, somebody else took over but we had, we did have -- by the time I left, we had a social, full-time social worker, a nurse, education director, who -- education director's load is a heavy one, 'cause she's gotta cope with, I had sixty-five, but out of the sixty five, probably fifty-five, almost, with teachers at all levels. And parent education programs, volunteer coordinator, and so it, the detailed work is all there, but if you have good people, it's doable.

But it's the first time in society that parents had a secure place to leave their children and then be able to get some reaction, some learning experience, learn from what the children are experiencing, and then, and we put some brakes on. When parents were constantly late, they, they had to be cut out, because the staff wasn't (going to) stay there half an hour later. They got, we, we added fines, I, I had one child whose parents never did come. A parent, teacher took her home, I, this happened a lot. I eventually took the child, and she had, she had said, "(Yes), I have an elevator." So then I called, I happened to know the welfare caseworker on that family, and, or an old caseworker, and, but I said to the caseworker, "This child says she lives in a building with elevators. Where do you think that might be?" And she did some calling, and finally came out herself. And I think maybe she recognized the name or something. It wasn't her case, but she solved it a little bit. There was a building in International District that had an elevator, and as we got close to it, the kids say, "Oh, (yes), there's my house, there's my house." And I can't remember now why the parent didn't show up, but anyway, we were, it was 8:30 or 9 o'clock, and I could dismiss the staff. But that kind of thing went on periodically. And there's a lot of -- sometimes parents get caught in many ways, but their responsibility is to contact somebody by telephone. And there's always a teacher, once a month a teacher has to take a child home. But as long as they notify me, I know how to solve it. But it was a massive -- and this went across the whole country, was learning in various ways. I think we had pretty good support, both from CAMP and from the licensing people, and community colleges.

AI: Well, as you, as you say, there was, this was a massive change across the country in both that daycare was developing, and more and more women were going out to work, outside the home, and, of course, this is the late '60s and early '70s, so the Civil Rights movement had really come to its, its peak, and the women's movement had come along behind that.

EH: (Yes), the women's, women's movement was probably a lot later. Because if you're in, engrossed in situations like that, you really didn't have time to get into the women's movement. When I first started this, both with enrichment program was pre-Head Start, and during Head Start, we would send children to Public Health, for instance, for dental work or whatever. Everybody needed dental work. But there were times when, even at Public Health, and this would have been late '60s, a mother with three or four kids would go to Public Health to keep a dental appointment, or maybe show up without an appointment. At any rate, they would be left there sitting, and the kids would get hungry and, and crying, the staff would go to lunch and come back, and they'd say, "Oh, are you still here?" And if that happened twice, the parent would come to me, even if I requested that they see a dentist -- and we often covered dental costs, or welfare covered it -- the parents would refuse to go back to a situation, and I'd say, "I don't blame you. I'm not going to send you back to that kind of situation." Insensitivity is what it is. And we would pay for private dental care, or Odessa Brown eventually got going. I don't think they were there, especially with dental in the late '60s. But it was, it was just... that's the way society worked, that if you were poor and if you were black, they didn't really regard you as a bona fide paying person. Somebody was paying for their services, but too often...

Ralph Hayes was working for the Parks Department, in one of his early student days, I think, and chasing balls for kids where, they hit with a bat. There was a dip in the hole and he fell, he turned his ankle and flipped on his shoulder and broke his collar bone. And he called the, his supervisor and said what the situation was, and summer evening, so he, boss says, "Well, explain to the kids, can you get yourself to Harborview?" And he goes, and it's like almost 9 o'clock when he's there. Ten o'clock, after ten o'clock, the staff goes for some kind of break and comes back and same thing happens to him, "Are you still sitting here?" And he's in pain all the time, and he just gets disgusted and ticked off and he walks out and goes to a private physician, a friend of ours at the church. And, George Sherwin takes him up and I don't know that he got a, I don't know whether he got an x-ray, but anyway, that kind of experience, one you have that kind of experience, you're reluctant to go back to that climate. But that was so, such a common issue. 'Course, a lot of parents didn't keep appointments and that, that was a headache, and a lot of parents up to that point hadn't taken their children to medical attentions, getting medical attention.

<End Segment 27> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.