Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1943)

These Lives Are at Stake! (Continued from page 49) for the morning and afternoon nap periods. If any of you live in the Sawtelle area in Los Angeles, you may have passed it. It's at 1755 Purdue Avenue. We leased the house the day we found it and the A.W.V.S. had carpenters and painters on hand the next day rushing the necessary alterations. THAT was the first hurdle. Next was the ' problem of a staff. Child protection laws provide that nursery school personnel must be trained, so the Board of Education supplied the principal and assistant teachers — the cook and a cleaning woman, of course, had to be paid and we hired two splendid women after interviewing dozens. Since we were to be open six days a week, from six a.m. to six p.m., we needed many assistant supervisors and for those jobs we called for volunteers. It was most encouraging to find how many women were willing to take a twelve weeks' course of child training and then to donate hours upon hours of their time to this course as made necessary by the ruling of the Board of Education before anyone is allowed to care for children. One instance was particularly touching. When I first announced that I was planning to open a nursery school, I received a letter from Mrs. Oley Olson — of Olson and Johnson fame — who said that she was very much interested in the project and wanted to do all that she could to help. Mrs. Olson had raised five splendid children of her own and I hesitated to tell her that she must take a twelve week course of specialized training before she would be allowed to work — for nothing — at the school. She made no objections at all but enrolled in the class at once and attended religiously. As soon as she had her certificate, she reported at the school and has since given five full days a week to the work without pay of any kind except the satisfaction of knowing that she is helping to win the war. "You know," she told me one day after she came to work, "I'm so glad I took that course. I found out I didn't know a thing about children." That's one of the advantages of running a nursery school. You meet the nicest people. We need more volunteers, of course. Some of the original group have had to give up the work when the war moved in on their own lives and they were forced to move to other communities or to go into full-time defense work themselves. But the classes are still enrolling trainees for our nursery school and others and we hope we can count on the women of our community to help us keep an adequate staff. Meeting the educational standards prescribed by California law was a stiff assignment, but we managed it. We managed, likewise, to comply with the orders of the fire and health departments for precautionary measures required by the concentration in one place of so many little children. The Health Department inspected our kitchen on the day before we opened and gave us official approval. THE opening on Thanksgiving Day had been planned as merely an open house and we didn't expect any children to appear — it was a holiday, and we had had very little advance publicity. But at six o'clock Thanksgiving morning— still long before sunup — Mrs. Carter came to the door with her son, Donald, the most scrubbed-looking four-year-old boy I'd ever seen. His mother was on her way to work at Douglas Aircraft and stopped by to leave Donald in our care. "But aren't you having a holiday?" our supervisor asked her. 76 Mother-daughter act by Joan Cawford, wife of Phil Terry, and her adopted daughter Christina. Recent addition to the small happy family is Phil, Jr., new year-old adopted son of the Terrys "There are no holidays until the war is over," she said. "And we can't complain. There aren't any holidays at Guadalcanal either." Donald was all alone that first day and sat wide-eyed and interested while scores of adults trouped through the rooms on inspection tours. He was given his breakfast and lunch and two midday snacks, hot soup at eleven, and orange juice at three, just as though the whole staff had come there to serve him. He didn't realize that he was our little guinea pig, nor did he know that we watched him nervously to see if our program was working out while he played in the sand pile and investigated the toy box. Despite the confusion of opening day, he enjoyed himself immensely and even went off to sleep for two hours after lunch to prove that our schedule provided for proper rest. A very co-operative little guinea pig, indeed. When his mother called for him at six. she paid the twenty-five cents, a charge which we decided in advance would remove any stigma of charity from our service and yet would not prove a burden to the mothers. The prices vary according to their ability to pay — some pay a dollar a day and, in needy cases, no charge is made. Mrs. Carter had tears in her eyes when she spoke with me. "I can't begin to tell you what this means, Mrs. Terry," she said. "If you could only know how I've worried about Donald —wondering all day whether I had put the matches out of reach, or whether he was eating the proper food. It was very hard to work with my child at home alone. I don't think I could have kept it up much longer. And yet, I have to work. Donald and I are all alone — " She didn't tell me more and I didn't prod her, but I know that handsome, intelligent woman had been fighting a hard fight. Her gratitude, more than any of the compliments of our visitors, told me that our project was a success. The next day there were five children. Two of them came with their "big sister," thirteen-year-old Marjorie, who told us her mother was dead and her father at sea in the Merchant Marine. She had been trying to keep the little family together, cook, and clean, and still go to school, as California law requires she must until she is sixteen. This little "mother" walks ten blocks to the nursery school every day. bringing her little brother and sister, before she goes to school. I am surer of America's future, having known Marjorie. WE ARE running almost capacity now. We cannot take any more than fifty children in the space we have, and we dread the day when we shall have to turn the first mother down. All children deserve what we can offer so few — a balanced diet, rest and play, and the chance to learn to live with children. We wish we could start such schools all over the city, all over the country — these baby war casualties are not limited to any one city or any one town. But I am giving as much time now as I can without neglecting my own home and my own work and my business manager tells me the expenses of the school already are cutting into funds I had earmarked for taxes and Bonds. The need is tremendous and I realize our own little nursery has barely scratched the surface of the problem. We will _be satisfied, though, (Continued on page ~S)