Change the Life of a Child
Remarks on the Occasion of a Dinner Introducing a
Capital Development Campaign for Hillsides Home for Children
The Jonathan Club
Los Angeles
October 24, 1996
Lawrence H. Luckham
Thank you ladies and gentlemen for giving me the opportunity to be here tonight to continue what's probably the longest personal association with Hillsides in this room.
I was nine years old in 1952, the year my brothers and I went to live at Hillsides. Hillsides was known as the Episcopal Church Home for Children in those days, and, the world was a profoundly different place. Although the times were different, the events which led me to Hillsides would be familiar to any caseworker today. My father had problems with alcohol, and my mother was being pushed beyond her limits.
At Hillsides I found a home full of children from similar circumstances. Some came from foster homes, and some from other children's homes. Some came from their own birth parents, under circumstances far more desperate than my own. There were boys and girls, Episcopalians, Catholics, Lutherans, and Baptists. They were white, and black, and Asian, and Hispanic. There was a Lebanese brother and sister, a Lithuanian boy, a handicapped boy. Long before equality would become the mandate of law it was a mandate of conscience at Hillsides.
We all became part of the Hillsides family.
Daily life at Hillsides in the early 1950's was very much orchestrated by Harry Maiden who was the director back then. In those days the director and small staff all lived on campus and were present for every event of the day, from breakfast in the morning, to dinner in the evening.
Harry had an easy way with the children and a great sense of humor. He'd often use mealtimes to make announcements, or tell stories. It wasn't long before I figured out that many of his stories were cleverly concealed moral tales. His answer to a child's question was sometimes not a simple yes or no, but a mini lesson on the principal or bit of wisdom necessary to enable the questioner to answer her own question the next time around.
A couple of months ago John asked me if I had read a new book called The Home by Richard McKenzie. I hadn't, so I bought a copy. Dr. McKenzie, is the Walter B. Gerken Professor of Enterprise and Society in the Graduate School of Management at UC, Irvine. The book is his memoir of growing up in children's home in North Carolina. His Home was called an orphanage but the choice of terminology is not important. It's function was the same as Hillsides'. His Home was a rural 1500 acre farm with several hundred kids. It was far different from our urban 16 acres and 64 kids at the same time.
Professor McKenzie and I are the same age, and entered our respective homes the same year. What I found remarkable about his experience in North Carolina was the similarity to my own at Hillsides. And, that over the course of 40 years we each arrived at the same conclusion about the value of good quality residential care homes for children in crisis.
In the time allowed me tonight I can't even open a door to my world as a Hillsides' child. For a better look at what the children's home experience meant to me, to Richard McKenzie, and to other children like us, I urge you to read his book. It's one that I think should be required reading for every person involved in child welfare issues today.
Times have changed since Richard McKenzie and I were growing up in children's homes. The children cared for at Hillsides, and places like Hillsides, today often face greater problems than we did. Still, their fundamental needs remain the same.
To grow and prosper children need a safe and supportive environment. They need to be with adults who are themselves stable and secure in their lives and who are able to provide love and attention. They need a place to live which sets clear, reasonable, and consistent boundaries based on clearly articulated values. They need encouragement to strive toward personal goals, and the patience and understanding to help them persevere in the face of setbacks. They need to have good things expected of them, and they need good role models. Children want to understand the rules of life, they want to meet our expectations. It's up to us to expect good things of them.
Perhaps most of all they need stability and consistency - to be able to wake up each morning knowing that their world is not going to be turned upside down by some adjustment of surroundings, adults, rules, values, expectations, or relationships. Hillsides provided that stability for me in the 50's, and continues to do so for other children in the 90's. With your help that role can continue into the next century.
Several months ago Ann Freeman, who is one of my own personal Hillsides extended family, had the opportunity to address a meeting of Hillsides board of directors. She made a comment so eloquent in its simple truth that it's worth repeating tonight. She said, "Don't think that what you are doing is just pouring water into sand. What you do here today will affect the lives of children far into the future. I stand before you today as living proof." Were it not for Hillsides, many children, like Ann and I, might never be able to stand at all. From my conversations with Hillsides alumni I can tell you tonight, many would say the same exactly the same thing.
Hillsides has a different personal meaning to each of us. For some it was a refuge in a world of confusion and terror. For others it was a place to learn important values, self respect, and the skills necessary to cope with whatever life threw in our path. One thing I can say with absolute certainty, is that no child ever left Hillsides with less than he brought, and no child ever left Hillsides without taking something of value. The luckiest among us left with a treasure chest of tools.
Thank you.
© The Luckham Company