Hale, Clara (1905–1992)

views updated

Hale, Clara (1905–1992)

American social activist and child-care worker who founded Hale House, a group home for babies born addicted to drugs and alcohol and, later, those born HIV-positive. Name variations: Mother Hale; Clara McBride. Born Clara McBride on April 1, 1905, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; died on December 18, 1992, in New York City; graduated from high school in Philadelphia; married Thomas Hale (d. 1932); children: Lorraine Hale (Ph.D., executive director of Hale House); Nathan Hale; Kenneth Hale.

"Mother" Clara Hale devoted most of her life to the disenfranchised mothers and children of New York City's Harlem, first as the foster mother of 40, and then as the founder of Hale House, a home for babies, many born to drug-addicted mothers or HIV-positive.

The youngest of four children, Hale was born in 1905 and raised in Philadelphia. Her father died when she was just a baby and her mother supported the family by taking in boarders. After graduating from high school, Hale married and moved to New York, where her husband ran a floor-waxing business. Besides caring for her three young babies, she supple-mented the family income by cleaning theaters. When she was 27, her husband died of cancer, leaving her to raise the children alone. At first she doubled her domestic jobs, cleaning houses during the day and theaters at night. However, she hated leaving her children without supervision, so she began offering day care from her home. In addition to caring for the children of women who worked as live-in maids, Hale began to take in foster children, for which she was paid two dollars a week per child. For the next 27 years, in a five-room walk-up in Harlem, Hale cared for seven or eight foster children at a time along with her own three. Her daughter Lorraine Hale was almost 16 before she realized that all the other children were not her real brothers and sisters. "Everyone called me 'Mommy,'" Clara Hale told Tom Seligson of Parade (November 18, 1984). "I took care of forty of them like that. They're now all grown up. They're doctors, lawyers, everything. Almost all of them stay in touch. I have about sixty grandchildren."

In 1968, Hale retired from foster care, quite unaware that her greatest challenge lay ahead. The following year, her daughter Lorraine encountered a young woman heroin addict half asleep on a bench in a Harlem park with a young baby girl dangling from her arms. Rousing the woman, Lorraine told her to take the baby to her mother, then get herself into treatment. The next day, the young woman arrived on Hale's doorstep, baby in arms. "Before I knew it," Hale later told Irene Verag of Newsday (January 29, 1985), "every pregnant addict in Harlem knew about the crazy lady who would give her baby a home." Within two months, Hale was caring for 22 drug-addicted babies lined up in wall-to-wall cribs in her apartment. It was exhausting work for the 67-year-old. For weeks, the tiny infants cried inconsolably with withdrawal symptoms that included leg and back stiffness, diarrhea, and vomiting. Hale's treatment, simple hands-on loving attention

round-the-clock, was 90% effective, surprising doctors and health-care workers who had long-since despaired of finding effective treatment for these babies.

For a year and a half, Lorraine and Hale's two sons, Nathan and Kenneth, provided financial support for the operation. In the early 1970s, New York City began funding the project through the New York City Department of Social Services. In 1975, aided by a federal grant, the not-for-profit Hale House was founded in a five-story reclaimed brownstone on West 122nd Street. One of only two programs at the time addressing the problem of New York's alarming number of chemically dependent newborns (the other was the state-funded New York Medical College Pregnant Addicts and Addicted Mothers Program), Hale House was unique in its approach, as pointed out by Mary Ann Giordano in the New York Daily News (November 14, 1983). "Only Hale House takes these children in after birth, cares for them through the withdrawal process, and raises them until their mothers complete a drug-treatment program—or simply decide they are ready to take their children back." Hale often reminded people that the house was "not an orphanage," and that only rarely was it necessary for a child to be put up for adoption. Lorraine Hale (who earned doctorates in child development and developmental psychology in order to function as the executive director of Hale House) told a reporter for The New York Times (March 12, 1984): "When we can send a child back to his family, that's a precious moment for me."

By 1985, annual funding for Hale House was $190,000, with an additional $30,000 coming in from private gifts. When the city withdrew funds in 1989, claiming the drug-addicted baby epidemic had passed, Hale and her daughter Lorraine turned to fundraising in order to stay in operation. With the help of generous celebrities as well as ordinary citizens, Hale expanded the operation to include treatment programs for HIV-infected babies, troubled teens, and young drug-addicted mothers.

In 1985, Hale was honored with an invitation to attend President Ronald Reagan's State of the Union address before Congress. "When the President called, I was sick, but I went anyway," she later said. "I wanted the kids to see it and know it." Cited by the president as "a true American hero," Hale received a standing ovation from the spectators, including members of Congress, the Supreme Court, and the Cabinet. In 1985, Hale also received an honorary doctorate in humane letters from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Clara Hale's charity was not limited to Hale House. "Anyone can come to my mother for a handout, and she'll give it," Lorraine once said. "She gets paid a salary and she gives it all away.… Every month, I write thirty envelopes to different causes she supports." Although Hale trained several child-care workers and sleep-in aides to help her, and was also assisted by the rest of the Hale House staff, she continued to personally care for her little patients until her failing health made it impossible. After a series of strokes confined her mother to bed, Lorraine would still bring one of the babies into her from time to time for a cuddle. "I tell [the baby] about my past—he is the only one who will listen to me anymore—and about his future," said Hale. Mother Clara Hale died on December 18, 1992, at age 87.