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Summer Session Kansan Friday, July 8, 1966
Loving kindness is all Harlem children want
NEW YORK—(UPI) The Children's Aid Society gymnasium in West Harlem is hot and humid. A thundershower beats against the windows, trapping the children inside where they yell their way through a fast game of kickball. One side is winning—by 40 to 6.
Leader of the hot scorers is a tall, gangling 20-year-old college junior who drapes his six-foot-seven frame over the apron of the small stage. A half dozen grade school boys crowd around him.
One of the smallest boys suddenly throws his arms around the student's neck and asks anxiously, "We're friends, aren't we?"
HARLAN LUDEWIG, of Forreston, Ill., gives him a friendly whack on the back. "Sure we are," he says. "Friends all the way."
The boy grins broadly.
"We took some of these kids to Central Park the other day," said Ludewig, "and they just loved to play on the grass. That's practically all they cared about — the grass."
In a basement room of the Children's Aid Center, the girls are skipping through "double Dutch" jump ropes. The timing is serious, punctuated with giggles and laughter and tin whistle screams.
EVERY ONCE in awhile, one of them calls over to pretty Veida McMullen: "Hey, Miss Veida --- watch this!"
The 20 - year - old Miss McMullen smiles and waves. "That's fine Suzy."
"All they want is some attention," the Fort Valley, Ga., coed explained. "And when you know their names it comes as a shock to them. When I leave
every day, the hem of my dress is all dirty from little hands gripping it."
Ludewig and Miss McMullen are Beloit College students spending a summer in what is known as a "field term" away from their Wisconsin campus. They and eight other Beloit students are working for the society in centers scattered throughout Manhattan's poverty and slum areas, where children's chances of rising above a ghetto viewpoint are slim.
THEY WORK four weeks in the city and then spend six weeks at the society's summer camps in upper New York state, where their faces will be familiar to many of the children, most of whom have never been out of the city before.
The field term for Beloit College's 1,200 students is an unusual approach to undergraduate study. It offers each student a chance to see how the rest of the world gets by, in activities that stretch from running an excursion boat to assisting scientists.
But these 10 chose Manhattan and the 113-year-old, privately-funded society that still lives up to its founding creed—save the children. The hours are rough and the experience is sobering to these students from middle class homes.
THEIR ACTIVITIES include play, supervision, teaching preschoolers and interviewing parents, and secretarial or filing chores in the medical and dental programs.
The students are divided into teams of two. Ludewig and Miss McMullen work at the Frederick Douglass center in West Harlem. Karen Olsen, of Hibbbing, Minn.,
and Robert Lyon, of Chicago, work in Greenwich Village.
Randy Buck, of Detroit, and Andrea Brewer, of Alexandria, Va., are assigned to a center near the old Hell's Kitchen district. William Webb, of Davenport, Iowa, and June Baker, of Gloversville, N.Y., work at the upper East Side center.
CHARLES ELLIS, of Rockford, Ill., and Richard Casper, of Brookfield, Ill., work at the East Harlem center.
They are paid $60 a week and live at the midtown Manhattan YMCA, now converted to living quarters for both sexes.
One day a week they help with the pre-school "Head-start" program. The other four days chores begin at 2 p.m. and end at 10 p.m., with activities that include grade schoolers and teenagers.
"I was sort of nervous riding the subways at night when we first got here," said Miss McMullen. "But now it's okay.
"BECAUSE EACH day these
Tour to gallery planned by SUA
A guided tour to the Nelson Art Gallery, sponsored by the SUA, is scheduled for Tuesday, July 19, and is open to all summer school students enrolled at KU.
Tickets may be purchased at the information desk in the Kansas Union at $1.25 a person. Anyone interested in buying tickets must do so by today.
The tour includes transportation to and from Kansas City, Mo., by chartered bus and an hour tour of the gallery with the rest of the afternoon free. The bus will leave the Kansas Union at 1 p.m. and its expected return is around 5 p.m.
kids come back and look for somebody that knows them... somebody to find something for them, like a ball or a jump rope. They're dying for attention."
"One day I started telling a story to a little Puerto Rican girl. She seemed very shy, but sat on
my lap and never took her eyes off my face.
"After a few minutes her big sister came along and told me the child didn't understand English.
“But she was happy, anyway. I was talking to her—just to her.”
NOW! Tonight> 7:00 - 9:00
Cont. Sat. & Sun. from 2:30
NOW! Tonight----7:00 & 9:05 Cont. Sat. & Sun. from 2:30
Air Conditioned
From The Man Who Made "Charade"
Gregory Peck Sophia Loren A STANLEY DONEN Production ARABESQUE
TECHNICOLOR PANAVISION
ENDS TONITE!
Both 1st Run!!
Bridgette Bardot
Roddy McDowell & Tuesday Weld
"Viva Maria"-plus-"Lord Love A Duck"
Starting
Saturday 3 big hits-Saturday only!
Souvenirs for your desk
Ballpoint Pen Set by Sheaffer.
Black base with silver trim.
$2.95
Ceramic Ash Tray 7" square with KU Seal. 2 colors—butterscotch and white.
$5.00
Also matching mug $5.00
Cork Lighter 21/2" tall, KU Seal and gold trim. $4.10
Black Leather Lighter KU Seal and gold trim. $10.00
kansas union BOOKSTORE