'I don't like to ask for anything'
By RICHARD LOUV Kansan Staff Writer
There was a dead tree in the front yard.
The branches overhung the recently painted house, and the clouds of an approaching storm were rolling in over the spotty slum of East Lawrence.
Dorothy Graves held the child Angela in her arms and laughed. She looked out the window and another child tugged at her skirt. "I did what I said I was going to do, and nobody, even the Welfare Board, believed I could do it," she said.
Her achievement was survival.
She turned from the window and limped over to the clean, ragged couch. One arm, wrapped around the child, was shriveled from polio. The tiny hand was twisted, and her arm was the size of a four-year-old's.
Mrs. Graves sat down and sighed. Five children ran through the room in the next few minutes, past the patched walls with their pictures of palm trees and beaches, sailboats and the Savior. The woman smiled and her face was pretty, only 35, and there were dark patches under her eyes.
Went without meals
"As long as I could work, I said I would. I don't like to ask anybody for anything." Her voice hardened and the smile left. "That's why I went without meals."
And that was why she worked seven days a week, five hours a day, for nine months as a maid for KU's Beta Theta Pi fraternity, receiving $25 a week.
That was why, when she worked at a better paying job at Naismith Hall, she would have to sit down on the stairs and hold her head to keep from falling.
That was why, when she knew she was getting sick from previous birth complications, she worked, at times dragging one leg behind her, until two weeks before she had Angela.
And that was why she worked for two years, until she could find enough money to return to Virginia and bring back her three children.
Stranded here
Divorced in 1959, she left Virginia Beach, Va., five years ago to marry a Lawrence man, planning to send later for the children left with her mother. When she stepped off the bus in Lawrence she was informed that her fiance had caused three pregnancies in Lawrence. She was stranded without enough money to get home.
"I decided I was going to stick it out. I wasn't going to run back to my mother, even when I made enough money to do it. I had an idea I could do it alone, and then I could go back and get my kids. I wanted to do it alone." she said.
When she arrived in Lawrence winter was approaching. She went for a month without a job, living in a room rented on credit. Finally in December she found a $15 a week babysitting job, and in the next few months she paid off every debt, going hungry to insure the debts were met.
No help
After she broke the engagement, her fiance offered to help until she got on her feet. But his mother and brother told him not to help her.
"And he didn't." she said.
In those days she would collect different prayers. She prayed in the morning, and at meals, and before she went to bed.
It was a cold winter in a cold town, and the people in Virginia had been friendlier. She said she encountered little bigotry anywhere she had been, including Lawrence, except for the white male cook at the Beta house.
"I was religious then, I suppose. I used religion as a source of the strength that people didn't give me." she said.
Mrs. Russell Myers, Beta Theta Pi housemother, remembers Mrs. Graves as "a very sweet person who never used her handicap to get out of work." Mrs. Russell said the salary for maids in 1967 was between $25 and $27 including two free meals a day and uniform service.
'Not underpaid'
"I don't think she was underpaid," Mrs. Russell said. "The boys helped her move anything that
Photo by Richard Louv
Mrs. Graves and children
They're waging a battle for survival and winning despite her determination to "go it alone."
was heavy. She wasn't strong enough to do very much."
Mrs. Graves presented a different picture of working for the fraternity.
"They took out 10 to 15 cents a day for one meal. I really only got $23 a week because of taxes," she said.
During the summer following her job at the fraternity, her luck again ran short. She damaged her thumb on her good hand while working for $9 a week, cleaning house for a woman. Paying $8.75 a week for rent, and somehow finding enough food to live on, she still refused to resort to welfare money. She continued to work with only four good fingers.
"Then I got really sick. Everyone told me to go to the welfare office, so I finally went, because I couldn't work any longer. I went in and sat down, and then they told me they couldn't help me since I hadn't lived there for five years. The woman said there was plenty of money available, but there were rules . . .."
Given $6 a week
The Welfare Department finally gave her $6 a week for food and paid two of her medical bills. Mrs. Graves paid for the rest of the medical expenses out of the food money.
During the next year she grew strong enough to go back to work. She took a job as a maid in Naismith Hall, receiving $50 a week. Finally she saved enough money to go back to Virginia and get her children. During her week vacation, she made the three-day bus trip, retrieved her children, and returned in time to start work again.
Now she was happy.
"I did what I said I was going to do. I rented a house and got my kids. All the people I knew said I couldn't do it. It was in my mind," she smiled, "it was in my mind."
Angela started crying and brought her mother back to the present.
"What is it baby?" she asked. Another child came in and asked her to pull up his zipper. A soap opera was going on inside the black and white television. There was a scene on the set in which a Cadillac appeared. Mrs. Graves smiled at it and hitched up the little boy's pants.
Caring for grandchildren
"This one isn't mine. I have four children of my own now, and I'm taking care of two grandchildren of my husband from a former marriage. My husband's daughter can't afford to keep them because she has a $400 dental bill," she said. "So I'm taking care of them."
Her doctor has told her that she can't work for a few months because of further complications from her last birth. Because of that, and because of the impossibility of taking care of six children on $50 a week, she now is dependent on welfare checks. She receives $334 a month.
She paused for a moment, and pursed her lips. Angela stared silently up into her face, and then Mrs. Graves clenched her twisted hand. "I don't ... I don't think my kids are as proud of what we have as I am. I had to so it by myself. I . . ." And then she stopped and changed the subject.
"It's enough, I think. All I wanted was a home, to be warm in winter and for the kids to have plenty to eat and warm clothes. They don't have enough warm clothes, though . . .."
The New Jersey Street project had touched her. She said, "They all worked like champs, and I got a kick out of just watching them. It's about the best thing I've seen happen in this part of town."
Students painted house
"The kids from the University came down and painted my house," she said, smiling.
The women in the neighborhood had all contributed food, and a church dinner had been given for the students. Mrs. Graves was proud of that.
She feels grateful for what she has, and she smiles in quiet dignity. But the pain that made her drag a weak leg behind her, while pushing mops, still haunts her. There is something terribly wrong with her insides, and the doctor has ordered her to undergo an operation.
I don't know where I could get the money," she says softly. "I try not to think about it. I keep putting it off."
Outside, the storm had finally broken, and the wind whipped the dead limbs and lashed rain against the window.
Inside, Angela began to cry again, and her mother turned on a transistor radio and give it to her baby to quiet her.
Angela listened closely.
1
It was Barbra Streisand in Central Park, singing,
"Happy Days Are Here Again."