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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 5, 1991)
► • V • • « 4 « 9 V 4*» • < •*• » * • * r V • • »>» V o in n in X T h e E y es a n d E ars of th e C o m m u n ity ” \<nciiiln i 6.1991 ®lfE ^pnrtianh ©irsertrer »* Local Child Casted In Oregon Shakespeare Festival Portland’s First All Black Production Six-year-old Cecile Matthews is one o f tw o local Portland area c h il dren casted in Oregon Shakespeare Festival Portland’s first all Black pro duction and season opener “ Fences.” Cecile is in the first grade at F ir Grove Elementary School in Beaver ton, and is a member o f M t. O live t Baptist Church in N E Portland. She and her fam ily moved to the Portland area from Cleveland, O hio in 1987. Attending Vacation Bible School with her grandmother in Ohio this sum mer has paid o ff fo r Cecile in more ways than one. She sang “ I May Never March In The C alvary,” a bible school piece fo r her audition before Benny Sato Ambush and Dennis B igelow , the artistic director o f “ Fences” and producer o f OSF Portland, respectively. August W ils o n ’ s drama “ Fences,” which won most major theater awards in 1987, is OSF Port land’ s season opener playing through November 30th. Cecile shares the role o f Raynelle Maxson, the seven- year-old daughter o f Troy Maxson in this m oving story o f the African- American experience in the 1950’ s. Raynelle is also played by Kandi Garvey o f Vancouver, W A . Cecile’ s acting/modeling accom plishments to date include the 1990 film “ Wee Sing’ s Best Christmas Ever,” an Oregonian Northwest Maga zine cover page photo shoot (June 1990), and the KO 1N -TV Channel 6 Christmas Greetings commercial in 1987. This is her first stage role. ‘Dances With Wolves’ Author Speaks to Students by “ I have a nice suit on today. I have someone to drive me around Portland to my speaking engagements. I ’ ll be fly in g to Seattle on a jet later today, but it was a very, very b rie f time ago that I had nothing. ’ ’ Those were the identical opening remarks o f the tw o lectures Michael B lake, author o f ‘ ‘ Dances w ith W olves,” gave in Portland last week. He spoke at the North Portland Branch o f the Multnomah County Library at 512 N. K illingsw orth and at the M ain Library downtown. Michael Blake came to Portland as part o f a promotional tour fo r his new book “ Airm an Mortensen.” M ost tours like this are blatantly commercial affairs. You k n o w -w in e , cheese, sign book, get check, go to the next town. That is not Michael Blake’ s style. He had it rough fo r a lot o f years. He knows a lot o f people aren’ t going to have $20.00 to plunk down fo r his book. So he made a good deal w ith his book publishing company, Seven Wolves Publishing. He would go on a book tour i f he could do it in public libraries. So it began. He has been on a 16-city tour talking to high schools students all over the U.S. Measure 5 almost stopped another Michael Blake dream. A dream o f in spiring high school students to dream. A lice Meyers, President o f The Friends o f the Library, supplied the funding for the event. She worked w ith all 12 Port; land Public School C urriculum depart ments to arrange busses, etc. so the students could attend the lectures. That statement about “ having nothing’ ’ came as quite a surprise to all o f the people assembled to hear the world famous author speak. M ost ev eryone assumes that anyone so famous and c ritic a lly acclaimed would have always been financially w ell off. “ I did n ’ t have anything fo r 25 years. I was trying to work as an artist in the United B ill B a rb er Michael Blake States o f America. Believe me, i t ’ s not an easy thing to do. B ut, I persisted, and 1 had comm itment and I tried to work from my heart. I tried to work with things I knew about. Fortune smiled on me. A ll I ever wanted...My big dream was to be able to make a liv in g o ff o f what I wanted to do. I ’ve achieved that - beyond my w ildest dreams. 1 can tell each and everyone o f you today: D on’ t give up hope! Whatever your dream is, it can happen fo r you; but, you have to hang in there. I know the country is not in very good shape rig ht now .” Blake conceded. “ Y ou’ re looking at a hor rible mess right in front o f your faces. Those o f you who are going to be leaving high school and m oving into the so-called ‘ A d u lt W o rld ’ w ill find there is not as much to offer you as there was a w hile ago. We all know what kind o f shape our environment is in, what kind o f shape the w orld is in, and we know how many things have to get pulled together before we have a decent place to live in. I believe there is hope for America. I think there is change sweeping the w orld. I ’ m excited. Somebody asked me the other day, ‘ M ichael, what point in history would you like to live in?’ I said, ‘R ight this minute. I can’t think o f a more exciting time to be alive. O ur backs are against the w all in Am erica, and around the w orld, and we are going to have to get it together.” Blake was at his best when he offered advice about our perceptions o f viewing other people. “ D on’ t look at me and say ‘Oh yeah, I can have it made in this life .’ ‘Cause theres no such thing as th a t There’ s no such thing as putting up your feet and th ink ing I got it made. That doesn’ t exist. Right when “ Dances w ith W olves” was finished and it was ready fo r re lease, I got cancer. .After all the opera tions, treatments, and therapy, I ’m doing good now. It just goes to show you. Y ou never have it made in this life .” It seemed ironic that the author o f one o f the new American classics was speaking w ith such candor. M ost o f the people in the room had seen the movie, even i f they hadn’t read the book. Blake’s next statement was even more ironic. “ I was technically homeless when I wrote “ Dances w ith W olves.” I had friends, they would give me meals and let me sleep in their liv in g rooms. They let me do that because I was so passion ate about what I was w orking on. I d id n ’ t have any place to live. I had a 1970 Chrysler ( ‘das boot’) which wasn’t too bad to live in because it was aw ful big. But it wasn’ t what you want to live in either.” The p oint that M ichael Blake was driving home was: “ D on’ t be afraid to dream.” He also announced a w ritin g con test offered by Seven W olves Publica tions; the details are listed on page 3. The History Of L.I.F.E. Center: Twenty-five Years of Service to Those In Need It was 1966. President Lyndon B. Johnson was talking about a War on Proverty and The Great Society. Congress was approving a variety o f social programs. In the Albina neighborhood o f north Portland, a handful o f comm unity serv ice workers, headed by 57-year-old Gertude Crowe, was going door to door trying to connect residents w ith pro grams that m ight help them. What the group discovered was that the needs o f the residents were much more basic and immediate than what the government programs had envisioned. People needed food, clothing, heat, furniture and bedding. “ Some people slept on papers laid on the flo o r,” re ported one o f the visiting workers. “ One old widow we discovered lived alone, slow ly dying o f m alnutrition.” The workers, members o f the Albina Neighborhood Service Center, decided to take the matter into their own hands, and set up a makeshift distribution center in a small building at Beech and W il liams Streets. They called it the Low Income Families Emergency (L.I.F.E.) Center. A t first, it was not much more than the workers themselves contributing what they could from their own homes, and asking friends and neighbors to do the same. Then, local businesses and churches became involved, and even tually a federal grant and United Way funding were added. But always one overriding prin ciple was followed: that people getting help from the center had to volunteer time and work in return for what they got. “ I t ’ s a question o f d ig n ity ,” Mrs. Crowe w ould say. “ It takes something away from people when they have to take something away from people when they have to take something fo r noth ing.” So men and women sorted, pressed and mended clothing in exchange for needed pots and pans, or refinished furniture in return fo r food, or typed letters to get clothes fo r their children. An Oregonian reporter wrote in 1974 that “ on a recent summer after noon the director (M rs. Crowe) was supervising a grade school youngster who was stamping receipts in return for a new pair o f shoes.” Another reporter in 1976 observed volunteers in a sew ing room “ busy making colorful, hand crafted q u ilts.” The principle o f “ giving for get tin g ” is still alive today. Charles Car ter, who became director after Mrs. C row e’ s death in 1985, notes that the tens o f thousands o f requests the center gets each year could not be fille d w ith out volunteer help. “ I t ’s what sets us Gertrude Crowe apart from other com m unity service groups,” Carter said. An Oregonian article credited the start o f L .I.F E . Center in 1966 to “ eight persons assigned to w alk a beat to sur $:■? M| . •. vey the needs o f the indigent in an area encompassed by Broadway and A in s worth and Northeast 15th Avenue to the W illam ette R iver.” Mrs. M innie Harris, now livin g in H| - continued on page 5 When I Grow Up I Want to Be... Christian Preacher Is Unjustly Accused Oregon Shakespeare Festival Portland 1991-1992 ter, and assisted w ith relocation o f v ic tims o f the 1947 Vanport flood. Mrs. Crowe was the mother o f three daughters (Betty W hite, o f Port land, Dorothy Pack, o f Detroit, M ic h i gan and Harriet W hitherspoon o f C hi cago) and one son (the Rev. Clarence Crowe, o f Arkansas). Her husband died in 1969. In 1982, Mrs. Crowe received the Russell A. Peyton Human Relations Award from the c ity ’ s Metropolitan Human Relations commission for ‘ ‘her charitable contributions to the entire Portland com m unity and her sincere dedication to serving and protecting the rights o f low income and indigent people.” U ntil 1968, Mrs. Crowe and other L.IE.E. Center workers simply donated their time to the center. They operated out o f storefronts and basements, moving the center from Beech and W illiam s Streets, to Fremont and Union, and then to Union and Monroe. “ There were many times when we didn’ t know we w ould be able to pay the rent,” Mrs. Crowe recalled for a reporter in 1968. W hat little money there was came mostly from benefits staged by the A lb in a Neighborhood Service Center. One such benefit held in 1966 at the Cotton Club featured “ M ighty M o Kid Talk Religion Entertainment Students From Vernon Elementary School By Michael Lindsey Page 3 Page 4 Page 6 EDITORIAL Concord, C alifornia, was one o f the eight. She was the first chairperson o f the board o f directors, and stayed seven years. She identified the other origina tors, in addition to Mrs. Crowe, as Mr. Ira M um ford (deceased). Mrs. Louise Carson (deceased), Mrs. Verna Shep pard, Mrs. Lizzie Sheppard, M r. James H ill and the form er pastor o f M l O livet Church, the Rev. John Jackson. Newspaper accounts from the early years refer to other key persons, includ ing C ecil W alton, a vocational coun selor aide in the A lbina Neighborhood Service Center; Vernon Summer, also a staff member at the Albina Center, and the Rev. Samuel Johnson (deceased), pastor o f Highland United Church o f Christ. But no one has been identified more closely with L.I.F.E. Center than Gertrude Crowe, who dedicated 19 years to it as its executive director and chief worker. “ She was industrious, loyal and faithful,” recalls Mrs. Harris. “ She was a good public relations person. She had the ability to win friends for the Center.” According to the obituary for her in the Oregonian o f September 19,1985, Mrs. Crowe was bom in Prescott, A r kansas (near L ittle Rock) in 1909 and taught in Arkansas schools before moving to Portland in 1942. She be came active here in the N A A C P chap NEWS KID TALK RELIGION ENTERTAINMENT CLASSIFIEDS/BIDS 2 3 4 6 10