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T h e E y es a n d E ars of th e C o m m u n ity ”
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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
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•.
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
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