CELEBRATE SPRING FASHION WEEK at. The Forgotten Woman THURSDAY MARCH 10t h CAREER DRESSINC Champa,(me ('rui n 4:001)111 (0 7:001)Ill FRIDAY. MARCH 17th WEDDINGS SPECIAL OCCASIONS Tea from NoOn to 2:00pin SATURDAY, MARCH 18th CASUAL WEAR Light Lunch Noon to 3:00pm InlOrinal Modeling Spring '95 is here... it's exciting, beamihil and very new. . .from Tamotsu, Hiiio Make, Nolan Miller. Peter Nygard, Givenchy En Plus. Judith Aim and more. Let otu• Fashion Consultants Toby Hyman • Arlene Greer Jackie Rigsbi . • Sharon La Rue dress you for Spring! 555 South Woodward Birmingham • (810) 258-8801 DESIGNER FASHIONS IN LARGE SIZES ONLY Please call to RSVP Op,„-vE 20( FOR THE MONTH OF MARCH! ON ALL ROOTS PRODUCTS $ 1=$1.25 C/D LU C/D LLJ YOUR MONEY IS WORTH MORE AT ROOTS 138 WEST MAPLE, 810-647-6687 • MARCH 1 - 31, 1995. CC LU 10662 Northend Oak Park, Michigan Fireplace Distributors Tel. (810) 547-6777 Fax (810) 547-6678 American Aiti LLJ 38 Steve Brown SALES, SERVICE & INSTALLATION "Et" • - A 5 a HOME page 37 his sister when she lived in the home, recalls his sibling going to a Purim carnival sponsored by the home's Tires and • ladies auxiliary. "It looked trash occupy like fun," he said. Robert Marwil remem- the site bers the first orphan home where the in the Hastings Street neighborhood as a large, home once red-brick home with a wrap- stood. around porch where he spent many of his weekend summer days. "My father was the pres- ident of the orphan's home," he recalled. `Td go over there "They slept two or three to a on Shabbos and sometimes on room and they were well-fed, Sunday with my father. I would nicely fed," he said. "You would play with the boys all afternoon." not hear stories of any mistreat- While the living quarters were ment in the Jewish orphan's sparsely furnished and "not very home. At least, I never heard any homey," he remembers that the complaining." boys were well cared for. Still, something was missing. 'The food was good, the sheets were clean and we were given good-fitting clothes," Peter said. "No one beat us. There was no corporal punishment." "But it was duty without love," he said. "We got care but we didn't get love." History Recalls 25 Years Of Service To Jewish Children F ram a disagreement about boarding Jew- ish children in Christian homes to an aban- doned field in a deteriorating neighborhood; the Jewish orphanages of Detroit took a long time to become operational and a short time to dismantle. It all started in turn-of-the-century Detroit, when there was no facility in the area to care for Jewish children. Jewish orphans, children with- out either parent alive, were sent by United Jew- ish Charities (WC) to a regional orphanage in Cleveland. The children were then adopted by Jewish families or raised by caretakers. Detroit's UJC also acted as a social placement agency for children who had only one parent to care for them because of divorce, death or illness. To make it easier to reunite the families when the situations improved, those children were placed in boarding homes or foster care until the fami ly could find better accommodations. But boarding homes would not take in a child under the age of 5, who required special care. Jew- ish adoptive and foster homes were few. Because no formal Jewish child-care facility ■ Aras located in Detroit until 1918, UJC placed the children in any available home, Jewish or gen- tile. This angered community members who felt the children should be in a Jewish environment. "The late Fred Butzel told the author that pri- or to the formation of the Infants' Home, Jewish infants were boarded out to non-Jewish families, where boys were not circumcised according to the halachic.ally prescribed time," wrote Allen Warsen Ma 1985 publication of the Jewish Historical So- ciety of Michigan. The alarm prompted action. A group of Jewish citizens formed the Detroit Hebrew Orphan Home in 1918. A fund-raising plan was formulated and bylaws passed. The group decided that the purpose of the home was "to bring up and educate orphans of Jewish parentage who have remained alone, friendless and helpless. All children shall be trained and ed- ucated in the Orthodox belief and faith and ac- cording to Jewish National traditions; Jewish, Hebrew and English languages shall be taught." Members of the founding group recruited friends and family to join the roster of support- ers. Eight hundred people contributed $3 each and many more attended social functions that served as fund-raisers. In 1920, the group secured the first home, located near the corner of Rowena and Woodward. It was an area once lined with grand homes built at the turn of the century that has since become a run-down stretch of Mack Avenue. The group also organized the Detroit Hebrew Infants' Orphan Home for children under age 5. The home was first located at Canfield and Wood- ward, but later moved to 262 Rowena, two blocks from the home for the older children. Detroit's Jewish Children's Home was born when the two local homes were combined in 1930 at the recommendation of the Jewish Child Care Council, a Jewish Welfare Federation committee comprising members of the boards of both homes. Under the council's direction, a new facility was built at Petoskey and Burlingame and the two other buildings IN ere vacated. In 1931, a year after the home opened, the Jew- ish Welfare Federation commissioned a study of child-care practices in similar Jewish child-care institutions. Jacob Kepecs, an expert in such mat- ters, informed the Federation that placing infants and young children in the home was "contrary to the best thought and practice in the field." Mr. Kepecs said that young children and in fants should be placed in private foster homes in- stead of institutional settings. The advice Was ignored. The population of the home steadily climbed through the 1930s until it peaked in 1937 at 57 children. Then it fell to 24 in 1940. The reason for the decline, wrote the late Jew- ish community historian Anne Chapin in her com- prehensive Histoiy of ewish Welfare Federation of Detroit 1926 - 1949, was the improved ability to keep families together through the Jewish Social Services Bureau, and the greater availability of public assistance. A survey conducted in mid-1940 at the request of home president Herman Cohen recommended that no more children be placed in institutional care. By late 1940, the rest of tlie children were reunited with their parents and the smaller chil dren were placed in foster care. During World War II, the home was convert- ed to a day-care center for children of parents in- volved in the war effort. When the war ended in 1945, the board of the Jewish Children's Bureau voted to deed the prop- erty to the adjacent Jewish Home for the Aged. The building was demolished by the city in 1987.