#MyGivingStory

#MyGivingStory

Written By Rebecca Dunkin, Development Associate at Board of Child Care
Images by Trina-Michelle Rosado, Training Specialist at Board of Child Care

      

A Special Birthday — A Day in New York City

One of our former residents is known for her personalized celebrations.  Birthdays, graduation, discharge, every special event meant a personalized party on campus from this youth. Months before the event (while she was still at BCC) she would walk around asking staff for money excitedly sharing that it was for “Ms. Sarah’s birthday!” or “Samantha’s graduation party!” She made sure that all events were personally catered to the recipient’s favorite things.

For my birthday this year, she went over the top with a dog themed party. First, she invited two co-workers who each had puppies so I could get covered in wet slobbery kisses. Then she had decorated her apartment from ceiling to floor in decorations.  The apartment was covered with cutouts, balloons, banners, streamers, and dog decor. She didn’t stop there. She also made food that was all dog themed.  We feasted on pup-eroni  (pepperoni) pizza, pup-cakes (cupcakes) and various other treats. (Please see the pictures below.) It was truly a memorable day and so very thoughtful.

A few months later, when her 20th birthday rolled around, I knew we had to make it something special. We (my co-workers and I) planned a birthday day trip to New York City where she would get to have a great new experience with her most favorite people.  This was her first time in the Big Apple and we had a full agenda of birthday wishes. We strolled around Central Park and we watched the ice skaters at Rockefeller Center. We shopped in the big Lego store and in M&M World.  We saw Time Square during the day and then again at night when it was lit up. To end the night we had her favorite food, a slice of New York pizza.  It was a great day for us and for her, with memories we will always cherish.

This is #mygivingstory

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Friendship Formed at Kelso Withstands Test of Time

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June Mulligan Hoshall and Maybelle Burns Boone

The Board of Child Care lost a physical piece of its history with the demolition of the former Kelso Home for Girls in Towson, MD. The YMCA of Central Maryland, which owns the property, constructed a new Towson Y and ball fields on the site.

While the BCC family is sad to see the loss of a building that had sheltered and cared for hundred of girls over more than three decades, contact from alumna over the years indicates that many of the relationships formed by the girls who once lived there continue to endure.

Eighty-year-olds June Mulligan Hoshall and Maybelle Burns Boone are one example. They both entered the Kelso Home on July 5, 1938, a day that cemented their friendship. For the next decade, they grew-up in the home together.

Both June and Maybelle came from large families where one of the parents died prematurely and the other parent could not care for all of the children. So the girls at Kelso home became June’s and Maybelle’s family. And June and Maybelle themselves became like sisters.

Just a month apart in age – June was born on June 8, 1931, and Maybelle was born on May 5, 1931 – they walked together to and from Towson Elementary, Towson High School and Towson United Methodist Church, did their chores side-by-side, and spent afternoons roller skating around the Kelso Home driveway and picking fruit from the trees that grew on the home’s 15 acres. Together, they also endured the strict rules of the home and the homesickness that came with being apart from their families.

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Maybelle’s high school graduation photo.

Kelso Home was one of three orphanages that eventually merged into the Board of Child Care. Founded in Baltimore City in 1874 by Thomas Kelso, the orphanage was later moved to a new building in Towson – the one being taken down ­– where it operated from 1925 to the 1950s. Before the home was taken down this winter, the YMCA donated some artifacts from the home to BCC, including a roof tile, brick and keystone.

After they graduated from high school and left Kelso in the late 1940s, they both married and started families. Maybelle had three children and June had four. But every spring, when their birthdays rolled around, neither would forget to exchange birthday salutations. Even when Maybelle moved to Florida and they temporarily lost contact, June got on the phone with the operators that controlled the phone lines and tracked Maybelle down.

Today, they talk by phone several times a month and occasionally get together at Maybelle’s apartment. “We are the best of friends,” June says. “We love each other like sisters.”

“We can talk about things that nobody else has experienced,” says Maybelle, who today lives in Parkville, Md. June now lives in Essex, Md.

Although life growing up at Kelso Home had its ups and downs for the women, both are thankful for the care they received.

“When I look back, I thank God I was put in Kelso. I graduated from high school and had religion, which helped me later in life,” says Maybelle.

June as a teenager at Kelso Home.
June as a teenager at Kelso Home.

June recalls that if it weren’t for Kelso, she and her eight siblings “probably would have had a horrible life running the streets of Baltimore while my mother worked. So I was grateful for what I had.”

The girls were still able to visit with their families while living at Kelso. Every Friday was visitation night and June says her mother never missed one, including traveling on three different street cars during a blizzard to make it to a visitation.

June says her grandson often asks to hear stories about the “orphanage,” so she shares with him the many memories she has. Both women describe life at Kelso Home as very regimented. Many of the housemothers were strict and whenever they’d enter the room the girls had to stand and address them as “Ma’me,” and everywhere the girls walked they had to walk in lines.

The Home was kept “immaculately clean.” Each girl had a chore assigned to them for the month – from scrubbing the floors to dusting the wheels on the beds – and they would awaken to a bell at dawn and complete the chores before school. All of their clothes were hand-me-downs and if they tore the girls had to mend them.

A few years ago June took her grandson to a swimming class at the Towson YMCA and saw the old Kelso Home building. She said it wasn’t as beautiful as she recalled, but she recognized the porch steps she used to enjoy jumping down.

“It’s going to be so sad to see the building taken down,” she said in an interview last fall. “There are so many memories. I loved it there.”

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