This week's column must be a swift gathering of the brightest leaves of the week. This has been no procrastination this time. The week was too full. It will take me three weeks to tell you all about it. Last Monday, Martha and I visited the Rehabilitation Center of the Association for the Crippled and Disabled, and were graciously escorted through the building on an off-visiting day, because Martha was an out-of-town visitor. She is vitally interested, because it is the place where Sister Margery hopes to regain the use of her legs, and find solace and satisfaction in useful activity. I will tell you all about this place in a week or two. Thursday, by pre-arrangement, I was granted an interview with Miss Bell Greve, the remarkable woman at the head of this institution. I had heard so much about her achievements and international fame that I expected to meet one of those mow-you-down personalities - and was terribly nervous at the prospect. I was entirely unprepared for the eager, cordial young woman, who extends her hand in welcome as warmly to an unknown reporter as she does to a chauffered philanthropist, who has come to endow the institution. One of her staff, who arranged the interview, told me how Miss Greve shuns publicity, so I expected a difficult time. But here she was, dashing here and there, pausing to tell a very crippled girl, "How very nice you look, Margaret," - and then we went up to her conference room. I confessed at the start that I was a rank amateur at the art of interviewing, but that I wanted to know about her as a person. So she talked - as one woman to another.
"I am a very simple person. I do my own dusting here - for there is no one else to do it. I do my own washing and ironing, because I enjoy it," said this vibrant young woman, who, besides her big job at the Rehabilitation Center, is County Relief Director, is at the head of the Woman's Auxiliary for Control of Cancer. In the building at that very moment was an impressive Doctor from Mexico, the head of the Center in Mexico City, who had come to study her organization methods. She told a co-worker how she had furnished shelter to the gallant doctor, who could find no suitable room. "He doesn't know," and her brown eyes twinkled, "that I slept on a cot last night." (To be continued in our next.)
Sincerely,
Florence B. Taylor.
Next - 11/16/44 - For Whom the Bell Tolls (The Story of Bell Greve)