Brooks House Workers Provide Vital Aid to Settlement Groups

Christ Child House is a battered, yellow building near Central Square. It rests quietly on a side street in one of Cambridge's better tenement sections--quietly, that is, until the kids come swarming in each day at the end of school. Then the building becomes alive; then the work begins for Director Bill Byrnes and the half dozen or so Phillips Brooks House workers assigned to the House.

The House is a recreational and social center for over 300 Cambridge children ranging in age from seven to 17. Byrnes, a big ruddy-faced Irishman, is the only paid social worker. All other help must come from volunteers, in this case almost all from Brooks House.

No Special Talent

A PBH social service volunteer needs no special talent or particular ability to work with children, according to Byrnes. "His most important qualities are consistency and willingness to spend time with his particular group."

Byrnes, presently awaiting the birth of a second child, is willing to spend countless hours himself organizing, planning, and actively leading his House. He handles each House member with care and respect, always striving to encourage particular skills. The children in turn affectionately call him "Bill," and surprisingly respond immediately to his every request.

"Skills or particular activities are not important to the kids," Byrnes maintains. "If a leader is willing to come down once or twice a week just to be with his group, it's sufficient. When the leader comes, the kids feel they have something of their own, something nobody else has. He takes the place of an overworked father or a big brother. He's something they can feel is their own--he's the key to the group system."

The "group-system" Byrnes mentions is in turn the key to a successful settlement House. Each boy and girl is placed in a small group of from eight to ten other children and given a leader. The group then works and plays together along definite planned lines.

Special Trips

The leader has complete charge of his group. He can direct them chiefly in arts and crafts, sports, or any other activities he thinks will be of advantage. In addition, he is expected to take them on special trips, to football games, swimming meets, museums or anything else that might interest them.

"Leaders never realize how important they are to the kids in their group," says Byrnes. "PBH workers come down and soon every kid in their groups here-worships them; copy every move and step they make. That's why it's important that they set a good example."

One of the most disastrous things to the morale of a settlement house, according to Byrnes, is a leader unwilling to spend the few hours a week necessary to command his group's respect. "If a leader shows little interest, fails to meet his group on the appointed dates, or mistreats them, it is entirely possible that we will lose the whole group, and they'll start reaming the streets again. Thank God my PBH leaders have all been good," he adds.

Byrnes is quick to point out the importance of the PBH worker. "Without them, it would be virtually impossible to operate. Two Harvard students specialize in sports, two in arts and crafts, and a fifth works on special skills. Each of these boys has a tightly-knit group that has come to depend up on him."

Highlights of the PBH social service work take place when the special events program goes into operation. Large blocks of tickets, donated by the H.A.A., are provided for athletic events for leaders and their groups. Over 200 local kids attended both the Springfield and Washington University football games, with a like number scheduled to go to the Davidson game with their leaders at the end of this month.

Christmas Concert

Later in the year, large groups are taken to swimming meets, basketball games, museum trips, track meets, and anything else PBH Co-Chairman Robert H. Mundheim '54 and William R. Crawford '54 can arrange.

Of course, the biggest event each year is the Annual Christmas concert by the Harvard Glee Club and Band. Eight hundred settlement house youngsters crowded into the Rindge Tech Auditorium last year to hear the concert and a like number is expected this Christmas.

Some settlement house volunteers combine their PBH work with their thesis writing. "It's a natural for social relations theses," according to Mundheim and Crawford. "For example, Sumner Cohen, who was a senior last year, worked with a group of eight and nine year olds at Hale House in South Boston, and received a magna plus thesis grade based on his work there."

PBH settlement house workers take special pride in the achievements of their groups, particularly along athletic lines. Almost every athletic group is entered in a league of some sort. Basketball, of course, is the easiest and least expensive league sport, and PBH workers concentrate on this--some with outstanding success.

The Trinity House basketball team, coached by Mundheim, won the Boys of Boston League in 1950 by winning ten straight games in the annual round-robin tournament. This gave Trinity House the first leg on the only triple crown in the history of Boys of Boston Settlement House Competition. The softball and boxing titles followed close on the heels of the basketball championship.

Climax to the PBH basketball season is the Boston-New Haven Inter-Settlement House play-off, held each year in the middle of March. Top players from the PBH and Timothy Dwight (Yale's counterpart to Brooks House) settlement leagues meet alternately here and at New Haven for the inter-city championship. A two-day week-end is planned with the games themselves as highlights.

The Social Service Committee, however, does not restrict itself solely to settlement house work. Programs have been set up in such places as the Youth Service Board Detention Home in Boston. Boston Psychopathic Hospital, Children's Aid Association. Boy Scout Groups, and inter-racial projects.

Two hundred and fifty college and graduate students are presently engaged in the Brooks House Social Service program. Mundheim and Crawford, however, are quick to state that the needs are always considerably greater than the number of volunteers.