An interview with Mother Christopher in 2007

 

Someone donated donuts. We had to give them to the police and fire department and everyone else because of the all the donuts we got.  Mr. Ben Swig became a benefactor and helped to raise the money to build the cottages and the gym. There were also a ladies auxiliary and the Men's Guild.

A woman named Grace was the person who helped put up the transition House. This is why it was called Grace Cottage and then Grace Center.  Her husband was a big shot with the unions.

There were girls who were leaving us who had no decent place to go. They couldn't go back to their families and had already been in foster homes and hated it. And we wished we had a transition House so Grace was involved in that. So she got the unions to agree.  And one Saturday they came and put in a whole major foundation. A couple of weeks later the Carpenters came and put up the outside. Every Saturday they built the house until little by little it was completed.

We did not have any real connection with Catholic charities. We never got support from Catholic charities although they used us to raise money for Catholic charities. But it was understood from the very beginning that the archbishop invited us and Catholic charities had not. The way we supported ourselves, was that different counties paid different amounts per diem for the girls that they placed with us. That and what we could beg from other sources is what we ran our programs with. As far as I know that was the only income we had.  The teachers were all paid staff I don't think there were any volunteers.

One of the teachers lived at the facility. She was living there when I first arrived in 1943. The school started in 1932. Edna also lived there. She was one of the girls who came from the original program. She worked in the office and she heard everything. The reason the school closed down was because there was a social worker theory that natural homes or foster homes were better than institutions. And there is a sense that a child is better off in a smaller setting.  But the trouble was the foster homes were not that good and there weren't enough of them.  This theory took over the social work world.  So the courts felt obligated to put their money in foster care.  And what we were getting were the kids that had failed in a foster home.  Sister Passion used to say they're the healthy kids.  They have enough sense to be unsatisfied with what they were getting.  Then a lot of the kids got into drugs.

 After that you couldn't handle kids like kids.  They were junior criminals.  They had to be put in isolation rooms and in things like that.  I don't know that many of the kids that were put in isolation were really destroyed by drugs.  I think they just wanted to act out and no one in their right mind would say they wanted to stay here.  Many said, "If there hadn't been a fence I would have gone on the first day".  But then they cried when they had to leave.  Teenagers always feel like they don't want to be wherever they are.

Up until the 1950s we always gave girls class names.  There was a girl called Valentine who had a huge portfolio of art supplies.  She was desperate to run away but she couldn't figure out how to take her supplies with her so she stayed.  Most of the kids were like that after three months they wanted to stay - even if we took all the fences down.

The kids would decide that they were better off.  There was a girl I don't remember her name but I remember it was Christmas Day and we all waited for Mr. Swig to give out his jewelry before the girls could go home on their outing - just by accident the girl got one outing at Christmas.  So most of the kids left around noon, but, she was back before two o'clock.  We ask her what happened.  She had run away from her father to come back.  He had taken her to a bar that's where she was supposed to spend Christmas Day.

We did not know the story of any girl.  Sister Passion would know.  And then perhaps a house mother might know because a kid told her.  But the girl's history was never published, only if the girl told somebody.

When the girls had class names the girls all knew one another's real names only the mothers didn't know. Not knowing the girls real names started back in France when the idea was before there was a juvenile system some of the girls who came to us were from really important families and they didn't want the families to be embarrassed by the girl.

We had a girl from another state who was the daughter of a governor.  You know what the newspapers would have made from that?  So we had to send her to our house in St. Louis where her father's name would not be so well-known.  So unless the children told what their names were no one could bring it up later.  Otherwise someone could look in the paper and see her name and say I remember her she was a juvenile delinquent.  Eventually it wasn't necessary because the girls often were in juvenile hall together and they all knew each other's names. Before this a long time ago even the house mother's didn't know their names unless the child told them.

At one point someone got the idea that the girls should wear uniforms but they didn't wear them very long. Someone may have donated uniforms. In the early 1940s the girls did have uniform dresses. Well, they weren't uniforms per se - they had a flowered dress that they wore for school and something else that was their Sunday dress.  They wore uniforms in that sense but they were dozens of different colors so that not everyone wore the same thing.  The style may have been identical.  One might have run into three or four people who had the same.

Sister Augustine was in charge of making the dresses.  She ran the clothing room. Sister Cornota was the other one.  They made the clothes for the girls. In the early 1950s Sister Passion decided to change that.  It was because when the girls would scrub the travertine floors on their hands and knees in dresses it would sometimes expose a little too much.  So Sister Passion decided to make kulats for them.  So everyone had kulats and the girls love them.  An important Mother from France came and she was horrified that Sister Passion allowed the girls wear pants. Sister Passion did not take the pants away.  Then shortly after that we saw a picture that came from our House in Philadelphia of girls picking apples and they were wearing petal pushers.  And one of the Mothers was pictured with the girls picking apples.

A lot of the kids came without clothes.  And the things they did have were unacceptable to wear.  So the girls didn't wear uniforms but they did get an issue of clothing.  And little by little it got so they could wear their own clothes on Sundays.  Eventually they could wear their own clothes but with certain standards.  Spaghetti straps were not acceptable.

From way back in the early 1930s there was always a store for the kids.  Hibernia Bank gave us their discarded savings books.  And one of the girls took her passbook to Hibernia Bank and tried to collect the money.  The bank we had for the store was called Hibernia Jr. the bank contacted us about the girl who was trying to collect money. The store was set up as an incentive for the girls to save and use money and have some independence.

During Sister Claude's time the seniors had dances with boys from St. Ignatius high school.  Mary Consecrate made the dresses so all the girls had a formal and someone offered to do every girl's hair.  So they went out and got themselves all fixed up.  Mother passion was upset when one of the girls with very long hair had a beautiful coronet hair style, and when she got back she took it all down before the dance.  She probably felt unnatural, and it wasn't her.

The mother of the boys had a fit when they found out where the boys were going to go to dance.  They had nothing but the newspapers to go by so they didn't know who we were, really.  The boys had raised enough money to take the girls to a restaurant after the dance.  One of the boy's mothers' didn't want that to happen so she gave the party in her own home.  There were only two dances.  After that we didn't have any more.  Before the dance the priest made the boys go to a retreat in order to qualify to go - so he really brainwashed the boys into behaving before the dance.  So after the first dance that priest was moved and another younger Jesuit took over.  And he just put a sign-up sheet on the wall asking if anyone would like to go to a dance at the University Mound School.  So of course there was no screening of the boys.  So that was the end of the dances.  It wasn't fair to the girls and wasn't fair to boys.  Because some of our girls could be pretty aggressive you know.  They were sometimes much wiser than the boys.  That was the only time we had any coed activity.  It was something we tried but we just couldn't handle it.

If the original priest had been there it would've been different.  We could've had something more like a sock-hop.  Even as controlled as the situation was there was a great deal of jealousy between the girls.  They told tall tales.  They told stories to get attention.  We used to say "attention or I'll die".

In the earliest days when we rarely took the girls off campus there was a circus in town.  Someone gave Sister Claude tickets to the circus.  She had never been to a circus herself so she thought it would be wonderful.  We couldn't go so some of the teachers and some of the ladies from the ladies auxiliary took the girls.  But they had no idea what the girls were capable of doing.  So what happened was almost half the girls did not see the circus although all but two came home.  The others ran all over Market Street.  Somebody call the house and said one of your girls is in a bar.  It had to be before 1956.  After 1956 we were able to go with the girls.  So we knew when they asked to be excused that someone would be with them.  The first thing we went to was the Ice Follies.  We were the first house in the United States that let the girls go out.

Sister Berkman was at a meeting back East and they were talking about how to make outings for the girls so they would be less closed up.  And they were saying well they can't do this and they can't do that and Sister Berkman said our girls just don't go out.  And the very night she came home was the first night the girls came home from a night event.

Sister Claude use to take the girls to the ballgames.  The manager of the Giants told Sister Claude she could come any time she wanted because she also made all Boy Scouts behave.  We all sat the same general area and the boys were throwing peanuts and stuff.  Well when she stood up the boys behaved because she laid them out.  Yes we were the first nuns to go to the ballgames.

Sister Claude felt the kids needed something to be excited about and talk about.  It was about that time that TV came to our cottages.  The two famous baseball players Willie Mays and Willie McCovey came to the house to visit.

There were also a couple of policemen who used to come and bring their horses. They were patrolling and McLaren Park and they would stop by with their horses.  The girls loved that.  They would come at noontime and bring their horses into the yard.  And the kids all got to pet the horses.

We had a black Siamese cat named Syracuse.  At one time we had two cats and a dog in the cottage.  We had to give up one cat because a couple of kids abused it.

Saint Mary Euphrasia

Zeal does not consist in continual preaching an inciting to virtue,

but is rather exercised by good example. Example makes much

more of an impression than words and often brings about really

astonishing results.

–St. Mary Euphrasia

Mary Euphrasia Pelletier was a French nun who started the Sister's of Charity of the Good Shepherd to help women prisoners in France. The order grew and came to the United States where many convents were once established to help adolescent girls.

The buildings

Buildings

In 1946 Universe Mound school was located on Cambridge Street down in long dirt road directly across from a nursery.  There were three buildings that were designed in the somewhat Italianate style.  One was for the girls boarding and classes. Another held the chapels and the convent.  The main six-story school building had a sizeable kitchen with staff and a large laundry facility.

An arcade joined the school to the chapels where there was a bell tower with a rope that hung down and was pulled so bells pealed out for prayers, Mass, and other occasions.  Doors from the chapel lead into the five-story convent.

Later six cottages were added. Two of which were for the younger girls and four for the older girls. The cottages were each structured with a sitting room, shower rooms, bathrooms, small kitchen, plus a room for crafts, dining and homework.  The top floors were where two dormitories were situated. Between the two dormitories was an entry way where the house mother could keep watch.  She also had a separate room situated between the two dormitories.  The four cottages that housed the older girls were set facing one another with a well groomed garden in the middle.  The younger girl’s cottages had a small garden.  There was a long arcade that led from the two younger girl’s cottages to a small dining room and to a separate chapel.  The two groups of girls were kept separate on all times.

 Also added was a well-designed lounge, an inner courtyard and a larger courtyard.  There was also a swimming pool with private dressing rooms and a movie theater.  The outer grounds were beautifully landscaped and in one section held the grotto. A cyclone fence was put up around the parameter.

And finally a Transition house was build on a corner of the property.