Dorothy Morton remembered

... a classy lady

The following is an interview I did for the Melrose
Centennial Book for the chapter on women. Although the entire interview
was not used, there is a paragraph devoted to Dorothy Morton in the
book.

Dorothy Morton of South Avenue in Melrose, aged 90 in 1998, was a
single women living alone in a home she had lived in since she was a
young child of 8 years old. She attended the Warren School on Warren
Street in Melrose (now a park as the school was torn down in the '60s).

In her day the Warren School had four grades. She moved to Melrose
from Somerville, MA. From the Warren School she went to the Franklin.
She remembers walking to and from Franklin Square four times a day as
the children came home for lunch each day. After a time her mother
allowed her to take the street car one way so she would have more time
to eat lunch. She was able recall (she had a fantastic memory!) the old
street car line on Franklin Street. She also remembered coasting down to
the school on her sled in the winter. (The Roosevelt School came
later).

In 1921 to 1925 she attended high school in the Coolidge School
Building (now a condominium.) From high school she attended college in
Colby, Maine. Her parents wanted her to attend college in New England as
that way she would be nearer. Dorothy is an only child. She originally
wanted to teach French but after her first year she changed her major to
social work. After college she worked for a year in the Melrose system
as a substitute teacher in French classes. She gave special help in
French to students who had difficulty in the language. She was working
with some hardship as she had to teach on the stage of the auditorium;
the school was overcrowded and running out of space.

Dorothy decided to go back to school and enrolled in Simmons College
School of Social Work. She graduated in 1931 with a bachelor of science
--she already had her AB from Colby. She did an internship in East
Boston doing field work at the Family Society in East Boston. Because
the depression was still going on her work was with the families,
advocating for the men in the family with their old employers, to seek
employment again for them with the companies who had laid them off.
Unfortunately she was often not successful as the employers could not
afford to hire them. She also did field work with the Children's Mission
in a hospital located where the New England Baptist Hospital is now,
called the Good Samaritan Hospital. She helped children who were
hospitalized with heart problems, chorea {a shaking disease), and
rheumatic fever.

After graduating from Simmons she went to work for the Children's
Friends' Society which was located on Rutland Street in the South End.
This is an old organization formed to help children in Boston. The
organization moved to Marlbrough Street on Beacon Hill because, as
Dorothy put it, there were too many drunks hanging around. This
organization merged with the Children's Aid Society and was later called
the Boston Children Service Association. It is now located on
Huntington Avenue.

Dorothy worked for 42 years with them, retiring in 1973. The firm
went from 12 people when she started to about 100 employees at the time
of her retirement. They handled children from all over Massachusetts.
Their referrals came from many different agencies such as the SPC,
schools, YMCA, churches, and the courts. She had to travel in the early
days to New Hampshire, out to Springfield and down to Cape Cod.
Eventually the Society split into different districts, so the commute to
work became easier. This was done to save gas, at the time of the gas
shortage of World War II. Rail transportation was excellent in those
days; she could get to Quincy by commuter rail in about 10 minutes from
Boston.

Dorothy kept in touch with some of the children she had as clients.
She worked mainly with adoption issues, going to court with the families
and placing children with adoptive parents. In the early years she
worked with troubled children or with families that could not manage
their children and wanted them placed in foster homes. She tells one
story of having to take a child home with her as the little girl had no
home. So she took her home to her parents' house until she could place
her in a foster home. She maintained a friendship with her over the
years; the women is in her sixties now and gives Dorothy credit for how
her life turned out better than her sibling who had a different social
worker. Adopted children were followed up for one year after adoption
with the same social worker.

I did question Dorothy about some of the problems children had. She
mentioned those who may have been caught stealing from Filene's Basement
or had poor home lives, or ran away from home. She made an interesting
observation on drugs. There was no drug use in her generation; however,
the generation before her did have some drug use so she remembered her
mother telling her of the dangers of taking drugs. Dorothy worked for 20
years on adoption issues. She retired at age 65.

About five years after her retirement Dorothy started to do
volunteer work for the Council on Aging in Melrose. At that time
volunteers were trained by the council on issues of disability and
aging. Workshops were held by organizations such as the Commission on
the Blind on the problems of daily living. For about 11 years she worked
volunteering as a friendly visitor for two patients at the Middlesex
Nursing home in Melrose. She received an award from the nursing home for
her outstanding volunteer work.

Dorothy has an interesting background; her family dates back to the
Mayflower. Her father's grandfather, Samuel Francis Smith, wrote the
words of the song "My Country Tis of Thee" when he was a minister at the
Newton Theological School. Her other grandfather was headmaster of
Proctor Academy of Andover, New Hampshire. Dorothy spent all her summers
as a child in New Hampshire where he had eight acres of land with three
big gardens. From him she learned all about wild flowers and how to
identify them. She developed an interest in gardening which she still
retains. She remembers playing hide and seek in asparagus beds and
climbing apple trees in his orchards. As she aged she could no longer
garden but still started plants in containers with the help of her
homemaker. Dorothy graduated from high school with Eleanor Harris and
Dorothy Leyrod.

Some reflections on the life of a quiet, serene wonderful woman whom
I had the pleasure to spend many happy hours visiting as she aged and
her health grew frail. I always came away from these visits feeling like
she gave me inspiration and hope to cope with life. Dorothy knew the
happiness of a serene life and more important she knew how to age
gracefully with much hope, dignity and most of all courage.

Dorothy passed away in February of 2002.

Previously published

March 7, 2003