Help Needed This Summer For Puerto Rican Camp
Summary: Appeals to readers for money to assist children from East Harlem to spend a summer at the beach. (The Catholic Worker, June 1955, 5. DDLW #688).
Again this summer Helen Russell, Mary Anne McCoy and Eileen Fantino are trying to take some of the Puerto Rican children in their neighborhood of East Harlem to the beach for the summer. What we would like to do is to rent a beach bungalow or obtain the use of some other camping facilities, so that the children could spend all their time on the beach in the sun and sea air. We are begging our readers who have children of their own and who realize what slum life is and who want to do something about it, to send contributions for this project to these girls who are living as close as they can to these most needy of our city’s poor folk.
Those of you who read my story of Felicia, those of you who have read Eileen Fantino’s stories of the Puerto Ricans (the most recent is an article in the Commonweal for June 11th) know how urgent is the need.
Any beach bungalow will cost about $500 for the summer. Please help. As for the food, we’ll think about that later. “A baby is always born with a oaf of bread under its arm,” the Spanish saying is. If they ask Our Father for bread, he won’t give them a stone. D.D.