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Page Twelve, PHOENIX50 Years OfBrooklynite Will Be Honored For Volunteer ServiceWThe Brooklyn Bureau of Community Service led fight for housing reform in Brooklyn. With openingof Williamsburg and Manhattan bridges, and tunnel with first subway connectiqn to Manhattan,single family houses were converted into multiple dwellings without adequate sanitation and fireprotection. One of agency%u2019s early drives was to let light and air into 172,000 windowless insiderooms in Brooklyn tenements. Agency helped frame New York City%u2019s model Multiple Dwelling Law.%u201cBrooklyn was a very differentplace 50 years ago. You almost feltas if you knew everybody. Thestreets were uncluttered. The airwas fresh. There was greeneverywhere. We rode our horsesfrom PLaza St. to Prospect Park.And you felt perfectly safe on thestreets at any time.%u201c I remember the electricautomobiles, those wonderful high,open trolley cars, horse-drawnsleighs in Prospect Park with bellsa-jingling, the first movies onFlatbush Ave. at the Bunny and theCarlton for 10 cents, and thewonderful sodas at Huyler%u2019s onUnion St.%u201cBut,%u201d says Mrs. Alfred H.Everson, who has just steppeddown as president of the BrooklynBureau of Community Serviceafter six years in that post, %u201ctherewas another part of Brooklyn wenever knew.%u201cIt was a part of Brooklyn Ibegan to learn about when I startedworking in the 1920%u2019s for theBrooklyn Bureau of CommunityMrs. EversonService and Colony-South BrooklynHouses.%u201cMost people never knew aboutthe extreme poverty, bad housing,delinquency, and crime. Therewere gangs then, as now, and asnow, weapons seemed to be easy toget. I remember we had to asksome of the boys to deposit theirguns on the table before we%u2019d allowthem to enter the Colony-SouthBrooklyn settlement house.%u201dOn April 12, a dinner will be heldat the Whitehall Club to honor Mrs.Everson for 50 years of work forvoluntary organizations inBrooklyn.In the last 50 years, Mrs.Everson has served as volunteer,board member, or executive officer of the Brooklyn Bureau ofCommunity Service, Colony-SouthBrooklyn Houses, the BrooklynChapter of the American RedCross, Y.W.C.A. of Brooklyn,United Neighborhood Houses,Brooklyn%u2019s first Planned Parenthood Committee, Youth United,Brooklyn Tuberculosis andRespiratory Disease Association,Brooklyn Women%u2019s Club, TheCivitas Club, and the BrooklynCouncil for Social Planning.The organizations to which shehad devoted her time and energyhave helped hundreds of thousandsof persons. But they could not havedone this without the aid ofvolunteers like Mrs. Everson, whohas raised money to supportprograms, shaped policies to widenthe scope of voluntary activities toreach more people, and helpedpioneer important servicesbecause people needed them inorder to survive.Mrs. Everson says these thingswere nothing special. She says shelooked around her, saw what washappening, and decided shewouldn%u2019t wait for the next person todo something. She%u2019d do it herself.At least part of her motivationcame from her father, Charles M.Higgins, an Irish immigrant whocame to the United States as a boy.Higgins invented Higgin%u2019sAmerican India Ink, went on tofound the Higgins Ink Companyand became one of Brooklynforemost philanthropists and civicleaders.Mrs. Everson%u2019s mother,Alexandra Fransioli, came fromSwitzerland to Brooklyn with hermother, sister, and brothers, andsettled there because her uncle,Father Joseph Fransioli, had comeearlier. Father Fransioli built St.Peter%u2019s Church, School, andHospital at Warren and HicksStreets in Cobble Hill, and was afounder of the Brooklyn Bureau ofCommunity Service. %u201c FatherFransioli has always been a kind ofmystical hero to me,%u201d Mrs.Everson says.Mrs. Everson attended PackerCollegiate Institute in Brooklyn,then went on to Vassar, andgraduated with a Phi Beta Kappakey in 1922. She completed a yearat New York University%u2019s LawSchool, but an injury resultingfrom a fall from a horse interrupted her education, and latershe decided to marry rather thanreturn to law school.While at school, she spent mostof her time during vacations andholidays with her family in ParkSlope. The world of the societydebutante in the 1920%u2019s was exciting, she said. %u201cThere were agreat number of private parties.The Metropolitan Opera appearedregularly at the Academy ofMusic, and everyone important inBrooklyn could be seen at thesefunctions.%u201cIf you were not careful, thatwas all you saw. In those days,neighborhoods were more distinct.The poor lived separately, inWilliamsburg, Brownsville, andBedford. The affluent were concentrated in Park Slope, theClinton-Hill area, BrooklynHeights and Cobble Hill, in thebeautiful Italianate and Victorianhouses still standing today.%u201dBy the time she married, in 1924,she knew pretty wellwhat at least a part of her life wasgoing to be.The same year of her marriage,she joined as a volunteer theColony-South Brooklyn Houses andthe Brooklyn Bureau of Community Service. Serving on theBrooklyn Bureau%u2019s F a m ily ,Committee, she learned of theproblems people were suffering.%u201cYou have to remember that inthe 20%u2019s there was still no publicrelief. People literally had no oneto turn to when they needed helpexcept die voluntary agencies.%u201dThe story of voluntary service topoor Brooklyn communities beganmuch earlier, Mrs. Everson said.In 1866, when the Brooklyn Bureauof Community Service wasorganized, Brooklyn had almost300,000 people, many of whom worepoverty-stricken.Volunteers did then whatvolunteers have always done in acrisis, Mrs. Everson said. Theyorganized to help.Thus, in 1866, the BrooklynChildren%u2019s Aid Society (later tomerge with the Brooklyn Bureau ofCharities and other voluntarysocial service agencies to form thepresent Brooklyn Bureau ofCommunity Service) wasorganized to care for the manychildren made homeless by theCivil War who were wandering thestreets and living by their wits. By1884, the Brooklyn Bureau hadestablished a work facility andemployment service for thejobless. Two years lata-, the sameagency opened a workroom toemploy unskilled women.Campaigns for court reform,mandatory pasteurized milk, freeschool lunches, free public healthservices to children and the handicapped, and many other causeswere taken up by Brooklynvoluntary organizations .in theyears that followed.During the depression in the1930%u2019s the situation was especiallycritical, Mrs. Everson said. %u201cWithnearly half a million peopleneeding relief in the New Yorkmetropolitan area alone, agenciespoured all of their resources intoan effort to keep people fed andfamilies together.%u201dMrs. Everson recalls shepublished in 1952 a 10-pointprogram for Brooklyn while sheserved as President of theBrooklyn Council for SocialPlanning and %u201cmany of theproblems I discussal then are stillthings we are struggling withtoday.Hotel Get$100 FineManagement of the PierrepontHotel was fined a total of $100 onMarch 29 by Criminal Court JudgeEugene Canudo for the four fireviolations for which it had receivedsummonses following the FireDepartment%u2019s inspection in lateJanuary.The Ad Hoc Committee for a SafePierrepont Hotel was representedat the hearing which set the finesby Priscilla Rassin, an attorneywho has been acting as Secretaryto the Committee. Ms. Rassin.speaking for the Committee, StateSenator Carol Bellamy, Assemblyman Michael Pesce and DistrictLeader Marge Dowd,acknowledged that a follow-upinspection three days prior to theMarch 29th hearing had shown thesummonsed violations to becorrected, but stated that one ofthem, the inoperative fire alarmsystem, had been summonsedbefore.The Committee will now givepriority to assuring that an efi c t u v c o c ^ u iiiy S y s t e m &OcS in toeffect at the Pierrepont. Both JimBenson, Committee Chairman, andPriscilla Rassin have spoken with representatives of the City Buildings Department on the matter. Brooklyn Chief Inspector Solvieri has given his assurance that the hotel%u2019s back door could be locked from the outside, permilting exit but net entrenc*' without further clearance.57-7\11 > Top full of ppDciiCS for your food &0 3 body. ShirfcjJeons. Tops&Ifiiqt^.haircutting, to o ! 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