Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-02-12
knowledge AIIeviates Hunger
Pain of Weightman and
Magruder Students.
"Tra-la-la," They Sing, but
Promised Hydrotherapy
Treatment Is Myth.

Yet violet does. She happens to
be one Of the pupils over at the Magru-
der School for Colored Crippled Chill
dren, and practically every morning
when, the big bus stops at her door to
take her of to a days class work she
has had nothing to eat.
And that's not the worst of it. Vio-
let never has any money with which
to buy lunch: she never even brings a
couple OF dry sandwiches in a paper
bag. like some of her schoolmates do.
OF course, Violet isn't her real
name, but, nevertheless, she herself Is a
flesh-and-blood child who daily at
tends that school at Seventeenth and
M streets where she has been promised
not only schooling, but treatment as
well-treatment which the doctors say
might help straighten out those shrivel-
ed little legs OF hers.
Strives as Hunger Gnaws.
And Violet is not the only child
who goes to that school to struggle for
good marks while hunger gnaws at her
warped and frail body. There are no
less than six others who never bring
their lunch or money for it; there are
five more who only occasionally bring
a nickel for their MONDAY meal, and
there are perhaps two who, like her,
come without breakfast.
Nor is Magruder the only school where
little children, handicapped by insult
flcient food and twisted bodies, seek
the learning they're told will help them
face the world as men and women.
There is the Weightman School, at
Twenty third and M streets, which Is
attended by crippled white children,
but there a parent-teached association
which gives of its labor and its money,
tempers cruelty which might other
wise be a more punctual schoolmate OF
of the children.
But to get to Violet. She is an or
phan who lives with a grandmother.
Grandmother goes out in the early
morning hours to one of the city's laun-
dries, where she Sweats a bit of living
out Of the soiled clothes of Washing
tonians who happen to be better off.
Violet drags herself out Of bed some
time after the old woman is gone; &C.
casionally the child picks up bite to
eat herself; generally she doesn't. The
bus drives up to the humble door and
the girl is whisked away to school.
In class she sits and works. Hasn't
she been told that II she studies hard
and learns her lessons well the world
will make better place for her with
those twisted legs? She's even happy
as she works. Hungry? Well, it's all
right, the class will begin its singing
lesson soon and then
Then they all toddle or are rolled in
wheel chairs out into the corridor.
Those less crippled push those confined
to chairs by complete helplessness.
Hungry? Not now, they're singing.
Those words:
Spirit Of Song Intervenes.
"Tra la, la-la, ira la, la-la, ira la,
Joy is everywhere"
It's the happy "Finiculi. Finicula,"
they're singing. That's what 1t was
when this reporter stood by and watch
ed them, and there was gusto in their
voices and smiles foot wide upon their
faces. Hungry? No, they're happy!
begin their trundling back to their
rooms. Some of those steel-braced
limbs do queer things; too sudden a
step, perhaps, and leg shoots out at
a crazy angle that makes the reporters
blood run cold, and down sprawls
child One of the four woman attend
ants there or perhaps a more able
pupil goes to the rescue; a bit OF tug
and the child is up again.
Tidied up, the lettering and rolling
class crosses the corridor again to the
science room, and the meal" that's
waiting is all that the less than so
cents allowed the teacher from the
manual training fund could provide for
SO children 1t may be a cuStard.
Perhaps it's q soup. but it's food-a
small dish Of 1t for each child. Violet
and the other six no better off than she
get theirs. Some of the children who
bring their lunch in paper bags share
- u To IN
it's a sandwich they can spare or a
piece of jelly-bread, or maybe it's Just
plain bread-that's all some Of them
can bring, you see. If the dietician's
provision for the day isn't one made
with milk, then the children have milk
to drink. That's what the nickels
which the teachers urge them to bring
are for. OF course. only six OF them
always have the nickel, and some four
or hve have 1t occasionally, so the
teacher in charge, with help from the
dietician, digs into her own pocketbook
for money with which to buy milk for
20 TO IS children every day!
Eating Is a Luxury.
Looking at 1t another way. There
are only five children in this school
who bring good lunches in bags every
day. The others-well, you've just read
their side of it. Most of them, you see,
are youngsters of large families, and
the heads of these families earn little.
A nickel q day is lot OF money to
them.
The meal" is over and the pitiful
struggling migration to the other rooms
is taken up again. There are the eerie
collapses of limbs, the GREATNESS watch
ing of the four women In charge, the
cripple pushing the cripple, and the
time has come for the rest period for
the younger children. Fifteen tlrst-
grade pupils there are who, the authori-
ties have decreed, shall have rest But
there are only five beds Tor them. SO
the wheel chairs that can be spared
are used in lieu of beds, and others. for
whom there Is nothing, slump in their
seats, fling an arm across their desk
tops and droop little heads on the
makeshtft pillows thus made for a
The treatmentP Well. there's no use
dwelling upon that. There Is phySto-
therapist at both Weightman and Ma
gruder who messages crippled limbs.
They have tables upon which the little
ones are placed and they have an cleo
trio baking lamp apiece. There's moth
ing more. The hydrotherapy treat
ments which were talked about when
the schools we're opened a month late
last Fall still are being talked about.
There Is none of this equipment in Ma
gruder School and there's none Of 1t
at Weightman.
Over at Weightman things aren't
very different from those at Magruder.
There they don't have the domestic
science room to use as a kitchen and
they don't have the daily half dollar
to provide luncheon for 40 children,
but it's into that void that the Parent
Teacher Association steps. This body
of parents. virtually all Of whom are
of normal children, who really
have no responsibility at all so far as