April 2, 1961
Carol Viescas
El Paso grew by leaps and bounds after the railroads came in 1881. With growth came the need for human services.
In 1886 El Paso’s first service organization was born – the YMCA. Like many young organizations, it struggled fro years to get a firm financial foundation.
A group of concerned citizens met at the old First Baptist Church (where the Toltec Building now stands) to organize and elect professor C. Esterly first president.
By 1906, after the organization suffered money problems and closed down twice, board members decided the only way for the YMCA to survive was to have its own building. They managed to raise $105,000 and the famed architural firm Trost & Trost designed a well-equipped YMCA building on Oregon and Missouri streets, across from the public library (now Continental National’s drive-in bank).
The new building was a grand achievement. It included El Paso’s first gymnasium. It had an indoor track, swimming pool, two handball courts and four bowling alleys which were torn down for a rifle range in World War I.
The YMCA opened the city’s first automotive school and gave classes ranging from business arithmetic to Spanish. It also offered the first free swimming instruction for grade school children.
Money troubles hit again with the Depression. Staff cuts had to be made and Vernus Carey, longtime worker at the YMCA who was then assistant athletic director, took over running the YMCA’s new Skyline Camp in New Mexico for 10 years and later organized Carey Ranch for girls.
By the late 50s, the YMCA outgrew its Oregon building and in 1958 then-general secretary Carey closed its doors to move into a new building – the present Central YMCA site at 701 Montana.
The beautiful Trost building, often described as one of Trost’s most important buildings in El Paso – and that had served El Paso for 50 years – soon became a hangout for vagrants.
The building finally came to an undignified end under the wrecking ball in 1961.
The YMCA has added three branches in West, Northeast, and East El Paso.
Twenty-five years after El Paso became a city; it got a major organization to help the destitute and transient – the Salvation Army.
An April 22, 1898 El Paso Herald noted the arrival of the first Salvation Army officers. A year later the first full-time Salvation Army officers, Ensign J. Pitt and his wife, arrived from Albuquerque.
The first Salvation Army activity was Door of Hope Mission, rented by the Pitts for meetings. By 1901, a hall and barracks at 104 N. Stanton were listed in the early Worley City Director.
The Salvation Army opened its first industrial store in 1913 at 228 S. Oregon and later took over the Women’s Rescue Home Association that had formed in 1914, operating the association’s former building Booth Memorial Home for unwed mothers until 1979.
After World War I the Army set up the Soldiers and Sailor’s Hostel at 417 ½ N. Stanton, moved it to 214 S. Mesa in 1924 closed it in 1927.
The army received some salvation of its own in 1976, when it received $257,000 from the estate of Lower Valley pear farmer, J. J. Smith. Smith came to El Paso in 1883 at 19 and brought fame to himself with his “peerless pears.” Upon his death in 1938, he left his estate “to be used for the indigent old people of El Paso County.”
The estate’s trustee, the State National Bank, was able to fulfill Smith’s wishes when it gave the funds toward building the new Pleasant View Lodge, which now houses 22 persons at 3819 Bliss.
Today the Salvation Army has a Center for Social Services at 4630 E. Paisano that provides housing, food and social services t the needy, and runs three thrift stores in the city.
$207.49
That plus three lots and a few shares of mining stock funded the original YWCA in 1909. Members of the Baptist Women’s Missionary Union, including hotel owner Alzina DeGroff, donated the assets to help improve conditions for young women in El Paso.
With its rapid growth, El Paso began to attract respectable young women after the turn of the century – but they often found it difficult to find decent lodging or opportunities for healthful moral recreation.
A year later these women built a 52-bed residence, the YWCA Home on donated land on Davis Street (now 541 W. Missouri). But that still left them without permanent staff offices. They found a home in the Herald Building at 5 Pioneer Plaza (where Zales is today.)
After three more moves, the YWCA board decided it had had enough. So in 1916 members raised $123,252 to build a permanent home at what is now 315 E. Franklin.
The YWCA, featuring the first in-door swimming pool in El Paso, opened in February 1917.
The building barely had opened its doors when Mexican immigrants began to pour over the border to ease the labor shortage caused by World War I. The YWCA set up a Hospitality House at border to prepare these immigrants for the El Paso labor market.
It also established the YWCA International Institute for Spanish Speaking Women on the second floor of the old Famous Clothing Store on San Antonio Street. The institute provided training in job skills for young women.
The Depression brought more problems for women and in 1934 the YWCA opened the state’s only Releif School for Women, one of the few across the nation. Founded by the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the school trained student s from age 18 to 30 in subjects from economics to “psychology in salesmanship.”
The pattern of helping women where they need help has continued to today’s Women’s Resource Center and 13 day-care centers.
The YWCA outgrew the Franklin Street structure and built in 1969 what is now the central YWCA at 1600 N. Brown.
An East Side branch, the Shirley Leavell Branch, opened a few years ago. Construction has begun for two new branches in the Northeast and Southeast.
Wars rarely create much good. But when Francisco Madero’s troops attacked Juarez on May 7, 1911, during the Mexican Revolution, the chaos prompted El Paso to begin its branch of the world’s most famous aid organization – the Red Cross.
The American Red Cross was in its early stages nationwide. Although it began in 1881, the organization only had staff of six people in 1911 and was just beginning to set up chapters over the country.
The revolutionary soldiers attacked Juarez driving the federals back into the city’s bullring and a few other strong buildings. Madero’s brother, Raoul, contacted young El Paso doctor C.M. Hendricks and suggested they do something to aid the wounded – friend and foe alike.
On the morning of May 11, Hendricks tied a white tablecloth to a broomstick and crossed the international bridge under fire, bullets whistling over his head. Accompanying him were Dr. R. L. Ramey and former heavyweight champion Billy Smith, then chief of detectives in El Paso.
The federals surrendered at noon and medical help came pouring in from El Paso.
Stevenson, who later became first chairman, when the chapter officially organized in 1914, wired President Taft and told him how El Paso agencies had been overtaxed as the result of the battle. Taft authorized Stevenson to draw on Red Cross funds.
The new chapter helped during the Border Mobilization in March 1916 that followed Pancho Villa’s raid on Columbus, N.M. The El Paso chapter was one of the few experienced in war work when the United States entered World War I in April 1917.
The Red Cross Shop, constructed of logs’ in San Jacinto Plaza, became a familiar spot for soldiers. A fire crackled in the tea room while soldiers munched on homemade cake and sandwiches.
Red Cross volunteers made thousands of surgical dressings on the fourth floor of the White House Department store.
Red Cross workers led by war chairman Dr. W. L. Brown turned a nearby school into a hospital.
When special trains stopped in El Paso, Red Cross workers from a railroad car canteen met them with hot coffee, ham sandwiches and doughnuts served on street cleaners’ pushcarts.
During World War II the Red Cross took up the same kind of work it had in WWI, making thousands of dressings and setting up a six sewing centers in women’s clubs across the city.
In the 1940s the Red Cross and the name Dorothy Brownlow became synonymous. She was a volunteer for six years then executive secretary of the chapter from 1948 until her death in 1974.
She got emergency messages through war lines in World War II, the Korean Conflict and the Vietnam War, and arranged emergency funding. At the end of WWII she arranged special classes for overseas wives. She set up the varied first aid programs still taught today.
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