Armory

It was during the height of Congressman John Murphy’s bid to become Mayor of the City of New York, a contest he actually thought he could win, despite being from Staten Island, when I passed the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue and paused briefly.

The history of the “Fighting 69th” was such that a movie had been made about it and its contribution in World War I, but I was suddenly interested more in the building itself than its occupant. It is not generally known but the armories, in New York City at least, were erected to be able to withstand and even put down civil insurrection. They are massive, very solid and are constructed to withstand siege.

But an idea was forming. I had undertaken one of the seemingly insoluble tasks of any campaign. I was Jack Murphy’s media advisor and we were again confronted about how to deal with the welfare problem. Nearly a million people, most of them women with dependent children, were a constant drain and cause of complaint to those who supported the never-ending cycle of welfare. We estimated that more than 850,000 people were on the rolls and it had become a way of life for generation after generation. But one fact fascinated me. Some 85% of the women on welfare said that they would leave those rolls if given adequate day-care facilities and here I was looking at a building seemingly designed to take care of massive numbers of people.

During my Marine Corps Reserve days I trained at a gigantic Quonset-like building in Brooklyn which was used one night a week and stood empty the rest of the time. Could the armory on Lexington Avenue be as little used, and just how many of these buildings were there? I entered, spoke to a custodian, and found that the army unit there used one night a week, had temporary tennis courts strung several afternoons a week, and it was occasionally used for a giant social function. In other words, is was rarely ever fully utilized.

There may have been another reason for my being interested. During the “Great Depression,” and the only thing great about it was its size and duration, welfare wasn’t called that, it was called “Relief,’ and to go on it was the final admission that you couldn’t last another week. My father was rarely home, and when he was it was usually a reign of terror. My mother struggled to somehow keep her one son and herself alive.

Finally, this proud Northern Irish woman, who won a scholarship to the University of Belfast at the turn of the last century, but never went, was forced to join the Relief line and I went with her. We waited in a big courtyard and it was very quiet. I looked up at my mother who seemed to have something in her eyes, for she kept rubbing them, and I realized she was quietly crying. Why would my mother cry? Had someone hurt her? She was the only thing I had and she was crying. That scene is as real to me decades later as it was during the thirties. So when I thought of welfare it was synonymous with tears and humiliation and here I just may have found an answer for literally tens of thousands of women with small children: use the 13 city armories as day care centers.

I explained my idea to Jack Murphy, he gave it a rather lukewarm reception but agreed that it could probably get him some “ink.” Sure enough, I researched the concept and we called a news conference at the 69th Regiment armory. We got ink, very little, and no television coverage because we were in a multi-candidate race and Murphy just wouldn’t apply himself to the long hours and the study of issues. He thought he could do it with the help of the big bosses in the Bronx and Brooklyn, but they had other plans, although they told him he was God’s gift to the party and the city. Such is the ego of politicians that he bought it.

Anyway, it stunned me that a practical suggestion about day care centers and women with kids on welfare wasn’t attracting any attention anywhere. After a couple more months Murphy was out of the race and I was out of a job. I sat down and wrote an editorial page synopsis of the idea to the New York Times, making reference to Isaiah and “beating swords into plowshares,” and lo, they printed it in a Saturday edition. I got precisely one phone call from an elderly gentleman from Brooklyn who thought it was a wonderful idea.

That was nearly three decades ago and I still think it’s a helluva idea. Anybody got a better one?

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