Marie Fox Felt certainly had Mormon credentials: She was even born on Pioneer Day (1900), and was the granddaughter of long-serving Young Women’s MIA President Ruth May Fox. She was interested in kindergarten work, a new field when Marie came of age, and she earned a degree in kindergarten and primary education at the University of Utah, then becoming a teacher in the Salt Lake schools. She married a little late, at age 31, to Joseph H. Felt, an auto parts retailer with a warehouse and shipping center in downtown Salt Lake; Marie eventually became the bookkeeper for his auto supply business. She also served for 35 years as a member of the Sunday School General Board, writing many of the lesson manuals for children’s classes, and publishing teaching aids, like flannel board stories, in The Instructor. Marie had no children.
Oh, wait.
In the spring of 1938, early in her bookkeeping career, Marie stood at the open loading bay of the warehouse.
As I stood at the door, enjoying the first breath of spring air, two little boys walked up this narrow street. As they neared the door, David spoke.
“Hello.”
“Hello,” I said, returning the greeting. “And where do you boys live?”
They told me, and as the conversation continued I learned from these boys that they belonged to a gang to which only children up to ten might belong. And they had a hut.
“Just where is this hut?” I asked.
“Oh, we can’t tell. Only kids in our gang can know,” they said.
Marie learned that the boys lived in a “cheap hotel” – the equivalent of living today in a motel – not exactly homeless, but transient, and very poor, and without adult supervision during the day or anywhere to play except on the streets and back alleys of the downtown industrial district.
Marie baked an apple pie, and watched for the boys the next day.
I’m just as sorry as I can be that I am not ten years old,” I said.
“Why?” they asked.
“Because if I were, perhaps you would let me belong to your gang.”
“Oh, you can,” said David. “Each year we make it higher. Next year kids up to twelve can belong.”
“How many years before I may belong?” I asked.
“Oh, we will let you belong right now,” they said.
Next day they agreed to let my husband and also our stockman join, and the gang headquarters were immediately transferred to the loading platform of the J.H. Felt Motor Supply Company.
Thereafter, throughout the spring and summer, a growing number of children, ages 2 to about 12, showed up at the loading bay to play during the day. Marie rounded up pencils and crayons, and all the scrap paper and the backs of no-longer-needed business papers became art materials for the children. She collected newspapers and crepe paper and games for the children. The business provided a table for them, and packing boxes for seats – the children wrote their names on the packing boxes and claimed their own “chairs” whenever they wanted them.
Marie taught the children to make puppets and put on puppet shows. They put on plays, and vaudeville shows. “Under guidance,” Marie said, “they were safe and the ugly side of life, too often the lot of such children to know, was partially replaced by happier things.”
Marie wasn’t alone in caring for this gang of street children. Merle Corey (I don’t know her relationship to the Felts or to their business – perhaps she was an employee of theirs, or worked at another nearby business, because she was there every day) took to bringing in two gallons of milk every day. They divided that milk into smaller bottles, filled according to the number of children in each family, and sent it home with the children. Joseph and Mary Kirkwood of American Fork began sending apples and vegetables to the children. Others working in the neighborhood contributed games and used clothing. Traveling salesmen came to know of the gang, and donated games and supplies.
One Saturday they went to the zoo together – the first time some of the children had ever been to a zoo. They fed popcorn to the animals, rode around town on the streetcars, and make a stop for ice cream at the parlor owned by a Felt family member.
I thought that when school started our summer play school would end, but not so. The children came to see me on their way to school; they called in at noon as they went home for lunch; and again as they went back to school after lunch. From about 3:45 until 5:30 our store was filled with children: drawing, putting on shows and programs, playing with plasticine and printing presses, etc. We had more children than at any previous time.
That was when the problem of Bob arose. Bob was a new boy in school, a ward of the court, a bully. The other children were fearful of him and did not want Bob to be a part of their gang. “If you let him come over here to play, we can’t come any more,” a child told Marie. Marie suggested they invite Bob anyway – if they kept him busy having fun, maybe he would be too busy to be mean. The children were reluctant.
Days passed by. One evening just as I was about to go home from work, Don and Johnny came dashing in, calling, “Mrs. Felt, Mrs. Felt, guess what?”
Of course I wondered what on earth had happened. They said that they had been talking to Bob about clubs and gangs and had told Bob that they belonged to one.
“Which one do you belong to?” Bob had asked.
“To Mrs. Felt’s gang,” replied Don.
“Why don’t you let me belong?”
“Because,” answered Don, “if you belong to Mrs. Felt’s gang you will have to be good.”
Well, Bob promised to be good, and the next day he came to play with the other children. He was just as pleasant and grand as a little boy could be, and proved to be quite a leader. One day I asked him if he liked to belong to our club and he replied, “Darn tootin’.”
The work had grown to be almost too much for Marie to handle while also working for her husband’s business. At about that time, she began to get help not just from people donating supplies, but from other organizations. Social service agencies called to watch and understand what Marie was doing. Salt Lake’s city recreation program offered assistance. Wallace F. Bennett, president of his family’s paint and glass business and future U.S. Senator, offered the use of a room in a building he owned near the Felt auto supply business, and John M. Wallace, mayor of Salt Lake City, offered to pay for the light and heat in the new “clubhouse.” Those men also kicked in $100 to hire workmen to clean and paint the room to make it attractive to the children.
The Felt Recreation Center officially opened on March 9, 1939. About 200 parents, city leaders, and representatives of the Kiwanis Club, the Church, and various other organizations were represented. Bob, the erstwhile bully, and still ward of the juvenile court, brought with him Juvenile Court Judge Rulon Clark and other court officials.
The “gang” continued to grow over the next few years – not only did it provide play school and activities for smaller children, but it began to provide services for children up to age 18, with ping pong tables and supervised dances. The program became so popular that the Felt Recreation Center changed quarters every year. They were fortunate to find larger facilities, always rent free, provided by the LDS Church, the City Recreation Department, and the Kiwanis Club. But because their quarters were always borrowed, they were subject to being asked to vacate time and time again, as World War II began and government offices expanded into the spaces that had been loaned. Even when the Felt Recreation Center bought its own building, they were turned out of doors when the USO commandeered their building, with the promise that it would be returned to the children after the war. Even then, though, the children were able to find another meeting place, too small and inadequate, but they viewed it as their contribution to the war effort.
The Felt Recreation Center is still functioning, in 2015, as the Kiwanis-Felt Recreation Center (440 South 900 East, Salt Lake City), 41 years after Marie Fox Felt died. “Every child is mine,” she told an interviewer in 1965. “Every child is mine.”
Photos:
Marie Fox Felt with one of the books of scripture stories she wrote for LDS children
Children of the original “gang”
Children playing with the sand table at the first room provided to the Felt Recreation Center by the Bennett family and the City of Salt Lake
Formal portrait of Marie Fox Felt
A beautiful story. Thank you.
Wonderful. This story could be filed under the category, “Have I done any good in the world today?”
Wow. What a wonderful woman.
Oooh! You should write ANOTHER book with stories like this one. (Because I’m guessing this story wouldn’t really fit in your current one.) Knowing about women like this can only inspire us to be better.
Glad you enjoyed this. I love it when somebody who sees something that needs to be done just does it.
JeannineL, don’t be too surprised to see two or three sentences of Marie’s story in the book — when I write about the social work done by the Church, probably the Relief Society’s work with adoptions and social work will be the main story, but I may broaden the picture a little to include other types of social work that Latter-day Saint women engaged in, including kindergarten and child welfare.
OK, you made me cry. Satisfied?
Thank you for sharing the inspiring story of Marie Felt!
Still functioning in 2015?! What an incredible legacy.
This made me cry like no other Keepa story.
Made me cry, too.
Now that’s what I call mothering those in your community. Thank you for sharing this, Ardis.
How wonderful. Thank you for sharing.
Looks like Keepa should have been distributed with a packet of tissues this morning … I’m very happy it moved you. I guess it’s something about taking care of “the least of these,” right? Everybody was willing to help, but somebody had to start.
Tears here too. I wonder what ever happened to the gang members. Is there any record you’re aware of that tells what this service led to? I so want there to be happy endings, though I’m painfully aware those don’t always happen in social work situations.
I am reminded strongly of one of my favorite passages from “The Great Divorce” by C. S. Lewis; for those not familiar with this book, it is taking place on the outskirts of Heaven (warning: really long passage ahead:
First came bright Spirits, not the Spirits of men, who danced and scattered flowers. Then, on the left and right, at each side of the forest avenue, came youthful shapes, boys upon one hand, and girls upon the other. If I could remember their singing and write down the notes, no man who read that score would ever grow sick or old. Between them went musicians: and after these a lady in whose honour all this was being done.
I cannot now remember whether she was naked or clothed. If she were naked, then it must have been the almost visible penumbra of her courtesy and joy which produces in my memory the illusion of a great and shining train that followed her across the happy grass. If she were clothed, then the illusion of nakedness is doubtless due to the clarity with which her inmost spirit shone through the clothes. For clothes in that country are not a disguise: the spiritual body lives along each thread and turns them into living organs. A robe or a crown is there as much one of the wearer’s features as a lip or an eye.
But I have forgotten. And only partly do I remember the unbearable beauty of her face.
“Is it?…is it?” I whispered to my guide.
“Not at all,” said he. “It’s someone ye’ll never have heard of. Her name on earth was Sarah Smith and she lived at Golders Green.”
“She seems to be…well, a person of particular importance?”
“Aye. She is one of the great ones. Ye have heard that fame in this country and fame on Earth are two quite different things.”
“And who are these gigantic people…look! They’re like emeralds…who are dancing and throwing flowers before here?”
“Haven’t ye read your Milton? A thousand liveried angels lackey her.”
“And who are all these young men and women on each side?”
“They are her sons and daughters.”
“She must have had a very large family, Sir.”
“Every young man or boy that met her became her son – even if it was only the boy that brought the meat to her back door. Every girl that met her was her daughter.”
“Isn’t that a bit hard on their own parents?”
“No. There are those that steal other people’s children. But her motherhood was of a different kind. Those on whom it fell went back to their natural parents loving them more. Few men looked on her without becoming, in a certain fashion, her lovers. But it was the kind of love that made them not less true, but truer, to their own wives.”
“And how…but hullo! What are all these animals? A cat-two cats-dozens of cats. And all those dogs…why, I can’t count them. And the birds. And the horses.”
“They are her beasts.”
“Did she keep a sort of zoo? I mean, this is a bit too much.”
“Every beast and bird that came near her had its place in her love. In her they became themselves. And now the abundance of life she has in Christ from the Father flows over into them.”
I looked at my Teacher in amazement.
“Yes,” he said. “It is like when you throw a stone into a pool, and the concentric waves spread out further and further. Who knows where it will end? Redeemed humanity is still young, it has hardly come to its full strength. But already there is joy enough in the little finger of a great saint such as yonder lady to waken all the dead things of the universe into life.”
Chad, none of the accounts I have seen have provided last names for the children so I can’t track any of them. It’s possible that Marie Fox Felt’s papers at the University of Utah would provide some clues, but I haven’t been up to see them yet. You want to know whatever became of the bully Bob, don’t you? Me too.
Am I that transparent?!?! Bully Bob would be great, but any of the gang members would make for a great story.
I don’t get a chance to read the blog much these days, but I’m glad I had a moment to enjoy this gem. Thanks!
Moniker! We’ve missed you around here. Thanks for dropping by.
Forgive the tangent, but my grandfather, William Dale, worked very closely with judge Rulon Clark in the early days of his career as a probation officer in the Utah juvenile court system during the 1950s. I found a couple of references in his autobiography:
He also notes that Judge Clark served a mission to New Zealand, and was a judge from 1926 to 1959.
Love this story. Love this website. Interesting and useful on so many levels.
I’m really glad to have you as a reader, Myra. Thanks for commenting.
Awesome story. Thank-you for sharing.
Darn tootin’ I want to know what happened to Bob the Bully.
I am interested in any followup stories about those young people that Marie Fox Felt and the others spent so much time loving. How have they done? Where are they now?
Mickey, I have only first names as of now, so it is impossible to track them. It is possible that someone wrote a reminiscence and mentioned his participation, or I might come across a newspaper article sometime that mentioned a full name — but as of now, there is no way I can research the later lives of any of “the gang.”
I found an article in the Ogden Standard-Examiner, April 2, 1939, which talks about a play based on the Gang.
The article goes on for 9 paragraphs, which I don’t have time to type out now…
Page 18 of that newspaper, near the middle of the page.
Thank you, lindberg! That’s a terrific find!
Here’s the rest of the Standard-Examiner article:
This is beautiful!
How’d I miss this back in July? Thanks to Lindberg for his late comment or I would have missed it completely!
Great story!
One more update: the Kiwanas-Felt Recreation center is no more; it was torn down earlier this year, per an article published in the Deseret News on August 20 of this year (and which quotes this very Keepa posting!):
Oh. Ouch. Thanks, lindberg.
I recognize the need for such housing, and heartily approve its creation — but this article strains way, way, WAY too hard to pretend that housing for a very few (68!) families is the equivalent of, or superior to, the recreational services for a far larger number of families. Even the kids in Mrs. Felt’s original gang had roofs over their heads, but needed much, much more beyond that.
I mean, REALLY? Incorporating leftover material bits of the rec center as “design elements” is somehow of benefit to the children who used to play there, or to the memory of Mrs. Felt? REALLY??
Yeah, I agree. Kind of a bummer postscript to a great story. I liked it better when it finished off with “The Felt Recreation Center is still functioning in 2015.” 🙁
This is such a great story (well, except that the recreation center was torn down). I wonder if you could find some of these children by posting the photos, first names and story on facebook. I bet someone out there would know who they are.