Transcript of interview with Ruth Urban by Barbara Tabach, August 24, 2015 and September 16, 2015

AN INTERVIEW WITH RUTH URBAN An Oral History Conducted by Barbara Tabach Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage Project Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas ii ?Southern Nevada Jewish Community Digital Heritage Project University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2014 Produced by: The Oral History Research Center at UNLV ? University Libraries Director: Claytee D. White Project Manager: Barbara Tabach Transcriber: Kristin Hicks Interviewers: Barbara Tabach, Claytee D. White Editors and Project Assistants: Maggie Lopes, Stefani Evans iii The recorded interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of a Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) Grant. The Oral History Research Center enables students and staff to work together with community members to generate this selection of first-person narratives. The participants in this project thank University of Nevada Las Vegas for the support given that allowed an idea the opportunity to flourish. The transcript received minimal editing that includes the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader?s understanding of the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. In several cases photographic sources accompany the individual interviews with permission of the narrator. The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of the Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage Project. Claytee D. White Director, Oral History Research Center University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas iv PREFACE Ruth Pearson Urban was born in 1948 in Los Angeles, California. At the age of ten, she moved to Las Vegas with her mother and older sister. Urban spent most of her childhood in the Huntridge area and was always heavily involved with Temple Beth Sholom. After graduating from Las Vegas High School, Urban attended the University of Nevada, Las Vegas where she received a bachelor?s degree in social work, and later, a master?s degree in counseling. Urban?s first job out of college was with a family service agency, while she also worked a part-time for Clark County?s juvenile court, where she was the first woman to have a male caseload. She was soon recruited by the district court to investigate contested custody cases. Urban remained with the district court for seventeen years, dedicating herself to promoting the strategy of mediation, based upon parental empowerment, to resolve cases. Her subsequent position was creating the Neighborhood Justice Center, which relied heavily on volunteers trained in mediation; she also created the Culture of Peace program to integrate mediation into schools. In 1998, Urban left public service to start her own consulting firm, The Urban Group, to provide facilitation services to organizations to assist with strategic planning, process improvement, and employee and leadership development. Urban has also been a strong leader within the Jewish community and at Congregation Ner Tamid. She was a founding member of Jewish Family Services and later served as the organization?s president. Additionally, she has served as Sisterhood president where she reinvented a dormant cookbook project as well as started the Jewish Women in the Arts program. In this interview, Urban discusses her upbringing in Las Vegas, and childhood friendships, many which came from within the Jewish community. She talks extensively about her professional career and passion for mediation as a strategy for problem-solving. In addition, Urban describes her community service commitments over the years, including her current role with Nevadans for the Common Good. Urban married Andrew Urban Jr. in 1983, and the couple have a son, Andrew Urban III. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Interview with Ruth Urban on August 24, 2015 and September 16, 2015 by Barbara Tabach in Las Vegas, Nevada Preface?????????????????????????????????..?..iv SESSION 1 Shares how her family settled in Las Vegas, from Los Angeles, after her parents? divorce. Reflects upon integrating into the community, with heavy involvement with Temple Beth Sholom; racial tension in the city, segregation; experiencing anti-Semitism. Mentions confirmation classmates, including Marilyn Tobman, Sharon Kirsch, Bob Unger, Susan Chenin, Janie Greenspun, Valerie Weiner, Shlisky brothers????????????????.?1-6 Discusses opening of Congregation Ner Tamid; family history and how parents ended up in California, and opened fabric stores. Talks about mother?s career as bookkeeper and auditor; which schools attended. Mentions Rowe family. Talks about mother?s friend Bella Stern, local businesswoman, and her possible mob connections, divorcee ranch??????????.7-12 Reflects upon life after high school; moving to Los Angeles for college and quickly retuning to finish at UNLV. Describes UNLV during the Sixties, welfare rights protest; campus leaders like Ruby Duncan, Myrna Williams, Esther Langston. Talks about first jobs out of college, for family service agency and Clark County juvenile court; interesting cases worked on; getting recruited to work for district court investigating custody cases???????????...13-18 Describes job with district court in detail and efforts to implement strategy of mediation, instead of investigations, for resolving cases; resistance towards mediation, especially from judges, the bar association; using training to turn opposition groups. Shifts hiring to those with mediation experience. Talks about leaving job to start county?s Neighborhood Justice Center program; recruiting and training volunteers as mediators??????????????????19-27 Talks about starting own business, The Urban Group; gets job to develop childcare rating system, with Cooperative Extension; running focus groups for various community projects; team conflict vi mediation. Describes project enhancing teamwork and morale for the University Medical Center; presenting experience as case study to International Association of Facilitators??28-35 SESSION 2 Remembers meeting husband, Andy, when both working for district court. Mentions joining Congregation Ner Tamid. Talks about involvement with Jewish Family Services and its growth over the years; developing programs to acknowledge contributions of local Jewish families. Mentions other involvements with Jewish community, including serving on Ner Tamid board; Sisterhood president, where started new programs, including Jewish Women in the Arts?..36-41 Discusses involvement with Nevadans for the Common Good; its focus on elder care; other religious congregations? participation; community organizing training. Reflects upon Jewish identity in Las Vegas; reason for rapid expansion of congregations in city. Recalls Jewish confirmation; names confirmation classmates and shares memories about them?????42-50 Index........................................................................................................................................51-52 vii 1 SESSION 1 This is Barbara Tabach and I am sitting with Ruth Urban. Today is August 24, 2015. We are recording stories for the Jewish Heritage project at UNLV. Let's start with how you came to live in Las Vegas. How old were you when you came? I was ten when we actually moved here, but we had been coming up to Las Vegas every summer since I can remember as a young child. We were living in Los Angeles and my mother had a childhood friend from New York who lived here and was somewhat of a pioneer here, Bella Stern. She had a ranch on the corner of what is Arville and Oakey. At that time Oakey was called Porter Drive and there was nothing but desert there and her ranch. Her ranch had bungalows on it for divorcees. It was quite a spectacular ranch. We used to come up every summer and spend the summer with her. My mom visited with her, and my sister and I played. It was a great summer. Then one summer, in 1958, we came up like we had every year and the next thing I know is my mother said, "Well, we're moving here." What did you think of that? That was the end of their marriage. She had come up here and there was a recession at the time, and my father had told her to scout out business opportunities. Then he filed for divorce and she was served while we were up here. It was quite a shock to everybody especially her with two young children. So that's how we ended up here in 1958. I have been here pretty much ever since, although I went to college for a year in California before returning. Wow. What was it like? I can't imagine at ten years moving from?What part of California were you from? We were living in La Ca?ada, so the foothills of the Angeles Crest. Then it was a very pristine area. It's changed considerably since then. We were up in the foothills of the mountains and away 2 from the hustle and bustle of Los Angeles. Then my mother, sister and I moved from there to here. Is your sister older or younger? She was a year older. Did both of you make the adjustment to living here full-time easily or what are your memories of that? I think we did. We had as normal a life as I thought was normal at the time. I missed my father, but my mother made sure we had a pretty normal life and got us immediately involved in the synagogue. We had been involved in the synagogue in La Ca?ada, which was a really fledgling synagogue then. She got us involved in Beth Sholom, which really was the only game in town here then. I attended religious school. We moved into an area that was brand-new, Hyde Park, and lived there just for a year, and then moved to the Huntridge area, where we lived for several years. Then my mother moved right by where Beth Sholom moved to, which was 17th and Oakey, and we lived at Sweeney where it dead ended almost at Spencer. It was maybe a block and a half from the temple, and our lives revolved around Beth Sholom. So you moved because the synagogue moved? She wanted to be closer to it? I think that was the reason, because the house was very close to Beth Sholom. Many of my friends were kids from religious school, or kids as I grew older from BBG, B'nai B'rith Girls. Who were some of your neighbors? Can you name drop a little bit? Probably not so much my immediate neighbors. If you want to know if they were part of the Jewish community, they weren't, but some of my neighbors not that far away and that I hung out with. I recently had lunch with two of my childhood friends, Susie Chenin and Vickie, who was then Graffman. We've been friends since pretty much since I moved here, since I was ten. So I keep up 3 with a few old friends. Some are Jewish; some are not. They're probably the friends I keep up with the most from the Jewish community from my childhood. What was Jewish education like back then? I can't really say what it was like except my perspective as a kid and it seemed just fine, but it was limited. There weren't lots of options. When I was a kid in terms of what temple you attended, it was pretty much Beth Sholom and that was it. It seemed fine. I have a childhood memory from when I was in confirmation. I went through Sunday school. Girls were not bat mitzvahed at the time, so that was never an option. But I went to confirmation class. I remember going to confirmation class and the rabbi was telling a story. It turned out that he was a racist. I was very disturbed by the story he told and the word he dropped. He was talking about being out somewhere on a road and there was a horrid rainstorm and the road was washed out and at the end of a road was a guy with a lantern warning people that the road dropped off and he used the N word. I got up, walked out of class and never went back. I told my mother and she said, "You don't have to go back." I was so disgusted with him and that really was kind of a huge memory and turning point in my sort of...concern and disillusion. So this would have been in the early sixties, probably. Yes, mid-sixties. Because there was a lot of racial conversations going on everywhere, but especially in Vegas, it was unique. Do you remember any of that from that age? I remember that growing up and in school. I remember that there was a lot of tension. There was the discussion about segregation. I remember when I was in high school I had black friends and I remember being called names because I had black friends. In terms of the amount of prejudice and racism that occurred, I think because I was Jewish I was more sensitive to that, and it was prevalent. 4 Was there anti-Semitism that you experienced? I experienced some when I was probably ten or eleven. I remember going to play with a neighborhood little girl who said to me, "Well, don't tell my mother that you're Jewish because she doesn't let me play with Jewish kids." That was probably the first real slap in the face that I got. So on and off some. I remember people would use the term, if they wanted to get a discount, Jewing things down, but I don't think they ever realized what that meant. I remember having a discussion with my best friend and she used that term as an adult in her twenties. I had to tell her, "Do you know what that means?" She had no clue. It was just she used it because she had heard it. It was part of the vernacular. People didn't think about it, yes. Yes, it was part of the vernacular. They had no idea that that's what that meant. Yes. Those are interesting memories. Who were some of the people that were in your confirmation class? Marilyn Tobman was in my confirmation class. There's a lot of people that I went to religious school with when I was in BBG that were in AZA that I still have an acquaintance with; I don't know that I'd say friendship because I don't see them socially. But I grew up with Bob Unger and his wife, Aydie. They're a little younger than I am. I know Ira Spector from that same group of friends. Jerry Gordon, from Gordon and Silver, and I were friends. I used to drive him to school. He was a year older than I was, but I actually had a car, which was a novelty at the time. I was friends with a gal named Sharon Kirsch, who's actually Harry Reid's wife's first cousin. So that was sort of interesting because he was still an up-and-comer as we were growing up and not in the position that he's in today. She was very proud of her cousin marrying Harry Reid then who was trying to make a name for himself. That was a lot of years back. Her family owned a drugstore that was off Bonanza and Main Street. We used to spend quite a bit of time at 5 that drugstore at the counter where they had like a soda shop and hamburgers and that sort of thing. I miss those kinds of places. Yes. What was the name of their drugstore? I don't remember if it was like Main Street Pharmacy or something. I don't recall. I was friends with Susie Chenin whose father was one of the only Jewish dentists in town. I used to walk to school with Janie Greenspun when we lived...My mother ended up getting this house near the temple, but before that we were living kind of in that area of Huntridge, and she lived off Sixth Street. We used to walk to school together. I used to walk to school with Valerie Wiener. So there were a lot of kids that I grew up with that are still in town and doing good things. It's interesting when we do projects like this, it's like we're such a transient city because we've grown so fast that finding those families that are deeply rooted and that's what you demonstrate is those names. Yes. And there's the Shlisky brothers. I don't know if you came across them, Ron and Matt Shlisky? No. They were in that same neighborhood, the Crestwood area, near Beth Sholom, when they were on 17th and Spencer. Then Susie and Shelly Lowe? I've heard those names, yes. So it was a small community. It was a small community, yes. But everybody knew each other because of the temple. Right. Because it was the only game in town. Right. Do you remember when other synagogues started to open up? I do. I remember when Ner Tamid used to have their meetings and my mother was curious about 6 them. One of the founders of Ner Tamid was Dr. Kirschbaum, who was one of the only Jewish vets and one of the only vets in town, and he was our vet. She liked Gene Kirschbaum. I liked him a lot, too. So we went to see what that was all about. I remember going to...I don't remember which church and exactly where it was, but we went there for services once or twice just to check them out. Never in a million years did I think that years later I'd be a member of Ner Tamid. We knew that there was an Orthodox shul that opened on Maryland Parkway and it was there for quite a while. Then you'd hear about these other pop-up synagogues; sometimes rabbis or cantors that left synagogues would start their own. I used to keep my pulse on some of the stuff of what was going on. Let's shift gears a little bit and bring me back to what you know about your family ancestry. I know my family ancestry on my mother's side was from Minsk and Pinsk, and from my father's side was from Bialystok. I was interested in the genealogy at one time and did a little bit of research. I have a cousin on my father's side of the family that's really involved in Jewish genealogy. He came to dinner here once a couple of years ago. He has some pretty extensive research done on the Pearson side of the family. Pearson, which is not a very Jewish name, was Anglicized when they immigrated to Canada. The story is that it was Peretsky and that they couldn't understand what they were saying when they came across the border and it sounded like Pearson and it became Pearson. They were Canadian, so actually Pearson turned out to be a very good name because of Lester Pearson, who wasn't related to us, but we used to try to claim him. When we'd go visit relatives in Canada and we'd come in through Montreal, we'd go, "Pearson, as in Lester." And for those who don't know who Lester Pearson is, who is he? He was the prime minister of Canada for a lot of years. I think the airport in Montreal is the Lester Pearson Airport. I'm not sure. So I have 7 relatives all over Canada; they were mostly in eastern Canada, but now they have spread all over. My mother's family immigrated through Ellis Island and settled in New York. So I have a lot of relatives in New York City and the surrounding area. How did everybody get to California, then? When my mother and father married, they really were looking for the land of opportunity and that's when they came to Los Angeles. It was very small then, not the metropolis it is now, and there was a lot of opportunity. My mother had connections through the garment industry and the materials industry, and my father had...kind of his father has been in the material business of dry goods, yardage, and my mother had the connections to be able to get that after the war. They opened up fabric stores and were in business together and had several stores. One of the stores that they had, and they had until my father died, was actually Straight Outta Compton, which is a popular movie now. But Compton then was a very middle class community, a suburb of Los Angeles that was thriving. So he opened a store in Compton. That community has changed quite a bit. It's gone through several changes it seems like. A lot of changes and now is kind of ground zero for a lot of gang activity. So you didn't experience any of that. No, that came years later, yes. My father had stores in Los Angeles and then he had a store in La Ca?ada, in Montrose, which was a little city near La Ca?ada where we lived. When your mom moved here, did she work outside of the home? How did she manage that? She had always worked in the stores and she was the bookkeeper for the stores. She was really ahead of her time. She had a career before she met my father in the garment industry and had worked her way up. I'll show you a picture I have of her that kind of shows you her sitting back, smoking a cigarette, dressed to the hilt and in a big office, and that was her office. 8 Wow. So she was a female executive at a time when they didn't exist. Right. Rarely existed. So she used that bookkeeping to get a job and she went to work here for a big furniture store that doesn't exist any longer, called Shepherd's Furniture. She worked for them for several years. Then ended up as an auditor for the Taxicab Authority and that's where she retired from, in that position. So she was a really great bookkeeper and auditor. She knew her business and excelled. She never had trouble finding a job. Very good. And you went to what elementary school? When I first moved here, I went to Red Rock for one year. I went to Red Rock Elementary because we were living in Hyde Park, which was a brand-new area, and it may have been the first or second year that Red Rock existed. Then we moved to John S. Park and I finished elementary school, fifth and sixth grade, at John S. Park. I went to fourth grade at Red Rock. Then I went to John C. Fremont. I just recently learned that when John C. Fremont opened it was an elementary school and then the need became so great for middle schools so it became a middle school. When I had lunch with my two childhood friends a couple of weeks ago, they told me that history. Then I went to the old Las Vegas High, which is now the LVA, beautiful building, beautiful campus. I had a lot of fun. The year I graduated, 1967, was the first year that Valley High School graduated. So half of the kids that I went to middle school with, and the beginning of high school, ended up going to Valley High and graduating from Valley High. That was kind of bittersweet because we had grown up with those kids and were looking forward to completing high school with them. The other family that was in the neighborhood that I grew up with was the Rowe family, Dr. Rowe was a chiropractor. He had three children?Michael, Kenny?Kenny was my age?and then a daughter whose name escapes me. They were very involved. They were related to the 9 Marshall Rousso family, which you've probably heard of. Oh, sure. So Mrs. Rowe, Malvina, a lovely woman, was the sister to one of the two sisters that married Marshall and Rousso. So Jayn Marshall. Jayn and...I'll think of the other. I can't think of that name, either, but I know who you're speaking of. That's how small the world is. Yes, small world. He was my chiropractor because when I was about ten or eleven I knocked my back out and my mother said, "Well, I believe in chiropractors; you're going to see Dr. Rowe." And I was hooked. He fixed my back. I went to him up until the point he retired. That's great. Yes. He was up there in years when he retired. So a long time. It is a small world because my mother was friendly with Malvina and Jayn's mother, who was Sara. Sara Saltzman? Yes. She owned a children's store that everybody shopped in called Just Girls. I think they had Just Boys as well. It was a very small Jewish community, and a very small community in general then. Everybody knew everybody and often people were related to each other that you may not have known, somehow, through marriage... When you meet people for the first time who maybe don't know how long you've lived in Las Vegas, what do they think or ask you the most? Did you have a normal childhood? Or, what was it like growing up? That's usually what they say. The standard, Do people really live in Las Vegas? Or they think that your mother was involved in show business somehow or whatever. 10 But it was really interesting. I want to go back in time just a minute to this friend of my mother's, Bella Stern. That would be great. Who was really a fascinating woman. We used to call her Aunt Bella. We were told at the time that she owned the ice company Polar Ice, which was a huge thing at that time because no one was producing ice; none of the hotels were producing ice. She not only had this ranch with all these bungalows, she had the ice company. She was extremely well-regarded when we'd visit her and she would take us to all these...There weren't a lot of places on the Strip, but she'd take us to the Desert Inn, I remember very specifically. When we would walk in, she was treated like royalty and they'd call her Mrs. Stern. We would eat at the nicest restaurants. We would go to the greatest shows. We were just really treated like royalty. I was very curious about...That was unusual. As an adult I thought, well, gee, how unusual for a woman to own?she also owned a motel on the Strip?to own all this property and own these businesses, which sounds somewhat that I'm being sexist, but at the time it was pretty unheard of for a woman to own all those things. So I don't know this and I don't want to say this, but certainly when I went to the Mob Museum and I was looking at all the old Las Vegas things, I had this feeling in the pit of my stomach that somehow she was connected with some of the people that founded Las Vegas. There were just too many things that looked too familiar. Oh, really? It was just really a weird feeling. I know that the university has a collection of some of her pictures. They're not from the Desert Inn, but that's where we went most of the time. They're from the old El Rancho and the Frontier. Anyway, it was sort of interesting. They have quite a collection of some of her memorabilia. I'll have to go look at that for some fresh photos, too, for this collection. So how did she and 11 your mother become friends? My understanding is that they grew up in Brooklyn together. My mother was an avid horseback rider and so was Bella. I don't know if they met at one of the riding stables in Brooklyn or at one point my mother was given like a year off, kind of like a sabbatical from her job, and she went out to a dude ranch in Arizona and she stayed out there. I don't know if they met there or they met at one of the riding stables in Brooklyn. But they had this love of horses and my mother was an avid horseback rider in her younger years. So it sounds like they were young women of the West. Yes. They weren't the stereotypical Brooklyn personality that you would think of. Interesting. Yes. Did you ever ride horses yourself? Oh, yes, I rode horses and we rode them at Bella's ranch. She had like little rodeos there. She was an avid horsewoman. There were lots of horses at the ranch and we went riding at the ranch and we went riding at...Down the road was a very famous stable here called Buck's Stable and we went riding at Buck's. That was really part of growing up. Here, at that age, at that time, you had to know how to ride a horse. Did she have children herself? She had no children. I never knew Mr. Stern, but she had been married at one point; that was not her maiden name. What an interesting occupation to have the divorcee ranch and all that going on and own property. That's great. What was the name of the motel that she owned? It was called the Lucerne Motel, and it was on the Strip in the area across from where Mandalay Bay is, near where that glass-bottom pool motel is. 12 It had never ever crossed my mind until I went to visit the Mob Museum that perhaps there was some connection there. Was there anything in particular that triggered that thought? I don't know other than looking at some of the old pictures and it sort of triggered some of these old memories of visiting her when I was younger than ten and going to the places with her. I didn't see any pictures of her. So it wasn't like a saw a picture of her. It was the genre, everything about it. It's a great museum for that though, for triggering memories I would think. But what's very interesting is I did fairly recent go and?I didn't go to the collection, but went online to look at what they had about her, and they have a very brief bio on her, none of which mentions any of that that I just said, not the icehouse, not the hotel and not the divorcee ranch. So I knew a very different history and biography of her than what is in the archives. That is good. But this is how we discover this, from first-person knowledge like that. So you grow up in Las Vegas and then you graduate from high school. What's your decision-making process about what you're going to do next? I decided to go to school in Los Angeles. I went for a year and was not very happy. So I came back here and finished up my undergraduate work at UNLV. I have a bachelor's degree in social work and a master's degree in counseling. I worked for several years, and while I was working went part-time to complete my master's degree. I wanted to get a master's in social work, but they didn't offer that at the time. So the only graduate degree they had?mind you, this is in the seventies?was in counseling and it wasn't even through the psychology department; it was through the education department. So it was educational foundations and counseling. I just wanted the master's ticket; I didn't care what it was. I just felt like I needed an advanced degree to advance. It turned out to be a good ticket. I never became a counselor, but it was a good ticket for 13 the work I was in. Let's talk about your career. So you get your degrees. Let me ask first, what was UNLV like when you were there? UNLV was like a desert. It was very sparse. I couldn't even tell you how many students there were, but it was a very small enrollment. I just read in the paper?it was just an outrageous enrollment [number]. I haven't even heard what the tally is, but we're growing. It's like thirty thousand or something like that. It was crazy. There wasn't a lot of options. I have some very fond memories of some of the people I went to school with. It was during the consciousness of the Sixties, lots of protesting, lots of dope smoking...It was a fun time to be going to college and it was a fun time to be very involved in that atmosphere. I remember being part of a welfare rights protest. I was smart enough to not go to the protest on the Strip where they blocked the Strip and many people got arrested. I knew enough not to get arrested, but I was very involved in some of the planning of it and some of the actual activities, but I knew not to be there physically to get arrested. Who were some of the leaders of that activity that you remember? Ruby Duncan was very involved and I know you know her from the black history project you did. Ruby had Operation Life. Just really was helping to make a better world for people who were unfortunate enough to be on the welfare system, which paid very little. There's a lot of misconceptions about people on welfare. She was really doing a great job. I have a lot of respect and regard for her. I'm trying to remember. I actually went to UNLV with Myrna Williams, who's a lot older than I, but she came back as an older student. Esther Langston was there. I don't know if you met 14 Esther. I've met her once. Was she part of your black history project? She's been interviewed. I didn't do her interview; Claytee did. At that time the undergraduate requirement for fieldwork was much greater than it ended up finally being. So we had to do a lot of fieldwork to graduate. So at one point she had an RV bus kind of thing. We were out doing social work in the field in this RV bus. This is Esther you're talking about? Yes. She was working on her DSW at USC at the time, but she came in to teach classes. Anyway, it was just a sort of raucous, fun time trying to heal the world and do good deeds. We had a lot of fun. I was just rereading Renee Diamond's interview and she mentions some of these people that she met through social activism. And within the Jewish community, Myrna's name comes up. What kind of leader or how do you remember Myrna's activities? I actually remember Myrna from several different ways, but one was that she was at UNLV when I was there. She was also very involved in one of the field opportunities that I had at a runaway house called Focus, which was started by her husband and a legislator at that time, Flora Dungan. Flora is many years passed away, but she was also Jewish. The Flora Dungan Humanities Building. She and Myrna were really close friends. It was Flora's husband, Ray Ben David, who was also Jewish, who had started the runaway house. So I had a field placement there for my undergraduate work. Later when I got my first job after I graduated and was doing social work for a family service agency, they got a grant to work with runaway kids through what was a national program, Traveler's Aid, and I was the person who had that job. I spent 50 percent of my time 15 working at the fami