Day Care Center Has Singular Purpose--Pride : Single Parents Given Recognition, Moral Support for Efforts

Sheila Swift of Garden Grove clutched the certificate she had just received acknowledging her efforts as a single mother. “It’s hard to be both mother and father,” Swift said. “I’ve shed a lot of tears, but I’m doing a good job, by the grace of God.”

In January, Swift, 30 years old and just divorced, came to California from Oklahoma with her two children. They moved in with her brother in Garden Grove while Swift looked for work. Now her son, 4, and daughter, 6, attend Pride Development Council’s subsidized day care center in Santa Ana while Swift is at her job as an operator for Dial-a-Ride.

On Saturday, she was among nine single mothers and fathers who received a rare pat on the back during Pride Development Council’s third annual tribute to Orange County single parents at the Santa Ana Zoo. “Being recognized is good moral support,” Swift said after the awards program in the zoo’s amphitheater.

Pride Development Council is one of the county’s few subsidized day care centers that sets its fees to working parents on a sliding scale. The center provides children from the ages of 2 to 14 with breakfast and lunch, as well as transportation to and from school or special programs at UC Irvine.

Started With 6 Children

Led by executive director Dorothy Davis, 57, the center has grown in the past seven years from an enrollment of six children cared for in the dining room of the First Mission Baptist Church to a multiple-services operation serving 130 children in a converted house, barn, garage and two trailers on Sullivan Street. In addition to tuition, the center receives funds from United Way, federal block grants, county revenue-sharing programs and private contributions.

Because it is in crowded central Santa Ana, an area with high unemployment and crime rates, the center’s windows and doors are barred. Some of the parents are professional people, Davis said, including an attorney and a teacher. But most, she said, are working women--many of whom are trying to get off welfare.

Davis said 87% of the parents are single, and that the availability of safe, affordable child care encourages them to look for and become established in jobs, or to go to school. Eighteen single mothers have finished college while their children were at Pride, she added.

“We believe we can break the welfare cycle,” Davis said. Explaining the annual tributes to single parents, she said that every positive step the parents take, starting with placing their children in day care, needs to be praised. “Seldom do people take time to say, ‘You’re doing a good job.’ If I tell them they’re doing a good job, then they will feel like continuing.”

On Saturday about 100 children, parents, city and county officials and Pride board members mingled in the shade, eating chili dogs and salsa. Children tugged at balloons as a band played. Community service officers from the Santa Ana police had brought their “talking car” and the Orange County Health Department had set up a card table offering information on immunizations, checkups and seat belts.

8 Guests of Honor

The festival honored all single parents, but only a few received certificates recognizing the development of their children, their self-support, community involvement and the ability to cope with single parenthood, their achievements and goals. These special guests of honor were Nestor Vale, Bob Olson, Regina Ford, Thelma Cole, Fran Williams, Bill Kemmer, Ella Croney and Arnetta Stewart.

Although past tributes had been evening banquets, this year’s awards gathering took place outdoors so the parents and children could spend time together. “If you’re gone working from 6:30 to 5:30, when do you spend time with the children?” Davis asked.

In addition, she said, she hoped to raise some money for Pride. Adults were to pay $3 each, but board member Leon Napper of Irvine, who collected the entry fees, admitted anyone with a sad story free.

There were contributions from 45 individuals and businesses, including $2,500 from Sears, Roebuck. Sears general operations manager Chuck Hemphill of Mission Viejo serves on Pride’s board and also on Sears’ Los Angeles Group Black Activist Committee. The committee, he said, seeks out groups worthy of funds. Last year, Sears gave $1,500 to the single parents’ tribute, Hemphill said. “Dorothy Davis has done quite a job for the community of Santa Ana,” he said.

Davis’ spunk, missionary zeal and persuasive abilities are given much of the credit for Pride’s growth. “She’s proven to us she’s filling a need,” said Dan Miller, executive assistant to Orange County Supervisor Roger Stanton, whose district includes Santa Ana. “A community-based organization run by a committed individual with ties in the community is probably the most effective program that can be run.”

‘Terrific Vision’

“This is one of the poorest areas of the city--a mix of Hispanic and black and Asian,” said Santa Ana Mayor Dan Griset. He said of Davis: “She’s got a terrific vision for kids and enthusiasm. Where life’s problems are most severe, she’s doing her work.

“That kind of spirit will be needed in greater numbers in our city,” he predicted. “We want to make sure kids can wake up with optimism and not see a lot of failure around them.”

Richard Medrano Jr., 30, of Santa Ana, is a single father who came to the tribute Saturday with his son, Ricky, 6. Medrano said he wants his son to be genuinely cared for and to learn courtesy and hygiene as well as numbers and letters while he is at his job on a computer assembly line in Huntington Beach. He said he is comfortable with services at the Pride center.

And he likes the idea of a tribute to single parents. “It gives you extra incentive,” he said. “If one person says you’re doing a good job, it makes you try harder to go beyond just what’s expected.”

Davis said she had a reason for naming her organization Pride.

“These people needed a sense of pride. Now,” she said, “this name is coming true.”