Finding Family Ties : Volunteer ‘Grandmas’ Offer Laps, Stories and Love to 60 Preschoolers

For eight decades, 81-year-old Frances Tourkolias and 87-year-old Lulu Neill had little in common.

Tourkolias, who was born in the United States, spent most of her childhood in Poland living on a farm with her parents. She received no formal education. After she returned to the United States in her 20s, was married and then widowed, she struggled to raise two children alone.

Neill, on the other hand, received a master’s degree in education and taught in public and private schools in Southern California for nearly half a century. She lived in a 10-room house with her husband for 51 years, raising bunches of children--their own, an adopted son and about 30 foster children. She was widowed in 1980.

Last summer, however, the two women discovered that they share a powerful bond: 60 children who call both of them “Grandma.”

Preschool Volunteers

The two are volunteers at the Weekday Preschool in Northridge, a nonprofit school sponsored by the Northridge United Methodist Church. They arrive once a week to read stories, join in arts and crafts or simply provide the special type of love for which grandmothers are treasured.

“It’s wonderful for the children,” said preschool director Sally Taylor. “Many of them don’t have grandparents who live nearby. What they’re learning is that it’s OK to be old, and that these are real people.”

From all outward signs, each woman appears to have developed a special rapport with the school’s children.

When the children see Tourkolias rounding the corner to the school each Wednesday morning, Taylor said, they often run to find their kickballs.

“She gets right out there and plays kickball with the children. They love it,” Taylor said. “One Wednesday, when Frances didn’t show up, I called her because I was worried. She cried because, until then, she hadn’t realized how much we missed her when she was gone.”

Neill, who has difficulty walking and is legally blind, often sits in a rocking chair that has been brought out under a tree in the play yard. She makes room on her lap for children, who come to whisper small secrets in her ear.

“One day, a little boy came over and asked if I had a grandma,” Neill recalled. “I said, ‘Yes.’ Then he asked me if she was dead, and I said, ‘Yes.’ ” The little boy then ran over to the slide and went up and down it before returning to where Neill was sitting. “In a serious little voice, he said, ‘My grandma died, too,’ ” she said.

Neill’s affinity for children didn’t come overnight. The silver-haired grandmother says she has “been a teacher since year one and I guess I’ll always be a teacher.”

Her first experiences at the front of the classroom, she said, were at a high school in Canyon City, Colo., in 1922. After coming to California several years later, she received a master’s degree in education from USC. For two years, she taught in Santa Ana, before marrying a junior high school teacher.

For the next two decades, she stayed home and raised her own children, taking care of other parents’ children as well.

“During World War II, mothers were going into defense work, and they needed someone to take care of children,” explained Neill, who has two sons of her own and adopted a third. Neill says she received a license to provide foster care in her 10-room house in Windsor Hills and, for the next 20 years, “30 children went in and out of my door for various lengths of time.” Two of those children stayed for more than 15 years.

When Neill’s husband retired in 1952, she decided to go back to teaching and taught public elementary school until until age 65 and special education classes for 10 years after that.

“This is a grandma with a big heart,” Tourkolias said with admiration, motioning to Neill. “I raised my kids, but I never did attach to them. I had children because I was afraid my husband would divorce me.” The two women looked at each other, and burst into laughter.

Tourkolias said her lack of a “true desire” to have children sprang from an early childhood experience. Tourkolias, who was born on a farm in Indiana, moved with her father and stepmother to a farm in Russian-occupied Poland when she was 11. The rest of her siblings, all older and no longer living at home, remained in the United States.

“They never even wrote a postcard to my father,” she said, her voice cracking with emotion. She said a friend sent cards to him, signing them with his childrens’ names.

“He had tears in his eyes when he read them, and I thought then about the terrible pain children can bring on you.” Turning to Neill, she said fondly, “But here’s a mother whose children love her and come back to her.”

Tourkolias lived in Europe until her father died. When she returned to the United States, she ironed shirts and sheets in a hotel where she met a Greek man whom she married. Her second son was born on the day of her husband’s funeral.

For the next 40 years, Tourkolias said, she worked odd jobs and struggled by on Social Security.

Unlike many senior volunteers who offer their time through organizations, Tourkolias and Neill, who live in apartment buildings within walking distance of the school, found the positions on their own.

“I was walking past the school yard last summer and there was a sign that said they needed volunteers. Immediately, I thought, ‘Oh boy,’ ” said Tourkolias, who also has volunteered at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Sepulveda twice a week for the last five years. Neill said she saw an advertisement for preschool volunteers in a local newspaper.

Volunteering their time at the preschool, both women say, has given them a sense of being useful, needed and loved. On top of that, Neill and Tourkolias appear to have developed respect and affection for each other.

“The determination she has!” Tourkolias exclaimed. “Besides the education.”

Neill smiled from her rocking chair and shook her head.

“I couldn’t do what she does,” she said, looking at her friend.