Granny and the Wolves

There is probably no living creature more furious in defense of a blood relative than a human grandmother protecting her grandchild.

They roar like grizzlies in the face of even mild danger and, by the time the roaring stops they are in full attack, teeth bared and ears flattened back.

God help you if you come between a granny and her youngling.

Newspaper files are filled with stories of grandmothers who have risen to stunning heights of courage in defense of a grandchild, including one who chased an entire gang through the streets of Pacoima.

That is partially because grandmothers today are younger, healthier and not shy about wielding a baseball bat when necessary.

In other eras, a bat was almost the only kind of self-defense they might offer, which is why so many grannies were eaten by wolves.

But times, as Bobby Dylan used to sing, are a-changing, and we have the little old lady from San Marino to thank for that.

I use the phrase for alliterative purposes only, since Yvonne Young is neither little nor old in the sense that age implies weakness or befuddlement.

Au contraire.

She is one tough lady, and she’s campaigning for the right of millions of grandparents to be close to the kids they love.

At 69, Young is president of Grandparents and Grandchildren, a statewide organization with about 1,000 members that has successfully fought for laws guaranteeing visitation rights and adoption preferences for grandparents.

Young’s interest in the fledgling organization was prompted when her 13-year-old grandson, Tommy, suffered what apparently was drug-induced brain damage in 1981. Tommy’s father is Yvonne Young’s son.

The boy’s parents were divorced, but even before that he was close to his grandmother.

“Nothing could keep us apart, kiddo,” Young said the other day in her San Marino home. She is a handsome woman with close-cropped hair and the manner of a fifth-grade teacher who works part-time as a bouncer.

“Tommy was here every weekend before the accident and on Easter and Christmas vacations and et cetera, et cetera. Every birthday party was at this house.”

How the boy ingested the drug (believed to have been PCP) is unknown, but its effect was to plunge him into a five-day coma and to impair his ability to remember or to learn.

“I spent two hours talking him out of the coma,” Young said, softening with the memory. “I talked to him about his dog Sandy, about the tree house he and his grandfather had built, about his best friend Mark and about trips we’d taken.

“When he opened his eyes, he reached up and touched my face. . . . “

What happened thereafter sent granny marching off to war.

Tommy’s mother, apparently bitter about the divorce, began making it difficult for Young to see her grandson, a situation Young found intolerable.

As a custody battle moved into the courts, Young began hearing about a group of grandmothers fighting to get a bill through that guaranteed visitation rights to grandparents of children whose families were split by death or divorce.

She joined the fight, helped get the bill passed, and eventually took over the organization.

Since then, two other measures backed by the militant grannies have been adopted by the state, one of which grants preferential consideration to grandparents in the placement of a child taken from his natural parents. The other enhances visitation rights.

Young’s organization is made up of both grandmothers and grandfathers, but it’s the grannies that give it muscle.

They take their cases to the media, hound legislators and, when necessary, confront the governor at public functions. Their primary concern is the welfare of the children and the rights of the grandparents.

“Sometimes, we practically raise these kids,” Young said. “Then, because of a divorce, we are denied the right to even see them. Damn, kiddo, that makes me mad.”

Young blames social workers for a lot of the problems grandparents face in either seeing or adopting their grandchildren. She vows they will be dealt with, removing a formidable barrier between granny and child.

Meanwhile, she has won the right to see her beloved Tommy both at her house and in the board-and-care home where he lives.

“We’re just not going to sit back and take it anymore, kiddo,” Young said, scowling. “We’re fighting mad.”

You get no (gulp) argument from me, granny.