WPA Workers

Your article “Firefighter Deaths in the West” (July 8) lists “29 workers on public relief” who were engulfed in flames at Griffith Park.

Since few of your readers were alive when the event occurred in 1933, I would like to clarify that the Works Progress Administration, a part of President Roosevelt’s New Deal, employed more than 8.5 million people on 1.4 million projects. The average salary was $41.57 a month. It was not the dole. It was a program that helped many get through the Depression with self-respect, whether they were working as laborers or as musicians.

Unfortunately my dad, who was a contractor and builder, started with the WPA for the first time on Oct. 3, 1933, and died with the others in the fire.

In my opinion the phrase for which there is little understanding 51 years later, “on public relief,” demeans the sacrifice of these men who were trapped not only by a backfire but by a dark period in the history of our country.

MARGARET MILES DREW

Garden Grove