Behind the Lace Curtains

They stand on street corners like sentries in a kingdom of children, identifiable by the bright orange two-way radios they carry and the alert manner in which they view the streets.

All of them are women. Some are young mothers with kids just starting school, others grandmothers with only their love for children motivating the time they spend watching.

Some speak English, some don’t, but all are bound together in an effort as old as motherhood to protect not only their own children but all who pass their way on a walk to adulthood.

And therein may lie at least one solution to the fear and pain suffered by young people in urban settings aboil with intimidation and violence.

They call themselves the Mother’s Brigade and operate in a mixed neighborhood of apartment buildings and century-old homes in a corner of Long Beach known as the Willmore district.

The area is the city’s original town site and is an equal blend of Anglo and Latino families, embracing Washington Middle School and Edison Elementary.

It is also a concern of the Willmore City Heritage Assn., an organization dedicated to preserving not only the neighborhood’s beautiful old houses, but, more recently, its beautiful young children.

And the effort is working.

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It began about a year ago. Neighborhood Watch leader Mary Fehr and others began noticing an increase in “incidents” that concerned children walking home from school.

At a meeting of the Watch, they heard reports of sons and daughters being robbed and beaten by boys from both inside and outside the neighborhood. An empty house had been broken into and was being used as a “headquarters” by youths forming a gang.

“The whole thing was escalating from boys-will-be-boys to a more serious problem,” Fehr said one day recently in the 93-year-old home she and her husband are restoring. “Someone suggested we take turns watching the children who walk through our block and I said why not?”

Fehr, a 62-year-old grandmother, stood at a corner one afternoon as the children came home from school, and noticed that their behavior altered with her presence. The troublesome kids were subdued and the other kids seemed relieved.

The idea of an area “brigade” composed of women was suggested to an organization called Madres Unitas, a Hispanic arm of the Heritage Assn., and was unanimously endorsed.

“What we had to do,” said association president Carrol Goddard, “was not only preserve the historic houses but also preserve the people.”

“A neighborhood is more than sidewalks, streets and trees,” Fehr added. “We had to get out from behind our iron bars and lace curtains and do something for our kids.”

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Today, there are 48 women standing on a dozen street corners on a rotating basis. They’re there 45 minutes every school day afternoon with the blessing of the Long Beach Police Department and the Heritage Assn.

Each woman wears a badge and carries a radio and a whistle. Since the corner watches began last December, all have noticed a decrease in the trouble that caused the mothers to organize in the first place.

“It has drawn our community together,” Fehr says. “There’s a feeling of all of us doing something for our families.”

She believes that everyone who occupied the graceful old houses in the Willmore district left a mark on the area’s history. “Now Hispanics are a part of our new history, and we want to include them in making the neighborhood a better place to live.”

I have always suspected that if our streets were ever going to be safe again it would be the women who would make them so.

Evidence of their participation has surfaced occasionally in neighborhood reaction to a specific act of violence or to the presence of a child molester loose in the area. But the impact has been brief and minimal.

The Mother’s Brigade in Long Beach didn’t begin with the flags and trumpets of a horrifying social trauma. It began with a peek out from behind lace curtains and through barred windows. It began with a mutual love for children and a respect for each other.

Where it will lead in the grander scheme of life in Southern California is anyone’s guess, but this seems relevant: The organization’s name is taken from the old-time bucket brigades that united communities to put out fires.

So look around. Fires are still burning on the tips of candles lit to memorialize children who die in violence on the streets. Forming new brigades to douse the flames may be an idea whose time has come.

Al Martinez can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com