Fred Jordan Mission a Light on Skid Row

There’s a black-and-white picture hanging on the wall of Fred Jordan’s downtown mission, showing the slender young minister preaching to a flock of bedraggled men in the 1950s.

Except for the faded dungarees and creased hats of a bygone age, and except for Jordan himself, the photo could have been snapped yesterday on the same skid row corner. Outside the six-story Fred Jordan Missions at 5th Street and Towne Avenue, the same hard hopelessness stalks a new generation of sick, hungry and addicted people lining the dirty sidewalks.

“I’ve been working on these streets for more than 50 years,” said Willie Jordan, Fred’s 69-year-old widow, who runs the nonprofit Christian charity her husband founded in 1944. “I certainly don’t have the answer.”

What she does have is hope, a hot meal for a homeless woman, a Christmas toy for a poor child. And she has three of her seven children working with her, helping the most destitute of Los Angeles’ poor by providing clothing and blankets, job training, Bible study and other services.

The organization received $10,000 from last year’s Los Angeles Times Holiday Campaign. That money helped fund the mission’s after-school program, which meets four days a week and serves about 200 children. It offers tutoring, meals and a safe place to play.

These days the bulk of Fred Jordan Missions’ tattered clients are women and children. When Willie Jordan came to the mission in the 1950s, skid row was populated by men, “winos, mostly,” she recalled. “We didn’t see women on the street until the early ‘70s,” when a prostitute who had been brutally beaten came to the mission for help.

The rising divorce rate and the spread of devastating drugs such as crack cocaine sent more and more women spiraling toward skid row. Just blocks from Los Angeles City Hall, the area is a forlorn and sometimes violent neighborhood of tents, plastic tarps and shopping carts.

A poor Mexican immigrant with 10 children, 52-year-old Estella Castro has relied on Fred Jordan Missions for more than a decade for furniture, toys and after-school programs.

“I feel safe here at the mission,” Castro said in Spanish as she helped prepare a tray of turkey drumsticks for the organization’s annual Thanksgiving feast. “I love it here.”

During this holiday season, as part of an annual fund-raising drive, The Times is highlighting groups that serve youths and families in Southern California. Every dollar raised, plus matching gifts from the McCormick Tribune Foundation, goes directly to such agencies; The Times and the foundation absorb all administrative costs.

Last year’s appeal and matching funds raised $653,000, which was allocated to more than 50 charities.

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