Auchard’s ‘Home for the Friendless’ a friendly read

The Home for the Friendless? What a name for a children’s home. But a little bit of research reveals that there were Homes for the Friendless all over the country. You have to marvel at the directness (and insensitivity) of those 19th-century social-services types.

At any rate. The Home for the Friendless in Betty Auchard’s memoir of the same name was in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Auchard and her brother and sister periodically found themselves there during the Great Depression. Their mother was a little independent for the times — loathe to deal with her husband’s various peccadilloes, unlike many of her contemporaries. So, when Waneta Peal took off, she usually took Betty, Bobby and Patty to the home.

Auchard remembers the home, its employees and the children’s lives there with a clear eye. It wasn’t a perfect situation but these were hard times and many were faring far worse — as she learned when the children briefly went to a home where the housefather had an unfortunate way of showing his affection (which Waneta, to her credit, promptly reported, putting a quick end to his child-care career).

The majority of the book takes place in the course of normal Peal family life (or what passed for it, anyway), and not at the home, where the children spent comparatively brief periods. For that reason, I initially thought the title was sort of a gimmick. But then I read Auchard’s book in its entirety. Her story, told through the Lifestories imprint of Stephens Press (a sister company to the Review-Journal), held my attention through many late-night hours of reading. If it needs a catchy title to draw people in, so be it.

One thing that I found a little irritating is that Auchard seems to find her young self a little too precious, a little too precocious. But as her story progresses, she establishes a more objective look at the young woman she must have been.

There are plenty of people around who remember the Depression or have heard detailed stories about it, and to them the book will no doubt strike familiar chords as Auchard details the extreme deprivation and the matter-of-fact manner in which her family and most of their contemporaries dealt with it. But to those of us whose forebears were lucky enough to escape the ravages of the era, “The Home for the Friendless” is both educational and provocative.