Childhood has rightly become a matter of overwhelming importance over the course of the past 100 years. There is very little that seems more important than the welfare of children--even to passing strangers in this busy, busy world we have come to live in. It’s difficult to imagine that the days of the Orphan Train movement were still rolling along up until 1929.
Charitable organizations saw to it that orphaned and abandoned children from the east coast were put on trains west to meet-up with adoptive families largely in the rural midwest. As far back as the 1850s there were some 30,000 orphaned kids living in abandoned conditions in New York City alone. The kids were sent on trains in some cases in the hope that luck alone would find them families. The practice ended in the late 1920s with the establishment of organized foster care in America.
Next week a newly-devised theatre piece will be staged at UWM that is drawn from real stories of fourteen individuals who were passengers on those trains. Robin Mello and UWM Theatre students have assembled the stories from diaries, photographs, interviews, newspaper reports, letters, and oral histories. The intention is to explore the courage of the children who survived the journey west. The stories resonate through song, storytelling and improvisation in what should be a fascinating look at a shadowy and ultimately triumphant corner of US history.
UWM’s Orphan Train runs Apr. 6 - 10 at Kenilworth Five-0-Eight on 1915 E. Kenilworth Ave. For ticket reservations, visit UWM online.
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