Hale House, the charity informally launched by Clara Hale in 1969 when she started taking babies born to drug addicts into her home for foster care, will no longer be taking in orphans. Ms. Hale’s charity — while she was alive it was mostly informal and often actually illegal — grew and grew until her death in 1992. It was rocked by scandal in 2001, when Eliot Spitzer indicted Hale’s daughter Lorraine and her husband for financial wrongdoing and neglecting the children in Hale House’s care. Today the Daily News tells us that the charity, facing a citywide decline in AIDS-infected and drug-addicted newborns, will shift its focus to more community services. For those of you who don’t know the story of Mother Hale, the Daily News has dredged up its obituary of her. It’s the kind of thing the tabloid does right — simply worded, civic-minded, a little punchy, and sentimental. We recommend you give it a read.
Hale House Shuts Doors to Orphans [NYDN]
Clara ‘Mother’ Hale’s amazing grace: She founded Hale House to care for babies born into addiction [NYDN]
