The Boy at Booth Memorial

When fourteen-year-old Rene stepped off the streetcar in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1949 with his mother, who had taken the position as head nurse at the Salvation Army Booth Memorial home for young unwed mothers, he found himself in a living situation he could never have imagined. A young teen boy simply wasn't meant to live with so many pregnant girls. He was sure of that, ashamed of that. He tried to hide where he lived from his classmates, even to the point of getting on his school bus around the block from the home. He tried to bond with other classmates playing hockey, though he had yet to learn how to ice skate. Eventually, he began to take an interest in the home, in the women running it, and in the lives of the many girls who spent time there. He saw how hard it was for the girls to give up their babies, felt how painful it was when difficult births and death visited the home, and it changed him. The time he lived at Booth Memorial saw Rene take his first steps toward being the man he would one-day become.