Clara McBride Hale
1905-1992
Clara McBride Hale, also known as Mother Hale, ran a daycare for children and fostered 40 others. After retiring at 65, she founded the Hale House Center, a home for children born addicted to drugs.
Hale was the first in her family to complete high school and married shortly after graduation. In 1938, her husband died from cancer and she was forced to provide for their three children during the Great Depression. She worked as a janitor and housecleaner but soon decided to start a childcare service in her home to spend more time with her children. The environment was so warm and welcoming that many of the children wanted to stay rather than go home at the end of the day so she began boarding them during the week. This led to her becoming a foster parent. Between 1947 and 1968 she fostered 40 children.
At 65, she closed her childcare business and retired. But retirement didn’t last long. In 1969, her daughter Lorraine offered to pay for the care of a drug-addicted mother and her addicted child if Hale would take care of them. By 1970, Hale had a license for a ‘home care facility’ and bought a larger building to have the space to take in more addicted babies. By 1975, after she acquired a license in child-care, she renamed her charity Hale House and devoted the rest of her life to caring for needy children. She took in children, free of charge, who were addicted to drugs and helped them through their addictive periods. Once they were healthy she would find families interested in adopting them. Until her death at 87, she help 1,000 drug-addicted babies and young children, children born with HIV, and children whose parents had died of AIDS.
Her advice on helping these children: “hold them, rock them, love them and tell them how great they are.”