COA keeps many links to area Jewish community
Elizabeth Kander, the great Milwaukee Jewish activist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, is most famous now for having created “The Settlement Cookbook,” which is still in print.
But she had other effects upon Milwaukee that endure to this day — and one of them will soon be celebrating its centennial.
In 1906, Kander and a small group of other Jewish women decided that Jewish children from impoverished and primarily immigrant families needed to have some time out in the countryside for fresh air, sunshine, exercise and generally more healthful living.
So they founded the Personal Relief Society and that year took eight Milwaukee Jewish children out of the city to a rural area around Whitewater.
Soon, the organization was renamed the Children’s Outing Society. It acquired the first of its own campsites in 1909, and in 1916 it became a beneficiary agency of the Federated Jewish Charities, the predecessor organization of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation.
In 1930, the organization’s leaders renamed it the Children’s Outing Association, and today it is known as the COA Youth and Family Centers. Its programming still includes overnight and day camping, but also child care, adult education, parenting classes, after-school youth activities, among others.
It is no longer affiliated with the Jewish community or an MJF beneficiary. Its 2006 clientele of some 7,000 children and families, while still from Milwaukee’s economically disadvantaged population, is primarily African American and Hispanic.
Nevertheless, its ties to Milwaukee’s Jewish community are deep and lasting. Many COA leaders, professional and volunteer, are Jewish. According to its executive director, Thomas P. Schneider, who is himself Jewish, half of the more than 30 members of COA’s current board of directors are Jews.
Running in families
In fact, involvement in COA appears to run in some area Jewish families. Current board president John Florsheim, who is finishing his two-year term, is the son of a previous board member, Nancy Florsheim, whom he said was involved about 25 years ago.
“Its got a tremendous history and heritage as being an organization that not only has had a tremendous impact [on life in Milwaukee], but it is also very well-run,” Florsheim said in a telephone interview when asked about why he has gotten involved with COA.
“As a board member, I feel I get a lot back because of the people who are involved and because of its mission in the community,” he said.
Incoming board president Lucille Rosenberg is the wife of a former board president, the late Jack Rosenberg. As a pediatrician and child psychiatrist, she saw first-hand the benefits of COA’s programs.
“We don’t teach Jewish subjects” at COA, “but we teach Jewish philosophy” in the sense of learning to help oneself and to become independent,” Rosenberg said in an interview.
Moreover, she is involved with COA because of “the concept of tikkun olam [repair of the world]; you do what you can to help the community,” she said. And because COA has Jewish roots, others in the community feel “a relationship, an identification” with it, she added.
Barbie Blutstein’s mother served on the COA board; and her father donated a boat to Camp Sidney Cohen, the COA’s overnight camp from 1929 to 1990. (It was replaced by Camp Helen Brachman near Stevens Point.)
Blutstein and her husband Mort are both past board presidents; and they now are co-chairs, with Karin and Mark Kultgen, of COA’s 100th Anniversary Campaign to raise $5.8 million. This campaign has raised about $4.2 million as of last week.
“I love [COA’s] mission; caring for families and children in need of opportunities for realizing their growth potential,” Blutstein said in an interview.
Moreover, “we think it is very important that Jewish people participate in the general community welfare, big time,” Blutstein said. “We live in Milwaukee, in the whole community.”
Schneider, who has been COA’s executive director since 2001, came to the agency from a very different direction. An attorney by training, he was a U.S. attorney and a deputy district attorney, “prosecuting people for all sorts of offenses,” he said in a telephone interview.
But he also was involved in projects for crime reduction, and “worked with almost all the youth-serving agencies in the community.” And in that capacity, “when we would show people how these programs worked, we would often visit COA as sort of the outstanding example of what these programs could do.”
So when he was invited to become the executive director, Schneider readily agreed. “I immensely enjoy working with children and families,” he said. And though “the hours are long and the stress immense,” he also finds the work very rewarding.
“I see things every day that other people would think were miracles,” Schneider said. He has seen children who might have ended up the kind of people he prosecuted as criminals now “on track to become great members of the community.” Moreover, he has seen these children inspire their parents and other family members to do the same, he said.
And in its centennial year, COA continues to change and grow in furthering its mission. In April, it opened the Alice Bertschy Kadish Park in the area adjacent to COA’s Riverwest neighborhood location on North Ave.
In May, COA opened its Goldin Center on 24th and Burleigh Sts. in one of Milwaukee’s most distressed neighborhoods. Schneider said that in its first eight months of operation, more than 1,500 kids made use of the new facility.
Finally, the centennial celebration itself will take place on Nov. 11 at the Milwaukee Art Museum.
Through all this and facing toward the future, Schneider said, “The values we promote today are in many ways the same vision and values that began with the pioneering women in the early 20th century.”
“I wonder if Kander and so many others, all the women who created [COA] in the early 1900s could have imagined that 100 years and a quarter of a million children and families later, COA would not only be here, but would be continuing to grow and thrive,” Schneider said.
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