The state of NC erected the above State Historical Marker in Raleigh, NC celebrating the history of the Methodist Orphanage (currently named Methodist Home for Children). This event is near and dear to my heart, since two of my sisters, one of my brothers and I, called this place our home; for me, just over ten years from early 1946 until I graduated from high school in June 1956.
The Methodist Orphanage (MO) was founded in 1899 by the North Carolina Methodist Church and has served over 2700 orphans before transitioning between 1979-1984 to a community based family services organizations.
Orphanages over the years have gotten a really bad rap, but this orphanage was the “c
ream of the crop”. The best way to judge this is by looking at those who graduated from the MO. This can be done, because each year there is a reunion of the MO graduates in Raleigh, NC. A finer group of men and women you will never meet. It is a rare graduate who did not become a pillar of his community. This is a subject I would love to explore in more detail in later blogs.
Entrance to the Orphanage ca 1953. The address was 1001 Glenwood Avenue and was know by the orphans as, "the foot of the hill" since to get to the the main part of the campus one must go up a hill for about 1/2 mile.
This is the Van Building: the administration and School building where all twelve grades had classes. The student body was, at most, around 200 kids at its peak. In the mid to late fifties it was much smaller and one of the reasons why the charter of the Orphanage changed
Class of 1956: This is all there was; we started high school with about thirty students. Some left because their family changes and was able to take them out of the orphanage, some funk a class or two and some just dropped out of school.
A very touchy massage.
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