Joseph Alfaro was a truck driver during the postwar years in St. Louis. He and his family sublet two rooms of an apartment from another family on Park Avenue. After three years of this arrangement, the landlord decided the house wasn’t safe with four adults and twelve children in four rooms. The Alfaros were asked to leave.
Alfaro quit his job as a truck driver to look full time for another place to live. Now they had neither a paying job nor a home of their own. They sold their furniture to ensure that their children had food, and hit the road. A homeless man is sad to see, but a homeless family of ten is a tragedy in the making. Joseph and his wife had eight children, ages fourteen years to four months, to consider.
Seeing no alternative, and too proud to beg, the family took to camping in Lafayette Park in mid-August, 1947. After their first night in the park, a Third District police officer found them lodging at the nearby Salvation Army, where they slept for a week.
With their allotted time gone, the Alfaros returned to Lafayette Park. The park superintendent offered to take up a collection to help feed them, but Joseph declined, saying he didn’t want money, just a place for his family.
You have to give kids credit. Over a five day park residency they made the best of the situation.
With old comforters their only camping equipment, they played around the park bandstand, in the shadow of Thomas Hart Benton, famous Missouri statesman. “They are all eaten up with mosquitoes, but they do enjoy themselves during the day, wading in the park pond,” said Mrs. Alfaro.
Both the St. Louis Star and Times and Post-Dispatch reported on the Alfaro’s situation. The coverage drew the attention of Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Ball, who took the family into their five room home in Maplewood.
Carl J. Reinecke, president of Reinecke Lumber Company also noticed the Alfaro’s plight. He visited the Hall’s home and offered the Alfaro family full access to the empty third floor of a company storeroom on Cass Avenue. The Alfaros were free to shelter in that space rent free until they could find a more permanent lodging.
Reinecke also gave the thirty-seven year old Joseph Alfaro work at his lumber company.
We’re living in difficult times; difficult mostly due to the way our own society works. We say we’re better than this, or this is not who we are, but empathy has become an emotion in shorter supply. I submit this to remind us all of the profound virtue in simply caring about those with less. Those most worthy of our admiration generally do the most while having the least to gain.
Resources
St. Louis Post-Dispatch; August 26 and August 27, 1947
St. Louis Star and Times; August 17 and August 29, 1947