Two friends team up to start youth program by Joan Johnson ('78) "With youth unemployment running at 20% - and a shocking 50% for minority youth - something just had to be done," says Gladys McCoy ('67 MSW). When she heard Mayor Ed Koch of New York talk about his idea for an American Conservation Corps to be modeled on the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) of depressed years, the former Multnomah County commissioner thought, "Why can't we create something like that in Oregon?" About the same time, McCoy learned that State Senator Frank Roberts and Represenlatille Rick Bauman were sponsoring a bill in the 1983 legislature to launch an Oregon CCc. The bill later passed, but funding for the project was not approved. That didn't SlOp Gladys McCoy_ If the state wouldn't fund the effort, why not a pilot project in Mullnomah County? Its purpose would be twofold: To complete public service jobs that would not be done otherwise due to the lack of govemment funds; and, in the process, to help unemployed young people develop marketable job skills through work experience and training. McCoy spearheaded the effort, gathering community leaders, friends and volunteers to help get the project started. A board, which included the mayors of each of the cities in Multnomah County, was formed. Leiters soliciting funds were sent to 1,200 Portland·area businesses, individuals, foundations and government agencies, and about $104,000 was raised - $68,000 in cash and $36,000 in in·kind contributions. One of the first to volunteer to help McCoy launch the venture was Bonnie Neal ('71). The two women have been "best friends" for 21 years, ever since the days they were raising families and trading babysitting in the same North Portland neighborhood. "We both had this gut feeling that this just needed to go." Divorced, with four young children to support, Neal moved to Portland in 1963, A Navy medic during the Korean conflict, she planned to use the C.I. bill 10 attend Portland State, but she was denied admittance due to poor high school grades. "And if it wasn't for Bob Tayler, I wouldn't be where I am today," she says, Neal explains that when she appealed the ruling, Tayler, then director of admissions, agreed "against his bener judgment" to admit her for one quarter. "He told me, 'If your grades are not fantastic, you're O\.lt'" But Tayler, now the University's director of alumni relations, can take pride in his decision. Neal earned a 3.0 GPA that first quarter and went on to receive a degree in secondary education in 1971. After graduation, Neal moved to White Salmon, Washington, where she taught school and later became co.owner of an auto dealership. In 1982 Neal moved back to Portland and, she says, she "kept running into Gladys McCoy." One day Neal was on her W.1Y to a job interview when she happened to see McCoy on the street. "Gladys said she had something she wanted to talk to me about." Neal never went to the interview. "I volunteered for several months and got so involved . . . w~ both had this gUI feeling that thiS just needed to go." Gladys McCoy ('67 MSW) and Bonnie Neal ('71) hillhe books and talk over summer plans with Richard Oliver (left) and Jeff Dyer (righI), enrollees in the Multnomah County Youth Services Demonstration Projed, starled by the fwo PSU grads. Neal has been working with the project since January 1984. In May 1984, she was hired as educational coordinator and in March 1985, she was named acting director. A sparse room filled with enthll§i;JSlJl Headquarters for the Mu1tnomah County Youth Services Demonstration Project is located in the old Foster School building at 5205 S.E. 86th Avenue in Portland. Furnishings are sparse - a couple of desks, several tables and some chairs are almost lost in the oversized room that serves as office, classroom and conference room. But the Spartan surroundings are enlivened with snapshots of a youth team working at Horsetail Falls. And the enthusiasm of McCoy and Neal fi lis the room, The initial demonstration project enrolled twenty 18·year-olds out of 80 unemployed young men and women who applied. The youth were assigned to one of three projects - building a stone wall al Horsetail Falls for the U.S, Forest Service, painting and repairing homes for low income residents of Mullnomah County, or working at Red Cross headquarters in Portland, They are paid a minimum wage for working and for aMending classes which are held one day a week. Those who stay with the program are promised a job upon completion of the one-year cycle. Sam Naito said, "If you send me kids who have the proper attitude and the proper work habits, I'll take one or two of them." McCoy is confidenl this is a promise the projed can keep: "I've talked to private sector people like Sam Naito. Sam said, 'If you send me kids who have the proper altitude and the proper work habits, I'll lake one or two of them and I know other business people who wili, too.'" Of the 20 who began the program in August, only one has been terminated. Seven otners have dropped out but Neal and McCoy consider them success stories - one decided to return 10 school, one married and moved [0 another slate, and five accepted full·time jobs, two with the agency that was training them. As long as unemployment rates for young people remain high, both Neal and McCoy would like to see the youth program continued and expanded. "We haven't begun to scratch the surface," says Neal, "either in terms of public projects that need to be done or jobs (or kids." "But we will not be taking jobs away from people," interjects McCoy. "We'll be doing jobs that wouldn't be done otherwise. Thai was part of the initial resolu lion . . . we will abide by that" "Way out west" from Tennessee That note of determination is typical of the softspoken McCoy, who surprised friends and family in Chattanooga, Tennessee, when, as a young, single woman, she decided in 1949 to move "way out west" to take a job with the Ponland YWCA, following her graduation from Talladega College in Alabama. She intended to stay a year and then attend Boston University to get her master's d~g.ree. But she met and later married (now Senator) Bill McCoy, settling in Portland, Gladys, who was named Oregon's Mother of the Year in 1980, JX)Stponed her education to raise their seven children, but when the youngest was three, she decided il was time to return to schooL She enrolled a1 Ponland State in 1965, earning her Master's of Social Work in 1967. Since then McCoy has had an impressive career in public service. She served as director of social .service programs for Vancouver Head Start for three years; laught SOCiology at Clark College and Pacific University; and .served as state omsbu1sman under Oregon Governor Bob Straub. In 1970 she was elected to the first of two terms on the Portland School Board, and in Continued on p_10 5
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