Courier-Post from Camden, New Jersey • Page 5

COURIER-POST, Monday, February 22, 1999 FROM PAGE 1A StillFamily continues to prosper Continued from Page 1A Vote Seniors courted Continued from Page 1A "William would not be a part of buying people. He believed the only way to fight slavery was to hurt it economically. He convinced Peter to have his family escape then-bondage, instead of him buying their freedom." Gloria Still Vs. nx, The united siblings made their way to their brother Samuel's home, where Charity Still lived, on a farm about eight miles away from James. "One of the daughters goes in to prepare Charity for the meeting," Gloria said, with a calming smile.

"She was nearly 80 and they didn't want to give her a heart attack." The siblings entered the house. They all began to talk. Peter sat next to his mother, who did not recognize him. Then a sister who lived nearby came in wondering "who was dead" when she saw all her brothers and her sister gathered in one place, Gloria said. The sister was Mahala.

She had lived with Peter and Levin in Maryland before escaping to New Jersey with her mother about 40 years earlier. She recognized her brother. "She said, 'I'm sure he must be one of our mother's lost Gloria said, quoting from one of the many books written about the Still family. At that point, one of the other sisters told Charity who Peter was. The aged woman got up from her chair, went into a nearby room and began to pray, Gloria said.

She came back out and asked Peter a few questions and began to weep. "The long lost son was blest," Pickard wrote. "He clasped his mother to his warm, full heart, and joyful tears stole down his dusky cheeks." Scon after his reunion with his mother, Peter began planning to buy his enslaved wife and children from the Alabama plantation where they remained. He asked his brother William, who was a man of means, to help him with the purchase. William refused.

"William would not be a part of buying people," Gloria explained. "He believed the only way to fight slavery was to hurt it economically. He convinced Peter to have his family escape their bondage, instead of him buying their freedom." Seth Concklin, a white abolitionist, volunteered to help deliver Vina and the children to Peter in the North. But the attempt failed miserably. "Concklin escapes with Vina and her children, who are by helping African Americans escape to the northern United States and to Canada.

Also part of the tour is the Rev. Terrell Persons, another Still family member who is pastor at Jacobs Chapel AME, Mount Laurel. Another highlight of the tour for Gloria Still came earlier this month, when she visited her alma mater Dunbar High School in Baltimore. A 1950 graduate, she told the story about early Still family descendants, brothers Peter and Levin Still, to students several weeks ago in the very same way she relayed it that afternoon. After buying his freedom in 1850, Peter Still sold into slavery in Alabama as a child made his way to Philadelphia, where he had heard that other members of his family had settled, Gloria recounted.

He set out to find them, but his brother Levin, who had been sold into slavery with him, had died years earlier before he could gain his freedom. When Peter got to the city he stopped at a boarding house, where a woman recommended he go to the anti-slavery office on North Fifth Street. The office kept church records and might have information on his mother, who Was known to be a religious woman, she told him. "He knew his mama lived in the church six days a week 'and went twice on Sundays," 1 Gloria said. "So he knew someone must know her." While eager to find his kin, Peter was wary of the people -helping him.

He thought they might try to send him back to his former life in the South or "commit some outrage upon his person," according to Kate :E.R. Pickard's The Kidnapped land the Ransomed, a biogra- phy of Peter and his wife Vina first published in 1856. Peter especially feared the young man at the church to -whom he first told his story. As he spoke to the young man, he sat as close as possible to door so he could make an ieasy escape, Gloria said. But "after Peter told his story, the young man spoke words that took the former slave by CURT HUDSONFbr the Courierfost A collection of Still family memorabilia traces their history.

A first edition of William Still's 'The Underground Railroad' (top) depicts Peter Still and his mother, Charity Still. At right is a small pistol Peter Still is thought to have used for protection, and the watches date from the 1800s. the homes of Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and William Lloyd Garrison, the abolitionist lecturer and journalist. They gave him references to help him raise money to buy his family. Even though it was illegal in Alabama to sell a slave his freedom or emancipate him, on Dec.

31, 1854, John Hogun sold Vina and the children to Peter for the hefty, hard-earned amount of $5,000. Peter and his family were finally free. Peter's freedom and the end of the Civil War marked the end of Stills being in bond age. In the late 1800s and beyond, the Stills continued to make family history with personal successes as professors, physicians, historians, models, entrepreneurs and in numerous other professions all made possible by their ancestors who rose above slavery. They flourished, and now number in the hundreds in South Jersey and throughout the region and the nation.

And every year, the Still elders retell the story and pass down the family legacy to a younger generation. This summer, at the family's reunion, the story will unfold again. adults now," Gloria said. "They get as far as the Ohio River. Slave hunters catch up with them.

Concklin is brutally murdered he's found with his hands and legs in chains and a fractured skull. The family is returned to slavery and Peter is in anguish. William tries to sell Peter on using the Underground Railroad again, but he will not hear of it." On Nov. 8, 1852, Peter left Burlington to raise money. He traveled north to New York, staying with his brother John in Brooklyn.

From there, he went to upstate New York and New England. He stopped at DYFSAgency criticized by citizens, child welfare experts sizes and create art and music rooms at all schools. The money also will go toward renovating science labs at East and West high schools, a new auditorium at West and repairs such as electrical upgrades and window replacements across the district. District administrators had hoped the township's senior citizen advisory board would throw its weight behind the bond, but chairwoman Irene Burke said the board stopped short of endorsing the spending plan, knowing many seniors' budgets are already tight. "It is difficult to try to reach seniors who you know that $10 more a month means a lot to them," Burke, 71, said.

"I don't think there's anybody in favor of raising taxes. There are many seniors on very limited incomes." Burke, however, will vote for the plan. "I know the schools need repairs," she said. "It's something that's been neglected for such a long time." Anna Mae Adams, 72, vowed to vote against the bond. "I'm not going to vote for it because my taxes are going to go up," Adams said.

"I really don't think the schools are that bad. If they could have seen the school I went to we still learned." From the start, Russo and school administrators have recognized the burden the increase could place on seniors and other residents with limited incomes. "The ability of the townspeople to pay a tax increase was always one of the most important concerns," Russo said. "I had a concern, a respect for the senior citizen." agency and agreed to adopt his daughter, who had been roaming with her family, sleeping in a car. At the time, the agency warned him that she might have a particularly traumatic adolescence because of her rootless beginning.

The agency promised to help if lems arose. "I've done everything I can to get their attention," Fischer said. When he finally was contacted by social workers, he found them to be "very professional and caring." But Fischer said they arrived too late to help his daughter, whose name is being withheld because of her age. Jim Smith, deputy commissioner of state Human Services, responded to the Fischers. "I'm not going to sit here and make excuses.

I certainly would have liked to have seen a call made in a week," Smith said. DYFS officials declined to discuss the Fischers' and Donahues' cases in detail. But in response to the Donahues' complaint, Venti said keeping brothers and sisters together was "a goal, not a policy." The Donahues should not have been told brothers and sisters must be kept together in every case, he said. Nevertheless, the Donahues recently sent DYFS a letter, saying that as of June 18 they will no longer keep foster children in their home. "We can no longer afford the expense of an attorney to represent us in our extremely frustrating efforts to receive the phone responses, information and clarifications from your personnel which we need and deserve in order to live organized and productive lives, as well as to function as foster parents," they wrote.

However, Robert Donahue, a Burlington City public school teacher, and his wife. Donna, a music teacher who gives private lessons, remain interested in adopting the 6-year-old boy if DYFS will allow it Child welfare laws getting an update "Suppose I should tell you that I am your brother?" the young man said, according to Pickard's book. "For all you have told me, I believe that you are a brother of mine. My father's name was Levin, and my mother's name is Sidney; and they lost two boys named Levin and Peter, about the time you speak of. I have often heard my mother mourn about those two children, and I am sure you must be one of them." The young man Peter spoke to was William Still, an agent of the Underground Railroad who wrote about the system and people whose lives it saved.

Peter knew nothing of his brother's achievements. He was still suspicious' of William, but he agreed to accompany him to where their mother, Charity Still, lived in Medford. William took Peter to visit two of his sisters in Philadelphia, and then the four of them headed for New Jersey. They stopped at the home of their brother James, a noted herbal physician from Medford. When Peter saw him, he was convinced.

"When Peter sees James he knows he's with his family," Gloria said. 'All of his doubt he said, because James is so like poor Levin there could be no mistake." reform, will trample the rights of the poor and those without affordable access to the legal system. Nadine Taub, a professor at Rutgers Law School and director of the Women's Rights Litigation Clinic, fears the state will stop working to reunite families in favor of getting children settled in permanent homes. But Assemblywoman Rose Heck, R-Bergen, does not believe parents should be allowed to keep their children "unless they've earned the right." "Children should come first, not families. We cannot have this yo yo experience, sending the child back and forth between foster parents and biological parents.

We destroy the wholeness and the wellness of the child," said Heck, who has coordinated task forces on domestic violence and child welfare. Workers for the state Division of Youth and Family Services in Monmouth County say that even when courts decide to remove children from families, many children still prefer to stay with their biological parents. "We must work toward reunification until the court severs parental rights. That's a legal mandate," said Michelle Kennedy, a caseworker in the Asbury Park DYFS office. "Our hearts go out to these kids, they really do.

"It's hard, especially with a very young child. All the way back, in the car, they're crying: 'That's my mom. That's my dad. Why can't I stay with mommy and daddy? Kennedy and Northern Monmouth County DYFS worker Sheryl Roach estimated 80 percent of the families where children have been removed are involved with drugs. Elizabeth McGuinness, special assistant to DYFS Director Charles Venti, confirmed that figure and described problems DYFS "If you are a child in New Jersey, and you have been the victim of abuse or neglect by your own biological parent, not only does the state pay thousands and thousands of dollars to rehabilitate these criminals.

You also have to go visit them, and relive your own rejection, every week." Donna Donahue, foster parent workers face in the field. "What can prepare you for knocking on a door and a child coming to the door in a dirty diaper, and you walk into the house, and it smells so bad because they've got a puppy that has defecated all over the room? There's no sheets. There's no pillow cases. There's no food. There's nothing," she said.

"And that's horrible enough, but it's not just that. It's that grandmom has cancer, and she's dying in the room, and they don't know what to do with that, and they have kids on all different levels, and their marriage is falling apart, and dad is abusing substances, and no one is supposed to know about that" But changes in the law have been too long in coming, according to Robert and Donna Donahue, foster parents in Shamong who have been trying to adopt an abandoned 6-year-old Hispanic child for 21 months. "The system which purports to protect and to help these children is, in our opinion, their worst abuser," Robert Donahue said. Continued from Page 1A "If they had acted sooner, I think we would still have a daughter," said Fischer of Bridgewater, Somerset County. Now, his daughter sits in a high-security detention center.

Fischer and his wife, Sara, believe their family is beyond the psychological help that DYFS could have provided. One year ago, child welfare experts issued a scathing report, saying DYFS needed to make 382 changes in the way it cares for the neediest members of society, the 50,000 children living in New Jersey in potentially dangerous homes. The state faces an April 1 federal deadline to change laws governing adoption and foster parents. But adoptive parents like Fischer, and foster parents like Robert and Donna Donahue, said the state needs to examine its attitude toward communicating with parents and helping kids. In Shamong, the Donahues wanted to adopt a boy who has lived with them for 21 months.

But DYFS told the couple they also must raise the 6-year-old Hispanic child's emotionally disturbed sister. The two children were among 10 born to drug-addicted parents in Camden. The sister disrupted the Donahues' home. She bit another foster child, drawing blood. "We told them we can't deal with this," Robert Donahue said.

"They said, 'We'll take the girl But we'll take (her brother), And we said, He was doing so well with us It seems like some sort of emotional blackmail" To protect the abused and neglected children it serves, DYFS operates in secrecy, keeping its actions from scrutiny. Approximately 6,500 children are in foster care, and another 2,500 live in group homes or other out-of-home placements. Despite recent reforms: Since December, thret children, whose families DYFS investigators were as volving "blood and broken bones." A year ago, a blue-ribbon panel of experts outlined sweeping recommendations for change. Today, state officials are saying there has been progress. The state already has spent $27 million to add more than 300 caseworkers, 28 lawyers, 16 paralegal professionals and other staff members to monitor the progress of children.

Whitman has proposed spending an additional $20 million to provide more help to foster families, and the state has launched a campaign to encourage more people to adopt children or become fos ter parents. But Cecilia Zalkind, associate director of the Association for Children of New Jersey, said much remains to be done. To help families like the Fischers and Donahues, the state needs to establish a "system navigator," an independent office with the authority to help parents, doctors and schools cut red tape and get quick answers, Zalkind said. "I think people need a place to go that's independent and has some authority to investigate how the agency is operating," Zalkind said. "It would enhance the division's credibility," if parents and children were able to find out more about the decision-making process.

Rhode Island, Connecticut, Michigan and Washington state already have navigation systems similar to the kind Zalkind proposes, said Howard Davidson, director of the American Bar Association Center on Children and the Law in Washington, D.C. Assemblywoman Rose Heck. Bergen, has introduced legislation calling for an Office of Child Advocacy, which she said would help parents and children deal with DYFS and other state agencies. Fischer said his whole experience with DYFS has left him feeling "exhausted." Ten years ago, he worked with the signed to monitor, died in.the Newark area. One 4-year-old died after her mother allegedly beat her.

A 2-year-old and her infant sister died in a fire while their parents weren't home, officials said. DYFS officials and Gov. Christie Whitman concluded the agency does not need to make changes in the way it handles cases. DYFS reviews only one-third of 1 percent of its cases to be certain its employees are behaving properly, according to a panel of experts that studied the agency. About half of the 1,100 caseworkers who help decide the fate of families received only eight days of training, according to DYFS Director Charles Venti.

Two years ago, tlje state changed its policy, requiring a month of training and a yearlong probation for new workers. But there are no plans to retrain workers already in the field. DYFS caseworkers earn a starting salary of $28,000. They are required to have a college degree, but do not need to take courses in psychology, education or criminal justice, Venti Workers at DYFS handle an average of 36 cases at a time, more than double the workload recommended by the Child Welfare League of America, whose standards are used as a benchmark. Two years ago, staff shortages caused many New Jersey DYFS workers to handle nearly 50 cases each.

In reports and at news conferences, DYFS officials have inaccurately said the welfare league recommends a workload of 27 cases of abused and neglected children. But league standards, last revised in 1989, have never called for workers to handle more than 17 cases, according to league spokeswoman Joyce Johnston. Problems at DYFS are nothing new. Two years ago, a child-advocacy group reported New Jersey's system was so understaffed it only responded to help children in cases in By ALAN GUENTHER Gannett State Bureau Donna Donahue has to cope with the nightmares her foster children get whenever they return from visiting their drug-addicted parents in Camden. One child remembers the rats he had to shoo away from jus baby sister as she slept.

The state's social worker tells Donahue she is sure the children's biological father is high on drugs when the children jisit, and he has refused to get treatment. "If you are a child in New Jersey, and you have been the Victim of abuse or neglect by your own biological parent, not only does the state pay thousands and thousands of dollars to rehabilitate these criminals. You also have to go Visit them, and relive your own rejection every week," aid Donahue, a 42-year-old music teacher from Shamong. In the weeks ahead. New Jersey lawmakers will be deciding how to update laws that determine when a biological parent loses the right to raise a child.

The federal Adoption and Safe Families Act, passed in November 1997, suggests that states cite parental abandonment, torture, chronic abuse and sexual abuse as cases Jvhere "reasonable efforts" are not required to return children to biological parents. The state risks losing federal funding if it fails to meet an April 1 deadline to define what Taggravating circumstances" can cause the termination of parental rights. In addition, the state must institute criminal background checks of prospective foster parents, pro-Vide health insurance for special-needs children and expedite permanent adoption if a child has been living in a fos-fer home for 15 months of a 22-month period. Some worry the new laws, In today's climate of welfare.