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For two years before retiring from her job at Southwestern Bell, Blanche Reel took piano lessons on her lunch hour. This should tell you something about the kind of woman she is.
A neighborhood resident of sixteen years, she knows everyone on her block and feels other block chairmen are “missing the boat” if they don’t too. She has served on the board of the Skinker DeBaliviere Community Council and tells of how Washington Heights Neighborhood Association was begun over back yard fences by people concerned about homes being turned into boarding houses.
She has been active in Washington Heights since its beginnings and recalls a call to arms by the Inter Association of Neighborhood Associations to oppose legislation being pushed through the Board of Aldermen by the Rooming House Association. The level of interest among neighborhood associations was so high that, in spite of below zero weather, the hearing had to be moved to Kiel Opera House — and the proposal was beaten. But Blanche knows full well that victories do not come easy. Perhaps because of this knowledge rather than in spite of it, she has maintained an active role in her neighborhood organization after others have thrown up their hands or put up their For Sale signs.
She has no single solution for neighborhood problems but feels that the key to any success is working together by neighbors and associations. Blanche does not say, “I remember this neighborhood when. ..” Her interest is in what it is — or can be — now!
But her interests aren’t tied to the neighborhood. Her husband, Alton, calls her “a joiner” and claims she doesn’t know how to say no — although Blanche says she is learning. Her church, St. John’s Methodist at Washington and Kingshighway, benefits greatly from her energies — such things as sewing for Kingdom House, teaching at Trinity Methodist and even her membership in Women for City Living grew out of her church concerns.
At home she cares for a husband, a 22 year old son, and two octogenarians — her father and Alton’s mother. In addition to roses and oleander, yellow lillies and Shasta daisies, crab apples and flowering moss are among the green things which receive her attention and award her with ample blooms and fruit.
Blanche is unique. A person who cares. And this caring is a very real action that aims to leave the world around her better than she found it. And Blanche still plays the piano.
Originally published in The Paper, August 1970.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times1970_08.pdf, printed page(s) 12.
Original photograph, PDF page 12: Bob Moore.
