[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 44 (Wednesday, April 20, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: April 20, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
  TRIBUTE TO ROOSEVELT CHIN--LOUISVILLIAN GIVES HIS ALL TO HELP OTHERS

 Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to a 
fellow Louisvillian for his outstanding service to the youth of his 
community. Mr. Roosevelt Chin has spent his entire life as an employee 
of Cabbage Patch Settlement House, an organization dedicated to helping 
children and adults deal with the problems that result from poverty and 
broken homes.
  At a time when Americans list crime as one of their greatest worries, 
Roosevelt Chin is doing something about it. In conjunction with Cabbage 
Patch, which was founded 84 years ago, he helps young people work 
through the difficult times in their lives. By teaching self-respect 
and dignity, Mr. Chin has turned countless people from troubled to 
valuable, contributing members of society.
  Mr. Chin is much more than counselor or adviser Mr. President, he is 
a friend to everyone he works with. He has turned down opportunities to 
try other jobs and instead has worked with the Cabbage Patch House for 
42 years. What is the reward for this lifetime of service? Mr. Chin 
says it best when he points out that he has satisfaction in 
contributing significantly to his community and that he feels like the 
most blessed person around.
  The families Mr. Chin has helped are far too many to mention, but all 
who have come into contact with this compassionate and thoughtful 
gentleman know how much he has touched the lives of those he has worked 
with. I urge my colleagues to join me in honoring Roosevelt Chin as 
someone who has truly made, and continues to make, a difference. In 
addition, I ask that an article from the April 11, Courier Journal be 
inserted into the Record at this point.
  The article follows:

               [From the Courier Journal, April 11, 1994]

                           `Mighty Motivator'

                            (By Todd Murphy)

       Upward mobility.
       Roosevelt Chin smiles at the thought.
       Most of his family--spread across the United States now--
     would be considered upwardly mobile, Chin says. Most of his 
     former college and graduate school classmates have moved on 
     and up, too, he says. All have asked him the questions that 
     come from a world that gauges success by jobs and titles and 
     prestige and money.
       What is he still doing at the Cabbage Patch? What has he 
     done with his life?
       Chin--who just turned 60, but looks 10 years younger--sits 
     at a table in the ``teen room'' at the Cabbage Patch 
     Settlement House in Old Louisville. American Indian masks 
     made by children adorn the walls. Screams and shouts of 
     playing children echo from the gym next door.
       Chin smiles again. He can talk not only about certain 
     children, but about their parents when they were children 
     running around the same gym. He has a master's degree in 
     social work and has studied at a respected art institute in 
     New York. But this place is his life--has been for 42 years. 
     And he has no regrets.
       ``The decision was made back then,'' he says, referring to 
     the point years ago when he decided to stay. ``And I never 
     look back.''
       The Cabbage Patch, now on South Sixth Street, was founded 
     84 years ago by Louise Marshall, the daughter of a prominent 
     Louisville lawyer and the great-great-granddaughter of former 
     U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Marshall. It serves all ages, 
     but focuses on neighborhood children--many of whom come from 
     poverty and broken homes.
       And for 42 years, those children have become friends with 
     ``Mr. Chin,'' or just ``Chin.'' They've played on his 
     basketball and football teams. They've gone on his camping 
     trips. They've built plastic model cars in his model-car 
     classes, painted pictures in his art classes, pieced together 
     puzzles as members of his ``Fun Club.''
       But Chin's relationship with the place, and with its 
     children, goes far beyond that, say the people who have 
     worked with him and the children who've been touched by him.
       A man whose parents couldn't speak English when they came 
     from China to this country 70 years ago, Chin has taught 
     children--most of them white or black--about life. About 
     telling the truth, about doing their best and about savoring 
     their worth--no matter what the world seems to assume about 
     them.
       ``He's had an amazing ability to take the (children) we're 
     just about ready to give up on, and save them,'' says Rod 
     Napier, another longtime Cabbage Patch employee. ``He works 
     on their self-esteem. They feel important when they're around 
     him.''
       ``You might have had the worst attitude in the world. But 
     if Chin came into a room, it changed,'' says Jamie Huff, 
     whose father left the family when he was 5 and who became 
     friends with Chin at the Cabbage Patch 15 years ago. Huff is 
     now a senior at Western Kentucky University.
       And Chin's sacrifices can change the most hardened child, 
     those who've worked with him say.
       Children whose families did not have cars trained to get 
     their driver's licenses in Chin's aging cars.
       He's taken Cabbage Patch children on vacations, paying for 
     everything. ``He took us to Florida one year,'' Huff says, 
     ``I never thought in my lifetime I'd see an ocean. I never 
     thought I'd see outside Louisville. But he took us to see an 
     ocean.''
       He's bought cars for some of his Cabbage Patch friends as 
     they were leaving for college, Napier says. And he's helped 
     pay college costs for a few, including Huff for a semester.
       Chin says his generosity is simple. ``Following an unspoken 
     commitment to the example Marshall set, Chin has never 
     married. ``I'm married to the Cabbage Patch,'' he says.
       And with no immediate family, he spends little money. He 
     adds: ``I guess when I die, all my money is going to the 
     Cabbage Patch anyway, . . . I'm just doing it a little 
     earlier.''
       Chin also notes that other longtime, Cabbage Patch staffers 
     like Napier and Charles Dietsch do many of the same things.
       The work of Chin's life could not have been farther from 
     the work of his grandfather. He was a don in the Chinese 
     mafia in Chicago in the 1920s, fighting with Al Capone for 
     power over the city's underworld.
       After his grandfather had won a restaurant in Louisville 
     ``in some type of gambling deal''--and gave it to Chin's 
     parents as a wedding gift--The Chins moved to Louisville to 
     run it.
       Growing up, Chin remembers enduring racial taunts and 
     Japanese-directed racial accusations that ``you people'' had 
     started World War II.
       He remembers he and his siblings wearing badges that told 
     people they were not Japanese, but Chinese--and therefore not 
     subject to internment camps.
       But he has good childhood memories too, including when he 
     was 13, moving to a house near Hill Street and finding a 
     place to play basketball--the Cabbage Patch Settlement House.
       By his late teens, he was working there for Louise 
     Marshall--``probably the most unusual person on the face of 
     the Earth. . . . Everybody was ready to die for her.'' After 
     going off to art school, then getting an interview to be a 
     designer at General Electric, Chin canceled it. ``That was 
     the turning point.'' he says. ``I couldn't leave the Cabbage 
     Patch.''
       He hasn't left since, and has no plans to retire soon.
       He still feels a bit sheepish when he drives up to a Chin 
     family reunion in his rusty 1984 van. ``I putt-putt up there, 
     and they've got these nice houses and fancy cars,'' he says.
       ``But they don't know what I have that makes up for the 
     things I go without.
       ``I have satisfaction. I have excitment. . . . When I wake 
     up and go to work, I don't feel like I'm going to work.
       ``I'm the most blessed person around.''
       So what has Roosevelt Chin done with his life?
       To those who know him, the answer is; about as much as any 
     human being could.
       ``I don't have enough adjectives to say for this man,'' 
     Huff says. ``If I can give back to the community half of what 
     he has done, then I will have lived a successful life.''


            roosevelt chin--coordinator of special programs

       Mission: Works with Cabbage Patch Settlement House, a 
     Christian service ministry that tries to help children and 
     adults deal with the problems that result from poverty and 
     broken homes.
       Years performing service: Chin has worked there 42 years. 
     (Cabbage Patch has been in existence for 84 years)
       Source of funds: Contributions from individuals, churches, 
     businesses, foundations, and service organizations. By 
     choice, it does not accept support from government or from 
     the Metro United Way.
       To lend a hand: The Cabbage Patch Settlement House 1413 
     South Sixth Street Louisville, Ky. 40208 634-0811, 634-
     0966.

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