[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 98 (Thursday, June 15, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1253-E1254]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


  SALUTE TO JOAN ROSS: FOR AN OUTSTANDING 26-YEAR CAREER IN COMMUNITY 
                        SERVICE TO WEST VIRGINIA

                                 ______


                         HON. NICK J. RAHALL II

                            of west virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, June 14, 1995
  Mr. RAHALL. Mr. Speaker, after serving southern West Virginia as head 
of the Southwestern Community Action Agency in Huntington, WV for 26 
years, Joan Ross has made her decision to retire in order to spend more 
time with her husband, her children, and her grandchildren.
  While her time and talents have been devoted almost solely to the 
Community Action Council which she has headed for 26 years, developing 
and implementing many ``poverty programs'' for the most needy people 
throughout southern West Virginia, Joan Ross began her public service 
prior to the 1964 enactment of the Economic Opportunity Act creating 
local and regional CAP agencies.
  Joan first spearheaded a local demonstration project called Project 
Find, a research and demonstration program under which she trained 
older, low-income persons who had not dreamed of being called upon to 
show the kind of professional skill required of survey takers, and 
under Joan's supervision were more than able to conduct the necessary 
random survey, using a 22-page questionnaire, throughout a three-county 
area--Lincoln, Wayne, and Cabell. The findings determined by the 
questionnaires indicated specifically what and how extensive the human 
service needs were throughout the area, and how best to provide for 
those needs. Joan Ross followed up by developing a delivery system 
[[Page E1254]] for those human services, and she also wrote a report to 
Congress on her findings, entitled: ``The Golden Years: A Tarnished 
Myth.'' Joan had found that the Golden Years for the elderly were not 
exactly golden--but she also knew what kind of help was going to be 
necessary in order to make them golden.
  After that effort, Joan then served as the coordinating supervisor of 
the Neighborhood Youth Corps, responsible for developing and 
implementing an internal evaluation instrument, and recommending to 
management appropriate changes to make the program more efficient and 
effective for the youth intended to be served. These findings too 
became a written report to the U.S. Department of Labor and were used 
extensively to improve and enhance neighborhood youth corps programs.
  In 1967, Joan became the interim executive director of the 
Southwestern Community Action Council, where she got so busy doing what 
needed to be done, she never left--until now.
  Joan Ross knew long before Federal legislation was enacted, that West 
Virginia's southern area was very different from the rest of the 
Nation. More than 63 percent rural, the State had hidden poverty 
pockets that neighboring urban areas and officials knew nothing about, 
or not enough to pay attention.
  When, in 1964, the Economic Opportunity Act was passed creating her 
agency, community schools and businesses, restaurants and movie 
theaters--were not yet integrated. Hungry school children were not 
receiving hot lunches, and health care was nonexistent in most rural 
areas. At that time, the mentally impaired or disabled child and adult 
were not mainstreamed into society--but were kept hidden, either in 
institutions or by their families. In 1964, Joan had already found that 
substandard housing was accepted as a consequence of poverty, but not 
as a contributing factor, and people who were poor were perceived as 
poor by choice--but Joan Ross knew better.
  The enactment of the Economic Opportunity Act gave Joan Ross, and 
many other directors of CAP agencies nationwide the opportunity to 
bring people together who were concerned about their communities--their 
counties, cities and rural hamlets--people who wanted to find a way to 
help the poor help themselves.
  Joan, along with the staff which she recruited and who have served 
with her for nearly the same length of years at Southwestern, took it 
upon herself to become a pioneer in Lyndon Johnson's war on Poverty, 
taking on new programs that no one else would touch--and making them 
work as they were intended to work: Helping the poor to help 
themselves.
  The people in southern West Virginia, brought together by Joan Ross 
and kept together by her unstinting efforts over the years, were 
somewhat awed by the sight of bankers working with welfare mothers, 
rural folks with urban folks--young people with senior citizens--and 
volunteers with working people.
  When Joan Ross began her service with the Southwestern Community 
Action Agency as its interim director 26 years ago, her job was to help 
organize and stabilize the agency. Over more than a quarter century, 
she has seen the program grow from a tenuous one to a multi-million 
dollars corporation-still receiving Federal support from a few 
remaining programs under the old OEA--but which has grown and continued 
to survive because of the resources she has generated from other 
Federal programs, from private foundations, and local contributions.
  Under her very distinguished stewardship, the Southwestern Community 
Action Agency has done everything from weatherizing existing 
substandard housing, to building housing projects, for the elderly, for 
the low-income families, for the homeless, and for the mentally 
impaired.
  She pioneered the Head Start Program in our region, overseeing four 
county-wide Head Start Projects, as well as Head Start's Parent Child 
Centers, providing educational opportunities to pre-school children and 
their families, saw to the fluoridation of the water system, advocated 
for the mentally ill, conducted several national demonstrations, some 
of which have resulted in Federal legislation, provided services to the 
homeless and to troubled youth, provided training which has led to jobs 
for the unemployed, helped provide small low interest loans to low 
income people who were trying to start up their own business--and she 
piloted countless other programs designed to help the poor stop being 
poor.
  The story of Joan Ross and her career in public service is about 
excellence. When it comes to bringing people together from all walks of 
life and inspiring them--challenging them--to work together and to make 
a big difference, she has no equal. Joan Ross did all this regardless 
of anyone's cultural, ethnic, or racial origins. She did it regardless 
of a person's age, or whether they were from rural or urban settings, 
and all other socio-economic factors were taken into consideration for 
residents throughout her service area.
  Joan Ross's life has been about uniting people, never dividing them.
  While Joan spent 26 years counseling, cajoling, inspiring and 
challenging people from all walks of life--from County Commissions to 
the State Legislature to the U.S. Congress--from the poorest to the 
richest in our region--ultimately getting them to do the right thing--
she was completely and selflessly involved at every other level of 
community service. How she found the time or the energy, we will never 
know. For example: During these 26 years Joan served as a member of the 
Junior League of Huntington, was active in her church, served as 
chairperson of the board of trustees of the greater West Virginia 
Employees Health and Welfare Trust, served as president of the WV 
Community Action Directors Association, served on the Greenbrier 
Mission Development Fund, was chairperson of the State Visiting 
Committee of West Virginia University, as chairperson of the Cabell-
Huntington Red Cross, as the national vice president of the Council of 
Agriculture Research, Extension and Training, served on the West 
Virginia Mental Health Planning Committee, as well as with the West 
Virginia Alliance for the Mentally Ill, as president of the Prestera 
Center for Mental Health, Chaired the Policy Committee of the WV State 
Jobs Training Coordinating Council, president of the Forest Management 
Corporation, and still serves as a member of the Huntington Hospital 
for Rehabilitation Board of Directors. And all this time, Joan was 
raising her four children and being a supportive wife to her husband, 
Dr. Thomas Ross.
  I have known Joan Ross for all of these years, and have been both 
inspired and humbled by her always dynamic, often gentle and 
compassionate approach to getting all the jobs done that were hers to 
do, and getting them done by, and for, the right people. By her example 
she brought dignity and a quality of life to thousands of men, women 
and children in southern West Virginia who had, until Joan began her 
life-long career of outreach to the poor, remained immersed in poverty.
  She will be sorely missed as she returns to the heart of her family 
to spend some quality time with them--but knowing Joan, she will always 
be involved in the affairs of her community and indeed in public 
affairs throughout the State.


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