[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 138 (Tuesday, October 6, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1921-E1922]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         TRIBUTE TO RUTH LUBIC

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. CHARLES B. RANGEL

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, October 6, 1998

  Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to a woman whose 
commitment and unselfish devotion, has helped countless women and their 
children have a better life as well as a more promising outlook to the 
future. The woman with a heart of gold of whom I speak is Ruth Lubic.
  Ruth Lubic, who until recently made her home on Manhattan's Upper 
West Side, is a nurse-midwife who has come to the nation's capitol with 
a vision of opening a birthing center in one of the District's poorest 
neighborhoods. Her need, her aspiration of personally doing something 
about the city's high infant mortality rate, is evident in her drive, 
her tenacity, and in her faith in humanity.
  Allow me to share with you this article about Ruth which recently 
appeared in The Washington Post. It's a heartwarming story which speaks 
of how Ruth is truly ``fulfilling a dream.''

               [From the Washington Post, Sept. 30, 1998]

                      A Battle Won, a Center Born


        Nurse-Midwife to Open Birthing Facility for D.C.'s Poor

                            (By Cindy Loose)

       To explain how she came at age 71 to be opening a birthing 
     center in a poor District neighborhood, Ruth Lubic first has 
     to tell about the things that have been bothering her for 
     decades.
       The sickly babies she saw in tenement houses during a 
     nurse-midwife career that began in 1961. The child sitting on 
     the floor of a Mississippi sharecropper's cabin, covered with 
     flies, her hair reddened by malnutrition.
       That visit to Mississippi was 30 years ago, but Lubic 
     chokes on her words and actually cries when she quotes the 
     state health official who told her not to worry so much, that 
     ``some Negroes got red hair.''
       When the phone call came five years ago telling her she'd 
     won a MacArthur ``genius grant,'' she knew right away what 
     she would do. She would come to the nation's capital and 
     build a model of infant mortality prevention.
       Never mind that she was a white-haired grandmother from New 
     York City, a carpetbagger without a building, or millions to 
     run such an operation, or staff, or permits, or city 
     connections. She did have her MacArthur grant of $75,000 a 
     year for five years; she had the power of her convictions.
       And she's actually pulling it off.
       This month, the new nonprofit she formed began a $1.2 
     million renovation of an empty supermarket donated by John 
     Hechinger Sr. and her family partnership. The D.C. Developing 
     Families Center will open on Benning Road NE, across from the 
     Hechinger Mall, in early spring.
       For the price of a hospital delivery, she and her partners 
     can deliver a baby, offer a wealth of services to the mother 
     and nurture the child for three years.
       Although it is a far commute from her life and home on 
     Manhattan's Upper West Side, Washington was an easy choice 
     for Lubic. The city's infant mortality rate of 14.4 per 
     1,000--double the national average--``has always been on my 
     professional conscience,'' Lubic said. Besides a center here 
     would be only a cab ride away from policymakers who might be 
     persuaded to replicate the model nationwide.
       At a time of life when even the most driven type-A 
     personalities are slowing down, Lubic took on one of her 
     biggest projects ever. Those who have come into her path 
     describe her as single-minded, forceful. She calls herself a 
     ``stubborn old woman.''
       Asked why she would take on what seemed an impossible task, 
     she answered: ``People are used to the idea that Ruth is a 
     little crazy. But I'm the age I am, I've had my career, I've 
     been honored and all that. I have nothing to lose.''
       Soon after being awarded the Mac-Arthur grant, Lubic quit 
     her job as director of the Maternity Center Association in 
     Manhattan. She and her husband took turns flying between 
     cities for visits. She settled in an apartment in Southwest 
     Washington and launched her assault.
       Hechinger still seems amazed that he let Lubic talk him out 
     of the building and 1.2 acres of property--land he had 
     planned to develop. He gave it up only after Lubic had 
     badgered him and his real estate manager, Jim Garabaldi, for 
     three solid years.
       ``We both told her over and over again it would never, 
     never, ever happen,'' Garabaldi said. ``We explained this was 
     our business entity, that as individuals we give charitable 
     contributions, but this is our business here.''
       But Lubic quite simply wore them down.
       ``She can soften you up because she's so intellectually and 
     emotionally sure of the rightness of her cause,'' Hechinger 
     said. ``When she's through with you, you have this guilt 
     feeling. Plus you're shocked at the statistics which prove 
     she's right.''
       While she was working on Hechinger, Lubic also was banging 
     on doors all over town.
       ``The women we'll reach have been put down and let down 
     their whole lives,'' she would say. ``The doors of this 
     building are going to be an escape hatch from despair.''
       She haunted the hallways of the Department of Health and 
     Human Services hoping for a chance encounter with Secretary 
     Donna E. Shalala--a tactic that actually worked.
       Through a friend of a friend, she wrangled a meeting with 
     former HHS secretary Louis W. Sullivan. Over breakfast, she 
     turned him into a major fund-raiser who helped her match a 
     $785,000 grant within a three-month deadline.
       She made city contacts from the bottom up. When a taxi 
     driver protested that it was too dangerous to drive her to an 
     evening community meeting in a tough neighborhood, she told 
     him, ``If I can go, then you can go, so let's go.''

[[Page E1922]]

       Over the course of the years, people mighty and small fell 
     under the spell of her vision--or in some cases simply gave 
     up trying to thwart her.
       As Hechinger put it, ``I personally was a victim of her 
     strongest characteristic: tenacity. She's a bulldog who 
     envelops you in the rightness of her cause.''
       Thick wire cables dangled in the dark, empty shell boarded 
     up with plywood. Glass crackled underfoot as fellow visionary 
     Delores Farr walked a few paces and paused.
       ``I want you to know I'm standing in my office,'' she said.
       ``Your office is closer to that window, isn't it?'' Lubic 
     asked, pointing toward a blank concrete wall.
       Down there on one end, where the store's dairy section once 
     was located, will be the entrance for pregnant women coming 
     for delivery or pre- or postnatal care. Women needing social 
     services and day care will enter on the other side. High-risk 
     patients will deliver at Howard University Hospital, where 
     nurse-midwives will have admitting privileges.
       It's not surprising that Lubic and Farr can visualize in 
     the dark shell a bright center bustling with patients and 
     clients. Both could see it in their minds before they'd even 
     identified a site.
       In 1994, a friend told Lubic that she should look up Farr, 
     director of the Healthy Babies Project, a private nonprofit 
     group. Farr and her workers walk the streets of tough 
     neighborhoods. They visit crack houses, liquor stores, beauty 
     shops--anywhere they might find a pregnant woman and persuade 
     her to get prenatal care. They offer parenting classes, 
     counseling, help with obtaining addiction treatment. Lubic's 
     birthing center, Farr agreed, would be a perfect place to 
     relocate.
       ``Meeting Ruth was like a dream come true,'' Farr said. 
     ``We immediately saw eye to eye on the needs and issues. 
     We've been joined at the hip ever since.''
       There were so many obstacles--getting a place and raising 
     millions of dollars was just the start. They needed all kinds 
     of permits from D.C. health officials, building officials, 
     zoning officials. They needed assurances of Medicaid 
     reimbursement, legal help, partnership with a hospital.
       People told them it would never happen. You can't even get 
     potholes around here fixed, they said. You'll never get a 
     big, complicated project like this rising out of nothing.
       But they kept on pushing with the plan. They will get to 
     pregnant women early through the Healthy Babies outreach. The 
     birthing center, Lubic hopes, will give women more control 
     over their pregnancies. And because birthing center 
     deliveries cost 30 to 60 percent less than hospital 
     deliveries, she said, the savings could help fund other 
     services.
       Lubic managed to persuade city officials to designate her 
     still-imaginary center as a future welfare-to-work site. 
     Still, they would need day care for the clients for whom they 
     found jobs.
       So in 1996, Lubic and Farr met with Travis Hardmon, of the 
     National Child Day Care Association. At that point, the 
     center lived only in their imaginations, but how would he 
     feel, they asked, about organizing child care for infants and 
     toddlers?
       ``His eyes lit up,'' Lubic said. ``Since then, he's been 
     the answer to a maiden's prayer.''
       And although Lubic had been told 100 times that she 
     couldn't have the Hechinger property, that didn't stop 
     anybody on the new team.
       ``Travis brought in Bill Davis, and things then really 
     started coming together,'' Lubic said.
       Davis, a project manager with nonprofit development 
     experience, couldn't get inside the building, but from 
     outside the chain-link fence, he studied the property and 
     pictured the renovations. And Lubic turned up the heat on 
     Hechinger and Garibaldi.
       Initially, the property manager refused even to put her in 
     touch with Hechinger. But she kept coming back, and coming 
     back. ``One day, somehow, she got me to see her vision,'' 
     Geribaldi said. He began to lobby members of Hechinger 
     Enterprises, the family partnership, as did Lubic's new 
     friends.
       ``Things were constantly cropping up where I'd say, `Oh no, 
     Ruth Lubic again, ' '' Hechinger said. ``Donna Shalala called 
     and said, `I'm really not in a position to tell you what to 
     do with your property, but this is a tremendous thing Ruth 
     Lubic is up to.' ''
       While the Hechinger family considered various proposals at 
     quarterly meetings, Lubic handed planning grants from two 
     national foundations and an anonymous donor.
       The first big breakthrough came about a year ago when city 
     officials discovered that millions in unspent grants were 
     about to revert to the federal government unless quickly 
     allocated.
       ``We ran like crazy'' to put together a proposal, Lubic 
     said. The city awarded $785,000 on the condition that the 
     money be matched within a few months--a seemingly impossible 
     goal. But Sullivan, the former HHS secretary, soon became the 
     second answer to a maiden's prayer.
       Sullivan now president of the Morehouse School of Medicine, 
     had agreed to a friend's request to meet with Lubic. ``I was 
     immediately impressed and began introducing her to people I 
     know,'' he said.
       He contacted a friend at Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., Dick 
     Thompson, who secured a donation from his company. Thompson 
     then got his friends at other drug companies to arrange 
     corporate donations.
       Sullivan said a lawyer friend set up a meeting for him with 
     Katharine Graham, chairman of the executive committee of The 
     Washington Post Co. Two foundations set up in honor of her 
     parents and husband donated a total of $100,000. Lubic's 
     former employer in New York kicked in another $100,000, law 
     firms helped and the match was made.
       Sullivan is still working on the case. ``A few days ago on 
     Martha's Vineyard, I ran into a few people and asked for 
     their help. [Del.] Eleanor Holmes Norton, for one, indicated 
     she'd follow up.''
       A $1.2 million grant awarded last month by the Robert Wood 
     Johnson Foundation will help with operating costs. The 
     building donated by the Hechinger family came with a 
     contingency clause--that Lubic would run the center for at 
     least three years.
       ``I laughed when I heard the condition and answered, `God 
     willing, Lubic said.
       Her son, Douglas, a New York lawyer said Hechinger can 
     count on Lubic to presevere.
       ``The day she stops working for what she believes is 
     right,'' he said. ``will be the day she dies.''

     

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