A Brief History of the Oregon Trail Chapter of the American Red Cross with a special LEARNING GUIDE on the Vanport Flood of 1948

Portland, Oregon

June, 2005

The agency today called the Oregon Trail Chapter (OTC) of the American Red Cross has had many lives and many names over the course of the twentieth century. Initially chartered as the “Portland chapter" in February 1917, its early history is substantially tied to the social and military crises of the World War I and World War II eras. In this, the OTC has much in common with other chapters across the country as well as with the national parent body. However, the Oregon context, as described by several in-house histories, suggests several notable points of comparison for further research. The first point is the huge success of the chapter in meetings its quotas for fund-raising and production in its early years, seemingly setting new standards for such work in the community and state as well as earning the attention and praise of the national body. A second point has several parts, and involve gender, class, and cultural dynamics. An intensely patriotic organization, the Red Cross was shaped by ideals of self-sufficiency, volunteerism, sacrifice, and business efficiency, and often carried out its work in a military mode and style, with men in charge at the top. At the same time, the bulk of its activities—direct aid to military personnel and their families on the battlefield and off—entailed “feminized" labor overwhelming performed by women. These tasks included nursing, face-to-face counseling, and the supply of concrete social services to those in need: knitting clothes, sewing hospital supplies, creating gift packages, providing help and cheer for various hospital patients (including children with polio and those confined by deafness or blindness), and collecting, cooking, and serving food to traveling and decommissioned military personnel (and Red Cross volunteers). Indeed, the Red Cross was often described as the “greatest big sister" or “greatest mother" of all in its posters and propaganda. As the character of volunteering, nursing, and social service changed in the second half of the twentieth century, the Red Cross transformed toward more specialized and professionalized capacities, perhaps most notably in its blood donation service. Throughout, however, the links between the Red Cross, the business community, various government agencies, and gender-based social organization provide key themes and threads for further explorations of its history.

Initial Organization and Activities

A group of prominent businessmen who were “personal friends" with each other and “well known citizens" in the city of Portland successfully organized the initial chapter in February, 1917, to meet the need for preparedness in World War I. A public meeting in April witnessed "tremendous interest" and a headquarters established in the Corbett building. In its patriotic drives for funds and other donations during World War I, the Portland Red Cross self-consciously replicated "plans adopted by the Y.M.C.A." for communication, canvassing, collections, appeals, and related matters of shaping public opinion and organizing social resources. Part and parcel of this strategy was the effective incorporation of existing community-based clubs, associations, and groups who in turn folded the Red Cross’s needs and agendas into their own during World War I. Protestant churches, Rotary Clubs, middle-class women’s clubs, Kiwanis, Elks, and local political officials, even a few labor unions, all aided in the work of legitimation and labor for the Red Cross. Small businesses donated a day’s receipts to the cause; city firefighters and the painters’ union donated its services to paint crosses across the city’s plate glass windows during drive weeks. A particularly close affiliation with Reed College marked these early years, with funds, resources, and personnel flowing in both directions. The cooperation of the public schools allowed the Junior Red Cross to take root in Portland classrooms, touching thousands of youth of middle and high school age.

War-time activities centered on civilian relief, first-aid training, and the production of surgical dressings. Leading Portland businesses donated credit, cash, publicity, work space, and other in-kind donations in order to set basic operations in motion. Equally essential was the labor of hundreds and at times thousands of women who donated time and skill at tasks ranging from nursing, to teaching, clerical, and hands-on production of materiel. In the 1918 "Christmas Roll Call," the "actual campaign direction was done by women," breaking through the leadership ranks in finance that were usually dominated by men. Middle-class club and church women—with a sprinkling of professional nurses and social workers as well as a quite a few well-connected society dames—usually had more consistent control of background fund-raising responsibilities. For example, the Red Cross "Superfluities Shop and Salvage Bureau," which collected and resold clothing, household goods, and myriad other objects, large and small, netted some $50,000 by the end of World War I. These monies provided the Red Cross with an Emergency Fund for operations, a fund that proved vital to its survival in the post-war era. Women were essential to the success of virtually all the ground operations of the Red Cross. "It cannot be denied that women asked to toil as workers had often resented the thought that the direction was all in the hands of men; that they had the actual arduous work of canvassing." Gender divisions of labor and authority in the organization seem to have undergone a slow thaw over time, with the exigencies of World War II providing special incentives for experimentation and change.

The Interwar Period

"Portland had given until to give it had almost to give its rags." Such was the agency’s sense of its surrounding community at the close of World War I. After the influenza epidemic receded and the gears of reconversion ground into place, Red Cross activities dropped off considerably. In 1923 the Home Service, Home Hygiene, Junior Red Cross, and Shop remained functioning; though latter closed shortly thereafter. In the midst of this transition, the Red Cross, like many city social agencies, affiliated with the Community Chest of Portland in 1921, and remained so affiliated until 1929. The Community Chest was an umbrella organization (since become the United Way) that consolidated fundraising and disbursements in the interest of efficiency and sharing resources in the city. This affiliation proved a mixed bag for the Red Cross. Prosperity was slow to return to the region and both contributions and disbursements lagged, nearly costing the Portland chapter its affiliation to national for non-payment of contributions in 1922. An impasse with the Community Chest was reached over funding in 1927, and the Red Cross determined to once again do its own fundraising. In 1929 the Board terminated its affiliation with the Community Chest. Particularly pressing at this time was the focus of Red Cross services on direct care for dependent soldiers and sailors through its Home Service department, work which they did not wish to surrender, as it spoke to their core patriotic mission to "serve humanity."

The 1930s brought both new strains and new opportunities to the Chapter. Peace-time duties came to the fore, though disaster relief within and beyond Oregon was uneven. First Aid and Life Saving training were formalized and spread among youth. A dental program was started in the public schools, later adopted by the Portland school board. Home Hygiene (basics of home nursing, nutrition, sanitation) were also taught in the schools and community centers, including in the Works Project Administration’s "Housekeepers Aid Project" (designed to train and certify women in domestic service to afford them a more competitive edge in the job market). Indigent soldiers’ and sailors’ relief continued to press on the Red Cross with some 1,200 families applying for aid in 1932. In 1931-32 the Red Cross worked more closely with local and federal governments in distributing relief, thereby integrating itself into New Deal programs. In 1931, the agency "was operating as the Relief Unit for the County Commissioners [of Multnomah County]" and cared for over 2,800 families and 1,000 single men at the height of the Depression. In 1932, the U.S. government donated cloth to be used for needy families by sewing clothes, further enmeshing the agency in relief work. In keeping with trends toward better protections for workers in this time period, in 1937 the Red Cross adopted a retirement plan for its employees.

A number of signal program were initiated in the 1930s. In1938, the Hospital Recreation Committee, otherwise known as the "Gray Ladies" by the color of their uniforms, began offering services (a library cart, letter writing, etc.) in the local veterans hospital. In 1939 the Motor Corps began, which highlights both the class basis for certain modes of volunteerism and the increased mobility of women in the twentieth century. "A group of 19 young ladies…volunteered both their services and their own cars." After providing their own vehicles, tires, gas, insurance, and taking first aid classes, and completing 52 hours of “active duty," only then were these volunteers permitted to purchase and wear the Red Cross uniform and serve in the Motor Corps, transporting veterans and blood. Such efforts suggest that the Red Cross ideals of self-sufficiency and self-support for the agency and its programs was underwritten by the donated services and in-kind contributions of relatively well-off Portlanders, especially women with leisure and resources to spare. As the decade closed, pressures for war supplies were again felt locally, and the surgical dressing workroom was successfully reinstated.

World War II

A striking feature of Red Cross activity in Portland during World War II was the seeming emphasis on supplying and training personnel for the home front and battlefield, especially nurses. Through its Home Service Volunteer Corps, the Red Cross surveyed, organized and deployed trained nurses, clerical personnel, and social workers across the state in various private and public agencies to aid in the war mobilization. Overwhelmingly, these workers were women. Distinctions between “staff" and “volunteer" frequently broke down in the accelerated pace of work and responsibility; extra giving was possible as “the entire community was geared to war effort." In addition to “traditional" home front war work of knitting, sewing, surgical dressing production, and canteen service, the new Blood Donor Center, started in 1942, stepped up the need for volunteers, record keeping, and nursing, including nurses’ aides. While the World War I era was notable for the support of businesses and unions in various Red Cross efforts, workers and employers seemed a bit distant from the work in this later period. “Surprisingly small contributions came from the ship building corporations," it was reported, and Red Cross activities at Guild’s Lake, Columbia Villa and Vanport—major housing developments for tens of thousands of ship yard workers, many of them migrants—met with little enthusiasm. Class and possibly racial distance was noted in outreach to these new neighborhoods. In the Vanport area were “persons from the poorest district[s] in the South and the slum districts of some of the eastern cities," people whom the Red Cross workers observed “either had not the time or lacked the inclination for volunteer work." Red Cross nurses observed similar class and racial distancing, a social pattern well-documented by historians of Portland in this era. In addition, women involved in full-time wage earning had little time for volunteering. “The rapid turnover in these areas, as well as the fact that many of the women were working and carrying on home duties…contributed to the slow growth of this [Home Nursing] project." Among “minority groups," Home Nursing was “offered to Negroes, both on an interracial and racial basis, but have not been patronized extensively." It was reported that Chinese American Portlanders “occasionally attend classes." The Red Cross was on hand to aid victims of the Vanport flood in 1948, which displaced more than 6,000 families, many of them African American.

Post-War Programs

The professionalization of historic Red Cross services, especially via nursing and the U.S. Veterans Administration, had a number of effects on programs and personnel in the Portland chapter that deserve more in-depth study and that can only be alluded to here. The professionalization of nursing, social work, human resource management—frequently coded “feminine" or “pink collar" jobs—slowly led to increased access to leadership and authority for middle-class, educated, and mostly white women within the Red Cross staff and administration. At the same time, the organization faced the challenge for racial integration pressed upon U.S. society generally via the Civil Rights Movement. Blood donations were segregated by “race" until 1949. Additionally, outreach to youth and young families emerged as an important means for maintaining the currency of the Red Cross mission in peace-time. Finally, the instititionalization of blood collection placed the Red Cross in an increasingly complex and frequently political endeavor to help meet the needs of medical technology and hospitals, as well as the military, for blood.

To be sure, plenty of soldiers needed help in the many wars of the second half of the century, and the Red Cross responded. The Chapter supported military families in Oregon during the Korean War and during the Vietnam conflict, recorded and sent message to soldiers via cassette tapes. Disaster relief remained an important priority in this period. The Columbus Day storm of 1962, the eruption of Mt. St. Helen’s in 1989, and the Flood of 1996 all saw the Red Cross leap into action. In the early 1970s, a new lifesaving technique was introduced, Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR). Thousands of residents signed up to learn. During the 1970s and 1980s, the chapter responded to changing family needs by developing parenting and youth classes. During this time, local immunization programs and blood pressure clinics were also supported. As the region experienced increased population and needs among the elderly, the Red Cross has responded, transforming its Motor Corps into a vital transportation service to otherwise home-bound or disabled residents. In the wake of the September 11, 2001 tragedy, Oregon sent more Red Cross volunteers per capita than any other state in the nation. In response to the community asking, "What can I do now?" the chapter developed the "Prepare Oregon" campaign. By encouraging Oregonians to do four simple things: build a disaster supplies kit, make a family emergency plan, get trained in first aid and CPR and schedule regular blood donations, the Chapter helped our state become a model of preparedness. In 2003, the American Red Cross adopted our local campaign and launched, "Together We Prepare" throughout the country.

The Oregon Trail Chapter of the American Red Cross, like any other social institution, both reflects and engages the pressures and opportunities posed by its surrounding historical setting. Sometimes it expressed the more exclusionary and hierarchical tendencies in our society and world, sometimes its more inclusive and democratic. Blood donation has been a symbolic and fraught site for some of these tensions as much as it remains a site of fine idealism. The words of one donor, probably written in 1963, captures both of these important dimensions of Red Cross work, and certainly resonate in 2005:

At our American Red Cross Blood Center, we have a simple, yet practical and blessed means of presenting the true heart of America in a positively spiritual manner. In the present era of politico-racial turmoil and international tensions there is tragic need to emphasize the good which resides in the hearts of all mankind, east or west. Let us turn for a moment from the contemplation of hydro-bombs and our wealth, symbols of death and decay; let us rather strike that universal chord of peaceful human compassion, the indicia of life and hope.

The many, many stories, struggles, and successes encompassed in the history of the Oregon Trail Chapter of the American Red Cross in Portland, Oregon are just beginning to be documented and explored. Let the collection of materials and further research, reflection, and discussion be carried forward in the spirit of "life and hope."

Works Consulted (all contained in OTC archives):

Goodman, Orton E. "History of the Portland chapter of the American Red Cross from its Organization in Feburary 14, 1917 up to June 30, 1919."

Barker, Burt Brown. "Introductory Study" (1919-1939) and "Preface" (1939-1945), completed 1949.

Marco, Norma. "History of the Red Cross Home Nursing From September 1939 to July 30, 1945."

Oregon Trail Chapter, American Red Cross. “A History of Caring…" 75^th anniversary flyer.

Lowery E. Huey to Editor, undated. Blood Donors Center Opening, 1949 and 1963 file, in “Histories" box in OTC archives