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Maurice Hunt
Maurice Hunt received his BA in 1934 in Sociology and Economics and his MA in 1938 in Social Services from Indiana University. He has had a lifetime of social activism. His involvement in the profession spans 50 years and includes a stint in Greece during WWII with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. Under his leadership, Maurice helped as many as 100,000 hungry and homeless children. He became Director of the Division of Public Assistance in the Indiana State Department of Public Welfare in 1946 where he was responsible for statewide administration of the welfare program. He held this position and the appointment by the Governor as Administrator during a time of near hysteria – the McCarthy era. However, Maurice would later remark “My experience in Indiana as state welfare administrator was a tumultuous experience…but I liked that position because I could make a little change and thousands of people would benefit. I greatly valued that aspect of it. I didn’t have much chance to improve programs because I spent most of the time trying to protect what we had.”
During the turbulent 60’s, Maurice moved to the east coast, continued his activism, and became the First Deputy Commissioner of the New York City Department of Social Service, an agency that had over 20,000 employees. From 1969-1982 he served as administrative vice-president for the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies in New York City. This organization was responsible for programs and administration of a large umbrella agency furnishing consultation to some 300 member social agencies, legislative activity and community leadership.
Maurice, a native of Kirklin, Indiana, began his social work career at the Indiana Boy’s School. He eventually became its director and worked to change the institution from a military-style operation to a treatment program. One of his students at the age of 82 called Maurice to let him know the impact Maurice had made on his life. Maurice remarked “that was really gratifying”. He retired in 1982 and is now 94 years old. He remains active in his current community of Greenwich, Connecticut. He sums up his career in social work as doing what he set out to do as an IU graduate: make things a little better for people.
Maurice Hunt: A 1934 Graduate Reflects on a Lifetime of Social Activism
By Rich Schneider
Maurice Hunt always knew what he wanted to do when he graduated from Indiana University: help people. As prepared to graduate in1934, Hunt made plans for a career in the ministry that would give him the chance to do just that. He was going to attend a theological school, and even had a scholarship in his pocket to help pay for it.
But that all changed in the time it took Clyde White, head of the IU Training School for Social Work (now the IU School of Social Work), to talk about the field of social work to Hunt and other students at the Bloomington campus. “I was majoring in sociology and economics at IU,” Hunt said. “The professor who headed up the department brought Clyde White down from Indianapolis to talk to us. Clyde White got me interested in social work and even arranged a summer job for me at the Indiana Boys’ School where I gathered facts and put together information about the children. That clinched it and I went to the School of Social Work and got my masters.”
The school was then located at 122 E. Michigan Street in Indianapolis in an old office building, Hunt recalled, and its professors were drawn from the ranks of individuals who headed local social service agencies. That was the beginning of a career in social work that spanned nearly 50 years for the native of Kirklin, Indiana, who celebrated his 93rd birthday in June, 2005.
Hunt worked as a junior research assistant for the Indiana State Committee on Governmental Economy during the summer before he entered the School of Social Work, work that preceded the establishment of Indiana’s public welfare program in 1935. Hunt went to work at the Indiana Boys’ School in 1935, first as a caseworker responsible for the placement and supervision of boys in their own homes and in foster homes when they left the institution. He then became director of social services at the Boys’ School, and worked to change the institution from a military-style operation to a treatment program. “It was quite an interesting experience,” he remembered. “It was uphill work, but worth doing.” One of the experiences he will never forget involved a young man who graduated from the high school at the Boys School. Hunt believed the young man had what it would take for him to succeed at college and arranged for him to attend Indiana University. Hunt, believing he had “accomplished something,” was disappointed when the young man disappeared a few weeks after he started school. He had apparently run out of money and turned to burglary to replenish his funds. “Three years ago, I received a telephone call from this boy, now an 82-year-old man,” Hunt said. “He wanted to let me know that he had made good. He had joined the army after he left IU, then got a job in Washington and held it successfully. He had a daughter who was a doctor and he wanted me to know that he wasn’t a failure. That was really gratifying.”
In 1940, Hunt left his position as Director of Social Services at the Boys School and started a new position as a child welfare consultant at the Indiana State Department of Public Welfare. Assigned a district of 12 counties in the southwest corner of the state, Hunt was to provide consultation the welfare departments in these counties and also to be responsible for the licensing of voluntary child welfare agencies in the area.
With the outbreak of World War II and gas rationing that required him to visit some the counties in his district by bus, Hunt decided to accept an offer to become the first fulltime executive of the Evansville Council of Social Agencies.
Still of draft age and willing to accept any assignment as long as it did not require him to kill enemy soldiers due to religious reasons, Hunt applied in 1944 for a staff position with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRA). Shipped overseas, UNRA dispatched Hunt to Greece, which had been ravaged by the war and a civil war. In a personal memorandum about his wartime activities, Hunt wrote Greece “was a poverty-stricken country ravaged by hunger, exposure, disease, suspicion, hate. Government was disorganized and did not have the confidence of the people. Private social welfare agencies were in just as bad a state of disorganization and were in no better position than the government.” Hunt was assigned the task of leading efforts to get food to children, many of whom were in desperate straits, reduced in some cases to eating grass for a period of time. He recalled that one of his most satisfying memories was passing through a remote mountain village. “A fire was burning in the center of the town under a huge iron pot. Children were coming from all directions with tin cans and other containers to get their food – tangible evidence that our efforts were paying off,” he said. Hunt’s other major effort in Greece involved trying to assist as many as 100,000 homeless children.
With the U.S. Marshall Plan set to take over the duties of UNRA in 1946, Hunt headed home to Indiana where he became director of Division of Public Assistance in the Indiana State Department of Public Welfare. Hunt served in that position, where he was responsible for program development and supervision of the administration of public assistance throughout the state, until January 1950, when, at age 37, he was appointed by Governor Henry Shricker to be the Administrator of the Indiana State Department of Public Welfare. In another personal memorandum, Hunt wrote his parents, who attended his swearing-in as administrator, did not know whether to be proud or worried. And with good reason.
That time period was overshadowed by U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy and the near-hysteria he generated about communists infiltrating America – concerns, Hunt found, that included his department. With the FBI investigating alleged communist ties of certain welfare staff members and the “Indianapolis Star” out to discredit the agency, Hunt found he had his hands full.
Despite the problems he encountered as administrator, including protecting the department’s programs and budget from hostile attacks by Republican members of the Indiana General Assembly, Hunt said it was the position he liked the best of all the positions he held during his career. “My experience in Indiana as state welfare administrator was a tumultuous experience,” he said. “But I liked that position because I could make a little change and thousands of people would benefit. I greatly valued that aspect of it.” “I didn’t have much chance to improve programs, because I spent most of the time trying to protect what we had,” he said, “but the potentialities of the job I liked the best.”
After leaving his state post in December of 1952, Hunt went on to become the assistant director of the American Public Welfare Association for two years and then chief of the Bureau of Child Welfare in the Maryland State Department of Public Welfare for a six year stint, ending in 1960. He served as director of the National Study Service, which organized and directed an organization to do social welfare surveys under the joint sponsorship of four national agencies for six years. He became First Deputy Commissioner of the New York City Department of Social Services in 1966, an agency which had 20,000 employees.
The two years Hunt served in New York City’s social services department were turbulent ones, with officials walking the streets of Harlem trying to restrain angry citizens. “I would come home at the end of the day and look out from my window toward Harlem to see if I saw fires. It was that serious.”
From 1969 to 1982, Hunt served as administrative vice president for the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies in New York City, an organization that was responsible for programs and administration of a large umbrella agency furnishing consultation to some 300 member social agencies, legislative activity and community leadership.
After he retired in 1982, Hunt, who now resides in Greenwich, Connecticut, became involved in real estate, an interest that he continues to pursue. He also continues to use his social work skills as a social agency board member. Throughout his career in social work, Hunt said he was always able to do what he sent out as an IU graduate to do: make things a little better for people.
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Karen Deery, (317) 274-8959 or kdeery@iupui.edu
