Dear Friends and Supporters,
Frances Perkins was born Fannie Coralie Perkins in Boston in 1880, but her roots were firmly at the family farm here in Newcastle, Maine. Through stories passed down through her great-grandmother Thankful Otis, Fanny (as she was known to the family) was raised with a deep appreciation of history and pride in her patriot ancestry. She came of age understanding her New England heritage and adopting the Yankee values of her family: frugality, ingenuity, tenacity and self-reliance – as well as a belief that the new nation, only a century old at her birth, held opportunities for all who were willing to work for them. As a student at Mount Holyoke College and in her first work in the settlement houses of Chicago, she realized that those opportunities were not readily available to all, and she dedicated herself to an ideal: that we as a nation have a responsibility to remedy economic inequities so that all citizens can reach their highest potential.
At the Frances Perkins Center, we celebrate the remarkable accomplishments that followed from a lifetime commitment to that ideal. Our programs apply the legacy of Frances Perkins to today’s economic and social problems and seek to foster a public understanding of her life-long labors on behalf of working people and their families. In the last years of her life, Frances Perkins remarked on how much work remained in order to fulfill her dream of equal opportunity for all Americans, admonishing students “It is up to you to contribute some small part to a program of human betterment for all time.”
We at the Frances Perkins Center have taken up that challenge and we thank you for joining us. Without you, we could not succeed in our ambitious mission to preserve the legacy of Frances Perkins.
If you haven’t made your tax-deductible donation to the Center, please do so now. If you have, know that we remain ever grateful for your support.
Christopher Breiseth,
Board Chair
December 30, 2013
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