Mathilde Bradford, faith story 'Great to know Jesus,' says Mathilde Bradford Faith and fellowship are among Louise Mathilde Bradford's favorite things about her longtime membership at First United Methodist Church Alexandria. "For me, it's a comfort as well as the faith that comes along with the church, because it has been a tremendous source of security for me. Being an only child, I had friendships and activities that came to me through the church that I wouldn't have had, maybe, otherwise -- who knows?" she said. For more than 60 years, Ms. Bradford devoted her life to serving the needs of children and their families. An Alexandria native, she was active in social work locally, statewide, nationally and even internationally. In the nursing home where she resides, younger hands now serve the needs of the 88-yearold retired social worker, who was interviewed Oct. 4, 2013. "It's just great to know Jesus and the wonderful things God can do through Him," Mathilde concluded. Earlier in the interview, she explained that her name is phonetically pronounced "Mateel" though spelled "Mathilde" -- the "h" and "d" are silent. "A lot of people call me 'Teel' but it's like Mat-Teel," she added, recalling "we used to have Teel" to put on toothbrushes. Teel was a liquid "dentifrice" -- a powder, paste, or liquid for cleaning the teeth -- and was a brand owned by Procter & Gamble in the past that was sold in the late 1930s into the late 1940s but since phased out, according to Wikipedia. Mathilde was born on Thornton Court in Alexandria. "Both of my parents were from here," she said. "We were born at home in those days."
She said her mother, a housewife, taught Sunday School before her birth and took two weeks off for childbirth before returning to teach. Her father was in the wholesale grocery business. Mathilde was an only child. "I've always been single. I decided, when I realized I wanted a career in child welfare, that it would be difficult to have a career and move around and be married and have, say, a family too, so I chose the career. It was something that I really wanted to do and, as it turned out, it was something that I could do and I think I could do well," Mathilde said, adding, "And because I was raised in Sunday School behind a piano!" She was referring to the use of a piano as a barrier to divide the overflow of children in a crowded Sunday School room inside the 1927 Religious Education Building, which served the former First Methodist congregation from 1927 to 1968 and was located where the downtown Red River Bank branch is now. "At one point, daddy was superintendent of the Sunday School," Mathilde said, but added she thinks it was the adult Sunday School. The Education Building "had our auditorium and Sunday School rooms," she recalled. "And we were so pressed for space for the Sunday School that I can remember as a child... we had our classes behind the piano -- we didn't have rooms individually" so the piano acted as a barrier, she said. "That's how we got by until we built the new building" at the current 2727 Jackson Street location. "We used 'King Tut's tomb' for Sunday School classes also," she added, recalling memories of those times. In 1922, Howard Carter, an English archaeologist and Egyptologist, discovered the tomb of 14th-century BC pharaoh Tutankhamen, aka King Tut, according to Wikipedia, and our church history states that "the term 'King Tut's tomb' developed humorously from the discovery." "The quip referred to the large room with chairs and pews, adjacent to the sanctuary and left of the pulpit," church history states, from when our congregaton occupied the First Methodist Church building from 1907 to 1968 at the corner of Foisy and Jackson streets that is now the Greater New Hope Missionary Baptist Church building. "The large room accommodated Sunday School needs regularly but also served to seat larger crowds for worship," church history says, reflecting a form of early 20th century church architecture known as the "Akron Plan." "I was baptized as an infant and then I 'joined' the church, we called it, probably age 12 or so," she said. Mathilde said that the Women's Missionary group back then was called the Gleaners, based on Biblical passages about gleaning.
"You know, you glean the sheaves in the fields and the gleaners would come by and help get all of the stray things in and make their bread and stuff... it's what's now the UMW," she said. "They did all sorts of nice things and one of the things that they did was during the war years -- see, now, we're talking about World War II years -- they, every Sunday night, would have supper for the troops who came in on the weekend and would come to church," Mathilde said. "They really had to be very frugal because funds were limited and also supplies were limited. So, they came up with a salad dressing, and if you ask one of these older ladies now, 'what is gleaner dressing?' Or 'what is a gleaner salad,' they will tell you." She recalled gleaner dressing was made by mixing big bottles of mayonnaise and Thousand Island dressing to go over wedges of lettuce, with some cheese drizzled over it, which recipe is in a church cookbook. "We could make an awful lot of salads out of a bottle of mayonnaise and a bottle of Thousand Island and some wedges of lettuce," she said. Mathilde also recalled Frances Lanier, who taught a class bearing her name from 1926 until 1965. "Mrs. Lanier was quite an outstanding member of our church and Sunday School and many other organizations," Mathilde said, adding it was "a very influential class in our Sunday School." Mrs. Lanier died in 1972 at the age of 78 and her class existed until December of 2002, when its few remaining members joined the Fifty-Fifty Class. Mathilde recalled the church's youth group grew due to the war effort during WWII, "by helping these individual young men, who were far from home, and had no place to eat, nothing to do, when they came to town" on leave from training. "So that's when the churches set up their Sunday afternoon meals, at least what our church did, and they were all free and open to the public. We welcomed them all; we did square dancing with them all because they were from the mid-west," she said. "They were from, well, Michigan, Wisconsin, that part of the country." In addition to Sunday School, Mathilde said she later attended a youth group which met Sunday afternoons into the church supper time that was called the Epworth League. The Epworth League is a Methodist young adult association for individuals ages 18 to 35 that was founded in 1889 at Cleveland, Ohio, and took its name from John Wesley's birthplace, Epworth, Lincolnshire, England, according to various online sources, but after denominational mergers among Methodists in the 1930s, apparently the Methodist Youth Fellowship was begun.
Mathilde's education was in the public schools in Alexandria before she attended Louisiana Tech for her bachelor's degree, then Columbia University in New York for her master's degree in social work, graduating in 1953, she said. "I came back here to work in child welfare," she said. "I was able to get a job with the state, again, as a child welfare case worker." Mathilde's job with the state fit hand-in-glove with her efforts in establishing First United Methodist Church Alexandria's day care, she said. "I was in Baton Rouge about three years as state consultant on day care and in that job I set up day care centers that were operated by the state around the state, and also I had responsibility for the licensing of day care centers, so it fell right in with what I was setting up here (for our church) to get into the day care... activities," she said. "In that job, I had access to resources that I might not have had otherwise... if they had a renown speaker coming for day care purposes, I'd see if we couldn't get some of our day care teachers from the church in on those workshops and things like that," Mathilde said. "Dr. Bentley Sloan was the minister for the original, I think, setting up of the day care center, and my office was in the state office building, and often I could hear Dr. Sloan come down the hall -- he often had an umbrella and he used it like a cane," she said. "So, he came up a lot. We did a lot of making applications for funds and things like that on behalf of the church day care center." Mathilde was on some national boards involving day care as well. "I would always go to the national, and to the international, conferences," she said, traveling to such places as Nairobi, Jerusalem, Quebec, and Brighton (England). Mathilde said she worked 33 years with the state and 18 years at St. Mary's residential home, however her career involving children spans 65 years, and she also represented the state of Louisiana in day care on a White House Conference on Children. "We made suggestions right to the President. He met with us for some of the meetings and then his people put it into the form of... legislation, our recommendations," she said. Day care benefits the child, the mother "and the community," Mathilde said, giving a safe environment for a child's educational development while freeing the mother to make money for her household, and helps the community "because we had more women in the labor force and we could do more than we could with less staff," she said. She retired as the administrator for child welfare for the Alexandria Region Six. Though she served on many church committees, Mathilde recalled that "one of the things that I helped to do significantly was to set up our day care center. I started that in the 1950s," she said.
"It met a real need because there were a lot of women who needed to work -- during the war, even more than just, you know, now... we were able to set up the day care center and they could go on and have a job... in supporting our war efforts," she said. Interviewed by Bill Sumrall, on October 4, 2013 FUMCA Communications Assistant