╠PAR@ ` ⁿTEXT ` εMcLean, Alice Throckmorton1886╨1968social service organizerBorn in New York City on March 8, 1886, Alice McLean was the daughter of the chairman of the board of the Phelps Dodge Corporation. As a child she traveled widely, mastered several languages, and was educated privately. An early marriage to Edward L. Tinker, a lawyer and later author and critic, ended in divorce, and she resumed her maiden name. Until 1938 Alice McLean led the life of a wealthy socialite. In that year, however, while visiting England she learned of the work of the Women╒s Voluntary Services, a volunteer organization doing war-related work on the home front. After studying similar groups in other European nations she returned to America in 1939 and began enlisting friends in what was at first an entirely informal series of activities aimed at promoting the idea of volunteer social service. In 1940 she organized the American Women╒s Voluntary Services. Despite the prevailing mood of isolationism in the nation at that time, she succeeded in rapidly building a sizable organization interested in preparing the home front for war. By the time of Pearl Harbor AWVS numbered over 18,000 members who were training in ambulance driving, evacuation procedures, mobile kitchen operation, first aid, household conservation, fire prevention, and other techniques. The entry of the United States into the war greatly increased the number of volunteers. Training in automobile mechanics, cryptography, switchboard operation, map reading, rehabilitation, and other skills was added to AWVS╒s program. Volunteers provided relief and food services to armed forces posts, disaster workers, and wounded servicemen and at other times served as fire watchers, crop pickers, motor vehicle drivers, and photographers. AWVS workshops turned out more than a million new or reconditioned articles of clothing for servicemen, their families, hospitals, and other users, while publishing booklets and conducting public classes for housewives in preserving and repairing their families╒ own clothing. AWVS members sold more than a billion dollars worth of war bonds and stamps during the war. By 1945 AWVS members totaled some 325,000, and the more than 200 junior auxiliary groups had enrolled over 32,000 young people. Partisanship, racial discrimination, and rivaly with other social service agencies were successfully avoided. McLean continued as president of AWVS, which was still in existence at the time of her death in Baltimore on October 25, 1968. «styl ` ! ¬ 5¬ % 5¬ ? !I w 5¬ x !I ! 5¬ " !I link `
