Travelers Aid Society has provided succor to lost and lonely new arrivals to Chicago since the late 1800s

In October 1924, Kalliope Koyka got off a train in Chicago wearing a tag pinned on her by an agent of the Travelers Aid Society. Speaking virtually no English, the 7-year old was looking for her parents. They had left her with relatives in Greece when they came to America two years earlier.

Lord knows how she got through immigration at Ellis Island. But someone must have brought her to the counter of the Travelers Aid Society. Topped by a bright white light on a pole, its counters were beacons of hope for immigrants and out-of-towners arriving at the city’s railroad stations.

Kalliope was greeted in Chicago by her aunt and uncle, according to the Tribune account, who told her that her parents were living with them at 5458 S. Princeton Ave.

“For twenty minutes she sat in her uncle’s lap and pulled his hair, mussed up his hat, punched his nose, and pinched his cheeks,” the Tribune reported. “Then she turned her attention to her aunt, Miss Ariti Dracoulakoun. That lady’s hair was mussed, her hat was pulled, and her nose was punched.”

The Travelers Aid Society in Chicago was established by the Young Women’s Christian Association in 1888, picking up on a mission to help people far from home that had begun earlier in other cities. “In a word its objective is the protection of stranger young women at the stations,” the Tribune wrote in 1895.

“So we women meet the through trains and watch for girls traveling alone,” a member of the society told the Tribune. “Frequently they are young, unsophisticated country girls who have come to this city, attracted by its glitter and glare, to seek employment. These are taken to safe boarding-houses and efforts made to place them in a desirable position.”

Runaway girls were especially vulnerable to “white slavers,” as they were known: Haunting train stations, they promised to help young women, but sold them to brothel operators.

“Certain it is that a part of the 3,000 girls assisted during the year, had it not been for the Travelers Aid, would have written their sad story in three chapters: Distress, the devil, downfall,” the Tribune’s 1895 report concluded.

In 1915, the YWCA’s traveler’s aid work was turned over to a secular organization, the Travelers Aid Society of Illinois. In its final 11 months, the YWCA’s society assisted more than 5,700 girls. At a time when charities were generally segregated, it was noted that “special attention was given to eighty-nine negro girls,” the Tribune reported.

On September 18 of that year, Travelers Aid got a telegram from Valparaiso, Indiana: “Reva Allen, 12-years old, sold her school books at Westville, walked 12 miles, escaped searching parties and detectives, and took to Chicago over Grand Trunk.”

The day before, an Aid Society worker had found the girl at the Dearborn Avenue Station and brought her to the YWCA’s hotel at 830 S. Michigan Ave. In the morning, Allen convinced the worker that all she needed was streetcar fare to an aunt’s house at 71st and Cottage Grove Avenue. Naively, the worker accepted her story before the telegram from Valparaiso arrived.

A frantic search ensued. When she was found, it was discovered that Reva Allen had also been known as Reva Christianson and Riva Anderson, but that her true name was Reva Arnold.

“It was explained that she had so many names because she had taken the cognomens of all her stepfathers,” the Tribune observed, noting that she was more likely 9 years old.

The Travelers Aid Society was financially supported largely by upper-class women, as the Tribune reported of its 1967 board meeting and luncheon at the tony Racquet Club in the Gold Coast neighborhood.

“I’ve never held this much money in my hand before,” said Charles Brown, president of the society’s administrative board, when handed a check for $20,000 by Mrs. John Contos, outgoing chairman of the society’s Woman’s Board.

“As soon as she can wind up her board business, Mrs. Contos and her husband are going to Palm Springs for three weeks,” the Tribune reported.

World War I created a new clientele for the society: War brides. En route to European battlefields, many GIs got engaged to local women. Some had little English skills upon following their betrothed to America.

The Tribune told one such story that began in Sarthe, France, and ended at 1649 N. Fairfield Ave., Chicago. It ran under a headline: “The Princess of Wooden Shoe, A War Romance,” a riff on the Cinderella fairytale.

The real-life tale began when Germaine Uzenot was asked by Albert De Vogelaere, of the 145th Machine Gun Company, to marry him. “Oui, monsieur, avec plaisir, she replied,” according to the Tribune’s account.

Fortunately for them, another Chicagoan, Rosaline Cashin, was in France working for a relief organization. She alerted relief workers and Travelers Aid agents to help Germaine en route and explained how they would recognize her.

“All the agencies from Bordeaux to Chicago knew the little French girl who arrived in New York alone, wearing her wooden shoes and carrying her good ones, and which had cost her 80 francs and which she did not propose to spoil.”

“So when the French stranger arrived in Chicago she was welcomed by the Travelers Aid Society and by the Protectorate of the Catholic Women’s League.” Shortly thereafter, Germaine and Albert were married at Holy Name Cathedral.

Travelers Aid at some point established an office at O’Hare International Airport, and also had an outpost at the Greyhound bus station. Its work extended to temporary workers in the area, including stable workers at Arlington Park Race Track, a Travelers Aid worker told the Tribune in 1977.

“Seasonal migrants, they work for low wages grooming and caring for the thoroughbreds they fall through the gaps of bureaucracy and social services available to others,” the Tribune reported in 1977. “Travelers Aid Society, using money from a variety of charities and originally from the Horseman’s Benevolent and Protective Society, has moved in to fill the gap.”

In 1981, Tribune columnist Anne Keegan wrote about the phenomenon of elderly people hitting the road and becoming lost. “Many of them have run away from a nursing home or the prospect of having to live in one,” a Travelers Aid administrator told her.

“They wind up at the Greyhound bus station or the train station, or wandering around O’Hare and someone brings them to us because they don’t know where to go next. Sometimes they don’t know where they are.”

The Heartland Alliance, an organization whose roots were planted by Jane Addams, the pioneering social reformer, subsequently absorbed Travelers Aid, and continues to provide assistance at O’Hare, according to the Alliance’s website.

In 1988, the society’s centennial was celebrated at the posh Drake Hotel. “It was a $100-a-ticket night of long stemmed roses, French Champagne and goodie bags filled with razors for the men and eye shadow for the ladies,” the Tribune reported. The $100,000 raised would give the “homeless a cot to sleep on, a bowl of soup and, perhaps, a pair of shoes.”

The agency’s executive director only hoped partygoers were following the dance steps of a first lady whose empathy for have-nots was contagious.

“I feel the irony in all this” said the Rev. Sid Mohn. “But I think of Eleanor Roosevelt. There was a candle lit in her, and bit by bit, across the room other candles were lit. At some point, there will be a fire and that’s the point when social justice and social welfare will be achieved.”

Have an idea for Vintage Chicago Tribune? Share it with Ron Grossman and Marianne Mather at rgrossman@chicagotribune.com and mmather@chicagotribune.com.