In 1966 a mother of five, Rose McGarrigle, relocated to Austin, Texas from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Rose realized the desperate need for quality day care for children with both physical and mental handicaps.
Rose discussed this need with the powers in charge at that time, got very little encouragement, and approached her husband, a retired Master Sergeant, who obliged and closed in the carport of their West Austin home. Within weeks, a red Volkswagen bus started rolling through all parts of Austin, collecting youngsters of all ages with a variety of challenges and taking them to a pleasant sunny room with music, toys and love in her home. Hope House, a licensed day care facility for the mentally challenged, was born and Rose McGarrigle was titled “the director,” a term that sounded very strange to Rose.
Within months, the neat, sunny room was outgrown and Austin churches came to the rescue. From the Austin Friends Meeting to the Crestview Methodist Church, help was offered and the number of children grew. A kind professor at the University of Texas informed Rose that she had a “tiger by the tail” as several day care situations became impossible for parents to handle. Because of concern for Rose’s five children, her first Board of Directors resigned.
Within two years, Rose’s four-bedroom house accommodated three youngsters, Rose’s five children, and a helper. The search was on for a large house to accommodate a combination of day care and residential care children. Once again, help from the city was refused.
A new Board of Directors was formed and a parent offered a “fixer upper” house in the outskirts of Austin. The renovation of the old two-story house was truly a labor of love for all involved and it served the children well for eight years.
Rose, the daughter of a well-known performer, grew up in Germany and was raised by her grandparents who owned a theater in Dresden. War time found Rose in Berlin, serving as a nurse’s aid in a Red Cross facility, caring for the terminally ill and displaced. She was seventeen and the facility scared her. It had locked, barred windows, huge wards, and was a very lonely place to be.
During the months in this facility, farmers from the surrounding villages would come to visit, asking what had happened to certain individuals who had lived there for years. When Rose denied knowledge of the individuals and asked why the individuals had lived there, the answer was always the same – he was slow or crippled and died of pneumonia. Even at seventeen that raised questions too horrible to contemplate.
Rose eventually left, in order to join a sisterhood of nurses, and became a nursing student. The end of the war brought a miraculous unification with her family. The whole family settled in Bamberg, Germany, in the American occupation zone. Rose met a German psychiatrist who directed a facility outside of this lovely old town where he housed a handful of children with mental handicaps whom he had saved from destruction during Hitler’s regime. The elderly nuns in charge of this facility were less than excited about their young charges and turned them over to Rose’s care – her first meeting with children with mental challenges.
Rose founded and directed Hope House for 38 years. She had some very firm convictions about people with severe mental challenges. She believed that they did not have to live in misery, loneliness, isolation, and chemical or physical restraints. Rose believed they could live in an environment of happiness and fun and that they could experience freedom of movement, even in a wheel chair. She believed they had ample capacity to love others and receive love. Rose believed that mental and physical challenges could be a blessing with the recognition and acceptance by the community and that everyone is a child of God, created in His image.
Very active involvement of her sons and daughter and an extremely dedicated staff aided Rose in her efforts. Hope House has been the recipient of very generous help from various Texas foundations – The Moody Foundation, The Ewing Halsell Foundation, The Hoblitzelle Foundation, The Lowe Foundation, The Lola Wright Foundation, The Frucella Foundation, and the Pierce Runnells Foundation. Their generosity, combined with a dedicated parent body, has helped create a truly pleasant home for 28 residents ranging in age from 6 to 51, living in harmony as a big family that has been richly blessed.
Thirty-eight years later, Hope House, (officially Casa Esperanza, Inc.), is located in Liberty Hill, Texas on five rambling acres following a creek line, in a Mexican style home with lots of joy and sunshine. A pet donkey, chickens, guinea hens, dogs, cats, and a variety of parrots add to the quaint, country atmosphere. A heated pool, a therapy room with a whirlpool, and a motor home to transport the residents to and from a variety of community recreational facilities are instrumental in adding to the quality of life. A school bus transports youngsters, who are able to function appropriately, to the local public schools.
Rose instilled in us all God’s love for children who need it the most. Rose worked every day until her very last Jan. 1, 2003. On this day she asked the workers to take care of “her kids” and left the facility in the capable hands of her devoted staff and under the direction of Ginger Hernandez, an assistant that trained with Rose for over 10 years. Ginger retired in early 2008 and the directorship is presently in the very capable hands of Mr. David Gould.
