Alice E. Lawrence of Altoona says it makes her want to cry seeing young men in prison - many involved with drugs - on the verge of wasting their lives.
As a mother of eight children, she knows that drugs are bad for a community.
"Nobody wants drugs in their town, nobody. It's bad when you are raising children," she said.
But Lawrence also empathizes with the many young people in prison, who are only 18, 19 or 20 years old, facing long jail terms and ruined lives.
That's why Lawrence, chairwoman of the executive board of the NAACP in Blair County, joins fellow NAACP leaders Don Witherspoon and William Sweet several times a week to attend court cases and visit county and state prisons in Blair and surrounding counties.
The trio meets with inmates, prison administrators and even judges - all in an effort to make sure the justice system is being fair, not only to black inmates but to anyone who needs their help.
"We don't act like attorneys. We go out to see [the inmates] get a fair shake," Lawrence said.
Lawrence is an exuberant woman with a hearty laugh and a good sense of humor. She has been active in Altoona and Blair County for more than 40 years.
Her work with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the justice system is just one of many ways in which she is giving back to her hometown and the county she loves so deeply.
She expounds traditional values. People, white or black, need to take responsibility for their lives, she said.
Lawrence remembers raising her large family at Fairview Hills, saying "back then, it really took a village to raise a child."
She said the Fairview Hills community was like a big family, and if anyone saw a child doing something wrong, he or she told him about it.
The other side is that people need help sometimes to improve their lives, and she has tried to be one of the those individuals who act as a "boot strap" for people to raise themselves up.
For example, she was among a small group of people back in the 1960s who saw the need for improved housing in Altoona. She, along with pioneers in the local housing movement such as Lucy Johnson, Lois Hileman, Nina Kennedy and Miriam Ritchey, met after church every week with the Rev. John Jameson to talk about housing.
That led to a bus tour of Altoona, showing ministers and others the atrocious conditions in which many people lived. It spurred the formation of a group that eventually became Improved Dwellings for Altoona.
IDA, as it is known, now operates hundreds of units for the elderly and families in central Pennsylvania
Lawrence is insistent that the job is not done. Young people, she said, still need places to live, to get on their feet.
Despite having seven sons and a daughter with her husband, Grover, who died in 1987, Lawrence worked for 36 years running a sweater-shaping machine at Warnaco, an Altoona company that closed several years ago.
"That was a nice place to work. We had a good time there. Most of the people who worked there were family, a lot of husbands and wives," she said.
Lawrence can remember when the city's downtown was all "hustle and bustle," and she loved a recent Saturday antique automobile show because downtown was like it used to be.
She is concerned about the lack of jobs for young people, about the closing of other businesses and about the lack of business in downtown Altoona.
She was and remains a big supporter of the Blair County Community Action Agency, which developed local neighborhood organizations in Claysburg and the Logantown, Fairview, Fifth Ward and Sixth Ward sections of Altoona that gave a voice to the poor, all in an effort to improve the community.
Lawrence still serves on the agency's board of directors.
She believes in Head Start, stating that the preschool children in the program don't just play - they learn. Head Start also has inspired many of the parents to further their educations, some to attain a college degree, she said.
The Rev. Calvin C. Edmonds, pastor of the Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church, which Lawrence attends, said she "is very faithful and devoted."
Until recently, Lawrence, who is approaching 80 years old, drove the church van. She collects food from church members to take to a local food bank and gathers clothes for the poor.
Lawrence is asking her church to help Shaquita Young, a young mother with six children who is being evicted from Fairview Hills - a story that caught public attention two weeks ago, Edmonds said. Lawrence also is helping the woman through the NAACP.
Witherspoon, the NAACP president, said Lawrence oversees the organization's executive board, helps out with the annual Freedom Fund Dinner, plans bus trips for young people to Washington, D.C., and is involved with community projects for the elderly. He said she visits people in the hospital and takes them flowers.
"We're happy to have her as part of the NAACP," he said.
Asked why Lawrence is so active in the community, Witherspoon said she raised a large family and was active because of her children. He said that just carried over even after her children were grown.
"It's a way of helping not just the black community but also the white community," she said, explaining why she became a part of the NAACP. "We have saved jobs for white as well as black."
She has fought for civil rights over the years, working with former state Sen. Robert C. Jubelirer and others to ban cross-burning in Pennsylvania, a bill signed by Gov. Tom Ridge.
She also met and talked to Dr. Ralph David Abernathy, who assumed control of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and met Dr. King's wife and daughter.
She said her active life is "to make it a better place for your children and other children coming up. This is our town, and you want to make it a better place to live."
Her advice for parents: "You have to start and teach your kids at home."
