Headline: WOMAN TOOK ADVICE TO HEART AND TURNED HER LIFE AROUND
Reporter: By Greg Freeman

Publication: ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Last Printed:  Thu., Oct. 24, 2002
Section: METRO, Page: B1, Edition: FIVE STAR LIFT

Don't tell Darcella Craven that she needs to learn what it's like to be down and out.
   Craven today is executive director of Friedens Haus, a community-based program in the city's Hyde Park neighborhood. Craven runs an education program that she hopes to turn into a multiservice community center. The program is the result of a coalition between the neighborhood and Friedens United Church of Christ. Craven works with youngsters, trying to show them that there's a whole world of promise out there. She drives a new car and lives a decent life.
  
But Craven wasn't always an executive director. She once was a mother on welfare, raising two young daughters. But with guidance from people she's run into along the way, she's turned her life around.

Craven grew up in the Forest Park Southeast neighborhood. A desegregation student, she graduated from Oakville High School in 1988, with no real plans. "My mother wasn't going to let me hang around the house doing nothing, so she signed me up for the Army, " Craven said.
  
Craven began as a communications specialist, fixing broken radios in Germany, where she was stationed. Then, in 1991, she became pregnant. When the Persian Gulf War began, she was assigned to be a family support specialist -- tending to the needs of the families left behind.
  
Two years later, Craven had her second child. And she was faced with the father of her children, who wanted to be neither a father nor a husband.

Wanting to spend more time with her children, Craven returned to the States.
  
"I was out of the Army, and ready to get the $50,000 job that Uncle Sam owed me, the home the government owed me, " she said. "I was in for a rude awakening."
  
Craven traveled from Colorado to Maryland to California and then back to Colorado before finally returning to St. Louis in December 1994. "I was going to come back to Mom and let her take care of me, but she had other ideas, " Craven said.

Craven got a small apartment and paid a visit to a federal program called the Job Training Partnership Act. "I walked in and said, 'I'm here to get me a job, '" Craven said.
   A counselor, William Hale, pulled her aside.  
"He asked me, 'What are you going to sacrifice to get what you want?' I didn't know, I said I'd give up parties."
  
Not good enough, Hale told her.

He advised her to get back into a military frame of mind and to develop a motto for herself and her family. She came up with one: "Short-term sacrifices for long-term goals."
  
Hale then sent her to Sanford-Brown College to get a diploma in secretarial science.
   Just as she was getting started, her car was repossessed. She took the bus every day, first to take her daughters to day care, then to get to college. By that time, she had gone on welfare, bringing in $292 a month. She wasn't proud of it, but it was a way to survive.

When she graduated, she landed a part-time job as a secretary, first at what was then Kiel Center, then at an office in Creve Coeur.
  
At Kiel, Craven met a supervisor who was always frank with her. "She would tell me, 'You can't wear that; go home, ' or 'You have to act this way here.' I learned a lot from her."
  
At the Creve Coeur office, a fellow worker was talking with her one day about her plans. She said she planned to get a college degree and start her own business. The woman told her she was looking at life through rose-colored glasses.
  
That made Craven even more determined. She went to Webster University and got a bachelor's and a master's degree. She landed her position at Friedens Haus two years ago.

Craven considers herself fortunate that she paid attention to what people were telling her. "There are a lot of good people out there, but we don't always want to listen to them, " she said. "I finally did, and it made a difference."

Her advice to others? "Get a motto, something that will get you up and out every day, " she said.
Her family's new motto?  
"Shoot for the moon, get to the moon, nothing else is acceptable."


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