My first Deaconess appointment was Wesley Community
House in Key West, Florida. We worked mainly with people who had
recently arrived from Cuba. A lot of the adults did not speak
much English, but most of the children picked up English pretty
fast.A lot of people in our neighborhood (we lived in the community house) had birds for pets. My house mate and I decided it would be nice to have a parakeet. She could take him to Kindergarten in the morning and I could take him to club groups in the afternoon. We called our pretty new bird "Perky." We tried to teach him to talk. I even bought a Parakeet Teaching Record. It repeated words like "hello, goodby, . . . " over and over. We played it for him during times we didnā€™t have people around.
One of my responsibilities was a girl's sewing class. Most of the girls attended the Catholic intermediate school, so when they needed my help with their sewing, they would call "Sister" or sometimes, "Miss Merritt." Although I always took Perky with me to classes and clubs at the Community House for six years, Perky never opened his mouth except to squawk or squeak.
After my work at Key West, I entered the graduate School of Social Work in Cleveland, Ohio. Soon after my first semester started, I had a letter from the new worker in Key West. She said that Perky, the parakeet, was driving them crazy because he was always yelling "Sister, Miss Merritt, Come here!" Unfortunately, he learned his lesson too late!
---Arlene Merritt