Most of the kids Maye Viola Turner led out of the projects each summer had never left Chicago — let alone smelled mountain air, watched hawks riding the thermals or seen white kids scavenging barefoot for peat moss.
Mrs. Turner’s summer pilgrimages all over America were intended to help poor black city kids experience new worlds and, in some ways, for them to appreciate their own.
“You think you’re coming from the worst, but you’re going to see things that make where you’re living seem a paradise,” said Archie Listenbee, who was married to Mrs. Turner’s sister and accompanied her on many of those trips.
Mrs. Turner, who devoted her life to the city’s youth, died Dec. 14 at Rush Oak Park Hospital after a short illness, her family said. She was 83, and had been living in a condo in west suburban Forest Park.
Mrs. Turner was born near Vicksburg, Mississippi. Her parents were part of the Great Migration that brought millions of African-Americans up from the South. Her parents settled on the near North Side. She grew up in a devout family, spending most of her spare time in church.
“’Always put God first in whatever you do, and you’ll never fail,’” her niece Julie Listenbee recalled her saying.
After graduating from Wells High School, Mrs. Turner earned a degree in psychology at Roosevelt University. She married the pastor of her local church, Gospel Temple Missionary Baptist Church — then at 405 W. Division — in 1965, and became the church’s “first lady.” Her husband, Warren A. Turner, died in 1995.
She became a social worker for the state of Illinois, striving to reunite broken families. She later taught at Chicago Public Schools and at the City Colleges of Chicago.
In the summer — working with her brother-in-law, who was the executive director of Project Open Roads — she would take busloads of African-American kids to the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia, the Rocky Mountains, rural Wisconsin, Orlando and elsewhere.
Mrs. Turner was a tall, slender woman who modeled in her younger years, but she’d happily get down on her hands and knees to crawl into a tent, or hike for hours on end. A stern glance and the thrust of her index finger was usually enough to stamp out any rowdiness on her cross-country bus trips.
With her as one of their guides, city kids learned to kayak, tell the difference between a timber rattlesnake and a copperhead, and meet rural kids who had less than they did.
“She was a very strong disciplinarian,” said Archie Listenbee. “She’d say, ‘There’s a way you’re going to conduct yourself, and I won’t accept anything less.’ . . . This was an opportunity for these kids to get out of Chicago, and they didn’t want to blow that by acting out.”
When she wasn’t traveling, you could often find Mrs. Turner behind the wheel of her 1970s custard-colored Chevrolet Monte Carlo, packing in family and friends to take them to church or missionary work.
Mrs. Turner would lead others cleaning up the homes of the elderly, often helping them bathe — and singing spirituals to remind them they were doing God’s work.
And she enjoyed few things more than Friday family nights at her mother’s home on North Ridge — eating fish, pizza and singing spirituals.
Mrs. Turner remained engaged with the world until the day she died, taking delight in the election of the country’s first black president, while deploring the absence of God in daily life.
“The main missing factor was the breakdown of the African-American family and [absence] of God, the absence of prayer and the absence of the traditional church,” her niece said.
In addition to her niece and brother-in-law, survivors include a son, Robert Monroe Turner III; a brother, Reese Harvey; five sisters, Alberta Harvey, Elnora Listenbee, Bernice Moore, Juanita Harvey, and Laverne Carson; a granddaughter, Mariah Vance; and many other nieces, nephews and cousins.
Services have been held.