When Tompie Asher arrived in Bloomington-Normal on assignment from the Methodist Church in 1908, her stop was only supposed to be temporary.
The superintendent of The Baby Fold, a home for orphaned children founded just six years before Asher’s arrival, had fallen ill and Asher was assigned to replace her. Conditions at the fledgling organization were bleak: The children’s home was overcrowded. Funds were tight, difficult to come by.
None of this was too daunting for the 40-year-old Asher.
“She did it all — and she did it very well,” said Jill Riesenberg, Baby Fold’s assistant vice president of public relations and development. “She really did manage it all, and was expected to.”
Although Asher was a newcomer to the Twin Cities, her dedication to the cause of children at The Baby Fold meant that it didn’t take long for her to develop a reputation. She often visited stores in what was then downtown Normal, a small child or two in tow, asking for anything they could spare — day-old bread or leftover produce, perhaps.
“Even one of the store owners’ daughters recalled seeing her and was just in such awe of her and her stature and how she didn’t draw attention to herself,” Riesenberg said. “She remembers Asher telling her father, ‘I don’t know what we would do without you.’ She did a fantastic job of bringing the community together and highlighting the need within the community.”
So effective was Asher that, in addition to families, the court system often turned to her to find care for abandoned children. Adoption laws as we know them today were virtually nonexistent, but Asher would seek out good homes for some of her children and follow-up with welfare checks much like the norms of today.
Rarely would she not be working, in some capacity, on behalf of the Baby Fold’s children and cause.
“She stepped into a difficult circumstance because of the nature of the work and the space that they had, but also the support could have been increased for her. She was so busy doing it all, all of the time,” Riesenberg said.
Asher’s assignment as The Baby Fold’s superintendent was supposed to be temporary, a stopgap until someone else was found for the job. She ended up leading it for 27 years before finally retiring.
Asher wasn’t the only woman working on the behalf of children in need at the time, but her effective organization and stewardship of The Baby Fold’s resources meant the foundation set for the next superintendent was solid — a crucial fact ahead of the Great Depression. It was Asher’s tireless work, Riesenberg said, that prepared The Baby Fold to change from a “Dickensonian orphanage” to the more modern, full-service organization it is today.
“She was kind of a community organizer: She empowered people and gave them ways to participate in solving problems at the time,” Reisenberg said. “I would say she laid the groundwork for social welfare in the community. She certainly wasn’t the only one doing that, but she was a powerhouse.”
