For decades Beulah Brokenborough lived in an old house in West Philadelphia, an angel of a woman surrounded by the blight and crime and desperation of a struggling neighborhood.
Born in 1924, she had 18 children and raised them all. When some of them fell on tough times, she took in their kids — her grandkids — and raised them too. She also saw to the children of friends and acquaintances who had likewise found drugs, despair or trouble. Then there were others, who all but wandered in seeking shelter or stability for the short haul or long.