Social Work
She attended Pembroke College, the women's college of Brown University, and later studied in the field of Social Work at Northwestern University’s Recreation Training School centered in Hull House, a Chicago settlement. When her training was complete, she earned the position Director of Girls’ Work where she acted as social worker to over 500 girls. Her devotion to service and helping others is often cited as the reason she entered the field.
In 1927, she married Waitstill Hastings Sharp taking temporary leave, although she would never return to the profession. The two lived in Wellesley, Massachusetts.
When Waitstill was ordained a Unitarian minister in 1933, he was assigned to a small church in Meadville, Pennsylvania where his wife followed. She acted almost as a second minister, organizing most of the youth work, education activities, and women's meetings, as well as church suppers. As her husband was often difficult to talk to, church members would go to Martha, who was always happy to lend an ear.
Read more about this topic: Martha Sharp
Famous quotes related to social work:
“...I remembered the rose bush that had reached a thorny branch out through the ragged fence, and caught my dress, detaining me when I would have passed on. And again the symbolism of it all came over me. These memories and visions of the poor—they were the clutch of the thorns. Social workers have all felt it. It holds them to their work, because the thorns curve backward, and one cannot pull away.”
—Albion Fellows Bacon (1865–1933)