Founder of Kids in Distress, Midge Shailer, dies at 77
As a home nurse for Broward’s health department in the 1970s, Mildred “Midge” Shailer saw things that troubled her.
Children were mistreated and abused. Some didn’t have parents to care for them. All needed a safe place to sleep at night.
And so when her ladies’ group, The Junior League of Greater Fort Lauderdale, challenged its members to go out and find a service project in 1979, Shailer envisioned
— and then created — Kids in Distress, which has grown into an organization that helps 20,000 children each year.
Shailer, of Hollywood, died Sunday after complications from a stroke nearly two weeks ago. She was 77.
In the beginning, Shailer served as the group’s director, recruited supporters and solicited donations. The first donation: a boat that the group had to auction off, said Mark Dhooge, the Kids in Distress CEO.
At an event to honor Shailer who was retiring after six years as the director, one woman explained to the crowd of 200 people: “Midge doesn’t take no for an answer.”
The very first clients were six foster kids.
“If Shailer is in her fundraising mode, and you’re in range, either ante up or hide your wallet. And if you want to pitch in and work with her, set your motor on high and wear your roller skates. She’s absolutely indefatigable,” a Society newspaper reporter wrote at the time.
Today, Kids in Distress — which acquired Family Central on Feb. 1 — serves 20,000 children each year from Monroe County to
Palm Beach County. It has a $35 million operating budget. Its headquarters remain in Wilton Manors.
“Midge worked the luncheon circuit, she became a pretty good speaker, very active in fundraising, she was out there putting the hustle on people,” said her husband Phil Shailer. “She got Mr. [H. Wayne] Huizenga [the founder of Waste Management] to give a million bucks - not bad, right? Not to disparage people who gave $50,000 or $5,000 — it all counted.”
Midge Shailer was born in Des Moines and met her future husband when she bummed a ride with some college boys who were headed to Yale University. They were all students at Duke University: She was a nursing undergraduate senior, and Phil Shailer was in his first year of law school. He was on his way to Yale to watch a football game, and she wanted to visit her then-fiance.
The rest, he says, is history.
They settled in Broward County because he liked the area, where his parents were snowbirds. Midge Shailer worked as a nurse and Phil Shailer became Broward’s first elected public defender in 1968, and then switched sides the next year to lead Broward’s prosecutors first as the appointed, and then elected, State Attorney.
“She saw such horrors out there at the hands of parents or stepparents or others, she saw there was a great need for some place that could provide refuge and safety for young abused kids,” he said. “I would go there from time to time and it broke your heart. [But] they were given such tender loving care. …
They of.”
Steve Palmer, the retired chief operating officer of the Stiles Corp., said Shailer recruited him 37 years ago to the Board of Directors, where he remains today.
“It was her driving force that put Kids in Distress on the map and made it a successful agency that had the potential to grow into what it is today,” Palmer said. “We would not have Kids in Distress today if it were not for Midge Shailer. She was passionate, smart, high character.”
Her daughter, Leslie Curley, of Hollywood, said her mother’s mantra was: “Find our purpose in life and learn how to give that away and share it. Mom through her own kids, the three of us, felt she needed to help other kids and hence that evolution of Kids in Distress.”
Dhooge said a 40th anniversary celebration is scheduled for December, and he was hopeful Shailer would attend. When he recently sent staff to chat with her and reminisce, she had a question about the achievements they had reported: ” ‘Are you doing it with excellence?’
“She always wanted to ensure we were going above and beyond,” he said. “This is a woman who had the vision to serve the kids that didn’t have a voice. She knew kids shouldn’t be served in just an adequate way, they should be served with excellence.”
Midge Shailer is pre-deceased by her son, Steven. In addition to her husband and daughter Leslie Curley, she is survived by her daughter Tracy Coe, of Eagle, Colo., and two granddaughters.
A celebration of life is tentatively scheduled for Jan. 26, which would have been her birthday. were well taken care