Clara "Mother" Hale knows about love: "As we help each other, we help ourselves," she says. "We gain strength from the love we give and the love it generates."

When she became a young widow with young children, she was faced with becoming a domestic, virtually the only job open to an African-American woman with no college education in the early 1940s, but that would require her to leave her children alone all day long.

So instead, she decided to help other mothers in need, and she began an informal daycare service. "(Children) were coming for five days and going home Saturday and Sunday," says Hale. "But they got so they didn't want to go home." Hale earned an extra dollar for each child who stayed through the weekend.

When Hale became an officially licensed foster parent for children of unwed or working mothers, she was called "Mommy Hale" by 40 children from various racial and religious backgrounds. Those first 40 children all went to college and Hale says, "Every one of them graduated."

When she was 64 and had just announced her retirement, Hale was brought a baby whose mother was a heroin addict. Within six months, she was caring for 22 babies in her own apartment, all born with drug addictions. With her own money and the help of her daughter, she opened the Hale House Center for the Promotion of Human Potential in a Harlem brownstone; the Center provided a home for children born addicted to drugs. Not abandoned, the children now had two mothers, and they were returned to their homes after they were successfully guided through withdrawal, and after the parents were rehabilitated.

"Mother Hale" didn't stop with caring for drug-addicted babies. When the AIDS epidemic became a national emergency, she opened Hale Cradle, the nation's first residence for babies infected with HIV. At the time, New York hospitals were strained for resources to care for AIDS babies, and many health care providers were afraid of being near them. Hale Cradle began by taking in 15 children, many of whom were not expected to survive more than two years. "I want them to live a good life while they can and know someone loves them," says Hale.

In his 1985 State of the Union address, President Reagan called Hale a "true American hero." But later, Hale explained the simple truth of her life: "I'm not an American hero. I'm a person that loves children."

UPDATE: Clara Hale died in 1992.