Rachel Andresen

Rachel Andresen (April 8, 1907 – November 3, 1988) founded Youth For Understanding (YFU), a non-profit organization dedicated to international exchanges of high-school students.

Andresen was born in Deerfield, Michigan on April 8, 1907. She was the daughter of Reverend Earl R. Mills, a Methodist minister, and Josephine Mills. Her parents motivated their five children to be highly focused and productive, particularly with education. By the time Rachel was fourteen, she had read and consumed the Harvard Classics and the entire works of Shakespeare that her father had encouraged her to read.

She was very lively in high school and had participated in sports, drama, and music; she was also an accomplished pianist. Her nickname at Adrian High School was "Rollicking Rachel". She also did the unthinkable, she bobbed her hair—much to the dismay of her conservative parents. She graduated top of her class when she was sixteen years old. It was also at this time that she met her future husband, Henry Rose. Rachel attended the Detroit Conservatory of Music and received a BFA in music.

After Rachel and Henry were married, she helped to support their income by giving piano lessons while he attended the University of Michigan, Rachel and Henry were one of the few married couples on campus. They had three children and Henry was beginning to establish himself in engineering when tragedy struck.

Henry Rose died in the encephalitis epidemic of 1934, at the height of the Great Depression. Rachel was left with three children to raise alone and not too many people opted to spend money on piano lessons at that time. So Rachel decided that the only way she could make it was returning to school and she decided to study social work; she received her MSW (Masters in Social Work) in a year and a half.

She began her work with the YWCA in Detroit and she also became the director of Camp Talahi. During the rest of the year she did a lot of inner-city work in Detroit. In 1942 she purchased a large farm house on eighty two acres near South Lyon, Michigan and this would become known as Pinebrook.

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