A Feast of Site and Sound

AT THE MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. BREAKFAST IN BRONXVILLE
 
By Susan Johnson 
(January 22, 2024) – Bronxville, NY
Despite the winter’s first big freeze, the Reformed Church of Bronxville was packed for the annual Martin Luther King, Jr. breakfast on January 15th, hosted by the Eastchester Community Action Partnership (ECAP) under the auspices of its Director Denise Chin.
 
Through its Foundation, the Rotary Club of Bronxville was a primary sponsor of the event.  Bronxville Rotary Club President Louis Maggiotto said, “As we join together this morning to pay tribute to one of our greatest Americans, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we reflect on one sermon Dr. King preached, in which he said, ‘All life is interrelated… somehow, we’re caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny.’  As we mark the life and legacy of Dr. King, the Bronxville Rotary Club recognizes a mutual destiny shared with our neighbors. We commit ourselves to working with ECAP towards improving the lives of all those in their communities and the lives of all the people of our world.”
 
 
A Feast of Site and Sound Susan Johnson 2024-01-22 05:00:00Z 0
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Wildlife Poachers become Business owners! Our club project in Africa

Posted by Martin Schulman
Bronxville Rotary Club and RI International grant helps fund COMACO, a joint project with the WCS, to convert illegal wildlife poaching to legitimate businesses, harvesting honey and other products and bringing it to market. Thousands of lioves, changed by thousands of hives! Wonderful work by PP Doris and PDG Bob Benson of Bronxville New York Club, District 7230.
 
Wildlife Poachers become Business owners! Our club project in Africa Martin Schulman 2018-05-08 04:00:00Z 0

DESTINATION COLLEGE and our Rotary Club

 
 
 
 
 
Our 2017-18 co-recipient of funding for ongoing Literacy and Education support is Destination College.
Please take a moment to view the attached video, you will recognize some very familiar faces of our Bronxville neighbors, mentoring and volunteering to assist local, neighboring student-athletes in their quest for college acceptance.
DESTINATION COLLEGE and our Rotary Club Martin Schulman 2018-03-12 04:00:00Z 0

Bronxville Rotary Club Foundation sponsors King Breakfast 2018

As in years past, your Club Foundation has included among its grants a small award to sponsor the  Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr breakfast on the anniversary of his birth. You may know, this holiday is dedicated as a Day of Service, which dove-tails neatly with our Rotary objects of service.
 
This year, County Executive George Latimer [Rotarian from Rye NY club] delivered the keynote address to those gathered at the breakfast, held at the Bronxville Reformed Church. Among our members who attended, a consensus that this speech was both heartfelt and moving, deserved to be sent to all of us. Here then, is the transcript of this address given on Monday, January 15, 2018 by George Latimer:
 
 
Keynote Address
George Latimer, Westchester County Executive
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Day Event
 
January, 2018
 
There is a song that was popular over 25 years ago – perhaps you remember it – a soulful song by a man named Marc Cohn; the song is called “Walking in Memphis”. It sets a scene of Memphis that the tourist board would love – the lyrics tell of the singer walking with his “feet on Beale Street, the home of the Delta Blues”. He sings of Rev. Green – Al Green of 1970’s music fame. There was catfish on the table, gospel in the air; the singer saw the ghost of Elvis up on Union Avenue – followed him up to the gates of Graceland, and saw him walk through. WC Handy. Blue suede shoes. The wide Mississippi.
Several summers ago, I had the opportunity to be in Memphis. Yes, I walked on Beale Street, and, I confess, I went to Graceland. I saw the Peabody ducks march across the lobby of that grand hotel; and I saw the massive presence of Fed Ex headquarters at the Memphis airport.
And I visited something not mentioned in the song.
I visited The Lorraine Motel.
If you’ve been there, you know that on that site has been built the National Civil Rights Museum, and it includes the motel as it looked on that fateful night in April 1968, when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with Rev. Ralph Abernathy, stayed during the Memphis Sanitationmen’s strike. Dr. King stepped out on the balcony of The Lorraine, and he stepped into history.
Dr. King had preached from a pulpit in Atlanta. He had accepted a Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo. He marched from the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. He wrote a letter from the Birmingham Jail. He stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, and looked out on the rows and rows of people on the Washington Mall and shared that he “had a dream”.
All of those stops along the road, in 39 short years, lead to Memphis, and the balcony of The Lorraine.
Walking through the Civil Rights Museum, the path takes you through all the dramatic moments of the Civil Rights movement 50 years past: Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott. The Little Rock Nine at Central High School. The lunch counter sit-in, Greensboro, North Carolina. Bull Connor’s dogs and fire hoses. Room after room after room – the stark reminders of how hard it was for human beings to receive the simple dignity and human rights every person deserves. Dignity granted by Almighty God, but denied by prejudice and hatred; years of slavery followed by years of Jim Crow. Protected by “law” in the Supreme Court, by Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896) – “separate but equal”.
Lynchings and degradations done with the sanction of sheriffs and lawyers. Some churches – houses of God – that turned a blind eye, and at times, gave justification, to heinous acts of hatred.
This too, was walking in Memphis.
On that night in April in 1968, I was a 14 year old boy, living on the south side of Mount Vernon – the only white kid in an African American neighborhood. We had tired ourselves playing stickball earlier that day, and I was in my parents’ home on South 14th Avenue, consuming mass quantities of spaghetti, as hungry 14 year old boys do. The breaking news came on the living room TV, followed by my father’s calls to watch the unfolding story. I “understood” that my black friends would be angry over the assassination of Dr. King. I “understood” it would be dangerous for me to go back outside that night.
I “understood” nothing, really, on that day. The 14 year old George Latimer could not comprehend the magnitude of the pain and suffering; the magnitude of hope Dr. King generated; the magnitude of loss being felt from Memphis to Montgomery to Mount Vernon that night.
What the 14 year old George Latimer could not grasp that night, the 64 year old George Latimer can finally see clearly – seeing all the pieces put together during that walk in Memphis, leading up to the balcony of The Lorraine Motel.
When those Freedom Riders boarded the buses, they did so to free blacks from Jim Crow. What they were also doing was to free White America from its shackles of prejudice.
When those lunch counter protestors sat-in in Greensboro, N.C., they sat-in to assert the dignity of the black man; but in doing so they also were asserting the dignity of all men and women, for all mankind’s dignity, not just African American dignity. The dignity of Italian Americans, demeaned as wops and dagos and considered all members of crime organizations. The dignity of Irish Americans demeaned as Micks, with signs that said “Nina” – no Irish need apply. They were asserting the dignity of those who are Jewish, those who are Native American, those who are Asian, those who are Hispanic, those who are Catholics and those who are Buddhists, and those who are Muslims and those who fall within any number of demographic descriptions.
The march from Selma to Montgomery asserted the right of black men and women to vote – to select their leaders – to govern themselves, but by doing so, they asserted that right for all men and women.   
I heard, in the days after Dr. King’s assassination, a voice on the radio of the man who was our then-U.S. Senator from New York; he said “no one can be certain who next will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed.” In the next 60 days, we found out who did in fact suffer next; that voice belonged to Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. And yet, the violence of those days did not deter the dream.
We are here tonight remembering the life of Dr. King, not his death. But he was not just a dreamer – he was a doer. The bravery he showed, in the face of constant physical threats, is a model for all of us; to show bravery in standing up for beliefs and principles, even if they are unpopular. Especially if they are unpopular.
Dr. King preached non-violence, but he did not preach passivity and timidity. He dreamt that there would be a better day for all of us, but he worked every day of his life to achieve that better day, knowing that good works and faith go hand in hand.
For those of us in the Christian faith, as joyous as Christmas time is – the birth of Christ – the greater celebration is the rising of Christ after his crucifixion, his triumph over death that we celebrate at Easter.
The ideas and the dreams of Dr. King have triumphed over his death. They have triumphed over those who set fire to the Freedom Rider buses; they have triumphed over those who taunted the Little Rock Nine, and triumphed over those who stood in the school house door at Ole Miss and Alabama. The ideas have triumphed over Bull Connor’s dogs, and over those who placed the firebomb in the church on Sixteenth Street that killed little girls in 1963.
Rosa Parks now has her seat -- in heaven. And we here on Earth must continue forward to complete the unfinished business of Dr. King’s legacy.
As the song concludes:
Put on my blue suede shoes, and I boarded the plane.
Touched down in the land of the delta blues /  in the middle of the pouring rain.
Bronxville Rotary Club Foundation sponsors King Breakfast 2018 Martin Schulman 2018-01-19 05:00:00Z 0

Rotary Clubs meet Amarok Society Founders

This Society teaches women, who then teach five others within their village. This spreads valued education basics at a much faster rate with little or no costs, among the people suffering from the harshest levels of poverty and lack of formal education.
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Career Bridges presents: A Night of Opera and Broadway Song

For fifteen years, Career Bridges, a foundation established and administered by Barbara and Rotarian David S. Bender has provided financial assistance, guidance, coaching and counseling to aspiring professional opera and classic singers.
On Thursday, March 16, 2017 Barbara and David brought us together with seven of these young professionals for a Night of Opera and Broadway Love Songs.
The cast:
Melanie Ashkar
Robert Balonek
Teresa Castillo
Shana Grossman
LaMarcus Miller
Jon Tetelman
The repertoire:
Bizet, Donizetti, Mozart, Verdi, Victor Herbert, Lerner and Loewe, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Mitch Leigh, Steven Sondheim, Kurt Weill..
 
It was truly an amazing evening and the audience was overwhelmingly gratified and entertained! Much applause is given to the artists, the Benders, our Social Committee and Board of Directors for a program that rewarded and fulfilled the dreams of all Rotarians.
 
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