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Love is: Getting a building named after you!
Sister Trude “Thomas” Collins, SC, is being honored this Sunday for her 60th Jubilee, that is, 60 years as a Sister of Charity of New York. Nearly 50 of those years were spent in the South Bronx at Saint Athanasius Church where Sister Trude taught int he classroom and did community organizing.
“People would knock on the convent door for help,” she said. “It cemented the idea you had to be with the people.”
Forty-eight of her years here were all about helping and hope, about rebuilding the wreckage of arson, drugs and crime.
The tan brick building named “Sister Thomas S.C. Apartments” on Southern Blvd. is on the last of the burned-out lots in the South Bronx.
(source: “Sister gives 60 yrs.” by Patrice O’Shaughnessy in NY Daily News, September 1, 2011)
The building is an all-affordable, 105-unit apartment building.
In the 60′s and 70′s the Hunts Point section of the South Bronx was a desolate place lined with the carcasses of buildings still smoldering from the latest fire. Landlords torched their buildings for insurance money, gangs ruled the streets, and crime was at an all time high. The community complained of no heat and hot water, no garbage pick-up and no police presence. The only refuge was the neighborhood Roman Catholic Church – St. Athanasius and its priests and nuns, namely Fr. Louis R. Gigante and Sister Thomas, who became beacons of hope and leaders in the tenant’s rights movement and in empowering this community.
The building’s name pays tribute to the strength and character of Sister Thomas, S. C. a key leader in the Hunts Point community that empowered her community by meeting their needs at a grassroots level. The beloved Sister of Charity boasts that although she is a NYS licensed teacher, her unofficial training came by way of the “Academy of the South Bronx Streets,” where she earned what she refers to as her “P.H.D.” – a degree in Poverty, Hunger and a Determination to bring about Social Change.
(source: Press Release from NYhomes.com, June 19, 2008)
Happy Jubilee, Sister Trude! May your light continue to shine brightly through your life and through the lives of all those whom you have known!
So here’s a question … if you were to be named after a building to characterize something about your life’s mission (as it’s unfolded or how you hope it unfolds), what building would it be and why?
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The Seamen’s Bethel In New Bedford, MA, the chapel Ishmael visits in Moby Dick. New Bedford was a major stop on the Underground Railway and the first integrated city in the US. Fredrick Douglas came to New Bedford as an escaped slave and began his preaching career here. The Bethel still serves fishermen from all over the world.
And completely off topic–Sr. Julie, do you still ride your bike. You haven’t written about it in a long time.
I would want to have a music school for at risk youth to be named after me. Music is my passion and helping kids is my mission. Maybe one day this will happen.
What a great story! And think of what it must have been to be the lone bastion of safety in that dangerous area!
What kind of building would I like to see my name on? (The question asks which building would I want to be named after, but I think it means what kind of building would i like to have named for me – not sure – but I’ll take that angle.) I think some kind of “safe-house” for those needing refuge – a place of simplicity, beauty, and order – with place to pray, to read, and to talk quietly with someone who would listen. With a good music system!
I think I’d want a retreat center named after me, because I want to help people who need stress relief.
Something educational, I think, would be good. Need not be a school, per se, but somewhere that people would go to learn stuff, formally or informally.
Seriously, I had a friend years ago, Nancy Short, who married Wayne Hall and became Nancy Short Hall. Wayne’s ambition was to make a lot of money so he could donate a building to his college (Colby, in Maine, IIRC). The stipulation was that they would name it after him. It would be “Hall Hall”!