Thank you for the article in a recent issue of the Norwood News which focused a spotlight on the COVE (Community Organized with a Vision for Excellence) founded 20-odd years ago by the Knox-Gates Neighborhood Association. As friends of the COVE (co-founder; former directors), we appreciate Mosholu Montefiore Community Center’s commitment to continuing the mission of the COVE under its auspices to provide quality programming.

We would like to expand the scope of the your article a bit to pick up the heartbeat that drove the formation of the COVE – developing the gifts of youth, steering them away from the draw of guns and drugs and aimlessness and despair that too often accompanied underemployment, self-medication, violence, and hopelessness that plagued the lives of their elders. The parent cooperative after school and teen programs engaged whole families in project-based learning, recreation and entertainment of youth and children.

Into the scope of the article we would also like to draw one youth who participated in COVE programs as a child – Michael Santiago, the young man now paralyzed for life, to whose gun-inflicted injuries you referred in two prior issues.  

The article on the COVE quoted his godmother, COVE co-founder Susie Albo, as saying that he was "a good kid but a bad drug dealer." We regret that reference because it says so little about Michael and about Susie. It does not say that from his hospital bed, Michael has said he does not want revenge – for a shooting that will keep him confined for the rest of his life. It does not say that Michael learned something in the COVE after school about the harm of taking revenge, when the program incorporated peaceful conflict transformation into its curriculum, along with collaborative problem solving and critical thinking.

We would draw into the expanded spotlight the young people from the neighborhood who gathered around Michael in the hospital on his 18th birthday to pray with Susie for those who experience violence in our neighborhood. We would highlight Susie’s efforts for the last 38 years to reduce the ripple effect of harm in the neighborhood and of the trauma that always accompanies violence.  

We would add that Susie has put her life on the line to build trusting relationships in a sometimes hostile and dangerous environment. Lastly, we would draw into view a silent prayer vigil led by Susie two weeks after the shooting incident – "Embrace Peace" – on the triangle in front of the DTC building, drawing neighbors together to pray for peace.

Our neighbors in the Knox-Gates triangle – and on DeKalb and at Tracey Towers and on Rochambeau and Bainbridge and the Oval – want what everyone else wants: food, clothing, shelter; dignity, respect, appreciation; peace, happiness, success. Some of us are woefully ineffective and harmful to ourselves and others in getting what we want.  

We call on all of our neighbors to give dignity, respect, and appreciation to everyone we encounter, near and far – and to join as faith groups, community organizations, institutions, individuals, and families with a common agenda to make the Norwood section of the Bronx a haven of peace, happiness, and success to the fullest measure we can achieve together.

Ruth Wenger

Susie Rodriguez Albo

Wenger is a former COVE program coordinator and current pastor of North Bronx Mennonite Church; Albo is a COVE co-founder, former COVE Activities Specialist, and member of North Bronx Mennonite Church.