Rivera Fights for Immigrants in DC

Last Sunday, Assemblyman Jose Rivera accompanied leaders from the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition (NWBCCC) to Washington, D.C.

Man Killed Defending Teen

Police are currently looking for the individuals who plunged a knife into the chest of a young man who came to the aid of a neighborhood teen.

Three Stabbed on Creston

On Monday night, three people were stabbed following an argument outside of an apartment building across from St. James Park.

Storm Leaves Mess

The Bronx is still recovering from a brutal Nor’easter two weekends ago that left 8,400 residents without power and felled dozens of trees in local parks.

Mr. Tambourine Man’ Movie Uses Local Backdrops

If you walked up Webster Avenue past the Woodlawn Cemetery on a recent Thursday it may have seemed as if you stepped back in time a half century or so.

Two weeks ago, that stretch of Webster, which stretches north along the Bronx River, was full of Chevys, Fords and Pontiacs from the 1950s and 1960s. The cemetery was being used as a film set for a new movie called, "Mr. Tambourine Man."

Bainbridge Businesses Still Picking up the Pieces

It’s been more than four months since a 5-alarm fire ripped through a popular Bainbridge Avenue commercial strip on Halloween.

The lot, on Bainbriudge Avenue near 204th Street, remains a pile of ash and rubble and a boarded-up blight in the middle of a once-thriving commercial strip. But some of the businesses affected are slowly but surely coming back to life – some nearby, others in different zip codes. Others may never make it back.

Megan Charlop — An Appreciation

The Bronx lost a giant last week. Megan Charlop’s shocking, sudden death took from us a mensch without rival.

Meeting Megan Charlop was knowing her. The warmth, the smile, the kibitzing, the energy, the offers of help – all that came as quick as the first handshake. I remember so clearly the first time I met her when, in 1994, she walked into the Mosholu Preservation Corporation office on East 208th Street, probably to talk to Dart Westphal about progress on the renovation of a building that would become the Lead Safe House. If I never spent time with her again, I would remember her always. Her joyous presence was instantly felt.

Going through the Norwood News archives, it was remarkable that we could only put our hands on a few photos of Charlop. This despite the fact that she helped realize the Lead Safe House on Mosholu Parkway and that, more recently, she played a critical role in making sure kids didn’t get hooked on sweetened milk in school cafeterias. She and her husband, Richie Powers, took in foster kids and hosted overseas families in town for surgery at the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore. She helped to start so many organizations we probably missed some in our cover article.

But it makes sense, too. Megan was a powerhouse of an advocate without the ego. She was all about the work, not the recognition, as so many others have said this past week. Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, who just last week was lobbied in Albany by Megan and students from DeWitt Clinton High School to restore state aid to school-based health centers, said he had to nudge her into the group picture with him and his colleagues.

Kudos to Westphal

I was surprised to read that Dart Westphal (article, March 11-24, 2010) had retired so quietly and without fanfare, after all that he has accomplished in this neighborhood. I have lived here for more than 35 years, and I love what Mosholu Preservation Corporation has done to make this such a wonderful place to live. Kudos to Dart for his vision for our little jewel of a neighborhood.