Dear Norwood,

I can’t remember when I didn’t love you. When I was little, Mom and Dad and a half-dozen siblings would come to Perry Avenue, to Nana and PopPop’s house. It was so exciting after East Greenbush. We’d come down on the Thruway and get off at 233rd Street, and go down Jerome Avenue. I was convinced that the end of the No. 4 train at the Woodlawn station was the gateway to New York. You could see the world from Nana’s house — the subway, the Thanksgiving parade, or just feeding the ducks at Woodlawn Cemetery. Aunt Ethel lived around the corner, and we played with the Irish kids next door. One of the three O’Sullivan girls had an exotic name – it was pronounced “Ah-va” — short for “Ave Maria because she was born at Christmas, ya see?” her sister told me.

So when I got a scholarship to come to Fordham University, it wasn’t surprising that I came. It was 1969 and the whole world was upside down. I lived my freshman year on Perry Avenue (Fordham had just gone co-ed, and there were no dorms for women). Sophomore year I got an apartment share; I was 19 and ready for independence. College was a time of learning, but I learned the most at the demonstrations and the constant political and philosophical discussions at the Campus Center during the day, and the The L-D (the El Dorado Bar – long gone I’m afraid) under the 3rd Avenue El.

I met my husband at The L-D, 40 years ago today. He was just back from Nam. We married a year later. Mike and I settled back in my mom’s old neighborhood, Norwood in the Bronx. Nana, newly-widowed, still lived there, and we wanted to be able to help her (not that she actually needed help — she lived another 20 plus years!).

As we were moving in, lots of folks were moving to the suburbs. The Jewish folks from Mosholu Parkway were leaving. “There goes the neighborhood,” the old folks said — but we loved it, and proceeded to have four sons in quick succession. By that time the Irish had moved in. They were good neighbors, so we stayed. They didn’t leave until the late ’80s and early ‘90s, and the same old folks said, “There goes the neighborhood,” when the Latinos began moving in from Puerto Rico, and Central and South America. They were good neighbors, so we stayed.

By this time, the “boys” had moved out to start their own lives. Most recently the neighborhood has seen an influx of people from Bangladesh and Pakistan, and Africans and Russians, and the Cambodians, and the Bulgarians, and the Filipinos and the African-Americans, and most recently, the Mexicans. And they’re good neighbors, and so we stay. Norwood is one of the most diverse communities in the country. And somehow, we manage to communicate and for the most part respect each other.

Twenty years ago, when Mike and the boys and I, along with six of our neighbors, lost almost everything in a fire, people in the community helped us – finding us a place to stay, replacing clothes, furniture, and school books. People collected donations at the subway station. Old ladies donated money from their Social Security checks. One neighbor took my youngest son’s stuffed animals and hung them by the ears from her clothes line every day for two weeks to get the smell of the smoke out. Ten days ago, another family experienced the same devastation. And the community—much poorer now than when we had our fire —has begun to do the same thing. Because we’re good neighbors.

So why do I love you, Norwood? Life is tough here. Lots of folks live one paycheck away from eviction. The drugs and the violence of the ’80s and ’90s almost killed you. But you’re still here. We’re still here. Because despite the Bronx’s horrible reputation, despite the poverty, despite the crazy, real, difficult problems we face here, we are a community. Because you shelter people from all over the world, because you’re home to many community groups and community people who stayed when the going got rough, and who take care of each other in a way you don’t see in other places. Because there’s a richness here, of people and cultures, that transcends the differences and the profound difficulties. For all these reasons, I love you, and we’ll keep muddling through.

Sally Dunford, a longtime Norwood resident, is the executive director of the West Bronx Housing and Neighborhood Resource Center.

admin

Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.