The New York Public Library Announces the Winner of the 1998 Brooke Russell Astor Award

New York City, November 5, 1998 -- The New York Public Library has announced James Gilmore as the recipient of the Library’s twelfth annual Brooke Russell Astor Award. Honorable Mentions went to Yolanda Garcia, Sister Mary Franciscus, and Reverend Hattie Smith-Davis. The $10,000 annual award, established in 1987 by a generous gift to the Library from David Rockefeller, recognizes unsung heroes who have substantially contributed to improving the quality of life in New York City. The winners were honored at a reception in the Trustees Room of The New York Public Library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street.

James Gilmore is a New York City police detective in Washington Heights, and also the co-founder of One Hundred Blacks in Law Enforcement, a fraternal organization dedicated to working for social justice. He spends his off-duty time and resources trying to improve the quality of life in the community. In addition to his police work, he has initiated a Safe Passage program of volunteers to accompany senior citizens on errands, works in a local soup kitchen on his day off, and councils young people on how to avoid drugs, checks their report cards, and even arranges country outings and weekend retreats.

Yolanda Garcia is the Executive Director of the We Stay/Nos Quedamos Committee (NQC) in the South Bronx. The NQC’s purpose has been to replace a proposed Urban Renewal Plan, which called for bulldozing and relocating many residents and business in the Melrose community, with a grassroots community-based plan comprising tenants, homeowners, institutions, and businesses who are committed to their neighborhood redevelopment. NQC is now the sole sponsor of all development in a 35-block Urban Renewal area with a population of 6,000 with a median income of $10,000.

Sister Mary Franciscus is the Executive Director of Opportunities for a Better Tomorrow (OBT) in the Sunset Park section of Brooklyn. In 1983 this former parochial school principal’s alarm and outrage at her neighborhood’s soaring high school dropout rates, juvenile delinquency, and unemployment led her to create an organization providing job training and placement for her neighborhood’s young people. Its tremendous success has led her to add an adult program offering the same classes and services as the youth program.

Reverend Hattie Smith-Davis, a retired nurse, volunteers tirelessly in Staten Island for a number of different agencies and causes. She can be found on any given day baking cakes for fund-raisers, fighting for the rights of neighbors as President of the Fox Hills Tenants Association, answering the counselling hotline at the International Christian Center, Graniteville, visiting hospital patients as a volunteer for the Staten Island AIDS task force, distributing food and clothing to the homeless from the trunk of her car, working with at-risk teens in the community, or helping prison inmates with AIDS cope with life behind bars and a frightening disease. Rev. Davis also serves on Staten Island Borough President Guy Molinari’s Anti-Bias Task Force, which works to address issues of prejudice and ignorance in the community.

The Brooke Russell Astor Award

The Brooke Russell Astor Award was established in 1987 as part of a generous endowment gift to The New York Public Library from David Rockefeller. Mr. Rockefeller’s gift is a tribute to Mrs. Astor’s continued commitment to supporting the role of individuals who improve the quality of life in New York City. Given annually, the Brooke Russell Astor Award honors an unsung hero or heroine, someone whose unrelenting efforts and tireless dedication to this city have contributed substantially to its betterment.

Nominations for the 1998 Brooke Russell Astor Award were solicited from over 200 individuals and organizations, including cultural groups, universities, foundations, elected officials, community groups, and social service agencies. The selection committee included representatives from the cultural, academic, government, and social service communities of New York.

Previous Astor Award Recipients

1997 - Cordell Cleare, Co-Chair of the New York City Coalition to End Lead Poisoning, has conducted workshops on lead poisoning prevention at day care centers, head starts, public schools, and for the Montefiore Medical Center’s Lead Poisoning Prevention Project.

1996 - Kathy Goldman, Founder and Executive Director of the Community Food Resource Center, has been working on city, state, and federal levels to address food, hunger, nutrition, and low-income issues in New York City.

1995 - Henry J. Carter, Founder of Wheelchair Charities, Inc., an organization that, through the efforts of volunteers, raises funds for people with disabilities.

1994 - Frank Carucci, Coordinator of Cultural Arts for the Career Education Center of the Board of Education. Mr. Carucci engages homeless and educationally disadvantaged "at-risk" adolescents in hands-on performing arts production.

1993 - Sister Elizabeth Hasselt, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Encore Community Services, an agency dedicated to improving the quality of life of poor and homeless elderly people in the Times Square and Clinton communities.

1992 - Dr. Joyce Wallace, M.D., F.A.C.P., Executive Director of the Foundation for Research on Sexually Transmitted Diseases and a pioneer in the field of AIDS care and research.

1991 - Guy Polhemus, Founder and Executive Director of WE CAN, a bottle and can redemption program that provided jobs for the homeless.

1990 - Marie Christopher, Co-Founder of Alliance for a Drug-Free City, who waged a successful battle against a drug dealer operating in her apartment building.

1989 - Genevieve Brooks, President and Executive Director of MBD Community Housing Corporation, a coalition of churches, tenant associations, and service groups created in 1974 to stop the deterioration of a Bronx neighborhood.

1988 - Rita Zimmer, Founder of "Women in Need," an organization on the West Side of Manhattan serving homeless women and their children.

1987 - Emma Blake, a retired practical nurse who devoted her personal resources to the hungry and homeless in Central Harlem.

 

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