Lena Horne (6/30/1917-5/9/2010)
NEW YORK – Lena Horne, the enchanting jazz singer and actress known for her plaintive, signature song “Stormy Weather” and for her triumph over the bigotry that allowed her to entertain white audiences but not socialize with them, has died. She was 92.
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"Perris buscando un hogar" by Claudia Carrasco
She’s a mother like any other in the upper photo with a litter of eight rescued last month before giving birth (upper photo center).
And the sadness of this dog after the devastating Chilean earthquake and tsunami in South Chile (bottom center photo).
Claudia Carrasco, “perris buscando un hogar.” Dogs looking for homes.
An earthquake dog
“Este perrito apareció por las calles de mi casa después del terremoto, es un macho café y está con su collar. Anda un poco asustado y con hambre. Le dejo comida y de ahí el va a comersela ya que no se deja tocar aún.”
This dog appeared on the streets of my home after the earthquake, is a male brown and is with his collar. He’s scared and hungry. I leave food and there he will eat it; he does not allow any touching yet.
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Mamie Till-Mobley
Death of Innocence excerpts of the book by Mamie Till-Mobley and Christopher Benson (2003). A nightmare for any mother to experience the death of a love one, a child, a brother, sister, husband or other family member or close friend.
“Emmett Louis Till, my only son, my only child, was kidnapped, tortured and murdered …on August 28, 1955…so many years ago, yet it seems like only yesterday to a mother who needs no reminders…” Mamie Till-Mobley.
Emmett Till
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Lydia Laboy , Sherry Tomaselli Nugent, Nancy J. Parisi (Sherry Burns photo)
The benefit for Mary Tomaselli at Harry’s Harbour Grille Restaurant drew an over-flowing crowd of family, friends and well-wishers, number 1000 or more to honor and help a woman they call a friend.
Delicious food, desserts, music and many wonderful gifts auctioned made the affair the most sought out place to be in Buffalo, New York on Sunday, April, 18, 2010.
Although Mary Tomaselli was unable to be there the beautiful message she sent in a letter was heard throughout the restaurant.
Click photo to view more of Sherry Burns photo of the Mary Tomaselli benefit at Harry’s.
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North Distrct School Board Candidate, Dr. Patricia Devis
Dr. Patricia E. Devis is the only woman candidate in the North District on the ballot for the Buffalo Board of Education. Her name is on the ballot under Level A, the School Board Election is May 4, polls open at 6 AM and close at 9 PM.
Dr. Devis is a woman, a scientist who wrote a doctoral dissertation in Bio-Chemistry at SUNYAB, a tenured Professor at ECC North Campus in Amherst, resident of North Buffalo for over twenty years. She is from Columbia, South America, raised in Puerto Rico, graduated from high school in California and gave up a prestigious fellowship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for SUNY at Buffalo.
After obtaining her Ph.D. in Bio-Chemistry, she taught at SUNY College at Buffalo later, moving on to Erie Community College where she guided, trained and prepared the future scientist of Buffalo and the Western New York Region.
Dr. Devis wants to do the same leadership training for the urban youth in the Buffalo Public Schools and for that we are grateful because there has been a tremendous “brain drain” from this region of some of our most talented people but she stayed and she is still here dedicating herself to preparing the future scientist especially women in an area like Bio-Chemistry where few opportunities exist for them to study or pursue as a career.
Dr. Devis said, ” I am a Ph.D. scientist (UB Biochemistry, 1986) and I have been a Professor for the last 24 years at Erie Community and Buffalo State College. At this stage of my career, I know that as an educator, I can significantly contribute to the Buffalo School District. I will work to improve the methods and programs that are effective and eradicate wasteful inefficiencies. “
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By Jenice Armstrong
Philadelphia Daily News
IT WAS crazy-hot the first time I saw the iconic Dorothy Height in person. Height, though, appeared cool in her trademark hat as she surveyed the sweltering masses at a Black Family Reunion Celebration.
Given her advanced age and her spot in history, I was surprised that she wasn’t off somewhere sequestered in an air-conditioned tent until her time to speak. She had more than earned the privilege of being comfortable, because if Rosa Parks was the mother of the civil-rights movement, then Height was the godmother. Height, who died yesterday at age 98, dedicated her life to the struggle for equality – not just for blacks but for women of all races.
Hers was usually the only female face at high-level meetings during the modern civil-rights movement. If you look carefully at certain photos of the late Rev. Martin Luther King as he delivered his historic “I Have a Dream” speech during the 1963 March on Washington, you’ll spot Height on the platform in the mostly male crowd. She had fought unsuccessfully to have a woman in the lineup to address the issue of women’s rights. (Bayard Rustin, of Chester, was one of those who nixed the idea.) Height didn’t become embittered, though. She knew she had to keep it moving, as we say these days. Height had so much more to accomplish.
By the time of her death from natural causes at Howard University Hospital, Height had spent four decades at the helm of the National Council for Negro Women. During her lifetime, she was an adviser to a number of U.S. presidents including Dwight Eisenhower and Lyndon B. Johnson, in 2004 became a recipient of the Congressional Gold Medal of Freedom and, in 1994, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
“She’s the last of the modern civil-rights leaders,” Temple University’s Charles Blockson said yesterday. “She was like a modern Harriet Tubman. She was always there. When other people retired or died, Dorothy Height was there.” “She was determined like no one I’ve ever seen,” said Bettye Collier-Thomas, a Temple University history professor, who worked with Height to open a museum in honor of Mary McLeod Bethune. “She’d say to me, ‘Dr. Collier-Thomas, you’ve got to learn to work beyond pain. It’s mind over matter.’ ”
Not a whole lot is known about the personal life of Height, who never married and had no children. My understanding is that her 2003 autobiography, “Open Wide the Freedom Gates: A Memoir,” doesn’t dwell that much on personal details. But here’s what we do know.
Born in Richmond, Va., Height moved to Rankin, Pa., near Pittsburgh, as a young girl. She showed early promise as a student by a winning a prestigious award. After being accepted to Barnard College in 1929, she was barred from entering because the school already had filled its quota of two Negroes. So, Height enrolled at New York University, where she received bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Her first job out of a school was as a caseworker for New York City’s welfare department.
In 1937, while working with the Young Women’s Christian Association, Height came to the attention of Bethune, founder of the National Council of Negro Women. Height had been escorting first lady Eleanor Roosevelt when Bethune asked her to volunteer with the fledgling organization. “Bethune was always looking for young women to pull over to the National Council of Negro Women, which she had founded two years earlier,” said Collier-Thomas, who earlier this year published “Jesus, Jobs and Justice: African American Women and Religion.”
Over the years, Height rose through the ranks of the national YWCA while also gaining more responsibilities with the National Council of Negro Women. In 1957, she succeeded Bethune as president. The causes she championed were the huge social issues of the day -anti-lynching efforts; desegregation of the U.S. armed forces; desegregation of public accommodations; and criminal-justice reform. Besides serving as president of the council, Height served as president of Delta Sigma Theta sorority, a black Greek organization, from 1946 to 1957.
“What Dorothy Height did early on was she hired someone to shop for her,” Collier-Thomas said. “She was always impeccable. You wonder how did this woman have time to put herself together like that? She had a cousin, Mr. Hall, who lived with her for years. He would do everything for her. That made it possible for her to come and go and function at that level. . . . Dorothy Height was freed of the normal kinds of things, so her life became her work.
“This woman got up every day and went to her office and was there by 8 o’clock,” Collier-Thomas continued. “Few people her age are able to do that. She lived life right to the end. It is the end of an era. This is a woman who was born in 1912. This is a woman who lived through Jim Crow segregation. This is a woman who lived through lynching. This is a woman who lived through the women’s movement. She was there when women got the vote. Her life traveled along the major movements of the 20th century . . . and she did not do it from a rocking chair retired. She stayed out there in the fray.”
Height was given a position of prominence at the inauguration ceremony for President Obama. “I never thought I would live to see this,” she told the New York Times. It seems right that she did.
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Dr. Barnett Slepian (Photo credit: J.P. McCoy, Associated Press
Lynne Slepian (Photo credit: Buffalo News
“I heard a popping noise. He looked at me and thought he’d been shot. I rushed over to him. He fell against me and then fell to the floor. I yelled to my oldest son. One of us called 911 and we grabbed some dish towels and we tried to stop the bleeding.” –Lynne Slepian
Dr. Barnett and Lynne Slepian attended services at Temple Beth El in memory of the anniversary of the death of Dr. Slepian’s father, Philip the night of his murder. After the couple returned home around 10 P.M., Mrs. Slepian recalled, they and their two youngest sons were in the large kitchen.
”I heard this loud pop,” she said. ”Then he went to the ground, and that was it,” she said. ”I think he bled out in 30 seconds. I never got a chance to say goodbye. All I did was yell at my kids to leave the room and watch my 15-year-old son scramble for towels to stop the bleeding.” She added, ”Hopefully, that memory will fade.”
Dr. Barnett Slepian executed October 23, 1998 in front of his family while in his kitchen preparing himself a meal a sniper’s bullet struck and killed him. This article “My Father’s Abortion War” appeared in the New York Times on January 22, 2006, the author Eyal Press wrote a book about the experience since Dr. Slepian covered deliveries for his father . The article was ” adapted from his book, “Absolute Convictions: My Father, a City and the Conflict That Divided America,” published by Henry Holt.
“On Oct. 23, 1998, a Friday evening, at about 6, Barnett Slepian, an obstetric gynecologist from Amherst, N.Y., called my parents’ home. He was phoning because, that weekend, as on every third weekend of the month, he was scheduled to cover deliveries for my father. A few hours later, after attending a memorial service commemorating the death of his father, as he stood in his kitchen waiting for a bowl of split-pea soup to heat in the microwave, Dr. Slepian was shot in the back by a sniper hiding in the wooded area behind his home. Within a few hours he was pronounced dead…”
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Genelle Beverly Ayres (1926-1963)
Another photo of Sherrie Morris Mother
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Especially for Women in Buffalo, New York 