Year in Review 2012: Rescue

In 2012, com­munity ef­forts kept spir­its high as South Phil­adelphi­ans re­membered the im­port­ance of help­ing oth­ers, wheth­er it be for those af­fected by Hur­ricane Sandy or their very own neigh­bors faced with a tra­gic house fire.


From ral­ly­ing for edu­ca­tion to build­ing new homes for single par­ents to rais­ing schol­ar­ship money for stu­dents in Haiti, area res­id­ents had their work cut out for them while boast­ing pas­sion and a shared be­lief for a bet­ter fu­ture for the city, the na­tion and the world.


Janu­ary


Ten Phil­adelphia Per­form­ing Arts Charter School, 2600 S. Broad St., stu­dents were se­lec­ted to per­form at the Mer­ri­am Theat­er in the na­tion­ally tour­ing “Wiz­ard of Oz.” The cast­ing com­pany reached out the Mar­coni in­sti­tu­tion to cast some of the Munch­kin roles.


St. Richard School be­came St. Pio Re­gion­al Cath­ol­ic School after ar­dent com­munity sup­port­ers and per­son­nel ral­lied to keep its doors from clos­ing.

A three-part series fo­cused on the over­whelm­ing changes af­fect­ing area Cath­ol­ic schools. The Blue Rib­bon Com­mis­sion, an Arch­diocese of Phil­adelphia-ap­poin­ted en­tity, an­nounced clos­ings and mer­gers of nine of South Philly’s 10 ele­ment­ary sites due to de­clin­ing en­roll­ment and the in­creased pres­ence of charter schools. Its re­port pro­posed An­nun­ci­ation B.V.M., 1148 Whar­ton St., would merge with St. Nich­olas of Tolentine School, 913 Pierce St., at the lat­ter site; St. Gab­ri­el School, 2917 Dickin­son St., would join St. Thomas Aqui­nas, 1719 Mor­ris St., also at the lat­ter loc­a­tion; and Epi­phany of Our Lord, 1248 Jack­son St., Holy Spir­it, 1845 Hartran­ft St., Our Lady of Mount Car­mel, 2329 S. Third St., Sac­red Heart of Je­sus, 1329 E. Moy­a­mens­ing Ave., and St. Richard, 1826 Pol­lock St., would move to the shuttered Stella Mar­is build­ing, 814 Bi­gler St. However, stu­dents, teach­ers and par­ents pro­tested against the mer­ging of schools. 


Feb­ru­ary


Debt and dwind­ling funds im­pacted many seni­or cit­izens at the Samuel S. Fels South Phil­adelphia Com­munity Cen­ter, 2407 S. Broad St., when its over­seer, Caring People Al­li­ance, put it up for sale. The Phil­adelphia Per­form­ing Arts Charter School dis­cussed plans to pur­chase the site, spawn­ing con­flict­ing re­ac­tions.


The Phil­adelphia City Plan­ning Com­mis­sion’s Lower South Dis­trict plan re­lease vouched to in­tensi­fy life and leis­ure for cit­izens, em­ploy­ees and vis­it­ors. Among the many pro­posed courses of ac­tion were adding a shop­ping cen­ter, re­vital­iz­ing va­cant build­ings, im­prov­ing traffic and at­tract­ing vendors to Pat­tis­on Av­en­ue. 


Former Eagle As­ante Samuel helped to re­vamp a home for a Grays Ferry mat­ri­arch.

Four-time Pro Bowl se­lec­tion As­ante Samuel, now an At­lanta Fal­cons corner­back, re­vamped a prop­erty on the 1400 block of South Mar­ston Street to aid the first loc­al ven­ture for his Bring It Home Single Moms Found­a­tion. Rasheeda Man­ning, a moth­er of two formerly of the 3000 block of Dickin­son Street, oc­cu­pied the Grays Ferry house shortly after.


Feb­ru­ary came to a close with news that some area schools had won their cases to re­main open. St. Gab­ri­el and St. Thomas Aqui­nas did not merge while the five-school mer­ger was split in­to two loc­a­tions, with St. Richard and Holy Spir­it com­bin­ing at the former’s loc­a­tion, later be­com­ing St. Pio Re­gion­al Cath­ol­ic School; and Our Lady of Mount Car­mel unit­ing with Sac­red Heart of Je­sus at Epi­phany of Our Lord School, later be­com­ing Our Lady of Hope Re­gion­al Cath­ol­ic School. An­nun­ci­ation and St. Nich­olas still were slated to join, later form­ing St. An­thony of Padua Re­gion­al Cath­ol­ic School.


March


Hor­ace Fur­ness High School, 1900 S. Third St., and South Phil­adelphia High School, 2101 S. Broad St., stu­dents ven­tured from their tra­di­tion­al classrooms and stud­ied en­ergy-ef­fi­cient philo­sophy at the Sus­tain­ab­il­ity Work­shop at The Navy Yard Quar­ters A, 1413 Langley Ave.


Young­sters from Steph­en Gir­ard School pre­pared the state’s first Amer­ic­an Heart As­so­ci­ation Teach­ing Garden.

Aim­ing to in­crease self-es­teem and de­crease waist­lines, stu­dents from Steph­en Gir­ard School, 1800 Snyder Ave., ten­ded to the state’s first Amer­ic­an Heart As­so­ci­ation Teach­ing Garden.


The newly ren­ov­ated Penns­port Wal­mart Su­per­cen­t­er, 1675 S. Colum­bus Blvd., held its grand open­ing, and con­nec­ted with the neigh­bor­hood, it presen­ted mon­et­ary con­tri­bu­tions to 14 com­munity or­gan­iz­a­tions.


The Chil­dren’s Hos­pit­al of Phil­adelphia and the City an­nounced a plan that would re­lo­cate the former from St. Ag­nes Med­ic­al Cen­ter, 1930 S. Broad St., to Health Cen­ter No. 2, 1720 S. Broad St., to form a pe­di­at­ric and adult care ser­vices fa­cil­ity. Sources also would en­able the re­build­ing of the South Phil­adelphia Branch Lib­rary, 1700 S. Broad St., and con­tin­ued im­prove­ments to DiS­il­vestro Play­ground, 1701 S. 15th St.


April


South Philly’s $60 mil­lion en­ter­tain­ment dis­trict that was four years in the mak­ing was com­pleted. Xfin­ity Live! Phil­adelphia, 1100 Pat­tis­on Ave., boas­ted its cre­ation of 800 full-time po­s­i­tions along with a fun fa­cil­ity for Phil­adelphia sports fans at its grand open­ing.


After em­ploy­ees, par­ents and com­munity mem­bers ral­lied to­geth­er, the School Re­form Com­mis­sion re­con­sidered its ini­tial re­com­mend­a­tion to close South of South’s Ed­win M. Stan­ton School, 1700 Chris­ti­an St., in Novem­ber 2011’s Fa­cil­it­ies Mas­ter Plan. 


Whit­man’s Mi­chael Sul­li­van donned a bion­ic exo­skel­et­on at Cen­ter City’s Good Shep­herd Penn Part­ners to help him to re­sume walk­ing.

A bion­ic exo­skel­et­on helped Mi­chael Sul­li­van to walk after a lengthy peri­od of wheel­chair con­fine­ment caused by a 1994 diving ac­ci­dent. The wear­able ro­bot gave the Whit­man fath­er and hus­band the abil­ity to be eye and eye with people again.


Pu­pils at Queen Vil­lage’s Wil­li­am Meredith School, 725 S. Fifth St., launched its second an­nu­al Hoops for Haiti, which raised aca­dem­ic schol­ar­ship money for chil­dren in Bo­losse.


May


The story of Bella Vista res­id­ent Steve Carter cap­tured the hearts of many who heard his com­plic­ated story of why he has two leg­al names, owns three birth cer­ti­fic­ates and cel­eb­rates two birth­days. His curi­ous search about his life con­nec­ted him with ex­ist­ing blood re­l­at­ives with whom he plans to re­build re­la­tion­ships.


Stu­dents from An­drew Jack­son School, 1213 S. 12th St., par­ti­cip­ated in a mock tri­al de­bat­ing the in­no­cence of the char­ac­ter Goldilocks in “The Story of the Three Bears” as part of the school’s sev­enth Law Week cel­eb­ra­tion.


The Arth­rit­is Found­a­tion’s Arth­rit­is Walk des­ig­nated Rev. Mi­chael Scuderi as its adult honoree, re­cog­niz­ing the New­bold priest’s 42-year mis­sion to curb his rheum­at­oid arth­rit­is and re­cent ad­vocacy for ad­di­tion­al re­search fund­ing.


Lauded en­ter­tain­er Frankie Avalon re­turned to South Philly to raise funds for aut­ism re­search.

En­ter­tain­ment icon Frankie Avalon re­turned home to as­sist his sis­ter, Theresa Belfiore, in ped­dling Aval­lone To­ma­toes at Shop­Rite, 29 Snyder Ave.


June


The Court of Com­mon Pleas gran­ted the Rev. Stan­ley Wilson and his Cent­ral Club for Boys and Girls, 2537 Al­ter St., a six-month stay of ex­e­cu­tion on the sale of two nearby lots he ac­quired in Oc­to­ber 2010. Since then, the Of­fice of Prop­erty As­sess­ment gran­ted Cent­ral Club a non­profit real es­tate tax ex­emp­tion of those prop­er­ties, which is ret­ro­act­ive to 1977.


Two mur­als were un­veiled at Ed­ward Bok High School, 1901 S. Ninth St., in hopes of re­mind­ing stu­dents that the fa­cil­ity is a No Place for Hate loc­a­tion. Bok learners ac­cep­ted the task to ap­pre­ci­ate each oth­er’s dif­fer­ences and ex­plore oth­er cul­tures.


St. Ma­ron’s Cath­ol­ic Church en­cour­aged every­one to be Le­banese for one week­end.

After a three-year hi­atus, St. Ma­ron Ro­man Cath­ol­ic Church, 1013 Ell­s­worth St., re­sumed its pop­u­lar Le­banese Fest­iv­al, which provided the 117-year-old Passy­unk Square church a way to cel­eb­rate its Asi­an an­ces­try with com­munity mem­bers.


Cen­ter City-based Catch Inc. de­veloped Pat­ri­ot House, 1221 S. 15th St., a 15-per­son site to provide be­ha­vi­or­al health and in­tel­lec­tu­al dis­ab­il­ity as­sist­ance to chron­ic­ally home­less vet­er­ans.


Ju­ly


The Mum­mers Mu­seum, 1100 S. Second St., took part in the 10-day Wawa Wel­come Amer­ica! fest­iv­al by host­ing Go 4th & Learn About Mum­mers. The in­ter­act­ive pre-In­de­pend­ence Day in­form­a­tion ses­sion provided an op­por­tun­ity for young­sters to learn about the tra­di­tion on a much warm­er day than Jan. 1.


Hawthorne res­id­ents cel­eb­rated the open­ing of their new com­munity park, 12th and Cath­ar­ine streets, a $2.2-mil­lion pro­ject that ad­ded more than 50 trees, 4,000 square feet of plant beds and 19,000 square feet of lawn to the site. 


Arts Sanc­tu­ary, 628 S. 16th St., in­tro­duced Valer­ie Gay as its second ex­ec­ut­ive dir­ect­or. With mu­sic­al theat­er, op­era and solo con­cert re­cit­al cre­den­tials, Gay will work to in­spire and pro­mote Afric­an-Amer­ic­an con­tri­bu­tions to lit­er­ary, visu­al and per­form­ing arts at the South of South or­gan­iz­a­tion.


De­term­ined youths tugged their way to vic­tory at the Chris­ti­an Street YMCA’s third an­nu­al Kid­die Olympics.

Chris­ti­an Street YMCA, 1724 Chris­ti­an St., hos­ted its third an­nu­al Kid­die Olympics, which 2nd Dis­trict Coun­cil­man Kenyatta John­son de­vised in his cam­paign for more phys­ic­al activ­ity. 


Au­gust


The An­der­son Mon­archs Base­ball Club’s na­tion­al tour in­cluded sev­er­al stops at Ma­jor League ball­parks.

While fit­ness activ­it­ies were tak­ing place at home, a South of South base­ball team was on a once-in-a-life­time cross-coun­try trip. Coach Steve Ban­dura led the An­der­son Mon­archs Base­ball Club on a three-week, 4,500-mile na­tion­al tour to com­mem­or­ate the 65th an­niversary of Jack­ie Robin­son break­ing MLB’s col­or bar­ri­er.


Stu­dents and par­ents braved the heat to at­tend a nine-hour gath­er­ing at South­ern nearly a month be­fore school was in ses­sion again. The an­nu­al Back-to-School Edu­ca­tion Ex­tra­vag­anza fea­tured work­shops for kinder­gart­ners through 12th graders for the second year in a row at the Lower Moy­a­mens­ing fa­cil­ity.


Domen­ic De­Marco, a 10-year-old Whit­man res­id­ent, honored his slain sib­ling through par­ti­cip­a­tion in the 42nd Phil­lies Home Run Derby at Cit­izens Bank Park, 1 Cit­izens Bank Way.


Youth am­bas­sad­ors for AT&T’s It Can Wait cam­paign gathered at United Com­munit­ies South­east Phil­adelphia, 2029 S. Eighth St., to dis­cuss the per­ils of tex­ting while driv­ing. Joe Di­vis, AT&T ex­ec­ut­ive dir­ect­or for ex­tern­al af­fairs, en­cour­aged the youths to be lead­ers in ex­plain­ing the im­port­ance of put­ting down the phone while driv­ing.


A New­bold fam­ily par­ti­cip­ated in a Phil­adelphia Live Arts Fest­iv­al show, “This Town is a Mys­tery.” The new­est piece from Head­long Dance Theat­er, 1170 S. Broad St., ex­amined di­versity and fam­ily co­he­sion.


Septem­ber


The band Las Cafet­er­as helped to cel­eb­rate the Septem­ber un­veil­ing of “Aqui y Alla” mur­al pro­ject at 1515 S. Sixth St.

Bella Vista artist Michelle Ort­iz cre­ated the “Aqui y Alla” mur­al pro­ject at 1515 S. Sixth St., giv­ing South Philly im­mig­rants the chance to share their stor­ies through art, while col­lab­or­at­ing with youth in Mex­ico. Las Cafet­er­as, a Los Angeles-based band, stopped by to per­form in front of the newly painted piece of art.


Daniel Peou, a former Cam­bod­i­an refugee, gained ad­di­tion­al pro­fes­sion­al solace in new his role as a prin­cip­al at Fur­ness where he pre­vi­ously at­ten­ded ju­ni­or high and served as as­sist­ant prin­cip­al.


“Hell’s Kit­chen” sea­son 10 win­ner Christina Wilson, left, now is spend­ing her days on the Las Ve­gas Strip, serving as head chef of Gor­don Ram­say Steak.

Former Point Breeze res­id­ent Christina Wilson won the 10th sea­son of Fox’s “Hell’s Kit­chen” and has since be­come a head chef at the Par­is Las Ve­gas Hotel’s Gor­don Ram­say Steak. Wilson star­ted her new job with a $250,000 salary. 


South­ern, which was re­moved from the Pennsylvania De­part­ment of Edu­ca­tion’s per­sist­ently dan­ger­ous schools list, has aimed for more suc­cesses, like a roof garden, since part­ing with the neg­at­ive dis­tinc­tion it has had since 2007. Uni­ver­sal Auden­ried Charter High School, 3301 Task­er St., which joined last year, also was taken off of the list.


Oc­to­ber


Re­l­at­ives and friends united to raise funds for Dolores Bar­rett and her three men­tally dis­abled chil­dren by hold­ing a four-hour cel­eb­ra­tion at the South Philly String Band Hall, 2820 W. Port­er St.


An elec­tric­al fire des­troyed a house on the 300 block of Mon­roe Street, where Leroy Cook and eight of his fam­ily mem­bers resided. Queen Vil­lage en­tit­ies quickly united to as­sist the fam­ily mem­bers, who all luck­ily sur­vived the blaze.


Of­fi­cials held a ce­re­mony at The Phil­adelphia Navy Yard for the 1,200-acre urb­an cam­pus’ first hotel: A five-story, $34-mil­lion, 172-room Court­yard by Mar­ri­ott. The build­ing, which is set to open in the fall of 2013, also will of­fer guests 2,000 square feet of meet­ing space, an up­scale res­taur­ant and lounge, as well as a fit­ness cen­ter.


Novem­ber 


Har­ris­burg-based Bridge Edu­ca­tion­al Found­a­tion dis­trib­uted $98,416 in schol­ar­ships to loc­al learners from Our Lady of Hope; St. An­thony of Padua; St. Gab­ri­el; St. Mon­ica, 16th and Port­er streets; Cal­vary Temple Chris­ti­an Academy, 3301 S. 20th St.; and Ss. Neu­mann-Gor­etti High School, 1736 S. 10th St.


Loc­al voters helped to de­term­ine the U.S. pres­id­ent by cast­ing bal­lots on Elec­tion Day. Al­though some South Philly res­id­ents were un­sure if Pres­id­ent Barack Obama de­served an­oth­er term, the ma­jor­ity of voters proved him to be worthy. 


Sereda Thompson, a Point Breeze nat­ive, re­turned from a year Middle East Op­er­a­tion En­dur­ing Free­dom mis­sion with more ap­pre­ci­ation for life. Thompson’s fam­ily mem­bers con­sidered her re­turn as a “life-chan­ging mo­ment” when they could “show and re­ceive love” to­geth­er.


Ant­on Moore foun­ded Unity in the Com­munity with hopes of help­ing bright­en be­lea­guered lives dur­ing the hol­i­day sea­son. In Novem­ber, the group traveled to north­ern New Jer­sey to help those af­fected by the dev­ast­a­tions of Hur­ricane Sandy.


SEPTA’s Route 71 ended op­er­a­tions after eight years of con­vey­ing pas­sen­gers to and from the Navy Yard. It has been re­placed with a loop shuttle, which is coupled with a Cen­ter City-based ex­press ser­vice to fa­cil­it­ate em­ploy­ees’ and vis­it­ors’ com­mutes to the ever-grow­ing urb­an cam­pus.


Decem­ber


The Wa­ter­fall Room, 2015 S. Wa­ter St., hos­ted its an­nu­al Christ­mas lunch­eon for the blind and visu­ally im­paired. Nearly 100 people were honored with gifts, food and sea­son­al songs to cel­eb­rate their suc­cesses and en­cour­age their per­sist­ence at Car­men D’Aquilant’s site, fur­ther­ing his 20-year in­volve­ment with the South Phil­adelphia Lions Club.


Fralinger String Band, 1901 S. Third St., feared its props were des­troyed after a four-alarm fire harmed a gar­age where it was tend­ing to and stor­ing its items for the Jan. 1 parade. However, two days after the blaze, mem­bers were cleared to enter the struc­ture where they found their be­long­ings with only wa­ter and smoke dam­age. 


Car­ro­lyn Ming­gia, a arth­rit­is aquat­ics in­struct­or at the Chris­ti­an Street YMCA, 1724 Chris­ti­an St., spread hol­i­day cheer with her stu­dents, dubbed The Sis­ters of the Wa­ter, at their eighth an­nu­al hol­i­day lunch­eon.

Con­tact the South Philly Re­view at ed­it­or@south­phil­lyre­view.com.

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You can reach Lauren Hertzler at lhertzler@southphillyreview.com.