They made the times better

On the second Tuesday of each month, Joann Neal, Daryl Jordan, Nancy Marr, Janet Wohlars, Jeanne Baum, June Johnson, and Anna McClure meet at Varney’s Restaurant in Brookhaven for lunch. Sometimes Helen Martin, Bellport Hagerman East Patchogue Alliance’s first executive director, now retired, joins them.

The women pushed among others for positive changes over the years in North Bellport, helping to establish school lunches, the beautiful new headquarters for the Boys & Girls Club of the Bellport Area, the South Country Community Land Trust, affordable rents and housing like the Gleneagle Green apartment complex on Atlantic Avenue, as well as social services and the South Country Education Foundation.

Besides North Bellport, they hail from Bellport Village, East Patchogue, Mastic.

“We meet because we have similar views and want to make the community better,” said Neal. The friendships go back decades.

Neal has seen a lot of changes in her North Bellport area.

“The houses here were built in 1955 and accommodated the husbands who had gotten out of the service; a lot of white lower-middle-class families moved in.
My husband and I got married in 1968 and came to our in-laws in North Bellport in 1969.

“A couple of minorities began moving into the neighborhood, and people started getting out and sold their houses cheap.”

Some did stay; most didn’t.

“The ones who didn’t bother selling them, walked away,” Neal added. “Government agencies boarded up those homes; then they initiated a lottery system you could enter for $50.

“We had two kids then and started bidding on homes in North Bellport and won on the third try.” Neal ultimately raised four children: a teacher, lawyer, police officer, and CEO of Strategic Solutions LLC and founding director of the Bellport Chess Club, Jason Neal. “We paid $14,500 for our house in 1972,” she said. “I love the block.”

Some initiatives ran in the family.

Daryl Jordan’s deceased husband, Herman Washington, started the South Country Community Land Trust; Daryl herself campaigned at Stony Brook University to have doctorate candidates teach master classes in Bellport schools for the South Country Education Foundation.

Marr said some of the friendships started in 1980, when a survey was conducted regarding a lunch program for Bellport students.

“Most of my motivation is seeing the community as a whole community,” she said. “I feel connected to North Bellport as well as Bellport Village.” Marr gave kudos to the town regarding housing, citing former town supervisor Ed Romaine when he came onboard as the first town community director, using code inspections to help families who had housing problems.

Habitat for Humanity and the South Country Community Land Trust were game changers for the area.

Neal pointed to the $4.5 million Long Island Region NY Forward funds recently awarded to the town to construct affordable mixed-use housing in North Bellport.

“We’re hoping that when this money comes to North Bellport, we’ll be involved,” Neal said.

Over in Patchogue…

Tracy Todd Hunter founded and helmed the free, exuberant Of Colors Creative Collaboration events at Artspace for years, drawing impressive celebrities and government officials. An original Artspace resident, he was a Patchogue High School Hall of Fame recipient last year and serves on a number of organizations, including the Greater Patchogue Cultural Heritage Committee, the Town of Brookhaven Black History Commission, and the Brookhaven branch of the NAACP. Hunter has moved a distinctive, impactful needle on diversity in Patchogue. He commented that his grandparents, Fay and Everett Dooley, bought their house in the village in the early 1940s. 

“There was a community of Blacks there at that time on West Avenue and South Street, and there were others in the 6th Street area and some on River Avenue and the West Main Street area,” he said. “We lived at 42 West Avenue. My aunt lived next door to the elder Monacos at 34 West Avenue.”

The time was 1966. Hunter was 4 then and lived among cousins and relatives.

“At Hammond Street, that used to be a four-story apartment building, there were Latinos there.

“Everybody got along. We all played together and went to each other’s houses. It was an open door; we had families back and forth.

“These towns were small with railroad stations, and people came to visit to go to the hotels and beaches. It was really robust back then.”

Pamela Gwathney spent her formative years in Patchogue (she now lives in North Bellport). She is a board member of Grace A.M.E. Zion Church on Grant Place in Patchogue, which is over 100 years old.

“Mother Ella McLean is still alive, and we recently went through pictures and talked about the older residents who helped to build the church in Patchogue,” Gwathney said. “We moved to Patchogue in the late 1940s. I lived on West Avenue near Tracy’s [Todd Hunter’s] grandmother. There was a Nabisco factory across the street.”

“Now I live in North Bellport and attend Grace Church.”

Grace Church was established in 1919.

“There was a core group in Patchogue who made up the area: Dinkins Hunters, Miss Waters, Sally Joaquin, the Edwards the Joneses, Fay Dooley, Tracy’s grandmother,” she said. “It was a sizeable group. They were dedicated. They first met in each other’s houses and then bought the building; I think it was moved to where it is now. South Street had a Mount Zion Baptist Church and a Church of God and Christ. The churches would have these dinners with chitterlings, corn bread, fried chicken.”

Gwathney went into a depression after her mother died and quit school at South Ocean Avenue in eighth grade, but eventually got her GED and progressed to a master’s in human services. Her career accomplishments include working at Head Start for 15 years developing staff training and aiding Stony Brook University in starting up a master’s in social work program.

“The church did a lot for me because I was without a mom after she died; she was a domestic in Patchogue. I learned how to be a young woman, how to speak and not be afraid. But even at the schools, they prepared me well.”