I am: a nursing-intent
student at the College at Brockport
Years in Rochester: 12
- 1 (1 year in Buffalo since l began living in upstate) = 11
Current Home: Ogden,
New York
Dear Rochester,
My first encounter
with you had me mispronouncing your name as a toddler who had trouble pronouncing
his R's. You see, I was traveling with my parents and sister from my then home
in Westbury, part of Nassau County on Long Island, through a county named
Westchester and onto the eastern reaches of Western New York. This travel, over
the river (I have come to know as the Genesee) and through the woods, or more
often cornfields, to Grandmother's house in Ogden. I’ve found that I can’t even
blame my juvenile pronunciation of Rochester on my weak Long Island accent! Though
linguistics aside, I arrived in Rochester a decade later with all the
skepticism of a just-outside-of New Yorker trying to find the city that so many
people told me about.
During my first years
in the area, I kept to myself some as I tried to make sense of the cornfields located
in what people called suburbs. Sure I had seen them on visits, but this part of
New York always resembled rural countryside to my naïve vision. Rochester, you then
were elusive and mysterious at first and I was shallow and homesick. It took
time to appreciate what made you different than the metropolitan area of the
Big Apple.
In time I ventured out
of doors and deepened my love for nature and history as I learned about your
footpaths. Hiking trails that had been created along historic canals taught me
about what shaped your towns and villages in the early 19th century
made me more aware of what made this community. They made and created a settling
place together instead of on their own. Together for the sake of community
instead of fame. This doesn’t stop people from rising to celebrity from your
unique neighborhoods and diligent suburbs. When you do cast light the national
fame o those who have had their roots here I saw that you celebrated that it
took a village to shape these lives. When those same people left the spotlight
for a time, you remembered them for their contributions to the creative arts,
the competitions of sports, and the world of philanthropy and business. It was
always about how the community was made better by these lives and not how one
person accomplished something on their own.
As I saw remnants of
your flour city days in the fields of winter wheat and the rumbles of the Star
of the West milling company on my errands to Churchville, smelled blossoms of
the flower city every spring and summer along tree limbs and dotting your
spacious parks, I began to see a city that defined itself as more than its
straggling winter –complains aside! Dear Rochester, you were quiet, and I had
to shush a place in my mind for noise that I had acquired from the din of Long
Island Expressway traffic, and listen to the echoes of the past still being
lived out in the present. I waited for lift bridges that fell and rose in Adams
Basin and Spencerport and sang about low bridges and mules. These were bridges
to the past that carried the future. These were beautiful connections for your
community to share, for everyone to enjoy.
And yet as I came to
enjoy the heritage and legacy of canals through the Genesee Valley and reaching
the west from the east towards Lake Erie, something began to bother me about
your present reality. Something that, in your neighborhoods and towns that stained
the fabric that I had come to love. What seemed so bright and hopeful began to
appear as bleak as I entered neighborhoods that had become ruined from industrial
decay and economic neglect. Inequality was straining the image of community
that so endeared me to your people. I began to see the poverty and economic
disparity that left the suburbs comfortable and happy and many of your city
neighborhoods and schools struggling for a piece of the pie. I saw the paradox
when the same conditions of squalor hid in the suburbs and shined in prosperity
along famous avenues in your city proper. When Wegman's began to close stores
in corners of your city that were economically fragile, I felt my heart sink.
Where was the community that cared for and came together for its neighbors?
It was more than the
broken windows in empty factories and the poverty that was maligned by thoughts
I'd heard in the suburbs about laziness and welfare. It was the lack of
understanding that didn't seem apparent. Rochester, I knew I could be idealistic,
but these disparities left me and you hurting. I didn’t want to give up on you,
especially when I heard of neighbors empowering each other and working together
with the police to prevent and stop criminal activity or when I heard your
store owners talk about the need to give the city a chance.
I cautiously began to
express my doubts about moving in with you if these realities afflicted the
greater community. I knew of people that cared for these concerns and listened
to the people the afflicted. I began to see a flicker of light in neighborhoods
that seemed to always be shadowed by better times. People wanted to make a
difference for your future. What was that light that beckoned me to come and
see? I soon heard you whisper to me, to my heart I heard about a whisper of
persistent and urgent need. I began to listen to voices that spoke about something
changing in your streets. I heard the growling empty stomachs and empathized
with shivering mothers looking for a way to survive your frigid winters. I
wanted to join them, and found something deeper in the heart of a community
that showed its strength yet again, in outstretched hands of synergy and
friendship.
Your outstretched arms
invited me in to see how I could work with others empowering your life. I heard
about these gathering places that dreamed and hoped. Cameron Community
Ministries, Dimitri House, Mary's Place, the Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, Partners
In Restorative Initiatives, the Greater Rochester Community of Churches, the
Rochester Area Interfaith Hospitality Network, Flower City Habitat for
Humanity, Foodlink – I could go on. Organizations people had created to listen
to the needs of your hurting neighborhoods in a desire to empower your network
of caring people and strengthen the community at large. When I volunteered in
your soup kitchens and community gardens, reaching out to people without enough
food stamps and those with income insecurity or with refugees trying to learn
English and a way to live with a new climate and culture, I saw a vision for
the future that was built on a legacy of mutual support. I saw dilapidated
houses become vacant lots which would become flourishing vegetable gardens that
could feed the surrounding neighborhood with fresh produce that could help make
a healthy life more affordable and more attainable. I heard gratitude and trust
being rebuilt after years of disappointment and fear.
Most of all, I heard
the voices that I could join in these efforts and find a way to care and nurture
a sense of purpose. In learning to listen to your collective voices speaking
strong, truthful words. These are words that encourage all to participate and
be engaged in responsibility of a relationship with you, Rochester. Your real
challenges are met by real hearts that remember and include people from every
walk of life. While not always perfect, your people are devoted to learning and
educating themselves and each other in ways to be sustained through real
challenges.
Your community is your
greatest asset, and though it has struggled with the real issues, it has become
stronger through the hope that everyone can become a part of its interconnected
chain. If I have found a home, it is knowing that you have invited me to
help form it, and even if I leave, I will know that the community in Rochester
has shown that there is not one person that does not need another. That in
loving you, we love each other and are loved ourselves. And so my eyes and ears
have been opened to see that there is no community of one person, a community
is you, which in the end is all of us, together.
With love and
gratitude,
Frederick Dean
