Senior citizens reflect on 50 years of Harlem Week
Harlem Week held its Senior Citizens Day at the State Office Building on Friday while celebrating its 50th anniversary. Throughout the day, longtime Harlem Week attendees gathered for the annual event designed to celebrate and provide information to seniors.
“Harlem Week continues to be something that we all look forward to each and every summer,” Adleasia Lonesome-Gomez, 63, told the AmNews.
Lonesome-Gomez has been coming to Harlem Week since she was a child, and has fond memories of listening to Jazz at Grant National Memorial. Now as an attendee of seniors’ day, she says she loves the community coming together to celebrate Harlem, while continuing to pass down Harlem Week tradition to her children as well.
“Hopefully when I’m no longer here, it’ll be another 100 years, another 150—something that we need to keep going for generations,” Lonesome-Gomez said.
As they walked in, attendees learned about various service programs available to them from groups like Black Health Matters and Visiting Nurse Services, and screened for blood pressure and vision from the Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine.
The first half of the day featured the premiere screening of “The First,” a film about Welsey Augustus Williams, the first Black firefighter to be promoted to an officer for the New York Fire Department. First Deputy Fire Commissioner Joseph W. Pfeifer and Assistant Fire Commissioner Jim Harding also presented a poster of the film in celebration of Harlem Week.
Voza Rivers, Harlem Week Board member and one of the original founders along with Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce CEO Lloyd Williams, spoke about the significance of Senior Citizens Day.
“This is one of the most important activities that we do because it is on the backs of the seniors who created the foundation that takes us into the future,” Rivers said.
E. Ronald Guy, 79, is the chair of Ryan Health and remembers Harlem Day in 1974. As Guy was a member of the Harlem Youth (Haryou) organization in 1964, a community organization that worked to uplift Harlem residents in education and civic engagement, he is delighted to see how Harlem Week has grown over the last five decades and carried on that critical work.
“It has elevated our sense of community and commitment,” Guy said. “On a personal level, It made me want to be more engaged.”
Guy emphasized the importance of building connections between older and younger generations of Harlem.
“The two things we have to remember are the seniors who got us where we are and the young people to get us further,” Guy said. “We need to make sure that we connect the seniors and the young people together.”
New York State Senator Cordell Cleare, who represents District 30 (which includes Harlem), made an appearance to share information about benefits and recent legislation with seniors. Other speakers provided voter registration and banking information while trainers from NY Road Runners also led an energetic workout session.
Stephanie Francis, 75, is an original Harlem Week Board Member who also helped develop the first Harlem Day. She likes reflecting on her support of seniors in the early days of Harlem Week to now being a “super senior,” herself.
Francis says that when Harlem Day and eventually Harlem Week was developed, it was built on the focus of supporting small businesses and vendors and bringing the community together as Harlem had been struggling in the early 1970’s financially.
“We got together – Lloyd (Williams), Marvin Kelly, Anthony Rodgers, Grace Williams,” Francis shared. “Names that you may not hear as much because some of them have transitioned but the thing that’s most important, we stood together.”
Francis is proud of how Harlem Week and its leadership continues to pass through the multiple generations of its leaders like her grandson, Taj.
“It’s not going to live if it doesn’t live,” Francis said. “Hopefully more people will come and support because the love is there, the energy is there.”
The post Senior citizens reflect on 50 years of Harlem Week appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.