Op-Ed: NYPD Hero Represented Real New Yorkers

Text and photos by George Molé

(An edited version of this article appears in the July 20, 2017 issue of The Riverdale Press.)

Less than a mile from the now-hallowed location on East 183^rd Street where Detective Miosotis Familia lost her life is the five-story Bronx walkup where I was raised. Both are in troubled neighborhoods near the Grand Concourse, the faded but still regal boulevard lined with Art Deco architecture that once symbolized middle-class elegance.

Coming of age in the Bronx, I knew that most of its residents were workers and strivers, people trying to get bills paid and kids schooled, and maybe get a little bit ahead tomorrow or next year or someday. That remained true even as communities “changed”—to use the standard euphemism—with many of the long-time Irish-American and Jewish and Italian-American residents finding better lives in the suburbs as the old neighborhoods sank into violence and squalor.

And it was still true later when I worked those same and similar areas on an EMS ambulance or wearing an NYPD uniform. To the casual observer, the rough crowd loitering on the streets at all hours may seem to be the face of the neighborhood; but the people who really make the community work are less visible, seen only when trudging to or from bus stops or subway stations on their daily or nightly commutes, or holding their children’s hands on the walk between home and school.

One of New York’s best-kept secrets is the high level of support for law-enforcement by residents of crime-afflicted predominantly-minority neighborhoods. In my years serving such communities, I’ve rarely attended a public meeting or had a conversation where folks demanded that cops be less assertive; almost invariably, they implore the police to address the quality-of-life issues that plague them, and to remove the hoodlums and drug-dealers from their hallways, from in front of their buildings, and from the parks where their kids play. And they are thrilled when they see results.

But those who appreciate the police don’t get much press, sadly, being too busy taking care of their families to become protesters or activists. And, perhaps, because they don’t fit the anti-cop narrative that dominates so much of the media. They’re just ordinary New Yorkers.

We all know now, of course, having learned much about her since her death, that Det. Familia was an ordinary New Yorker herself, striving to support and nurture her family as a working mother in the Bronx.

Det. Familia’s wake and funeral took place at the World Changers Church, which occupies the old Loew’s Paradise Theatre on the Concourse, one of New York’s stunningly ornate golden-age movie palaces. The name of the church, and its majestic setting, were fit for laying to rest a warrior queen whose example may yet change the world.

At a Sunday vigil in front of the nearby 46^th Precinct, and the next day at her wake, the community was out in numbers to pay respects, holding up candles at the vigil or lined up for hours to file past her casket in the church. And on the day of her funeral, as thousands of cops from across the world filled the Concourse for a final salute, and police helicopters and motorcycles shook the wide boulevard, the people were there too, coming out to say goodbye to a martyred protector who was also an ordinary New York woman.

A tradition at a police funeral in our city is that the legendary NYPD Pipes and Drums, making no sound but a muffled drumbeat, their instruments covered in mourning drapes, leads the procession as it leaves the church, bound for the cemetery where the hero will rest. But when they’ve keened a farewell dirge, and the procession is on its way, the band turns and parades back again, past the rows of mourners, bringing renewed spirit with them. And so they marched strong up the Concourse on that Tuesday, swagger back in their step, wailing old songs of lament and resilience—“Hard Times Come Again No More,” prays one—into the weary Bronx streets.

We prevail, the music says; death doesn’t win. We’re better because she lived, and because we knew her, and stronger for what we’ve endured.

She lived, we knew her, and we endured. Good reasons to work for a better, stronger city.

New York: The soul of Queens (Get it? See, Aretha Franklin was called...ah, never mind)

 Text and photos by George Molé

Perhaps some of the other boroughs are a bit more iconic.  The Bronx--Yankee Stadium; the Bronx Zoo; Howard Cosell telling everyone that it's burning.  Brooklyn--Ebbets Field (knocked down); Coney Island (partly knocked down); Thomas Wolfe telling everyone that only the dead know it.

But Queens has some soul of it's own.

"I don't know how youse do it anymore," a guy in Queens says to a cop.  "It's so crazy out there..."


Woodland clearings have nothing on under the el when it comes to dappled sunlight.


"So f---ing crazy.  People don't give a s--t..."



Need curry--store on the left.  Need to curry favor--store on the right.


"I'm waiting for robberies and everything else to start picking up..."



A steal--needs a little work.

"I don't care if God becomes president.  We ain't gettin' fixed..."

Few remember that paperbacks were once called "pocketbooks."  Actually, few remember paperbacks.

"We're in big trouble."

Rainstorm, Hillside Avenue.

And we've barely dipped our fork in the place...

Music: Glen Campbell at Town Hall, Saturday night

Text and photos by George Molé 

I had too much to do this weekend, and a concert was not on the agenda, but there it was in Friday's newspaper: Glen Campbell would be appearing at Town Hall the following night--Saturday, January 7.

Campbell's music had been part of my youth, in the country section of the eclectic soundtrack of my family's life, along with John Denver, Marty Robbins and whatever was playing on WHN, New York's great and lamented AM country-western station.

Spending our Augusts camping with other city people at Lake Welch, a little jewel set in forested hills not even 45 minutes from the Bronx, we became country folks, at least a little bit and for a little while, and put some distance between ourselves and the decaying urban neighborhood where we lived the rest of the year. Music was part of the experience.

So Glen Campbell was with me from way back. His "Southern Nights" coming from the speakers of my sister's old radio-cassette player on a warm northern night. Or my brother-in-law sitting by the fire with a guitar and doing a pretty fair "Gentle on My Mind."  (When my mother would hear the latter song, she'd roll her eyes and mutter, "Oh, the song with the 42 verses.")

And if some of Campbell's work was a bit shallow and poppy--though always catchy--some (especially his interpretation of songs by legendary songwriter Jimmy Webb) was brilliant.  And this would most likely be my last chance to see him--it had been announced recently that he is suffering from Alzheimer's disease, and that his current CD, Ghost on the Canvas, and his current tour would both be his last.

When Campbell took the stage, I was a few rows away.

As he did one after another of his well-known songs--beginning, if I recall, with "Gentle"-- a listener would not have known that he has that vicious disease.  The familiar voice was strong and clear and, except for one minor stumble, he sang the lyrics as they're meant to be sung (although I read in one review that he was helped by the presence of teleprompters, which I did not notice, on stage).  When he spoke to the audience, though, he seemed more awkward, sometimes seeming to lose the thread of his jokes or to mumble some of his words.  This might have been the effects of his illness or, more comforting to imagine, simply fatigue or the mannerisms of a man more at home singing than talking.

It's easy to forget that Campbell started out as a well-respected guitarist on other people's records, including the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, and his hit records didn't do much to highlight his guitar work.  But in this performance, Campbell took a soaring guitar solo in almost every song, his fingers dancing like Nureyev across the strings, these interludes alone worth the price of admission.  May he always know that fretboard as he knows it now.
 

Campbell's best songs are full of melancholy and loss, the stories set against American landscapes, often rich in American place names, sung simply and lovingly to simple melodies.  Most of these--"Galveston," "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," "Wichita Lineman"--were written by Webb.  I once heard Webb refer to them as his Rand-McNally songs, because of all the place names.  (And, in an odd coincidence, Webb was performing on the same night as Campbell's Town Hall show, at the Iridium, a club a few blocks away.)

But "Gentle on My Mind," by another writer--though it has no place names in its title or lyrics, only in the surname of its author, John Hartford--with its finely-drawn landscape, belongs in the same category.  It doesn't really have 42 verses, but it's verbally dense, full of striking images: 

Though the wheat fields and the clothes lines
And the junkyards and the highways come between us...

Was the distance from you to someone thought about ever more heartbreakingly real?

All of these songs are masterful American poetry, the kind you understand and appreciate more the more you've lived.  And though Campbell didn't write them, it took his voice to make them live.  He did them all in this performance, thankfully, and they were as powerful as they've ever been.

Campbell's band, which also served as the opening act, included three of his own children--two sons, Cal and Shannon, and a beyond-lovely daughter, Ashley.  The kids displayed a touching solicitude for their father, and he for them; at one point, when Campbell left the stage rather suddenly, or so it seemed to the audience, his daughter said something to the effect of, "My dad's going to take a break now, but we're gonna do a song for you."  They did, and Campbell was back for the next number.  At another point, Campbell walked over to her and told the audience, "This is my little girl!"

A great performance, a great musician.  Pray for his recovery, and for a cure, as I will do.

And after leaving the theater, I couldn't resist photographing...wait for it...

...yes, the cracks in the dirty sidewalks of Broadway.  I know every one.

If you don't get the reference, check out the lyrics to "Rhinestone Cowboy"--which he also sang at this show.

New York: It's Christmas time in the city, 2011

There are fewer Christmas lights in the city this year than I can ever remember.  One can drive blocks and blocks, miles and miles, through the neighborhoods of New York, and find barely a clue that it's Christmas time.  Have the liberals made that much progress in their war against the holiday, their struggle to replace Yuletide celebrations with celebrations of diversity?  Or is it just a reflection of the bleak and dreary times we live in?

But they still know it's Christmas in this below-street-level Park Avenue apartment.  And no, this isn't the Manhattan Park Avenue of dowagers and doormen.  This is another, less prosperous, stretch of that same street, much further north--Park Avenue, the Bronx, U.S.A.

New York: I just adore a penthouse view...

In the Bronx, sometimes beauty is where you find it.

Boxing: Fight night in the Bronx, Part 1

My lifetime exposure to the sport of boxing has been limited, mostly by my own lack of interest.

There was an evening of Golden Gloves bouts in a church basement in upper Manhattan, sometime in the ‘80s. I liked the rowdy, colorful crowd, and the noir-ish vibe of the whole thing—but not quite enough to attend another fight for the next decade or so.
Then there was the second Julio Cesar Chavez-Meldrick Taylor battle, 1994—my buddy and I flew to Las Vegas to see it. But for me, the fight was secondary to the Vegas scene; I never understood the drama of that contest, and did not even remember who won, until some recent reading filled in the gaps.

I’ve seen some of the Rocky films, of course, and I go back often to the best New York City movie ever made, Jimmy Cagney’s boxing-themed City for Conquest. And what writer wouldn’t love Pete Hamill’s fine novel Flesh and Blood, an arresting blend of memorable characters, boxing and incest. But that’s about it. And so my overall impression of boxing remained this: Two high-school dropouts put on some padded gloves and pummel each other until one falls down.

But it's difficult to get to know Arlene Schulman, as I've been fortunate enough to do, without developing at least a dollop of curiosity about the sport a 19th-century Englishman called "the sweet science of bruising." Arlene, a talented photographer and writer, spent a good part of her career chronicling boxing and boxers (she blogs here by the way).

And thus it tranpired that on a recent Saturday afternoon--June 5th--she and I found ourselves at the Yuri Foreman-Miguel Cotto fight, the first boxing match to be held at the new Yankee Stadium, and the first at either Yankee Stadium since Muhammad Ali fought Ken Norton in 1976.

Here are a few photos and observations from the event:

Before entering the new Stadium, we visited the grave of the old one on the other side of 161st Street. Perhaps the most historic square block in the city, it is now only a raw patch of soil on which will be built a bland and featureless public park.



A movement had arisen to preserve the oldest part of the old Stadium—“Gate 2”—for history’s sake, but the hunger of politicians and bureaucrats (particularly the New York City Parks Department) to destroy was too great, and every bit of the old Stadium went the way of the old Penn Station. Even a cri-de-coeur from the legendary Daily News sports cartoonist and columnist Bill Gallo (last five paragraphs of his column) did not avail. To read more about the failed effort to save Gate 2, click here.

But though the senseless destruction of this American cultural treasure was a crime, it is a completed crime, and no bitter thoughts will undo it. (But that doesn’t mean we ought to forget; it is likely that those responsible will be remembered as villains who failed to preserve a vital link to our city’s past.) In any case, we eventually turned away from the sad and old, and walked toward the bright and new—the brand-new Stadium on the north side of the street, all dolled up for the night’s action.



To Be Continued...