Tag Archives: Tiffany

Looking for Rosemarie

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Ronnies is looking for information about her mother Rosemarie, who lived near Tiffany Park during the 60′s,  70′s. until her murder in 1982.  The story is not all that different then what we all have experience ourselves within our own families or of those of our friends and the pain is one that we will always carry to the end of our lives.

If you can help her out and find people who knew her mom, let  me or Ronnies know.

I’ll update this with more information as I get it.

Ricky

Hello,

I hope all is well.

I am writing you because I see you have so many pictures from the South Bronx mainly Fox St.

I was wondering if by any chance you knew my mother Rosemarie.

She was murdered March of 1982.

She lived on Fox St. in the building between handball courts and the school on Fox (The park’s name is Tiffany.) Her husband at the time was Julio, she also had a son by him.

Her sister Gladys died of AIDS a few years after her death.

Her brother Papo was also murdered in the late 1980′s to early 90′s

I am just trying to find out anything about my mom, people who knew her and might have a story or two to tell. I was not raised with her, she gave me to my dad when I was born. I do not have many memories with her as I saw her very rarely.

Thank you in advance for accepting my email and helping in anyway you can.

God Bless

Sincerely,

Ronnies

 

( I asked for more information and some clarification, this is her reply.)

From what I’m told (and it’s not much) before she and my dad met she was dating Frankenstein from the Savage Skulls.

I was born in 1973 That’s when the picture of her and dad was taken that was their wedding night.

Papo’s real name was Jose not sure if he shared the same last name as my mom.

Her mother does still live there but will not tell me anything.

Gladys, her sister, was known as India and her Husband Indio.

My mom’s close friend name I believe was Raymond Rios aka T.M.

This is information that I found when my mother police report of her death was finally released to after 2 years of going back and forth with FOIL a program in NYS that releases records to family members but does block out names.

Thanks Again,

Ronnies

Hunts Point Express Interview

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Surviving Hunts Point’s bad old days

Posted on 20. Feb, 2010

By Peter Jackson | peter.jackson@hunter.cuny.edu

Photographer Ricky Flores remembers bad times and good

By Peter A. Jackson
mrpjacks@gmail.com

Ricky Flores’ friends call him the “Jimmy Olsen Guy” because, like Superman’s sidekick, he always has a camera in his hands.

Flores left Longwood in the early 1990s, moving from his family’s apartment on Fox Street, first to the Grand Concourse and then to northern Westchester. Recently, however, he’s been revisiting his old neighborhood by reviewing thousands of photographs he took between 1982 and 1991.

The photos record not only the devastation of the South Bronx, but also the exuberance that helped residents to cope with those calamitous times.

Times were tough, Flores remembers. “People don’t realize how difficult it was, how barbaric, how marginalized our existence was.”

Yet he and his friends rejected the stereotypes that outsiders imposed on the people who lived in the South Bronx. “One of the things we always struggled with was our vision of who people thought we were, living in that community, as opposed to who we actually were,” he recalls.

He tells a story that illustrates this double vision. Abandoned cars were just left to on neighborhood streets. “Our block, our home was being turned into a dumping ground and the city just didn’t care.”
So Flores and his pals took matters into their own hands. From Longwood Avenue to Southern Boulevard, the pushed the cars into the middle of the street and turned them over.

“They may have called us hooligans, typical Puerto Rican trash, tearing up our block and making it worse for those that lived there. Maybe they might be correct in their assumptions,” he writes, “but to us, on that one summer night we decided that we were going to make the city clean it up.”

Visiting Hunts Point today, he sees a different place. “I look at stuff differently now that I am older. Tiffany Plaza is now a gated community. It’s now like Fort Knox,” he said.

Photography became Flores’ passion in 1978, when he came into a small inheritance from his father, who had died in 1965. He used it to purchase a camera and set out to learn the art of photography, learning to hone his craft and develop his eye primarily by taking shots of friends and family.

The local Police Athletic League (PAL) and Boy Scout Troop on Longwood Avenue nurtured his interest and talent.

The kids in the community hung out at the PAL, Flores recalls. For him and his friends the community center was always a part of their lives, he says.

He learned how to print his negatives, spending enormous amounts of time. On one occasion, he was even left behind when the PAL closed for the night. He could have left, but his love of the place impelled him to stay all night, rather than leave the building unlocked.

Flores recalls the kindness of Bill Raymond, who was the director of the PAL and involved in the Boy Scouts, and Dr. Edward Eismann. “They provided supplies and encouragement whenever I needed it,” he says.

Many of the people who post comments on his photos, are from outside of the United States, and Flores says they view the subject matter as romantic. There was nothing romantic about the time or his efforts, Flores insists. He says he was taking pictures of what he saw, both the pain and the pride.

The photos include burned out buildings, piles of rubble and the general devastation of the neighborhood.

He says he is proud of the people of Hunts Point and Longwood who managed to endure .

A version of this story appeared in the March 2010 issue of The Hunts Point Express.