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Corona School's Alumni Fund for Students Binds Generations and Ethnicities

By Katie Honan | July 20, 2015 7:27am
 Alumni from P.S. 143 pose in front of the school where they got their start. From left: Luvon Roberson, class of 1964; Deloris Roberson, class of 1967; Carl Sumpter, class of 1964; Stephanie Bostic, class of 1965; Domonique Edwards, class of 1965; Charlene Bellamy (center,) class of 1966.
Alumni from P.S. 143 pose in front of the school where they got their start. From left: Luvon Roberson, class of 1964; Deloris Roberson, class of 1967; Carl Sumpter, class of 1964; Stephanie Bostic, class of 1965; Domonique Edwards, class of 1965; Charlene Bellamy (center,) class of 1966.
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DNAinfo/Katie Honan

CORONA — It’s been decades since Luvon Roberson attended P.S. 143, but she still sees the stairwells and hallways in her dreams.

When she finally returned to the red-brick school on 113th Street, where she learned how to research, how to memorize facts and how to speak French, all the memories came rushing back.

“I just cried,” she said about her first visit back two years ago. “These were the same stairwells and halls and classrooms, the same closet and cubbyholes of my youth.”

Roberson, 62, is a member of P.S. 143’s Alumni Association, a group formed two years ago by another Corona native and alum, Charlene Bellamy, 61.

Bellamy began it after creating a Facebook page for the school a few years ago, and other alumni reminisced about the school. P.S. 143 had an award-winning glee club, trips to the opera and a garden in the yard where they grew fresh vegetables.

Bellamy said she simply wanted to see her old friends again, but through all the nostalgia she realized they had to give back to the place where many got their start.

“I thought about the many years that I went to that school and what I got out of it,” she said.

“I really learned and got a great education — and I can honestly say that it was the foundation of my life.”

A third grade class at P.S. 143 in 1962, featuring alumni association members Stephanie Bostic (third row from the bottom, fifth from the left) and Dominique Edwards (top row, second from the right.)

Bellamy recruited a handful of alumni to help form a scholarship fund for graduating students, who they select through an essay contest and surprise with the award at graduation.

The group is driven by their memories of P.S. 143, Corona and East Elmhurst, which in the 1950s and 1960s was a haven for black Southerners who came to Corona during the Great Migration — including many families of the students.

Malcolm X lived in East Elmhurst, along with countless black jazz musicians such as Louis Armstrong, who lived blocks away on 107th Street and is the namesake for the school. Former borough president Helen Marshall was president of P.S. 143's PTA, where she got her start in politics.

The demographics of Corona changed beginning in the late 1960s as Latin and South America immigrants began settling in the neighborhood.

The population at P.S. 143 is now 90 percent Hispanic, according to the school, and at first Roberson said that change was startling for her.

“Where were the children who looked like me at the school?” she said she thought.

But Bellamy insisted that they still had an obligation to help.

“I started the process of re-envisioning and taking another look,” said Roberson, whose parents came from Mississippi.

The kids, while different, had the same beginning as she did.

“Just as their parents have a dream for them, mine did too. There were many people in the community to help to fuel that dream, and we want to be a part of it.”

Bellamy said she’s had to work hard to convince other alumni that they still need to get involved, even if the neighborhood is different.

“It's not about who’s there now, it's about the school and what it meant to us, and how we grew up,” Bellamy said. “There’s a lot of history in that community.”

First place winner Vanessa Mejia with Charlene Bellamy at graduation.

That history is important to Principal Jerry Brito, who was raised by his Dominican parents in Corona after they left upper Manhattan in the late 1970s.

“I identify with those kids because I was one of them,” he said about his students.

But he also knows that there’s a long history at P.S. 143 and he needs the alumni support to preserve it.

“I think it’s important that the kids see people who graduated from their school, what their lives were like,” he said.

When he gave the alumni association their first tour two years ago, he was moved by the depth of their memories as they walked the halls.

They remembered the room they were sitting in when they heard John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and had vivid memories of their teachers and classes.

“To have this type of connection — there’s a thread there that I really want to build,” he said.

Brito said the alums have made a strong impression on the students as well, particularly the four students who were given $50 gift cards after submitting essays on how the school has prepared them for their future profession.

The kids were “ecstatic,” Brito said. “They loved the recognition, they put their hearts and souls into the essays.”

He hopes for even more involvement from former graduates to continue the school’s tradition, which dates back more than 80 years.

“Corona’s going to look different in 20 years, but it still has these common threads,” he said.