COLUMBIA STREET WATERFRONT DISTRICT — A longtime Puerto Rican leader who spent years advocating for young people in south Brooklyn may have his name honored through a street sign in the neighborhood.
Friends and family of Jose "Tuffy" Sanchez, who died in 2005 at the age of 72, are hoping to rename the corner of Columbia and Union streets for him, they told Community Board 6's transportation committee last week.
"It's just a corner. That's all we ask," said Chevez Sanchez Sr., Tuffy's son.
Tuffy Sanchez, as he was commonly known, was executive director of the Puerto Rican Waterfront Corp., a nonprofit through which he fought tirelessly to provide employment opportunities and services for young people and teens in surrounding neighborhoods.
After he was drafted in the Korean War, Sanchez returned to Brooklyn in the early 1950s to find that his young brother and other kids in the neighborhood had turned to drugs.
He championed the Puerto Rican community and sought to help kids get off the street through the nonprofit, even forming a neighborhood softball team for children, he told the New York Daily News in a profile published Aug. 22, 1973.
The center also assisted adults looking for employment or in need of social services, according to the news clipping.
The corner of Columbia and Union streets is near the location where Sanchez first established the Puerto Rican Waterfront Corp, Chevez Sanchez Sr. told DNAinfo.
“We thought that that would be the most appropriate place,” he added.
Tuffy Sanchez later turned his attention to politics as a co-founder and treasurer of the Independent Neighborhood Democrats in 1970. He also served as the delegate from the 14th Congressional District for George McGovern, the Democratic Party's presidential nominee in 1972.
According to Sanchez's supporters, he also played a crucial role in preserving a large swath of housing in the Brooklyn Waterfront after the Port Authority, state officials and unions proposed demolishing the homes for the port's operations.
"Nothing scared Tuffy Sanchez," said Michael Pesce, a former assemblyman and Brooklyn Supreme Court judge who spoke at the meeting.
The proposal received unanimous support from the CB6 committee. The application for street naming will be reviewed by the general board Oct. 14.
If the proposal is approved, Tuffy Sanchez won't be the first member of his family to have a street corner renamed for him. The name of his father, Rev. Manuel T. Sanchez, can be seen at the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Court Street — near the Antioch Pentecostal Church where he had been a minister.
"It's kind of a family legacy," Chevez Sanchez Sr. said.
