In Yonkers, a new basketball court four years in the making is providing valuable life lessons to the community’s kids – and adults. The Rotary Club of Yonkers-East Yonkers and its members, one in particular, Peter Spano, dreamed of turning the neighborhood eyesore into a source of civic pride.
Yet four years ago, the possibility that this picture-book basketball court might one day exist in a corner of Yonkers must have seemed as remote as the spires of downtown Manhattan. Even a few months ago, the basketball court at John Barton Memorial Park was a buckled concrete mess of cracks and pebbles and broken glass, splotched with clumps of sprouting grass and littered with discarded drug paraphernalia. During downpours, the rain would pool into a small lake that left a coating of dirt and debris as it dried.
It was an international partnership that brought this program to Yonkers. The Yonkers-East Yonkers Rotary Club endorsed the idea in early 2015 and provided a reliable source of man- and womanpower, as well as financial resources. The club contributed $5,750 toward the project, and a partnership with the Rotary Club of Yeocheon, Korea, led to an additional $16,000 in Rotary Funds (from the Rotary District in Korea and the local district in New York and Bermuda) and a $23,500 global grant from The Rotary Foundation.
Leonard Spano, executive director at the Westchester School for Special Children, joined the partnership, seeing the need for these refurbished courts in the community. Mayor Spano, along with the departments of public works, planning and development, and parks and recreation, as well as the Yonkers Community Agency Development Board, approved the removal of the current court, put new asphalt over the court, and made other improvements in the park
The project brought not only the new immaculate court, its regulation length bracketed at each end with an NBA-quality breakaway backboard, but also paired it with 12-week basketball clinics and anti-bullying lessons.
Tim Hodges, first deputy chief of the Yonkers Police Department and a member of the Yonkers-East Yonkers Rotary Club, led a number of the anti-bullying sessions. Perched on the bleachers and eating pizza, the kids listen as Hodges – wearing his dress-white police commander’s shirt and his shield – explained how he once dealt with a bully.
Hodges said he understands how Rotary’s emphasis on “service above self” influences his daily job as much as it does the afternoon courtside sessions. After his conversation with the kids, he stressed how important it is for police officers “to get along with everyone in the community, which we didn’t do years ago. We made so many mistakes; we thought we could arrest ourselves out of problems,” he said. “Now, we’ve changed our whole concept.”
The Yonkers-East Yonkers Rotary Club has been involved in local and international projects since 1920, helping communities near and far. It has provided scholarships to deserving Yonkers high school graduates, helped victims of the Hawley Terrace Fire, built a playground at Yonkers School 9, given iPads for autistic children and library books for the Eugenia Maria de Hostos School, provided pencils to every Yonkers first grader, donated books to the Yonkers Public Library, and supported various local community and youth organizations and soup kitchens.
