A long-time journalist with the Bay Ridge Courier was one of 14 people honored recently by the Bay Ridge Community Council (BRCC) as “Hidden Treasures of the Community.”
The reporter, Helen Klein — who has covered Bay Ridge since 1996 — received the award during the group’s September meeting, which was held in the community room at Shore Hill, 9000 Shore Road.
The other honorees included two other local journalists, Paula Katinas of the Home Reporter and Harold Egeln of the Brooklyn Eagle, as well as local residents who have given freely of their time and energy to make the neighborhood a better place in which to live.
They are:
*Mary Clavin, the president of St. Anselm’s Youth Activities for the past three years and one of the founding members of the Mothers’ Club;
*Doreen Daly, the president of District 20’s Presidents Council, PTA president of her children’s school for six years, and also a member of the school’s School Leadership Team;
*Jean DeGennaro, who founded a lunch program serving the poor and disadvantaged at Zion Lutheran Church, which she had run since 1987;
*Judith Grimaldi, a member of Community Board 10 and the past president of the Alliance of Bay Ridge Block Associations, who has made a mission of helping senior citizens in the community;
*Louise Hidar, who has been active with BRCC since 1988, and who volunteers for many worthwhile programs, including soup kitchens, food pantries and the Lutheran Medical Center Auxiliary;
*Harriet Leich, a resident of a Guild for Exceptional Children home who volunteers for numerous worthy causes and who founded the Guild’s self-advocacy group;
*Eleanor Petty, a member of CB 10, and the president of the McKinley Leif Ericson Parks Alliance, who has been active in civic organizations for some 40 years;
*Police Officer Susan Porcello, of the 68th Precinct, who made headlines, last year, when she befriended an elderly World War II veteran to whose house she had gone in response to an emergency call, taking him into her extended family and making sure that, when he died, he was buried with his mother, not in a potter’s field;
*Joan Regan, the founder of the Narrows Botanical Gardens;
*Helen Reyes, an advocate for the developmentally disabled who works at the Guild for Exceptional Children; and,
*Ellen Triscuizzi, the vice president of the 68th Precinct Youth Council, who was the group’s first female president and who has been active in the program since 1983.
The contributions made by volunteers to the community’s quality of life are immense, stressed Andrew Windsor, BRCC’s president, noting that, while the United States is a Mecca of volunteerism, the neighborhoods of Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights and Fort Hamilton “lead the way.”
City Councilmember Vincent Gentile concurred. “We stand out in the borough, we stand out in the city, because of the people who live here,” he averred. “All of us make the neighborhood the great place that it is.”
Assemblymember Alec Brook-Krasny, for his part, said that the annual award ceremony, now in its sixth year, is “one of the nicest events we have in Bay Ridge.
“And,” he added, “one of the nicest privileges of elected officials is to thank people for working hard in the community.”
