Talk Bronx New York

Miriam Chan once lived in a house a few blocks from the one that Ruth built.

“Oh, what a player that Ruth was,” Chan said recently as she pulled a Yankee cap over her head. “What a beautiful swing.”

Chan, who was 6 when her family moved to Manhattan from the Bronx, has been around to celebrate all of the Yankees’ 26 World Series championships, including the first in 1923, which came at the expense of the New York Giants.

“I’ve been a Yankee fan my whole life,” she said, “and that’s a pretty long time.”

When asked how long, she balked.

“Let’s just say I’m in my 80s and I’m lying about it,” she said.

Chan, a widow and mother of two who lives on the Upper East Side, still takes the train to her old neighborhood to watch the Yankees play, and she plans to visit their new house next season.

“It’s kind of sad that my guys are moving to a new stadium, but time changes everything,” she said. “I guess I’ll just take my memories across the street.”

Those memories stretch from Babe Ruth to Lou Gehrig — “Oh, that poor man, that’s all we could talk about when he got sick,” she said — to Joe DiMaggio to Mickey Mantle to Bobby Murcer to Don Mattingly to Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez.

Chan has been a regular at Yankee Stadium since the mid-1930s, when she was an art student at Hunter College. She later became a sketch artist in the fashion industry.

“One year, there was a fire at Hunter, so the students were moved to an unoccupied building in the Bronx,” she said. “On the train ride home from school, my girlfriends and I would pass Yankee Stadium. We started getting off the train and going to the games, and I’ve been a die-hard ever since.”

Chan spends a good part of her year at her home in Palm Beach, Fla., but is back in New York before the start of each baseball season.

“A good dose of the Yankees and a little of that New York pollution keeps my system going,” she said.

Through the years, Chan has seen a number of great Yankees come and go, but her favorite is Bernie Williams.

“He carried himself with so much class and dignity,” she said, “and he was such a graceful player, kind of like DiMaggio in that way.”

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

“Let the Kids Shine!”

The Bronx Charter School for Better Learning’s
5th Anniversary Gala Cocktail Party & Student Performance
Celebrating our first five years and our founder, Dr. Ted Swartz
New York Botanical Garden – May 14, 2008

The Board of Trustees, students, families and co-chairs, Ellen Waldman and Vicki Swartz, are pleased to announce the date of The Bronx Charter School for Better Learning’s 5th anniversary benefit cocktail party and student performance, “Let the Kids Shine,” which will be held on May 14, 2008 at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx from 6:30 – 9:30 p.m.

The gala is the biggest fundraiser of the year and has been supported and attended in the past by influential community, business and political leaders. We have already received confirmation from Adolfo Carrion Jr., (Bronx Borough President), Councilman Larry Seabrook and Councilwoman Annabel Palma, and James Merriman (Institute for Charter School Excellence) that they plan to attend. This year’s gala will be a special celebration of fives — FIVE years since the school’s founding, FIVE years of outstanding achievement, our first graduating FIFTH grade class, and our full, FIVE-YEAR charter renewal! In addition, we will be honoring Executive Director, Dr. Ted Swartz, whose vision and commitment shaped the school’s community!

The evening’s festivities will begin with cocktails and hors d’oeuvres, prepared by Abigail Kirsch caterers, served outdoors in the splendor of the tented Terrace Garden. From 6:30 p.m., the gardens will be closed to the public for the school’s guests to stroll the grounds while they enjoy the drumming of Raymond King and the enchantment of spring while they co-mingle with friends and colleagues and visit the silent auction tables. Musical entertainment during the cocktail hour will be provided by S.O.C.

At 8:00 p.m., guests will be invited into the Grand Ballroom for presentations by guest speakers on behalf of the school, including presentations from Messrs Carrion and Merriman, and a reading of a letter of commendation from the Mayor’s office. Special recognition will be given to the school’s Executive Director, Dr. Ted Swartz .

“Let the Kids Shine,” the student performance will begin at 8:15 p.m. Approximately 40 of the school’s students will read poetry, play music, sing and dance to the delight of our guests. For the fifth year, Ya Ya Kamante will be leading the children in a rousing African Village Dance. Dessert and coffee will be served following the student performance.

Guests are asked to donate $150 per person to attend. Corporate Sponsorships are also available. A commemorative journal will also be produced for this event. For ticket or journal ad purchases, or for corporate sponsorship information, visit http://www.bronxbetterlearning.org/and follow the link “Next Big Event.”

The Bronx Charter School for Better Learning also graciously acknowledges its corporate patrons — Rohm & Haas Electronic Materials, Cox Nissan and MTC Real Estate.

CONTACT: PAMELA TUCKER
914.595.6992

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New York City officials are investigating a fire that burned a classroom at a vacant junior high school in the Bronx.

Fire marshals are investigating the blaze at P.S. 143. The cause is under investigation but fire officials say it’s suspicious.

Firefighters had the blaze under control at about 8:40 a.m. The blaze damaged a first-floor classroom in the five-story building near the Jerome Park Reservoir.

No one was hurt. More than 1,000 students attend the school for grades 6 through 8. City school officials didn’t immediately comment.

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A construction worker’s bid to curse the New York Yankees by planting a Boston Red Sox jersey in their new stadium was foiled Sunday when the home team removed the offending shirt from its burial spot.

After locating the shirt in a service corridor behind what will be a restaurant in the new Yankee Stadium, construction workers jackhammered through the concrete Sunday and pulled it out.

The team said it learned that a Sox-rooting construction worker had buried a shirt in the new Bronx stadium, which will open next year across the street from the current ballpark, from a report in the New York Post on Friday.

Yankees President Randy Levine said team officials at first considered leaving the shirt where it was.

“The first thought was, you know, it’s never a good thing to be buried in cement when you’re in New York,” Levine said. “But then we decided, why reward somebody who had really bad motives and was trying to do a really bad thing?”

On Saturday, construction workers who remembered the employee, Gino Castignoli, phoned in tips about the shirt’s location.

“We had anonymous people come tell us where it was, and we were able to find it,” said Frank Gramarossa, a project executive with Turner Construction, the general contractor on the site.

It took about five hours of drilling Saturday to locate the shirt under 2 feet of concrete, he said.

On Sunday, Levine and Yankees CEO Lonn Trost watched as Gramarossa and foreman Rich Corrado finished the job and pulled the shirt from the rubble.

In shreds from the jackhammers, the shirt still bore the letters “Red Sox” on the front. It was a David Ortiz jersey, No. 34.

Trost said the Yankees had discussed possible criminal charges against Castignoli with the district attorney’s office.

“We will take appropriate action since fortunately we do know the name of the individual,” he said.

A woman who answered the phone at Castignoli’s home in the Bronx on Sunday said he was not there. Read more..

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