The Broadsheet - Lower Manhattan’s Local Newspaper

Juanita Gore-Thomas, a resident of Lower Manhattan starting in October, 1971 (when she and her husband purchased a home in the Seaport District’s newly opened Southbridge Towers), died on February 17 at 77 years of age. The cause of death was colon cancer, associated with exposure to toxic debris from the collapse of the World Trade Center. She follows her husband of more than 30 years, Norman B. Thomas, whose life was claimed by September 11-related chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder and lung disease, in May, 2021, at age 74.

Their daughter, Downtown community leader Mariama James, the area's first Black elected District Leader of either party, recalls that the family moved to Lower Manhattan at time when the neighborhood was an office district with no more than a few hundred residential households. “My dad worked for Citibank, at 20 Exchange Place, where he became known as the second Black vice president on Wall Street,” she remembers, “having risen up the ranks first at Chase Manhattan Bank and later Citibank, remaining for over 20 years, until his retirement. My mom worked at Bache, on Gold Street, and I was a latchkey kid, attending local schools. Race was something we were conscious of, but in different ways. My best friend growing up was Italian, and her family loved me, but often made clear that I was an exception in their eyes.”

“Even though my dad worked for a bank and my mother worked for a stock broker, they were urban hippies, who were revolutionary for their time,” she observes. “Another early example of becoming aware of race was hearing my parents talk at the dinner table about being arrested in South Carolina. My mother was locked up for being Angela Davis,” the 1960s radical leader, “because she had a similar hairstyle, and they put my father in handcuffs for explaining that she wasn’t Angela Davis. And those officers left my sister, who was three years old, standing alone on the street corner where they arrested my parents.”

Having taken up residence in Lower Manhattan, Ms. Gore-Thomas plunged headlong into the life of the fledgling community, dedicating her free time to Parent-Teacher Association meetings and volunteering at public radio station WBAI, then located at 120 Wall Street. In the early 1990s, she became a leading advocate for the designation of the newly discovered African Burial Ground (on Broadway, between Reade and Duane Streets) as a National Monument.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Gore-Thomas headed for her office at the Deutsche Bank Building on Liberty Street, across the street from the World Trade Center. (By this time, Ms. James, now pregnant with a daughter of her own, had taken over the Southbridge apartment.) As she approached the office, emergency responders turned her away. But within a week, she was ordered to return to work. “She believed our government when we were told the air was safe to breathe,” reflects Ms. James.

In the years that followed, Ms. James would join Community Board 1, be elected a District Leader, and become an outspoken advocate for providing healthcare and financial compensation to first responders and survivors of the September 11 attacks. These efforts took on a personal resonance in 2017, when Ms. Gore-Thomas was diagnosed with Stage Four colon cancer, a condition that federal health officials now certify as caused by exposure to environmental toxins on September 11, and in the weeks and months that followed.

“She was told that she had only a few weeks left to live, perhaps a month or two at most,” Ms. James remembers, noting that the extended family gathered in anticipation of her imminent passing. “But my mother was a fighter, and she never stopped struggling, and kept beating the disease back for almost six years.” Multiple rounds of surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy brought Ms. Gore-Thomas back from the brink. She remained relatively healthy until last August, when the cancer returned, having spread to her lungs, liver, and adrenal glands.

This journey will be top of mind for Ms. James this morning, when she is scheduled to speak in the U.S Capitol building at the announcement of a proposed new federal law that aims to close a pending budget shortfall in the World Trade Center Health Program. While Congress allocated $1 billion in additional funding for the program at the close of 2022, the Health Program still faces a substantial long-term shortfall, and also excludes some responders who served at the Pentagon and the site of the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, when passengers overpowered the hijackers.

“I am a September 11th survivor,” Ms. James reflects. “My parents were September 11th survivors, until they were taken. They both wanted me to do this. My children suffer from conditions they shouldn’t have at this age. My friends’ children are suffering from cancer.”

“On my birthday in 2006,” she adds, “my friend and neighbor, Allen Tannenbaum, who also happened to be a famous photographer, told me he was doing a photo spread called, ‘9/11: Still Killing.’ He said he wanted to come and photograph my family and friends, with our medications. With the exceptions of me and my children, every person in that spread, including my mother and my father, has since died. People here continue get sick and fight for their lives on a daily basis, and they keep dying.”

Ms. James’s family history with September 11 continues to reverberate in other ways. She is one of the co-founders of the Coalition for a 100 Percent Affordable Five World Trade Center, the local grassroots organization that is pushing for rent-protected housing at the last remaining development parcel in the World Trade Center complex, where the official plan calls for predominately market-rate luxury apartments on the publicly owned site. “My mother is gone because she went back to work,” Ms. James reflects, noting that the tower planned for Five World Trade Center will be precisely on the spot of the former Deutsche Bank Building. “Thankfully, not everyone who was here that day is dying, but many of us, particularly those in treatment for September 11-related conditions, would benefit from housing security. And there could be no more fitting tribute to those who are gone.”

NY Waterway, the company that operates between the Battery Park City Ferry Terminal and various cities in New Jersey, has committed to converting several of its vessels to diesel-electric hybrid propulsion. Read more...

[Re The Shipping News, February 27, 2023]

To the editor,

While NY Waterway took a step in the right direction, it will be a long time before the company can stop running its fleet of noisy boats to Battery Park City.

Donald Liloia [NY Waterway executive vice president] said they plan to convert three or four of the President-class of boats. However, only one of these runs between Hoboken and BPC daily, namely, the Empire or the Garden State. While these two boats are noisy, they are relatively not as bad as other NY Waterway boats that come during the morning and evening rush hours and randomly during the day. 

It starts as early as 6:30am. These boats rattle windows and cause vibrations inside apartments. The most frequent offenders are the Frank Sinatra and the Robert Roe.

So far, NY Waterway does not have a clear timeline when these noisier boats can be replaced with hybrid, nor they can propose anything meaningful to mitigate the noise. We are looking at many years before a complete fleet of hybrid boats can be a reality from NY Waterway. Recall that it took them about six years to replace the horns.

Hopefully the community can continue to work hard on this issue to hold NY Waterway accountable for the quality of life of BPC residents, and ask the Port Authority and Battery Park City Authority to help to resolve this sooner.

_________________________

[Re Varsity Blues, February 23, 2023]

To the editor,

I am happy to hear that the Blue School's William Street building will be repurposed by two other schools. Those who take over the Blue School's Water Street building, closer to the East River and in the flood plain, may have big problems to deal with.

More than eight feet of water surged into the Seaport during Hurricane Sandy in 2012. It took more than three weeks of deep cleaning and airing before the interior was useable, and required a great deal of money, as the damage was extensive. For context, most of the Seaport remained closed for another three months and it could be argued still has not completely recovered.

I hope the new occupants of 214 Water Street have the deep pockets and great flood insurance that was needed then, because little has been done in the way of storm resiliency measures in the Seaport district.

The family behind the iconic shopping brand Century 21 has announced that the Platonic ideal of off-priced luxury retail will return to its longtime sanctuary at 25 Church Street (between Cortland and Dey Streets) “in early spring” of this year.

Experience the history of the four Jewish communities in Vienna on this live, virtual tour. $36.

The Rosenstrasse Protest of 1943 was held against the incarceration and potential deportation of roughly 2,000 people who were arrested by the Gestapo on February 27, 1943. $10 suggested donation.

Lecture about Willis Augustus Hodges, who served as the first African American lighthouse keeper from May 10 to July 26, 1870. This lecture is in conjunction with an encore opening of the exhibition Lighting the Way: African American Lightkeepers in Civil War America. $10.

Committee reports and discussions of Lower Manhattan issues. Open to all, including opportunity for the public to address the Board.

Directed by Church Street School of Music, the chorus is open to all who love to sing. Learn contemporary and classic songs and perform at community events throughout the year. Free.

Each week a model will strike short and long poses for participants to draw. Educators will offer constructive suggestions and critique. Materials provided. Free. Space is limited; registration required.

202 BC – Liu Bang is enthroned as the Emperor of China, beginning four centuries of rule by the Han dynasty.

1784 – John Wesley charters the Methodist Church.

1827 – The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad is incorporated, becoming the first railroad in America offering commercial transportation of both people and freight.

1849 – Regular steamboat service from the west to the east coast of the United States begins with the arrival of the SS California in San Francisco Bay, four months 22 days after leaving New York Harbor.

1953 – James Watson and Francis Crick announce to friends that they have determined the chemical structure of DNA.

1983 – The final episode of M*A*S*H airs, with almost 106 million viewers. It still holds the record for the highest viewership of a season finale.

1986 – Olof Palme, 26th Prime Minister of Sweden, is assassinated in Stockholm.

1993 – Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents raid the Branch Davidian church in Waco, Texas. Four ATF agents and six Davidians die in the initial raid, starting a 51-day standoff.

1991 - Gulf War ends after Iraq accepts a ceasefire after their retreat from Kuwait

2013 – Pope Benedict XVI resigns as the pope of the Catholic Church, becoming the first pope to do so since Pope Gregory XII, in 1415.

2013 - The brains of two rats are connected so that they share information

2019 - Summit between North Korea's Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump collapses without agreement

1901 – Linus Pauling, chemist and activist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1994)

1903 – Vincente Minnelli, director and screenwriter (d. 1986)

1906 – Bugsy Siegel, gangster (d. 1947)

1929 – Frank Gehry, architect/designer of 8 Spruce Street and other famous buildings

1940 – Mario Andretti, race car driver

628 – Khosrow II, king of the Persian Empire

1967 – Henry Luce, Chinese-American publisher (b. 1898)

2007 – Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., historian and critic (b. 1917)

2020 - Freeman Dyson, physicist (known for his work in quantum electrodynamics, solid-state physics, astronomy, nuclear engineering), dies at 96