Bronx community members gather to watch

history in the making as King's dream

 comes true

Juan Gonzalez

Tuesday, January 20th 2009, 9:29 PM

Simmons/News

At the West Bronx Recreation Center, Jeanine Taylor, Jill Martinez, Dorothy Lamar and Barrington Lawrence watch the inauguration.

Barrington Laurente, 44, had never watched a presidential inauguration.

"No reason to, until now," Laurente said Tuesday, as he sat with a few hundred of his neighbors and watched the big screen TV that had been set up inside the gymnasium of the Highbridge Recreation Center in the West Bronx.

For nearly 20 years, Laurente drove a truck for Sears. During all those years, he didn't pay much attention to politics.

"But the company kept downsizing," he said. "Then they outsourced us and our jobs to some other company and cut our hours, and finally, they let me go completely."

After that, Laurente's three sons, all in their early 20s, got laid off one by one.

"It's been one tough year," he said.

The same is true for many in Highbridge, which sits in the middle of one of the poorest congressional districts in the United States. The neighborhood's unemployment rate is at depression levels of more than 17%.

Little wonder that so many gathered from this one forgotten neighborhood to witness Barack Obama make history.

Along with the rest of the world, Laurente, a heavy-set black man, watched in rapt attention as a nation built in part by African slaves welcomed as its 44th President the son of an African immigrant.

Sitting next to Laurente was Jill Martinez, 47, a health rehabilitation assistant. Martinez has been out of work for nearly two years. She got so frustrated by all the job rejections that she enrolled in a training program run by one of the unsung heroes of this city, Sister Ellenrita Purcaro. She's the Catholic nun who directs the Highbridge Community Life Center.

Purcaro arranged for a vanload of residents to travel down to Washington for the actual inauguration. But so many wanted to go that she decided to gather all the others in the rec center.

Tears rolled down Martinez's cheeks as Obama began reciting his oath of office.

"Dr. King told us he might not get to the promised land," she said, "but his spirit is with us today. His dream has come true."

Lakisha Hunter, 36, has already witnessed the extraordinary effect of Obama on her 13-year-old son, Malik.

"Mom, you know about the black guy who's running for President?" Malik told her last September.

Yes, she said, surprised that he was paying attention to the campaign.

"Well, Obama's gonna win," Malik predicted. "He's going to be the first black President, and I'm going to be the second."

She watched with pride as an entire class of sixth-graders from the Manhattan-Bronx Seventh Day Adventist School filed into the gym and sat quietly in front of the screen.

As delighted as the youngsters were, it was the older people in the audience who most understood what this all meant.

"I spent so much of my life protesting things, from the days of Vietnam," Yoland Romero, 59, said. "After a while, I lost a little faith in this country."

The past year had restored much of her faith, she said.

"I feel as nervous and anxious today as when my children graduated from high school," she said.

"Say it plain, that many have died for this day," the poet Elizabeth Alexander told the crowd after Obama's speech.

Then the Rev. Joseph Lowery stepped up to give the benediction. Lowery had been beside King in all the great and terrifying moments of the civil rights era. More than anyone in the crowd, he understood the long road traveled.

More than anyone, he knew the real work of changing America has only begun.