NEWARK: BARRY CARTER

A blog about Newark, NJ by Barry Carter

Toppling her fears with a bulldozer

by Barry Carter/The Star-Ledger

Sunday August 24, 2008, 5:54 AM

The demolition equipment seemed to come out of nowhere.

Sandra Perez couldn't believe it. The operators hadn't done any work yet, but that was okay for now. The machinery was there Friday morning, parked in front of the house she had been complaining about for over a year at 9 Summer Place in Newark.

"Everything is ready for demolition," she said. "They said it's going to come down."

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Her hands work magic on their faces

by Barry Carter/The Star-Ledger

Sunday August 17, 2008, 6:35 AM

Stephanie Glover-McGee has been around well-dressed people her entire life. Everything was always meticulous for her parents, Steve and Virginia Glover.

Her father's shoes were polished, his pants creased. A shirt and tie were his signature. The dress her mother wore with the belt flared at the bottom, revealing high-heeled black pumps. She applied her trademark red lipstick just so, leaving a "V" shape in the middle of her top lip.

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Coaches of Olympian are still there for kids

by Barry Carter/The Star-Ledger

Wednesday August 13, 2008, 6:10 AM

A lot of people talk about giving back to their community. Jimmy Wilson and Elliott Bradley do it in an unlikely place -- in a swimming pool in an urban neighborhood.

Somebody took them by the hand when they were young and showed them how to swim. They decided the same should be done for city kids. They never expected one of their students would go on to compete on a world stage.

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Teachers aides in a jobless limbo

by Barry Carter/The Star-Ledger

Sunday August 10, 2008, 7:35 AM

Diane Mercer-Knight and Shelia Manley are not looking for a handout.

They only want what they feel is their right: unemployment benefits.

Both Newark residents are per diem teachers aides for the Newark public school system, working as personnel aides with special education students at an elementary school.

When the school year ended, they tried to get hired by the district in the summer as aides and were denied.

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Teen finds inside himself the man he wants to be

by Barry Carter/The Star-Ledger

Friday August 01, 2008, 5:26 AM

Matthew Brown saw his life slipping away. People close to him were dying. His mother, Dawn, passed in his junior year at Central High School in Newark. A good friend was shot and killed.

The crowd he hung with in his neighborhood wasn't doing anything with their lives at Baxter Terrace, a public housing complex. He was 16 at the time and going nowhere, thinking he didn't have a future. He figured he would run the streets, maybe drop out, and just exist without a purpose.

"I was a follower," he said. "I did what others did instead of what I wanted to do."

Brown wanted to find himself. He wanted the strength to be different and realize his own potential. The death of his mother played a big part. So did the first two lines of a poem by author Marianne Williamson.

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Perfection it's not, but street is better

by Barry Carter/The Star-Ledger

Sunday July 27, 2008, 8:18 AM

Hillside Avenue residents understand why the state reconfigured the Route 78 entrance ramps into Newark.

Their street is no longer a speedway for motorists coming off the highway heading toward Clinton Avenue.

Trucks do not barrel through the neighborhood anymore shaking homes on their way to warehouses in the South Ward.

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The science of showing girls their potential

by Barry Carter/The Star-Ledger

Sunday July 20, 2008, 6:11 AM

Shelly Bell didn't know what had gotten into her daughter.

There was excitement in her voice, her eyes. Shellisa was talking fast, telling her mother about a summer class she was enrolled in at the Academic Resource Center in Maplewood. They had clay, Silly Putty and bread, and they used it to model a brain.

The instructor, Jennifer Payne-Parrish, an African-American neuroscientist from Maplewood, got Shellisa to grasp and enjoy science for the first time.

"I don't know what this woman did," Bell said. "It was like a light bulb and a spark went off."

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