Volume LXXVII, Number 31
A Garden Grows at Mercer Street Friends . . . . . . . 5 Ridgeview Conservancy Director Presents at Council Meeting . . . . . 8 New Home for GPYO on Westminster Campus . . 10 Summer Chamber Concerts Series Closes Season with String Quartet . . . . . . 17 Moving to Midfield, PU Alum Sowers Starred as US Men’s Lax Won 2nd Straight World Crown . . . . . 24 PHS Grad Mbusa Enjoyed the Experience Of a Lifetime, Playing For Uganda in World Men’s Lax . . . . 27
Sinéad O’Connor (19662023) is Featured in This Week’s Book Review . . 16 Art . . . . . . . . . . . . 21-22 Books . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Calendar . . . . . . . . . . 23 Classifieds . . . . . . . . . 32 Home Maintenance. . . . . 3 Mailbox . . . . . . . . . . . 14 New To Us . . . . . . . . . . .29 Obituaries . . . . . . . 30-31 Performing Arts . . . . . 20 Real Estate. . . . . . . . . 32 Senior Living . . . . . . . 19 Sports . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Topics of the Town . . . . 5 Town Talk . . . . . . . . . . 6
www.towntopics.com
Joint Effort Safe Streets Begins Friday, Celebrates Princeton’s Black Community Joint Effort Safe Streets 2023, a 10day celebration of Princeton’s Black community, will be opening on a festive note on Friday, August 4 from 5 to 7:30 p.m. at Studio Hillier on Witherspoon Street. Featured events in Friday’s kick-off program will include a special salute to Mamie Oldham and the late Barbara Hillier, recipients of the Jim Floyd Memorial Lifetime Achievement Award; presentation of the Mildred Trotman Community Service Award to Princeton Public Schools Superintendent Carol Kelley; and recognition of Witherspoon Jackson resident and four-time recipient of a Joint Effort Book Scholarship Hailey Young, who graduated from Brown University in May and will be traveling to Botswana in January on a Fulbright Program grant. There will also be remarks by Princeton Mayor Mark Freda and other local officials; acknowledgements of the ancestors and angels by Princeton Councilman Leighton Newlin and Witherspoon-Jackson Historical and Cultural Society President Shirley Satterfield; and a vision for the future of Witherspoon Street presented by architect and Studio Hillier principal Bob Hillier (a Town Topics shareholder). “The whole thing is about acknowledging the contributions of the African American community in Princeton — recognizing some folks we’ll be honoring and dedicating the event to and talking a bit about growing up in the neighborhood and why we chose that theme,” said Safe Streets Founder and Event Coordinator John Bailey. Young, a 2019 Princeton Day School graduate, is the daughter of Birch Avenue residents Darius and Tracy Young. A creative writing major with a minor in Africana Studies at Brown, Young will be going to Botswana in January, where she will be teaching English to elementary or middle school children for the following 10 months. On Saturday, August 5, which is Betsey Stockton and Laura Wooten Day, Joint Effort will sponsor a community discussion at the First Baptist Church of Princeton focused on the question “Do Black Lives Still Matter?” With a panel of individuals who grew up in the Witherspoon-Jackson neighborhood, as well as educators, local officials, and other Princeton residents, Continued on Page 9
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Five Candidates in Race for Three BOE Seats Beth Behrend and Michele Tuck-Ponder will be running for reelection in the November 7 election, and Adam Bierman, Eleanor Hubbard, and Rene Obregon Jr., will be competing with them for three seats on the Princeton Public Schools (PPS) Board of Education (BOE). BOE member Jean Durbin, the third incumbent whose term is up at the end of the year, had not filed for reelection by the July 31 deadline and could not be reached for comment. Behrend and Tuck-Ponder have both served on the BOE for two three-year terms. Behrend, a Riverside Drive resident, was board president from 2019 to 2021. She has worked as an attorney in New York and Princeton and has been a frequent community volunteer. The youngest of her three children is a rising senior at Princeton High School (PHS). Tuck-Ponder, a Laurel Circle resident, has served as vice president of the BOE and has held various local offices, including mayor of Princeton Township, over the past 30 years. Her daughter graduated from PHS in 2017 and her son is a rising PHS junior. Tuck-Ponder is executive director of an educational administration nonprofit based in Cherry Hill. Bierman, who lives on Grover Avenue
and was unsuccessful in two previous campaigns for BOE, works as a teacher at the State Division of Children and Families in Trenton. He has served as an educational administrator, a shop steward for the Communications Workers of America, and a member of the executive board of the Princeton Community Democratic Organization. Hubbard, who lives on Prospect Avenue, is a Princeton University history professor with three children in the PPS,
one at Princeton Middle School and two at Riverside, where Hubbard is currently garden vice president in the PTO. She earned her BA and Ph.D. from Harvard University, has served as a NYC Teaching Fellow, and taught for two years at PS 65 in the South Bronx. For eight years she was a trustee of UNOW, the University-affiliated early childhood center, and served one year as board president there. Obregon is a lifelong New Jersey Continued on Page 11
Lt. Gov. Sheila Oliver Dies at 71; New Jersey Politicians Pay Tribute
Sheila Oliver, lieutenant governor of New Jersey, died on Tuesday, August 1, her family announced. A statement on Gov. Phil Murphy’s website calls her a “trailblazer” and someone who “brought a unique and invaluable perspective to our public policy discourse and served as an inspiration to millions of women and girls everywhere, especially young women of color.” She was 71. Murphy is out of the country, and Senate President Nicholas Scutari (D-Union County) is acting governor, according to the rules of the state constitution. Oliver had been serving as acting governor.
Oliver, of East Orange, had been the state’s lieutenant governor since 2018, and served as the head of the Department of Community Affairs. In 2010 she became the first African American woman to serve as speaker of the New Jersey Assembly in the state’s history. New Jersey politicians began to pay tribute to Oliver on Tuesday afternoon. U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), called her a dedicated public servant. “Lt. Governor Oliver’s legacy of service and devotion to the people of New Jersey will never be forgotten,” he said in a statement. Continued on Page 12
FULL STEAM AHEAD: Hay rides were among the many activities at the Mercer County 4-H Fair and Wheat Threshing last weekend at Howell Living History Farm in Hopewell Township. Attendees share what they liked best about the fair in this week’s Town Talk on page 6. (Photo by Grace Roberts)
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