Destruction and Renewal

Also view these pages in the 2001-02 photo album!

Omer Ilyas,

President

This was with no doubt a troubled year for the garden. We began our year with the horrors of September 11. Students and teachers in our school were numbed by this attack, and the subsequent crash of the airline headed for Santo Domingo only compounded our sadness. Some Kennedy students lost parents and loved ones in these disasters.

We ended our school year with the stabbing death of a summer school student yards away from the garden. Tragic events like these have cast a shadow on the spirit of the school, our students, and our garden.

To add insult to injury, our garden was repeatedly vandalized this year. The worst episode ocurred around New Years Day. All of our benches were ripped up from their groundings and hacked into splinters. Our greenhouse was broken into and thoroughly trashed, with all our tools strewn about the parking lot.

Much of our year was spent fixing up damage repeatedly inflicted upon the garden. With a shrinking membership, and a seemingly more apathetic student population, we struggled to maintain a gardening program against the odds.

Physically, the garden has endured another major challenge. The construction of MS / HS 368 commenced next door to the garden. While there was initial concern that the filling in of the drainage ditch would wreak havoc on the garden ecosystem, our fears were proven wrong, as the construction company installed pumps to insure that there would be no flooding in the area around our garden. A corrugated metal fence was built around our garden, but the garden has remained essentially untouched by the construction, a sign that the higher powers at the Board of Education value our garden, and want to see it continue as an educational and recreational resource for the Kennedy campus.

We also lost access to our fire hydrant. With the city facing the worst drought it has had in years, the department of Environmental Protection has put special magnetic caps on all hydrants, including ours, making it impossible to access water. July and August, critical watering months, were unusually dry and hot, and our plants suffered immeasurably. We had to go through the laborious process of carrying water from long distances to keep our more needy plants from dying. Even with these efforts, we lost some of our favorite plants this summer.

Under the mature and steadfast leadership of Omer Ilyas, the membership worked hard to keep the gardening program alive and meaningful to the school community. We would like to acknowledge a small, but dedicated corps of members for keeping the garden one of the crown jewels of Kennedy High School: Tanjeen Azad, Jahaira Barriga, Hena Bhuiyan, Sung Cha, Sung Cha (Yes, there are two Sungs!) Celia Dubin, Mahammood Elahi, Francheska Garcia, Christopher Maldonado, Alex Marte, Mahmod Masri, Jansel Pujols, Fahaam Razack, Yira Rivas, Franklyn Roa, Latoya Rogers, Abdus Salaam, Umme Udin, Christyan Valentin, and Debbie Zhang. For those who stuck with the garden in tough times, we found it a place to feel a sense of renewal and hope. We still grew our vegetables, we picked some the biggest, juiciest peaches and raspberries, and we continued to improve our garden in various ways. We hope the garden can act as metaphor for our school, city, and nation, as we face tougher times ahead.