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Looking towards a barge on the Hudson River from West 85th Street. 8:45 PM. Photo: JH. |
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| May 29, 2009. A overcast, cool-ish and drizzly Thursday in New York. New Yorkers are like this. In the late 1960s, living in Manhattan on the Upper East Side, I got involved in a political campaign of Carter Burden, a young man about my age, who was running for City Council in what was then popularly known as the Silk Stocking District. Burden, who was a scion of the Vanderbilt and Burden families here, had grown up in Beverly Hills (in a house later owned by Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston), went to Harvard and then came to settle in New York. In his early 20s, he married the very pretty Amanda Mortimer whose distinction in those days was mainly as the daughter of Babe Paley, second wife of William Paley and Stanley Mortimer, heir to a Standard Oil fortune whose second wife was Averell Harriman’s daughter Kathleen.
Their first apartment was in the Dakota and was photographed for Vogue: it was spacious and grand yet newlywed cozy and cute (in Carter’s dressing room was a throw rug woven in the image of US Dollar bill). It was the talk of the town. It was a very glamorous time in the New York social whirl and the emerging fashion world of Seventh Avenue and Carter and Amanda Burden were at its forefront. It was a life just this side of frivolous in appearance except for the fact that Carter had gone to law school and was working as a Senate aide to Bobby Kennedy. 1968 changed everything for a lot of people including Carter and Amanda Burden. RFK had been assassinated. Martin Luther King had been assassinated. The catastrophe of Viet Nam was continuing. The pubic protests against the war were growing, and the Liberation Movements of that era, including the anti-War movement, were taking hold. In 1969 Carter Burden, no longer the protégé of RFK, decided to make the leap into public service by running for a City Council seat. His campaign headquarters in an old supermarket storefront on the southeast corner of Second Avenue and 79th Street (now a large apartment house) was a hive of young volunteers going from door to door, politicos, political advisers, socialites, young lawyers, and even Christina Onassis who, encouraged by her stepmother Jackie, briefly got involved as a door-to-door volunteer. Although he was running against the old pols and the pros, his already high local public profile along with his liberal ideas and association with Robert Kennedy, and his effective campaigning (door-to-door throughout the neighborhoods) managed by his law school roommate and friend (now author) Bartle Bull, brought victory. It was not long after Carter Burden became Councilman Burden that he recognized a very great need in his district – a great number of seniors, often frail and elderly who were living, often alone and on tiny pensions and Social Security, in small tenements, once active members of the community who now needed help in order to remain living independently in their apartments and participating in their neighborhood life. In 1971, with one social worker assigned solely to the seniors in the district, the Burden Center for the Aging was opened in a small storefront in the East 80s. For reasons unknown to this writer, Carter Burden became disillusioned with political life and eventually retired from politics to pursue business interests in publishing and broadcasting. He and Amanda divorced and they both remarried.
In June of 2006, The Burden Center officially changed its name and logo in honor of its 35th anniversary to The Carter Burden Center for the Aging, Inc. (CBCA). Today the Carter Burden Center provides many different kinds of assistance to seniors through diverse programs. The Upper East Side has one of the largest populations of elderly people and senior citizens in New York City. From their small beginnings they now have expanded into new programs for: Medicare/Medicaid Assistance. The C.V. Starr Adult Day Services Program offering programs on Saturdays. People come to the Center in crisis - they might have received an eviction notice or need help in ending an abusive relationship. There is a special Homebound Unit to provide services to those in the community who are the most isolated and cannot leave their homes on a daily basis. There are Support and Discussion Groups such as the Chinese Language Group, the Women’s Discussion Group, the Alzheimer’s Support Group for Adult Children, as well as Caregiver Clinics. They have a great program called Cultural Connections which offers a variety of cultural experiences throughout the year with excellent discounted prices on the tickets to performances of the New York City Ballet, concerts, New York City Opera, Broadway musicals, Jazz performances, lecture series, special Metropolitan Museum tours, and many other tours, luncheons, and spectator sports games. Also every weekday, scores, sometimes hundreds of people attend the Carter Burden Luncheon Club which is located in the ground level room of the old Jan Hus Church at 351 East 74th Street (between First and Second Avenues). Dedicated staff, local undergraduate and graduate students, and over 1200 volunteers help to address these needs at the luncheon club and senior program. Socialization, recreation, computer assistance and lessons, classes, trips and monthly birthday and holiday parties are all part of the luncheon club’s daily agenda. |
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A lively lunch at the old Jan Hus Church at The Carter Burden Center for the Aging. |
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| Several weeks ago, at the urging of Susan Burden, JH and I visited the Luncheon Club at the Jan Hus Church. It’s an amazing neighborhood institution and a great achievement. Mainly with the help of volunteers and a small but talented (and tireless) kitchen staff, they turn out thousands of great hot lunches (with a menu) to the guests. Recently on a Wednesday there was a “Guest Chef” day when Gavin Kaysen, executive chef of Café Boulud came to the kitchen to prepare a delicious lunch for the guests (also known as seniors) |
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In the kitchen: on this day Luncheon Club members and seniors had a choice between Chef's Salad or broiled fish with rice and green beans. |
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Ruben Martinez helping out in the kitchen with Justin, Schuyler, and Moufdi. |
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The Chef's Salad ... |
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The fish ... |
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Senior volunteer Art LeMoine, student volunteer Chesley Carter, and Ruben Martinez |
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Marlena Vaccaro, Director of the Carter Burden Senior Program, Ruben Martinez, and Megan Huston, Assistant Director of the Carter Burden Senior Program. |
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| Carter Burden’s idea to use his political power to help his neighbors (his constituency in the beginning) has flourished into an institution that has touched the lives of tens of thousands of people. At the Luncheon the day we attended, I was impressed also to see young school-age people serving and assisting the guests. We learned that Regis High School, a tuition-free Jesuit college prep school on East 84th Street, encourages its students to volunteer their time to serve the community. Many Regis students help out at the Carter Burden Center. On that day we met one young man named Ruben Martinez, a senior at Regis high school on East 84th Street who is going to attend Binghamton University in the fall. Ruben had completed his high school credits and was devoting his entire last semester to daily serving at the Luncheon Club. There is something awe inspiring to see a teen-age student befriending, assisting and serving his elders. Watching it you get the feeling you’re observing a hopeful future for all of us, leadership in the making. We interviewed Ruben Martinez after his work was completed that day, to ask him how he had come to the Carter Burden Center, how he liked it, and why. We were very impressed by his sensitivity to and empathy for his elders. Have a look, you will be too. Young men like Ruben Martinez are the inheritors of Carter Burden’s legacy. |
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| To learn more about the Carter Burden Center for the Aging and its programs visit www.burdencenter.org [1] |
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Comments? Contact DPC here. [2] |