Article About The Bronx - Irish Echo

[Marion Farrell Cronin]

Boroughing in

By Eileen Murphy
emurphy@irishecho.com

September 3, 2008 Of the five boroughs that make up New York City, the Bronx might be the one that is least understood by outsiders. The city's mainland borough doesn't have the glamorous sophistication of Manhattan, the wisecracking attitude of Brooklyn, the leafy-sounding villages of Queens, or the suburban atmosphere of Staten Island. The Bronx is solid. The Bronx is no-nonsense, with a gruff sense of humor and a language of its own. The Bronx is apartment buildings and private houses, parks and parkways, industrial zones and shopping meccas, universities and churches. But the Bronx is more than just a physical place. It's a mindset.

Neighborhoods are defined by parish boundaries: St. Raymond's in Parkchester; St. Jerome's and St. Luke's in the South Bronx; St. Margaret Mary's on Tremont Avenue. The majestic edifice of St. Nicholas of Tolentine towers over Fordham Road. The litany goes on: St. Philip Neri, St. Brendan's, Visitation, Our Lady of Mercy, Holy Spirit, St. John's, St. Lucy's, St. Margaret of Cortona, St. Ann's, St. Mary Star of the Sea, St. Barnabas - a veritable congregation of the venerated, just north of Manhattan.

For the generations who moved to the Bronx from the 1930s through the 1960s, the borough represented a break from the close confines of city life. It was a great place to raise a family: the schools, both public and parochial, turned out graduates highly proficient in the three R's, imbued with ambition, and infused with a desire to build a better life. Kids played in the parks, but the urban landscape inspired the most popular games: stickball, marbles, skelly, stoopball. For teens, there were dances, where socializing was conducted under the watchful eyes of the host parish's clergy.

In the 1970s, many families moved to the suburbs as the city - and especially the Bronx - suffered from budget crises, escalating crime rates and urban decay. Many stayed, refusing to cede their neighborhoods to the criminal element. In the 1980s, a new wave of immigration from Ireland brought thousands of young people to the borough, swelling the ranks of GAA clubs and creating a thriving social scene.

Today, the Bronx faces a bright future. Families thrive in newly-built houses in neighborhoods long written off. Major retailers and luxury realtors have discovered that there's gold at the end of the rainbow - or at the end of the D train, anyway. And the colleges and universities enjoy robust enrollment figures.

In a real sense, the Bronx is about tenacity. It's about staying the course, about facing down adversity, about doing what needs to be done. It's about remembering the things that are gone, but not letting nostalgia get too firm a grip on the imagination.

In a world where traditional values seem to be eroding at an ever-increasing pace, those whose personalities were shaped by the city's northern borough are committed to maintaining the standards with which they were raised.

There's an old joke that says you can take a person out of the Bronx, but you can't take the Bronx out of a person. For those who were lucky enough to have been born there, raised there, or employed there, there is no better compliment. For the rest: well, maybe there's a little bit of the Bronx in everyone.

submitted by John Tell