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"It can get rough here. There's no pretending that it can't. When Mary Paul and I opened the center in 1978, youth gangs ruled the neighborhood. The Homicides. The Assassinators. Now the gangs are gone, but the pushers have taken over. The violence stays. One night two summers ago, we were closing up our Teen Jam, and I walked past this group shouting at one another. One gang trespassed on a rival gang's turf. Suddenly, a woman and a boy were shot dead. A white car sped off, chasing a wounded boy all the way to Lutheran Hospital. They fired straight through the windows of the emergency room."
Much of the greenery in Sunset Park lies in Greenwood Cemetery, one of the oldest and largest public burial grounds in America. Among the half a million interred are Currier and Ives, Samuel F.B. Morse, William ("Boss") Tweed, Horace Greeley and Elias Howe, inventor of the sewing machine; Charles Tiffany, jeweler; Pierre Lorillard, tobacco tycoon; Edward Squibb, the pharmaceutical manufacturer; William Colgate, the soapmaker. James Kirke Paulding lies in Greenwood, the man who composed "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers," as does Frank Morgan, who played the Wizard of Oz in the 1939 movie.
They are buried among the Dutch and English, who first settled the neighborhood in the 17th century with farms stretching from the hill down to the water, and among those who fought under Washington in the Continental Army. Sunset Park was a major stronghold in the Battle of Long Island in the summer of 1776. Some trees of Greenwood Cemetery--oak, maple, beech, white pine--are old enough to have sheltered the Canarsie Indians, who maintained a fishing station at what is now 37th and Third. Greenwood rests above the neighborhood like a great serene estate, some of the wealthy contained in vast crypts beside decorous ponds, as stark and monumental as Egyptian tombs.
South of the cemetery is Sunset Park itself, 18 acres of walking paths, playgrounds, graffiti-ridden benches and a WPA-built swimming pool. From the high ground around the flagpole, neighborhood citizens may look down over the rooftops into the bay at the Statue of Liberty, sheathed in scaffolding for repairs, rising from the water like a shapeless green plant; or watch Manhattan at twilight sparkle into being.
"We use the park for our summer camp," says Geraldine. "The pool is too shallow for the bigger kids, and fights break out. But it's all we've got in the heat."
Besides the camp and the after-school programs that Michael Mallory attends, the Center for Family Life organizes a foster-grandparent program, a theater workshop, and literacy classes for adults. A dance group produces a version of the Nutcracker for the neighborhood Christmas show. The awninged thrift shop not only sells inexpensive goods but provides free emergency food. The center also operates an employment agency to help non-English speakers in particular. The main work of the center is counseling--group-therapy sessions, and individual meetings between staff members who are professional social workers and clients who, like Mallory, seek the center for help.