By Bill Bradberry
Niagara Gazette
NIAGARA FALLS —
I have been playing tour-guide for two of my sisters since they arrived back home in Niagara Falls from Florida last week for an extended visit, one of them had not been home for nearly 30 years. Cruising the city streets, landmarks and our old neighborhood we quickly realized that we have a lot of catching up to do.
It’s funny how we remember things.
As a child, I thought our yard was humungous, that I walked 10 miles to school and that we were rich. Time and distance can create outrageous distortions of our memories, but hard reality has a way of putting things into their proper perspective as was the case with me and my sisters last weekend.
We went back to the old home site and just as I had discovered when I came back a few years ago, our memories sometimes fail us.
The yard was smaller than I remembered, the walk to and from school, shorter than I recalled, and we were far from rich ... very far.
Not even close!
As children, we were unaware of our circumstances, we were too distracted by the absolute joy of being young to notice what we did not have.
To us, having the pennies we needed to hike all the way over to the Dairy Queen for an ice-cream cone, to Krystek’s Delicatessen for a 7 cent popsicle, to Walter and Lottie’s corner store for a nickel candy bar, or to Mike’s for a dime’s worth of penny candy was enough to worry about.
We agreed that our mutual memories of our childhood in the old neighborhood had been far more beautiful than the harsh realities of today offer, but we decided to hang on to them anyway as we circled our old stomping grounds.
Most of the houses from our childhood days are gone now, but the memories of the families who once lived on what is now vacant land, still persist as do many of the stories that we’ll never forget.
While we sat parked in the driveway where our family garage once stood and remembered a few of those stories; our howls of laughter could, no doubt be heard up and down the empty streets even after we left, headed for the other side of town.
I probably put a 100 miles on the car.
We went up and down the city streets to our former elementary schools, high schools, churches and hangouts like Mrs. Caver’s place off of what used to be East Falls Street where we’d go for ice-cream sodas after the movies at the Strand on Sundays — after church, of course.
We rode through the parks, along the parkway, out to Niagara University and then all over the North End which prompted a later conversation about the past, the future and the present conditions in our beloved hometown.
Somehow we got around to talking about the people who influenced and impacted us the most as we were growing up here. A lot of names came up, they were our family, our friends, and especially our neighbors.
But one name in particular came to my mind when I turned the corner at Fairfield Avenue ... Bond.
I slowed to a crawl in front of the house where Harwood and Bloneva Bond lived when we were still in diapers, and I remembered how close they were to our family and so many others here so many years ago.
My sister, much younger than me remembered how Mrs. Bond would do all of my sister’s hair ... all six of them, and how Mr. Bond would show up at our house with his huge briefcase filled with vacuum tubes to adjust our television sets.
But we also remembered them as loving, caring people who took the time, along with our parents to encourage us to study hard, to be polite and to focus on being good.
Good!
To the Bonds, being “good” meant being active and standing up for doing what is right.
My parents and the Bonds spent hours talking about the challenges they were facing here back in the day. To us, the Bonds were special, they had college degrees, yet they took the time to take us and dozens of other children in the city under their wings. With none of their own, they mentored us all, becoming living role models for everyone.
It was not until much later in my life that I learned the true value of the Bond’s contribution to us children, to my family in particular, and to the entire city as a whole.
As was written on the program that was distributed at her funeral on Saturday, May 29, 2004, at New Hope Baptist Church with the Rev. Harvey L. Kelley, pastor, officiating, “Bloneva Althea Pride Bond was born September 11, 1918 in Daytona Beach, Florida to the late David and Arabella Pride ... (she) moved to Niagara Falls with Harwood in 1943. Her many achievements, accolades and years of dedicated service to the Niagara Falls community include being a member of the NAACP where she served in several capacities including six years a president.”
Their accomplishments far too many to list here, are well known by many, though a diminishing number of adults here, and sadly to most children born after her death in 2004, she is a stranger, completely unknown even though many of the benefits they and their parents enjoy today came as a direct result of her and Harwood’s efforts.
In a valiant effort to change that, and to preserve their memory, their contributions and in particular, her legacy, a small group of very dedicated people have found a way to honor the Bonds with a tree planting and a granite monument which will be dedicated this Saturday at Robbins Drive and South Avenue at 2:30 p.m. in Hyde Park.
As a young boy, I simply knew them as good people, but as an adult, I will always remember them as stalwarts, able to “stir the pot,” yet remain firm in their commitments to principle ... never shaken by the battles they fought and won.
We ended the first leg of our makeshift tour with a stop at Mike’s Dairy Queen on Niagara Street before we headed across the Grand Island bridges on our way to visit a last surviving aunt who might be able to shed a little more light on our history.
Amazed by the condition of so much of the area, one of my sisters declared, “I would find it almost impossible to live here again after living in Florida, it’s just so depressing.”
My other sister chimed in, “I could ... I think it’s one of the most beautiful places in the world; it has a great history and a great future if only the people will remember and learn from their past.”
I agreed with both of them, of course.
Contact Bill Bradberry at bill.bradberry@yahoo.com.
