Public Employee Press

Black History Month at DC 37
We are family

The focus this year was on fitness and fun for hundreds of union children at the annual DC 37 Black History Month Family Day celebration at union headquarters Feb. 7.

The Sports Expo and Educational Seminar was sponsored by the Black History Committee, MTA Clerical Employees Local 1655 and the DC 37 Retirees Association, and featured an array of interactive activities for toddlers, teens and adults.

Youngsters learned the ABCs of golf from LaToya Finney of the Finer Life Golf Foundation. U.S. Olympian Kamara Jones (2004) and Donovan Holtz, a 2012 Olympic team hopeful, taught kids fencing basics, while Columbia University’s women’s archery coach Derek Davis helped 8-year-old Dorian Noel and others hit their marks using bows and arrows.

Family Day also featured high-energy activities like double dutch, track and field and syncopated step drills, the traditional dances practiced by historically Black fraternities and sororities.

Local 299 member Bruce Cannon, who is the artistic director at the Central Park’s Swedish Cottage Marionette Theater, told children the history of Harlem through songs, dancing marionettes and his hip-hop hand puppets Uncle Marvin and Abdul.

DC 37 volunteers painted children’s faces and added colorful tattoos to little hands. Parents and teenagers learned about nutrition and how to be more budget-savvy to save for college.

Local 436 Nurses offered weight loss tips and measured members’ blood pressure, and massage therapist Vance Allen gently eased members’ aching muscles.
“This was my first time at Family Day,” said Local 372 member Frances Lamour, who attended with her children. “I didn’t know DC 37 had so much going on. We’re having a ball!”

— Diane S. Williams

U.S. Olympic team fencers instruct children at the annual Family Day program.

A praise dance youth troupe perform at Family Day.