Richard Cook, President of The Hundred Year Association of New York; Dennis M. Walcott, Deputy Mayor for Police, City of New York; Award Recipient Christine Camacho; Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of Education Update, Dr. Pola Rosen; Deputy Assistant Chief of the Fire Prevention Bureau, Howard Hill; Avery Eli Okin, Esq. Chairman, Awards Committee of The Hundred Year Association of New York

Awards Ceremony Honors Outstanding Civil
Servants and Their Children
Education Update Gives Scholarship

By Michelle DeSarbo

The One Hundred Year Association of New York recently honored New York City civil service employees and their children for their accomplishments in both their careers and academics with the Isaac Liberman Public Service and E. Virgil Conway College Scholar Awards. Proud parents, relatives, and scholarship recipients escaped the morning rain and filled the spacious auditorium at Police Headquarters to hear Commissioner of the Department of Citywide Administrative Services Martha Hirst give the ceremony’s opening remarks.

“This event is one of my favorite occasions,” Hirst said. “These remarkable individuals have demonstrated extraordinary levels of commitment to public service in their work.”

In his keynote address, Deputy Mayor for Policy Dennis M. Walcott expressed his own message to young scholarship recipients. “Your success is a tribute to your parents. I’m pleased to see so many of your parents and grandparents here today… and I hope that some of you recipients will consider careers in civil service.”

Among the civil servants awarded was Theresa Knox, a field director with the Department for the Aging. Knox was granted $6,000 from the Consolidated Edison Company for the Intergenerational Work Study Program (IWSP). From its inception, IWSP was intended to team up high school students at risk with senior citizen mentors who act as tutors and counselors. Now the program includes all students, bringing roughly 10,000 adult mentors with 350 teens.

Also included was Mary Beth Frey, a speech teacher at P.S. 256Q. The school, located in Belle Harbor, is for students who have acute language and cognitive disabilities as well as strong emotional needs. Frey received an award of $2,500 from the Amalgamated Bank of New York for her efforts to assist special needs children and their families; she regularly calls students’ parents to help them make arrangements with social service agencies offering assistance to special needs children and has even offered financial support to families on her own in the past.

John Gallin & Son, Inc. awarded Administrative Parks and Recreation Manager Kim McNeal $1,000 for her work with the St. James Recreation Center in the Bronx. McNeal coordinates monthly poetry slams for the children who visit the Center. At the year’s end, the best poems are published in a booklet and the Center holds a signing for the young poets. McNeal is also responsible for the addition of music, voice, and dance instruction to the preexisting poetry, visual arts, and technology programs.

“The young people receiving scholarships today are an equally impressive group,” said Hirst as she introduced the E. Virgil Conway College Scholars. The 23 honorees came from such prestigious colleges as the University of Pennsylvania, Cornell, Duke, Brown, and Columbia. The KeySpan Corporation awarded Charles E. Innis College Scholar Chen Xie $6,000 for his academic excellence. The Harvard freshman has also received a National Merit Scholarship and a Harvard Faculty Scholarship.

For some awardees, excellence and academic achievement runs in the family. Charles Lei, a junior at Harvard, received $3,000 from Bowne & Co. and was honored in the 2002 and 2003 Hundred Year Association scholarship ceremonies. His brother, Edgar Lei (a freshman at Cornell University), was granted $1,500 from James Thompson & Co., Inc. Their father is Joel Lei, a computer specialist at the Department of Probation.

The Bank of New York honored Ali Arvanaghi with $1,000.  Only moments after his award was announced, the Cornell sophomore’s sister Roxana Arvanaghi was awarded $1,000 by The Greenpoint Financial Corp.  Their mother, Morteza Arvanaghi, is an associate project manager at the Department of Environmental Protection.

Other students honored included Queens College freshman Christine Camacho, recipient of a $1,000 scholarship jointly sponsored by Education Update and Hotel Wales and Danisa Clarrett, a Case Western Reserve University freshman who was awarded $1,000 by the Brooklyn Bar Association Foundation.#