Eleanor Roosevelt High School is one of the most popular public high schools in the city, attracting far more applications than available spots. We live less than a block from it, and I can proudly claim a teeny-tiny role in its origin, having been a part of a group of local parents who helped champion the need for a school like “El Ro” when it was just an idea. There are parents who go above and beyond to support their children’s schools. I am not one of them, but lately I’ve been trying to do a bit more—and part of the reason is a memory of how El Ro got started—it’s a story that’s sad, inspiring, and worth sharing parent to parent.
Two extraordinary women, local moms, led the charge to build a good neighborhood high school. I don’t remember their names, I believe they were once PTA heads at Wagner Middle School (also in the neighborhood), but I’m not sure about that. They were deeply informed and persuasive. My oldest, now 14, was in nursery school at the time. She was so young, it’s almost embarrassing that I was already getting neurotic about high school politics, except that those two women seemed so right and so determined to fix a problem that had existed for too long.
I’ve already told you the happy part (El Ro lives). Now here’s the sad part. At some point in the time that the idea of the school was transforming into a beautiful reality, one of those women died of cancer. I had participated in brainstorming sessions in her home, but I didn’t know her very well. I had no idea. And her death shocked me. She was a journalist too, and she had made the school a priority even as she was fighting a much more personal and lethal battle.
In December, we published a cover interview with Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, whose most recent book is about making the time to make a difference in the world, however large or small, because it’s good for the world and it’s good for you. One of their key suggestions is to not wait until retirement; rather, they suggest that you embrace giving as an essential act of being alive.
I see all those lucky kids scrambling to get to El Ro on time in the morning as I’m scrambling to get my son to the nearby grade school. Who knows if they would’ve had this opportunity if not for that big-hearted believer and her cohort?
Eric Messinger is the editor of New York Family. He can be reached at emessinger@manhattanmedia.com.
