By Azriel James Relph
Azriel.james.relph@gmail.com
It had been 25 years since they had last been together in the schoolyard of IS 116 on Tiffany Street. Back then the Bronx was burning, and signs reading “Save Our Schools” hung from classroom windows.
This time the graduates were there to make sure things were better.
The Rafael Hernandez Middle School Class of 1985 held a reunion at their old schoolyard on a sunny Saturday in May. It wasn’t just an occasion to catch up on one another’s lives or reminisce about the glory days of ninth grade. More than a dozen alumni came together to make sure that the school’s current students have every opportunity to succeed.
They took the first step in the process at the May 15th event, when they announced the Joe Conzo and Joe Conzo Jr. Scholarship, which will help send students from Rafael Hernandez to elite prep schools in the Northeast.
The class of 1985 was noteworthy for the number of its students who attended prep schools and parlayed that education into success, said Orlando Rodriguez, one of the organizers of the event.
The Alumni Association has partnered with the non-profit Diversity Foundation to create the scholarship. In a first for the foundation, which usually funds college scholarships, it will work to secure funding, while alumni from Rafael Hernandez will serve as mentors, helping to guide students through the application process. As the funding arrives, potential students will be identified.
The scholarship is named for a well-known father and son from the South Bronx. Joe Conzo was Tito Puente’s publicist and unofficial historian. Joe Conzo Jr. has been called “Hip Hop’s first photographer.”
Congressman Jose E. Serrano was at the event to announce the scholarship. “Joe Conzo Jr. documented with his camera the hip hop generation,” he said. “If his father is proof that Salsa was invented in the South Bronx and not Puerto Rico, then he is proof that the hip hop generation came from here and not anywhere else.”
The school’s band performed songs like Puente’s Oye Como Va for the audience and guests.
“I think the most important thing today is to let you guys know that you can overcome certain things, and you can go on to bigger and better things,” said the elder Conzo to the students seated with their instruments.
“Follow your dreams and stay in touch with your roots where you grew up at, and you’ll be fine,” said Conzo Jr.
Thomas Armstead, a member of the class of ’85, was one of several classmates to get into top prep schools, attending the prestigious Brooks School in Massachusetts. Now he is the CEO of Armstead Capital Inc., and is one of the founders of the scholarship.
“A lot of us who went to private schools were able to break down the myth of white superiority,” said Armstead. “Now it’s about taking all of the resources that the graduates of ’85 have and giving it back to the kids in the best way we can.”
Rodriguez, another ’85 alum and co-founder of the scholarship, said he thinks he knows why so many of his classmates were driven to success. “We were the Cosby kids,” he said. “We were the kids who watched “A Different World,” so going to college was just a given.”
Rodriguez thinks that today’s students – if given the opportunity – can be even more successful. “They’re growing up in a time where it’s not just images on television where the hypothetical Bill Cosby character is a doctor. They have a President where they can go, ‘Hey, that President looks like me,’” he said.
Seth Litt, principal at Rafael Hernandez, believes he will see another inspiring group of alums in 25 years, thanks to the scholarship.
“I expect great things from our students,” he said. “I think if our students are given the opportunity to compete with other students anywhere in the world, we’ll hear great things from them.”
As the reunited classmates of 1985 laughed over old photos and posed together for new ones, the student chorus performed the song “We Are The Young.”
“We are the young, the children of the world. We hold tomorrow in our hands. We are the young, the promise of a brighter day. The future waits at our command,” they sang.
A version of this story appeared in the June 2010 issue of The Hunts Point Express.