The Ile Camera
A Heritage Newspaper
Weekly Publication
The great Ile outdoors
Nature and Land Conservancy hosts kids from Delray
By Terry Jacoby, The Ile Camera
PUBLISHED: August 4, 2006
The Grosse Ile Nature and Land Conservancy hosted 52 children and two adults from the Delray Neighborhood House at the Grosse Ile Nature Area on July 18. The event included 45 kids between the ages of 6 and 12 and their seven teenage helpers.
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"The kids had a wonderful time away from their concrete jungle," said Peter Rock of the Grosse Ile Rotary Club, which also helped organize the event.
Delray is an economically depressed and environmentally polluted neighborhood in Southwest Detroit. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, the median household income in Delray is $18,856, 53 percent of its residents are not part of the workforce and only 43 percent of residents aged 25 and above have a high school diploma or equivalent.
Rock is very familiar with the Delray area.
"When we arrived in the U.S. from war-ravaged Europe in 1951 it was Detroit's Hungarian ethnic community," Rock said. "That's where we attended church, listened to gypsy music, bought Hungarian foods, socialized and worked our way into American society. It was a rough neighborhood, but it was our safe haven from the bombed-out cities in Hungary and Germany.
"Now Delray looks like one of those old bombed-out cities."
Rock quickly points out that this is not the fault of the children now living there, which is why so many people from Grosse Ile have helped out with projects for the Delray kids in the past.
For the second consecutive year the Grosse Ile Rotary Club has donated $10,000 to the Delray Neighborhood House to conduct a summer program. About $4,000 pays for field trips and $6,000 pays for the teenage helpers to work there during the eight-week program.
As a result, 90 to 100 neighborhood kids get to play sports and games, receive academic tutoring and have already gone to the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Hillberry Theater.
"As part of the GINLC environmental education outreach program we invited the children to our nature area," Rock said. "When they stepped off the school bus by the airport many of them thought they were up north."
Conservancy members Terry Laesser, Ingo and Margarete Hasserodt, Barbara Leeper, Michigan State University student Martina Egerer and Rock separated the visitors into seven groups and walked them to several locations. Laesser had them conduct science experiments at Quarry Lake (the ph level of 7.2 was good and nitrate levels were low.)
At the old seaplane base, Ingo Hasserodt showed them the American lotus leaves suspended a foot above the water. Leeper, Egerer and Margarete Hasserodt described the shoreline restoration project and pointed out wildlife such as a fox snake and tree swallows.
"Before departing, the children gathered together to shout out their Delray creed," Rock said. "The seventh part of their creed says, 'I will always respect myself, others and the environment.'
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