News Of Neighbors

By Rachel Boxdorfer

April–May 2020

Historical April–May 2020 article. Dates, prices, services and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.

Today I’m late for my deadline which is not unusual; the Times editors will be the first to confirm that fact.

It is a time of uncertainty for our neighborhood, our country, our world. Coronavirus has spread and businesses are closing, social distancing is the new normal. And I hate it.

But at this time, there is one thing I know.

I am so grateful to be a part of this community, a part of the Skinker De-Baliviere neighborhood.

I am reminded of that even more so as I escape my home and take daily walks, talking to neighbors from a safe distance. And here we are, celebrating 50 years of our neighborhood newspaper! How many of you have even ever noticed that we are “the oldest neighborhood newspaper in St. Louis”? How cool is that?

I still remember when it was called “The Paper”.

In all honesty, I loved that.

I wish it still was, but maybe with a tag line about Skinker DeBaliviere, we need to keep that name in there proudly.

I think I’m just being nostalgic.

This paper and the incredible volunteers early on and throughout its history gift us with such a unique and wonderful product when they produce this paper multiple times a year.

We are so lucky to be part of this community.

We can track our history through the issues, through the years, which Marge Weir has organized for all to access online.

It shows the progress of the community, so much of it because our neighbors, our community work together. And that is also rare in many areas. So thank you to everyone throughout the years who has put their efforts in to producing our neighborhood paper and to all of you for being a part of this wonderful neighborhood we all call home. And with that, let’s move on to our current news of neighbors. Congratulations are in order for Heidi Dowgwillo on her recent retirement as Executive Assistant at Forest Park. Heidi and her husband Bob live on the 6000 block of Pershing.

We wish her a very happy and enjoyable retirement! Congratulations to our Tom Hoerr of the 6100 block of Kingsbury and former headmaster of New City School on the publication his new book Taking Social Emotional Learning Schoolwide: The Formative Five Success Skills for Students and Staff.

In the book, Tom uses school culture as a tool to show how teachers and principals can bring SEL to life in their schools.

He spent a great deal of time talking and emailing other educators and visiting schools. Taking Social Emo-tional Learning Schoolwide was just published by ASCD and is available at ascd.org. Congratulations to Evan Holden who was nominated for the FIRST Dean’s Award in Robotics. Criteria for selection of the FIRST Dean’s List shall include, but not be limited to a student’s; demonstrated leadership and commitment to FIRST Core Values, effectiveness at increasing awareness of FIRST in their school and community, interest and passion for a long-term commitment to FIRST, overall individual contribution to their team • Technical expertise and passion, and entrepreneurship and creativity, as well as ability to motivate and lead fellow team members. Evan is the son of Dan Holden and Colette Morton of the 6100 block of Pershing and he attends Metro High School. Five professors from the Trudy Busch Valentine School of Nursing have been named finalists for the 2020 Excellence in Nursing awards. One of those nomi-nees is our very own Cristina McGroarty, MSN who is nominated in the Oncology category. St. Louis Magazine will be announcing the winners in their May is-sue. Cristina lives on the 6100 block of Kingsbury with her husband Sean and their six children.

She teaches courses in child health nursing, pediatrics and public health nursing.

Her research is focused on mindfulness in students. Con-gratulations Cristina on this welldeserved honor!

In an earlier issue of the Times we covered Claire Rater’s service in the Peace Corps. Unfortunately, due to COVID-19, Claire’s service in Senegal was cut short and she returned home in March. Peace Corps volunteers from around the world returned home and the entire service is being shut down.

We are so sorry for Claire that her time and service ended so abruptly but we are glad that she has arrived home safely to be with her family. Claire is the daughter of Dan and Molly Rater who live in Kingsbury Square.

Another neighborhood young adult had to cut her service short. Sarah Cross, youngest daughter of Andy and Linda Cross of the 6000 block of McPherson, was serving in the American Conservation Experience in Corpus Christi, Texas. Unfortunately, due to COVID-19, ACE-Texas’s major and minor project part-ners terminated projects due to the fact that they’ve been shut down and so Sa-rah returned to St. Louis after a month and a half. Welcome home SJ, we are glad you arrived safely. For those who don’t know and since I did not get to cover Sarah’s adventures yet, here is a bit of information about the program. ACE-Texas, located in the coastal bend region of South Texas in Corpus Christi offers AmeriCorps posi-tions for individuals interested in kick starting their careers in the restoration biology/ecology field! Although the workload is diverse, ACE-Texas’ efforts are primarily focused at restoring gulf coast prairies and watersheds to support threatened and endangered animals and neo-tropical migrating birds such as the Whooping Crane. Get well wishes go to longtime neighbor and Halloween pioneer Art Santen, who is now residing in the new Allegro center opposite St. Mary’s. Art was one of the stalwart neighborhood supporters, always hardworking and willing to pitch in. For many years he helped distribute the TIMES to every block. For 50 years, he was “Mr. Halloween”, organizing the event at St. Roch.

His collections have been featured in our publication, as well as others.

We hope to see Art again, and we wish his family all the best. That my friends is our News of Neighbors for this issue. I’ll conclude with a heartfelt prayer and hopes that all of you are safe and well.

We will get through this time; we are a strong community of wonderful neighbors.

We are Skinker DeBaliviere! Do you have news to share?

Please send your submissions via email with the subject line News of Neighbors to rachelb@sdtimes.org or drop off a note to the attention of Rachel Boxdorfer at the Skinker DeBaliviere office. Be sure to mark it “News of Neighbors”.

We love to hear about neighbors accomplishments, awards, travels, weddings, anniversaries, births, and more!