Birth of / bash for an activist:As we mentioned in last week’s column, Doris Diether’s 50th anniversary celebration of being a member of Community Board 2 was quite the par-taay. It was hosted by her fellow board member Richard Stewart and his husband, Dr. David Ramsay, at their airy, art-filled One Fifth Ave. apartment overlooking Washington Square Park. Diether started things off by reading aloud a statement she gave back in 1969 at the old Board of Estimate, which she recalled was named something different at the time. Titled an “Open Letter To The People of New York,” Diether’s testimony concerned the New York Post’s report on a Parks Department plan for the free New York Shakespeare Festival at Wollman Rink to “charge $1 to $3.50 for seats and slightly more for boxes.” Diether testified, “I was rather surprised that no follow-up of this story appeared in any newspapers. It seems that every time Robert Moses [then Parks commissioner] gets a brainy idea, the public is ignored and special interests get the best part of the deal. …” As she read on at the party, Diether, 85, overcome by emotion, started to choke up and sniffle. “…When are the people of this city going to wake up and demand that parks are for the public — small “P” — and not for Moses to parcel out as he sees fit? … Now is the time,” Diether’s statement concluded, “to let our public officials know that the people still own the city, and not one or two individuals.” Right on! The crowd at the party cheered. Diether handed us a copy of her speech. Scrawled at the top in script, she wrote, “Start of my civic career.” As she later explained to us, up until then she had been working closely with other Village legends, such as Jane Jacobs, Verna Small, Ruth Wittenberg and Shirley Hayes. Like lieutenants, they carved up the Village into sectors, each taking the lead in watching over her own — calling the others when they needed help in their area. Diether’s sector included Patchin Place and Eighth St., among others. But this was the first time Diether basically stood on her own. After her testimony back in ’69, a knot of reporters rushed up to her and asked her “what group” she was with, to which she responded, “I’m not — just me.” The good feelings were flowing at the Fifth Ave. fete, which was attended by many C.B. 2 members, including board chairperson David Gruber, as well as Assemblymember Deborah Glick, state Senator Brad Hoylman, Borough President Gale Brewer, and Councilmembers Rosie Mendez, Margaret Chin and Corey Johnson. “To say I have learned a lot from the ‘Zoning Maven’ would be an understatement,” Mendez said of the C.B. 2 icon. Mendez piled her with an armful of gifts, including a book on cats — Diether loves books and cats, Mendez noted — and a mini pop-up old-school rooftop water tank. For her part, Glick recalled serving on the community board back in the 1980s with Diether — who she called a “forceful advocate” yet also “genteel.” “I’m here not just as an assemblymember but as a fan,” Glick stated. “As board members, we always followed Doris’s lead. Doris always takes the right position.” Hoylman, Gruber’s predecessor as C.B. 2 chairperson, fondly told the board veteran, “I have always taken your lessons to heart.” Chin gave Diether a City Council proclamation, Hoylman gave her one from the state Senate and Brewer gave her one of her own declaring it “Doris Diether Appreciation Day.” Gruber quipped, “Thank you for your years of service, even though you’re sometimes a bit of a pest — I mean, a contrarian.” Added Stewart of the octogenarian activist, “Doris does not miss a meeting. It doesn’t matter what kind of pain she’s in.” She must have some amazing painkillers, he joked. Not really — it’s called dedication! If they could only put that in a pill and bottle it… .
Big shots at Cats party: Gristedes magnate and former mayoral candidate John Catsimatidis celebrated his birthday earlier this month at Le Cirque, on E. 58th St. As he gave remarks, at one point, he quipped that everyone at the party was over age 50. However, there was one younger couple who looked like they were probably in their 30s. “Cats” then noted that he was proud to announce that among their midst was the very Navy SEAL who fatally shot Osama bin Laden. No doubt it was the same SEAL who, as Scoopy first reported back in June, Congressmember Carolyn Maloney told us would be giving the shirt that he wore on that fateful mission to the 9/11 Museum. One of the daily tabs recently reported that the shirt — with its blacked-out American flag shoulder patch (well-suited for nighttime antiterrorist missions) — had, in fact, been donated to the museum’s collection. Other notables at the Catsimatidis confab included Joe Piscopo, Geraldo Rivera, cable TV news-show host Larry Kudlow and actor Gianni Russo (“Carlo,” from “The Godfather”), who sang at the affair.
Safer Houston and Sixth: Two years ago, the death of Jessica Dworkin, a.k.a. Jessie Blue, 58, who was killed by a tractor-trailer while on her kick scooter at Houston and Sixth Ave., shocked and horrified her neighbors in Soho and elsewhere Downtown. After the tragic incident, Community Board 2 held at least three meetings — the first one mainly a massive outpouring of residents’ grief and rage at the intersection’s notoriously unsafe conditions. C.B. 2 member Jon Geballe, who lives nearby on W. Houston St., was recently pleased to report that the city’s Department of Transportation was, at last, putting in promised safety improvements at the chronically unsafe crossing, including sidewalk “neck-down” extensions and other traffic-calming measures. Shirley Secunda, the C.B. 2 Traffic and Transportation Committee chairperson, said the measures will help. “Oh, God yes,” she said. “I think it’s going to make a difference with the turning on Houston St. into Sixth Ave.” D.O.T., she said, was “very, very responsive” to what the community wanted to see done there.
