Florry Burrell

Florry Burrell is famous for being not famous enough.

She was born as Florence Kraus on May 19, 1924. In 1952 she, her husband Harry Burrell (a printer for The New York Times), and her mother Rose Kraus spent every cent they had to buy a house in Elmhurst, Queens, at 52-13 94th Street. There she began to raise her children, Adrienne (born 1950) and Barbara (born 1952).

Florry soon became a well-known and beloved figure in the community. She volunteered for the Red Cross, and became a Girl Scout leader (troop 4-104). When her children began to go to the local elementary school, P.S. 13, she joined the Mothers' Club, and did volunteer work for the school library. In 1963, she became a School Aide at P.S. 13, the local elementary school, and worked there for the next thirty-five years.

Florry loved children, and children loved her, which made her an ideal School Aide. In this most polyglot community of New York City, she knew how to say "don't run!" in seven languages, including Mandarin and Cantonese. Children who had trouble in school got her special attention. She made them her Visual Aids monitors, and the extra responsibility often helped to pull them up and make them better students. Decades after they graduated, they would still come back to visit and to thank "Mrs. Burrell."

Florry had a deep social conscience, and worked for democracy and fairness wherever she could. She was an elections inspector for her district for over twenty years, a well-known member of her Democratic club, and shop-steward for her union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. Even after her retirement, she never hesitated to speak up for her community. When the Post Office announced that it would remove the only mailbox on 94th Street, she started a petition, wrote letters to every politician she knew, and eventually got the mailbox back for the neighborhood.

"Grandma Florry" was best known for her warm heart and good advice to any in need. If neighbors had trouble filling out a form or understanding a regulation, she would gladly help them straighten the situation out. At first the names of her friends were Italian, Irish, Jewish, and Russian; later Spanish, Greek, Dominican, and Korean. She was proud of the varied mosaic of the Elmhurst community, and even when she couldn't speak the language, she managed to communicate gardening tips, useful coupons, opera plots, and news of her grandchildren to all. Through the generations of children she mentored and the many people she helped, she made Elmhurst a better neighborhood. Though she died on June 14, 2002, she never really left the place she loved for fifty years.

In recognition of her contributions, her lifelong friends and neighbors, Karen Squeglio Ninehan and her mother Catherine Squeglio, petitioned the New York City Council, asking that the street Florry had lived on be named in her honor. On October 24, 2006, with the support of Council Member Helen Sears, the petition was granted.

On April 17, 2007, Florry's family, friends, and co-workers gathered at the corner of 52nd Ave. and 94th Street in Elmhurst for the dedication of a street sign labeled "Florry Burrell Way."

But the next Sunday, an opinion piece by Stuart Miller, a sports writer, appeared in The New York Times, asserting that Florry Burrell's name did not fit among those famous enough to merit a street sign; and that in any case, too many such signs were cluttering the streets. He may have been prompted by a recent case in Brooklyn where a City Council committee had rejected a street sign for a controversial neighborhood activist, Sonny Carson; but his animus against street-naming had appeared as early as 2003, when he co-authored another Times editorial [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res9805E3DD1239F93BA35752C1A9659C8B63&nTop/Reference/Times%20Topics/Subjects/H/History] against naming a Brooklyn street for Harriet Tubman.

Karen Ninehan's eloquent letter in rebuttal appeared the next week. It said, "A matching piece of aluminum on a pole does not make clutter, nor is it costly. It is a way to remember the lives of residents who did more than pay taxes and obey the law. A humble street sign for one block is small recognition of one individual's selfless contributions to a community, vital to neighborhoods and the city."

Mr. Miller's scoffing only served to make Florry Burrell's name more famous, and her memorial will continue to stand on her street in Elmhurst.

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