Our Friend Jackie Connor

This is our friend Jackie Connor.
In this picture she is sitting on the front steps of Old First Church, corner of Carroll Street and 7th Avenue.
In her right hand is one of the cigarettes that gave her the cancer that took her from us last year ...way too soon.
Jackie was born and grew up in Park Slope.
Jackie married and raised her family on 7th Avenue.
She was a community activist before this neighborhood knew it was a community.
She was here before the first wave of gentrification, and rode out every change with a single-minded devotion to the quality of life on the streets of her hometown.
Jackie was particularly militant when it came to protecting the interests of the small "Mom and Pop" businesses that flourished on 7th and 5th avenue.
She was an avid deterrant to pick-pockets, shop lifters and petty thieves, patrolling up and down the streets equipped with her camera and notepad, recording data on potentially threatening or offensive persons, which she shared with the local police precinct.
And she was a great story teller,true to her Irish blood.
She would say this was getting too long and really boring.
I'm workin' on it, Jack.