Ex-Professor Gives Hope to South Bronx

On Lyman Place in the blighted South Bronx, hope is synonymous with the name Hetty Fox.

In 1970, an inner voice told Fox to leave her teaching job at San Fernando Valley State College, now California State University, Northridge.

She had meant to make only a short visit to the Bronx, but has been there ever since.

“In California, I drove an Austin-Healey. I rented a nice, big house with a fireplace. It was wonderful. I miss being able to do those kind of things,” said the 49-year-old professor who taught courses in race relations and other subjects.

Took Charge

Her new career, which she took up quickly, is designing a “trickle-up economy” for Lyman Place, a once-thriving melting pot made desolate by blight and flight.

“When I heard no sounds of children on this block, I knew it was almost dead. It got me in the heart,” she said. “People are breaking their necks to get to America. Why aren’t we breaking our necks to hold onto it properly?”

Neighbors watched in awe as this woman with a machine-gun speaking style, braided hair and boundless energy:

-- Recruited dozens of families to move into several abandoned buildings slated for demolition. They now pay rent to the city.

-- Fought evictions, becoming an advocate in courtrooms for elderly, handicapped and poor residents.

-- Turned garbage-strewn lots into gardens and persuaded city officials to close the street for summer recreation programs.

-- Began a community center where impoverished adults and children learn the skills they need to prosper.

-- Patrolled the streets and confronted muggers, drug dealers and scavengers who were tearing down buildings for scrap.

“I tried to convert them to my cause. I literally ordered these men to come with me,” Fox said. “They thought, ‘Who is this crazy lady?’ ”

She added, “Kids copy what you do. I want them to observe me defending the neighborhood, sweeping, putting up windows.”

Today, Lyman Place bustles with 150 residents who think about its future. Neighboring blocks became piles of rubble.

The nonprofit community center is in a once-abandoned house.

The walls are adorned with newspaper clippings and children’s drawings that proclaim, “I Love You, Professor Fox.” But the center’s 17 rooms, including a makeshift law library, have little heat in winter. The phone and lights sometimes are shut off because of unpaid bills.

Still, residents consider it vital. The center is where they get help when they’re threatened with eviction, where they study everything from poetry to tenants’ rights or how to become an entrepreneur--with Fox as the teacher.

Improving the Neighborhood

One of the adults who have taken the course on becoming an entrepreneur has set up a corporation that assists men coming home from prison and finds housing for their families.

Fox is trying to find start-up financing for several others. One wants to open a Laundromat; another hopes to set up a child-care center for parents who work nights; a third has proposed a business that would teach people how to burglar-proof their homes.

The businesses would remain near Lyman Place, she said, helping further to improve the neighborhood.

The children attend after-school classes, younger ones learning to count, older ones writing stories or making necklaces for sale. Parent volunteers and four summer youth workers paid by the city help out.

Outside, people point out trees, a repaired road or a new coat of paint. And they talk about Fox.

“People know each other because of her,” said Willie Fogle, who grew up on Lyman Place.

“This is a close-knit block,” neighbor Arthur Barber agreed. “We don’t have to worry about our children.”

Donations, Weekly Allowance

He added: “I love her. I’ll go to her before I go to the borough president.”

“We’ve got a bunch of new babies,” Fox said. “It’s an automatic defense--when you have a father and mother on the block, they make sure things are safe.”

The Professor, as they all call her, runs the programs and her own life on about $2,500 in annual donations plus some income from substitute teaching and a $30 weekly allowance from her father.

Her parents, George and Ina Fox, recently retired to Long Island but held onto their house on Lyman Place.

“There’s a great deal of sentiment there,” said George Fox, an immigrant from Guyana.

In its heyday, he said, the area resounded with happy blue-collar families. “Then, all of a sudden, the deterioration started.”

“Our church had a Catholic school,” Ina Fox said. “Now there is no school there.” There was a lumberyard; now, it is gone. They’re trying to tear the Bronx away from everyone who wants to stay there.”

Hetty Fox, who left in 1962 for graduate school in San Francisco and Los Angeles after earning a psychology degree from Hunter College, said she eventually will move on. As a musician and writer, she dreams of living and working in France.

But, before leaving, she wants to rehabilitate two more buildings and ensure that the neighborhood is self-sufficient.

“I’m not an evangelist,” she said. “I’m like a nurse who walked by and saw somebody bleeding. I didn’t think it would take 17 years to heal.”