Historic Ocean Grove hotel opens doors to Newark girls impacted by violence
The Central Avenue House in Ocean Grove is a rambling Victorian summer inn, with a labyrinth of narrow halls and compact rooms cooled by ocean breezes.
It rivals the Great Auditorium in age and is just short blocks from that landmark and the summer tent city of the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association.
In "God's Square Mile" - as the Methodists who founded the beachfront retreat 147 years ago called it - the Central Avenue House is part of the enclave's scenic and sedate Victorian charm. It's the kind of place where the bathrooms are still called water closets.
The front porch and upstairs balcony are decked with cushioned rockers and wicker loveseats, the parlor is furnished with antiques and the walls are adorned with many photos of the family that has owned the hotel since 1901.
The fact that those owners have all been women, partly explains why the genteel hotel was hosting a group of energetic 16 girls and young women, ranging in age from 10 to 20, who were thrilled to run through its halls and lounge on its airy porches.
"This is what my hotel was meant to do," said host Jennifer Sirois, marveling at the assembled guests. "This is why I reached out to A'Dorian. I wanted to make a connection with these girls."
A'Dorian Murray-Thomas, 21, began a program called "SHE Wins" in Newark last year, with a grant from Swarthmore College, now her alma mater. The idea was to take girls and young women impacted by homicide or other violence and give them "a safe space" to tell their stories and grow. In the two years of the program, Murray-Thomas has had 50 girls come through her "Leadership Institute," some as young as 8. She understood their needs. Her own father was murdered when she was 7.
"What we did was make life as normal as possible for her," said Dana Murray, A'Dorian's mom, who was in Ocean Grove helping. "It was a family project to keep A'Dorian moving forward."
This is the lesson, Murray-Thomas is passing on to her charges. Keep learning. Keep living. Keep giving.
My colleague at The Star-Ledger, Barry Carter, wrote a column about Murray-Thomas last summer and Sirois tracked her down.
"We started to talk and I felt like we had known each other for years," Murray-Thomas said. "The majority of our girls had never been to the beach, so I thought, 'Why not?' We were here a month later."
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The girls returned this year, spending four days in Ocean Grove last week.
"I wanted to do something for these girls," said Sirois. "I gave them the run of the hotel. The other day, I overheard them talking as they got the beach chairs out of the shed. They were so excited just to be able to pick out these old beach chairs. Something so simple meant so much to them.
"Too many of us take our privilege for granted," she said.
That privilege includes safety. For the girls of "SHE Wins," it isn't always a guarantee.
Malayjah Williams, 12, lost her father to violence "four months before I was even born."
Nevaeh Parker, 14, knows her grandfather was murdered and lives on "an unsafe block."
Tyniquah Colbert, 20, one of the "SHE Wins" interns, had a close friend and a cousin "killed over nonsense."
Another girl said she joined the group "after I was raped." She is 14.
While Murray-Thomas began the group with the idea of focusing on girls who had been directly impacted by homicide, she quickly realized her lessons "of resilience building" were important to all girls who suffered trauma or live in frightening environments.
"The three core focuses of resilience-building are giving the girls new learning opportunities, allowing them to have positive relationships with adults and teaching them problem solving," Murray-Thomas said.
In Newark, "SHE Wins" now meets at the Center of Hope for Girls on Boyd Street, one of nine such educational and cultural centers launched by the Ras Baraka administration. While "SHE Wins" is a separate 501c3 nonprofit organization, Murray-Thomas said the city offering her a "safe space where the girls can tell their stories" has been essential.
And now, they have a summer place.
On Wednesday evening, Sirois and the young women hosted a barbecue for a group of people from Asbury Park that certainly fell under the criteria of "positive relationships with adults."
The girls served and conversed with a group of adults that included actress Lorraine Stone, known for her one-woman acts on Harriet Tubman and Rosa Parks; Kay Harris, who owns the Galleria on the Asbury boardwalk and comes from a long line of black Asbury Park business owners; and Reggie Flimlin, a co-owner of Juice Basin, whose organic products are made in Asbury Park and sold at Whole Foods stores.
"These are the kind of women I wanted these girls to meet," Sirois said. She didn't say it, but she could have added "herself included." She is a retired Army intelligence officer and a respected licensed private investigator, who owns Your Peace of Mind Investigations. And she runs the hotel first bought by her great-grandmother, Cora Mae Applegate, in 1901.
Most of the guests were from a group of Asbury Park people called simply "Dialogue," formed in 2014 after a series of public meetings in Asbury Park about ways to restructure the town government.
"We went to these meetings and were engaged in all sorts of dialogue," said co-founder Conrad Neblett. "When those meetings ended, we wanted to keep going."
Another co-founder was Gil Caldwell, who marched shoulder-to-shoulder with Martin Luther King on April 23, 1965, in Boston to protest school segregation. He had pictures of that event to give to the girls after leading them in a simple Civil Right-era song in the dining room of the hotel.
"I woke up this morning with my mind stayed on freedom," the girls sang.
"Sometimes, when we activists focus on widespread injustice, we lose sight of the individuals," Caldwell said. "Ralph Ellison wrote, 'I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.' These girls would fall through the cracks if there was no one there to catch them."
Mark Di Ionno may be reached at mdiionno@starledger.com. Follow The Star-Ledger on Twitter @StarLedger and find us on Facebook.