New Haven Independent

Third grade students (left to right in first row) Helpis Rustillo, Isabelle Gonzales, and Nicole Rivera, along with their teachers Maria Reyes and Stephanie Hart, and their principal Dr. Abie Benitez on deck, were part of an animated audience of more than 100 people participating in a forum held by the Progreso Latino Fund of the Greater New Haven Community Foundation (GNHCF).

The aim was to screen a new film, “The Legacy of #21,” an inspirational biography of baseball great Roberto Clemente to raise awareness about New Haven’s first-ever philanthropic resource funded by the Latino community and specifically dedicated to supporting education, the arts, and general civic involvement of Hispanic New Haveners, and, specifically, those, like Clemente, of Puerto Rican origin.

Clemente died aiding victims of earthquake in Nicaragua in 1972

“Two years ago,” said Frances Padilla, one of the fund’s steering committee, “some of us in the Puerto Rican community sat down and said that our community has grown in numbers sufficiently so that we should create a legacy that will tend to the educational and social development of our community.” Although Hispanics have been in New Haven for decades, “it was time, overdue in fact,” she added, “for us to take our place at the table.”

The Progreso Latino Fund, she said, has already exceeded its initial goal, which was $100,000. The new goal is $250,000. The fund is now accepting applications for the first round of grants, to be funded by interest on the capital. “Nonprofits, teachers, civic organizations can apply,” said Padilla. “The first rounds will be very modest, in the $250 to $1,000 range, but it will be a further step in bringing the Latino community to the foundation and the foundation to Latinos.”

Helping Padilla to celebrate were the Rev. Bonita Grubb, from Christian Community Action, whom Padilla called “my hermana, my sister, an honorary Latina,” and Angel Fernandez-Chavero, a senior philanthropic officer with the foundation, who sits on the steering committee of the Progreso Latino Fund. Chavero said he was pleased how the fund is both raising and addressing issues in the Latino community and providing role models for kids.

The latter aim was being well advanced at this particular forum. Contingents from other schools — such as this group from the Fair Haven K-8, with their assistant principal Viviana Camacho and behind her Dr. Jose Ortiz, New Haven Public Schools supervisor of bilingual education, —were all rooting both for the fund and for retiring Clemente’s number 21, which was the theme of the inspirational movie. The argument of the hagiographic film was that Clemente was to Latinos, who now represent at least 30 percent of major leaguers, what Jackie Robinson was to African Americans. In the entire history of baseball, only Robinson’s number, 42, has been retired.

But there was more, and that was in keeping with the Progreso Latino Fund’s themes. “It’s a way,” said Julio Pabon, one of the producers of the film, as he received the aldermanic and mayoral proclamations of support from Westville Alderman Sergio Rodriguez, “to celebrate not only a baseball Hall of Fame sportsman, but the humanitarianism he embodied, which Latino players in baseball have all followed. Clemente was killed in a plane crash on his way to deploy a mobile hospital and staff, which he had been the prime mover in assembling, to aid victims of a severe earthquake in Nicaragua.

So had New Haven’s kids heard of Clemente and his exploits on the field and off? The Columbus Family Academy teachers said that the Latinos of Puerto Rican origin had, in no small part because a unit on Clemente focused on a reading of the biography We’ll Never Forget You. It is a mandatory part of NHPS third grade curriculum. At the dual language Columbus school the kids also read the book in English and in Spanish both.

They learned he had a .317 lifetime batting average, was four-time National League batting champion with the Pittsburgh Pirates, was an MVP, played in 14 World Series games and got 14 hits; was the first Latino in the Hall of Fame, for whom the five-year mandatory wait was posthumously waived, and much else. Most of all the kids learned of his pride, his interest in making sure Latino players were treated with respect due them, and of a philanthropic spirit that one admirer described as perhaps his greatest gift: “His mission on earth was to teach us the path to fraternity.”

The Progreso Latino Fund chose the right movie to screen at the Roberto Clemente Leadership Academy. Though the film has been shown at many different venues, the New Haven screening was also the world premier in a school (and there are many all over the world) named for Clemente. For information on applying for a grant, call: 777-2386