Angels Gather To Give Kids Safe Place To Play

A party brought Newhallville together at a playground slated to be revamped to honor a Yale clinical scientist who loved to give back and made significant strides to improve substance abuse treatment. 

The Kathy Carroll Playground will be located at 600 Winchester Ave., a soon-to-be reopened and revived haven for transitional housing, training, and support program for homeless New Haveners inside the former Ivy Street School.

Afternoon showers held out for the kick-off celebration at 660 Winchester Thursday for the playground’s reconstruction and expansion.

The playground will be constructed and expanded over the next year by the Where Angels Play Foundation, a New Jersey-based group that specializes in building memorial playgrounds. The organization was founded by retired New Jersey Fire Capt. Bill Lavin. Inspired into action by tragedies like 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the Sandy Hook School shooting, Lavin gathers retired and active firefighters and other law enforcement members known as the ​“Angels Army” to build memorial parks throughout the country and beyond.

Thursday’s celebration honored the legacy of Carroll, who was a clinical scientist in the Yale Department of Psychiatry and died in December 2020 at 62 years old. 

Before her passing, Carroll was the Albert E. Kent Professor of Psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine and the director of the Psychosocial Research in the Division on Addictions.

In addition to her scientific work with improving treatment for substance abuse, Carroll was a committed volunteer with Christian Community Action (CCA) — which operates the transitional facility at 660 Winchester — for more than 25 years. 

CCA Executive Director Rev. Bonita Grubbs thanked the playground’s organizing team, Charla Nich, Jennifer Bardsley, and Kate Chivian, for investing in New Haven’s community. 

Alongside Lindy Lee Gold, an advocate of the former Stepping Stone Program that was housed out of 660 Winchester, Grubbs announced that the transitional haven will reopen this summer as a program called New H.O.P.E. The acronym stands for housing, opportunities, purpose, and expectations.

Gold helped to secure the funding for the renovations and furnishing of the building’s apartments that will be provided to the homeless. 

(Click here to read a previous story about the 660 Winchester revamp.)

“This will be again a landmark. A place of peace. A place of celebration. A place of hope,” she said.

Pastor Roger Wilkins of Maranatha Life Changing Ministries blessed the spot of the playground to-be. Wilkins said he agreed not only to pray Thursday for his community but also to grieve the loss of his cousin, who was murdered in last week’s Buffalo supermarket shooting. 

“Sometimes it doesn’t touch us until it touches us. But it’s important for us to remember that we’re all necessary in that,” he said. ​“Let this situation turn our community closer together.” 

Several of Carroll’s family members joined the celebration, including her daughter Kate Chivian and stepdaughters Natalie and Carla White. 

The playground will be designed by the Carroll family to capture Kathy’s personality, Lavin said.

Pre-school graduates of Harris and Tucker School, who crossed the stage earlier in the day, joined the celebration. 

William Simmons, the uncle of Skylar, 4, and Javon, 15, attended the kickoff to celebrate Skylar’s graduation outdoors. Simmons takes care of his niece and nephew five days a week and often enjoys showing them new places around town. 

“I live off Exit 8 but like for them to see all neighborhoods,” Simmons said. 

While the space rumbled with Bomba beats from Proyecto Cimarrón Skylar, Javon and a dozen other children blew bubbles, drew pictures with chalk, played with frisbees and hula hoops, and explored an antique fire engine throughout the event. 

Included in the process of coming up with a way to memorialize Carroll were two of her mentees, Brian Kiluk and Ayana Jordan.

Kiluk followed in Carroll’s footsteps with her support and is now an associate professor of psychiatry at Yale and the director of its Psychotherapy Development Center. 

“She raised me in my science and my career,” he said. ​“Her passion to make the community brighter motivated me.”

He described Carroll as a model for great and inclusive leadership.

Jordan, who is an associate professor and addiction psychiatrist at NYU Langone Health, credited her confidence in herself and her work to Carroll’s mentorship. 

“As a Black woman, she supervised the fullness of who I am,” Jordan said. 

She recalled Carroll often telling her, ​“You can do this” and ​“Ayana keep going” during her years rising through the ranks at the Yale School of Medicine. Jordan has been an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry, associate residency program director, and director of the Social Justice and Health Equity Curriculum and the Yale Global Mental Health Residency Program. 

Community members enjoyed free subs from Jersey Mike’s and cupcakes from Stop and Shop. 

The group sang two versions of ​“Happy Birthday” to celebrate Carroll’s 64th birthday, which was Thursday. 

Newhallville Alder Devin Avshalom-Smith presented the Carroll family with a mayoral proclamation. He thanked the team for investing in Newhallville’s community playground. The only other neighborhood playground is on the property of Lincoln-Bassett Community School, Avshalom-Smith noted.

“I want this to be an intentional neighborhood that has all the amenities every other neighborhood already has,” he said.

The organizing team and partners have raised $280,000 so far for the project; $140,000 is being donated by the Where Angels Play foundation, which is doing the reconstruction pro-bono. The community has a goal of raising the other $140,000 and has raised 60 percent of it so far. Click here to donate. 

New Haven native and mother of four Rachel Collins, 37, brought three of her kids and her nephew to the Thursday celebration after they got off the school bus. 

Collins has lived on Winchester Avenue for 14 years. She often walks to the Bassett Street playground. Playgrounds are often the only place Collins said she feels safe bringing her kids to keep from violence. When not at the park, they are at home, she said. 

“I’m glad this is happening so the kids have more to do,” she said. 

Collins suggested that a splash pad be added to the park so she can walk her kids down the street instead of to the Bassett playground to play in the summer. 

She said she would also love to have tennis courts in the neighborhood.

The Where Angels Play foundation has created 58 playgrounds, 26 of which are memorial playgrounds throughout New England honoring the victims of Sandy Hook. 

Lavin vowed to cut the ribbon for the new playground one year from now on Carroll’s 65th birthday. 

Jersey Mike’s team member Chad Faulkner, Tony Sarcone, and Andrea Faulkner are raising money on behalf of the project to provide resources to Where Angels Play.

New Haven Fire Capt. Christopher Brigham promised to gather local troops to aid Lavin in volunteering to build the playground. 

“Kids are the life of the community and we want to support the growth,” he said.

Brigham brought out the NHFD’s parade engine Thursday for youth to sit in, ring its bell, and learn about. He answered questions from kids about what year the engine was from, why it is white, and where a water hose would be stored to connect to a hydrant.