Issues. People. Events.

   Waterbury AmeriCorps teamed up today with the Waterbury YMCA to clean up the Berkeley Warner Community Center, located at the Berkeley Heights Housing Project.

   According to John Corcoran, coordinator of the AmeriCorps program, approximately 35 members will help clean and paint the interior of the building beginning Saturday and continuing into next week. The cleanup coincides with national AmeriCorps Week, which is March 9-17. The goal is to have the Center ready for its open house on March 27. Once the Center is open, AmeriCorps members will volunteer afterschool homework help and mentoring.

   A team of Quinnipiac University diagnostic imaging professors will x-ray the remains of Fortune, an African-American man who was enslaved by a Waterbury bone surgeon in the 1700s, to help determine how he died. The x-raying will be done on Monday, March 11, from 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. in the Center for Anthropological Research, Room 108 of the Clarice L. Buckman Center on Quinnipiac’s Mount Carmel Campus. The project is being done in collaboration with the Mattatuck Museum, where Fortune has been the subject of an exhibit since 2003.

Daisy Cocco De Filippis  is the president of Naugatuck Valley Community College in Waterbury, and today became the ceremonial Dominican Mayor for the Day during a ceremony in City Hall. Photographs by John Murray

The new career academy is nestled on a hill overlooking the city of Waterbury.

                            Column by Jay Gonzalez

   The city of Waterbury is a diverse melting pot of many different cultures and nationalities. From Portuguese to Lebanese, Latino to Irish, Italian to Albanian and so on, this great city has a plethora of establishments celebrating the unique aspects and traditions of each great culture. The rich heritages of The Brass City can be seen from street corners to festivals. Whether it's the Ponte Feast, Portuguese Club, Mayor for the Day, or Jonathan Reed School that recently opened up, our city honors the sacrifices, hard work, and dedication that these cultures and people have made for their hometown. As the fifth largest city in Connecticut, there are many opportunites we have to pay tribute to a cause or ones beliefs. Just last year in Waterbury, there was tremendous support for the naming of a new school opening up to be dedicated to a black man, first time ever. Really? It was the first public school in the City of Waterbury, a city so diverse, to be named or in honor of a minority. Hundreds turned out, and rightfully so, for Jonathan E. Reed School dedication ceremony as this was a long overdue accomplishment for the city.