Allan Appel Photo
Katro Storm wanted to create a mural that celebrated achievement in the tough but resilient Newhalville neighborhood where he grew up. To do so he had to cover over a wall that memorialized those killed in street violence, including one young man he himself knew well.
Cars slowed down as he worked. Drivers cautioned him not to do it. There were veiled threats.
Then the mother of one of the murdered kids picked up a brush and helped him paint the ideal word.
Joyce Gamble and Storm painted “RESPECT” over a mural that recalled her son Terence, killed in 1990. And a besieged corner in New Haven began to be transformed, by art.
The transformation unfolded over the past week at Winchester Avenue and Starr Street. There Neighborhood Housing Services of New Haven had engaged Storm and community kids to beautify the wall on a dilapidated building on the northwest corner. (Click here for a story on the kids’ first encounter with the project.)
While NHS has rehabbed and built houses, this was its first wall project. “We can’t fulfill our mission only by building,” said NHS’s Sarah Custer. “To create a strong neighborhood you need to engage the residents.”
So she organized community meetings, involved a local youth group, and found Storm, who had achieved local renown by doing the mural on the Stetson Library on Dixwell.
Public art seemed a way. But there was a problem.
“I really wanted to do something positive, inspirational, not a rest-in-peace mural,” said Storm, who grew up in Newhallville.
Problem was that the wall selected already had a mural celebrating the life but also – by definition – the death of Terence Lamont Gamble and Kevin Dean. Gamble was killed in street violence in May of 1990.
When the mural went up at the end of that year, Joyce Gamble said, she was deeply moved by the love it showed the community felt for her son. His street name TAZ stood in three-foot high letters. In 1997 another local young man, Kevin Dean, was also killed in street violence. “DINO” was added. Storm had known him and his family.
Over the nearly 20 years, the wall had fallen into deep disrepair. Still, wouldn’t covering it, even with the word RESPECT, which Storm had selected, demonstrate its opposite — that is, disrespect?
So people asked Storm. He understood.
“It wasn’t maintained. Still people wanted to hold onto that mural. That’s all they had,” he said. “People in this neighborhood are very proud.”
As the wall received its primer coat last Thursday, kids and some longtime neighbors came out. Some people were querulous, others critical.
“They were upset,” Storm recalled as he painted away Friday afternoon. “‘You were dead wrong. That ain’t right you want to paint over the mural,’” he recalled passersby saying.
Others slowed down in their cars and offered drive-by encouragement.
Still, Storm confessed that he was concerned.
Then Joyce Gamble, who has lived in the neighborhood for more than 30 years, came out.
A religious woman, she looked at the wall and paraphrased from the Hebrew Bible’s Book of Nehemia: When Nehemia was on the wall, he wouldn’t come off until it was built up.
Although there were some misgivings, Gamble said, “As long as he was painting something positive,” it was OK.
And she liked the message. Storm liked the word RESPECT, and, it turned out Gamble did too. She had already figured out what the letters meant to her: “Righteous, Exaltation, Supernatural, Persevering, Excellence, Courage, and Truth.”
Then she took up a brush and began to paint.
“That was the turning point,” said Storm.
“No, we all were the turning point,” Gamble said. As she saw it, the new wall had a message: “It’s time to build the community back up.”
A local man came by with a weed whacker and cleared the patch of tall grass between the sidewalk adjacent to the mural and the curb. Longtime neighbor Eva Smith (right in photo, with Gamble) came by, painted, and offered to organize getting plants set in the grass.
“Hostas,” she suggested.
Another man brought a garbage bag and cleaned up the brush. A third asked if anything was needed for the painting. Noticing a lack of buckets, he brought one over.
Now Storm’s friend John Pickett is gathering photographs of local people whose images Storm in the next phase will paint inside the letters. And, yes, these will include the portraits of Dino and Taz.
There will also be the façade of Eddie’s barbershop, a neighborhood anchor for generations, and the Macedonia Church in Christ on Newhall Avenue.
“And the prayer walks,” added Eva Smith.
“And the lady on Ivy Street who always does a cookout for the kids when school’s out,” said Pickett.
Storm likes the location. School buses pass by, and the kids see the change. Cars continue to slow down and to notice. One woman offered to provide plants. This man wanted to engage Storm in a mural for the Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Hamden when RESPECT is finished.
“Those who made comments are working on the wall now,” Storm said.
Everyone who touches the mural, by painting even one stroke, becomes part of the mural, said John Pickett.
“The only time people in this community are in the news is when something bad happens,” said Katro Storm.
No longer.
There will be a celebration when the wall is completed in July. Then kids from Your Place Youth Center will paint the wall at right angles to the RESPECT mural. NHS owns and will maintain the empty lot adjacent. Across Starr Street, the group is building a new house.