Leslie Radcliffe Riddle Solved

Here’s a clue: Her feet know how to pray.

Here’s another possible clue: She once pointed a .357 magnum at a cop — who had a gun pointed back at her — and survived.

Another clue: She grew up with seven siblings, learning early about membership in the human family.

And one more: She heard a woman in another prison cell getting raped, and resolved to get out, and stay out.

Those clues might all turn out to help explain the Leslie Radcliffe Riddle.

Here’s the riddle: Why does one person spend long hours every week helping to make the Hill and New Haven a cleaner, smarter, safer, more caring community?

For free?

You’d be hard pressed to find a New Havener more involved in ​“civic engagement,” or as Radcliffe puts it, her ​“ministry.”

You rarely see her name in a headline about something great happening in the Hill or an important decision being made about New Haven’s changing landscape. You often do see her name in the article below the headline, and sometimes her picture.

More often than not, she’s the reason or a main reason something good is happening: Why neighbors spend a Saturday cleaning trash in the Hill, for instance. Or creating a community garden on Truman Street and helping neighbors start an ​“urban farm” on Ward Street. Or knocking on doors with cops to connect neighbors to the police. Or getting life-saving masks delivered in a pandemic, and worn correctly. Or bringing political and policing and health care leaders together to figure out how to tackle quality-of-life drug-related crimes while also considering the needs of the addicted.

Since buying a home on Truman Street in 2009, Radcliffe has emerged as a trusted go-to person to help tackle every important issue in the neighborhood. From there she was recruited for a spot on city nonprofit boards as well as the City Plan Commission — which she now chairs, as the city navigates the largest building boom in over a half century.

Radcliffe, who is 67, retired from an administrative job at Yale this June after 27 years. She could have settled into well-earned rest. Instead, she’s busier than ever, raising questions, organizing neighbors, attending her community management team meetings, making a difference, always with a no-nonsense, caring mien devoid of ideological cant or self-aggrandizing blather. She shows up, sticks around, does the work, no show, no fuss.

“I don’t have time for nonsense,” she said.

Why does she do it? Why does someone work so hard at making a difference in New Haven?

She agreed to help us solve that riddle during an appearance on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline New Haven” program. (You can watch it above.) She reached back to her childhood, then early-adult misadventures, and subsequent discoveries to offer clues.

“Wandering Years”

Radcliffe grew up ​“Out The Way” — in the Brookside public-housing projects in the shadow of West Rock, long before they were rebuilt. Her father, Lloyd Leslie Radcliffe, was one of the famed ​“Tuskegee Airmen” who served in World War II; he worked as an engineer for MB Electronics in New Haven. She remembers a happy childhood exploring nature and feeling part of a community. ​“We used to run and rule the woods,” she said. They skated and hopped over the brook.

One of eight children, Radcliffe learned early what it meant to care and look out for one another; her mom showed her how to run a household. Radcliffe gave birth to her son Marcus at 16 years old. For the first four years, her mom helped her raise him. Then the factory where her dad worked moved out of state, as did her parents. Radcliffe moved to Kensington Street, worked for a while in mediation and peer training, then entered two decades of what she called ​“wandering years.” She didn’t have a focus for a career. She worked some office jobs. She also hooked up with one, and then a second, boyfriend who sold drugs. She joined in the enterprise.

At one point they sold cocaine out of a Lake Place apartment. One day the cops broke down the door to raid the place.

She didn’t know at first that it was the cops. So she grabbed protection.

She recently wrote about that experience in a comment to a New Haven Independent article, to offer a different view of the cop who could have killed her that night — and about the broader tendency of some people to bash the police. The cop was Billy White, who is now retired after a different raid tarnished his reputation.

Here is what Radcliffe wrote:

40 years ago I sold coke out of the home I shared with my young son and partner, a criminal act. One night after we ​‘closed up shop’ the door to our home was kicked in. Not knowing who was trying to come thru or their intentions, my instinct was to protect my son. I removed the fully loaded 357 magnum from its hiding place, positioned myself between the intruders and my son and stood locked and loaded for whomever came thru first. Then a voice of calm in the midst of the chaos called me by my name and said ​‘this is Billy White with NHPD … put the gun down … you don’t want to do this’.
THAT Billy White did NOT shoot me. He called my name and brought me into focus. I surrendered the firearm that I had pointed at POLICE OFFICERS! without incidence. He let me sit with my son until someone I was allowed to call came to take custody of him. I was arrested and incarcerated at Niantic Women’s Correctional facility for a crime I committed. I turned my life around.
I am fortunate and pleased to know and work with many good officers in my community. I’ve built positive relationships over the years because of my experience. I can be objective because of my experience. I’m Black and a former member of the CRB. You CANNOT be a good candidate if you focus on the negative.

Radcliffe spent two weeks at Niantic. She remembered when another inmate was being raped.

“I heard it happening,” she recalled.

And she thought: ​“When is my time coming? What am I going to do?”

She was released, spared a prison sentence. She determined not to return behind bars.

“I made drastic and intentional changes in my life,” she recalled. ​“I kicked the boyfriend out. I got a job. I made sure my son did his homework. … I’m looking at him and the example I’m setting …”

Radcliffe didn’t return to prison. She landed an administrative assistant job at Yale’s medical school, then transferred to the engineering department. She established roots. Her son thrived.

She attended Pitts Chapel Unified Free Will Baptist Church in Newhallville. It was the 1990s, another period when New Haven was looking at how to promote peace amid a stretch of street violence.

Radcliffe’s pastor told her about prayer walks organized by Minister Donald Morris’ Christian Community Commission to seek to promote peace in the neighborhood.

“Go walk with them,” the pastor said. So she did. The group walked together and prayed. It felt right. It kept her grounded. It kept her connected. It kept her ​“relevant.” Like mission-driven walkers before her, from Frederick Douglass to Abraham Joshua Heschel, Radcliffe discovered she was praying with her legs.

A ​“ministry” was born.

The Truman Show

The ministry took a new block-building and citywide civic turn when Radcliffe bought a home on Truman Street in 2009.

It started with how she came to buy the house: It was part of a Yale School of Architecture program in which students design and help construct one home a year in a low-income neighborhood. Radcliffe also went through the Neighborhood Housing Services first-time homebuyers program, taking workshops on developing credit and maintaining a house long-term.

The work inspired her. She got involved with NHS, helping other first-time buyers — and eventually ascending to the presidency of its Board of Directors.

When she moved into Truman Street, an area that has had its challenges with crime, she planted flowers in her yard. Soon neighbors stopped to check out the flowers — and the children, at least, started talking to her. (Some thought her property had become a community center.) She eventually got to know the adults, too.

She helped organize a new community garden on the block. She signed up to help start an urban farm on Ward Street aimed at helping neighbors combat heart disease. (Radcliffe, whose family has a history of heart disease, started growing her own beans, peppers, kale, and tomatoes in 2013 after suffering three mild heart attacks over the course of 13 months.) Not surprisingly she ended up on the citywide advisory board of New Haven Farms.

On evenings when others folks are glued to their TVs, Radcliffe threw herself into neighborhood groups like the community management team, developing a working relationship with the area’s police as well.

She enrolled in the police department’s Citizens Academy. She got to know cops, and how they did their job. One simulation involving an active shooter chastened her. ​“I think I shot up everybody in the movie theater!” she recalled. That gave her a renewed appreciation for the pressures officers deal with.

Radcliffe also enrolled in Democracy School, city government’s course for citizens to learn how different departments operate. She paid attention — and collected business cards and phone numbers. She called those numbers when a sidewalk needed fixing and a downed tree needed clearing. ​“Whatever you’re given,” she reflected, ​“you’re given for a reason. You should use it.”

She kept calling until the work was done.

Politics Allergy

Meanwhile, she testified on issues affecting the neighborhood downtown, including at these zoning hearings about a problem landlord.

She caught the eye of Karyn Gilvarg, the longtime (now retired) head of government’s City Plan Department. She asked Radcliffe to join the City Plan Commission.

Radcliffe was skeptical.

“I don’t do politics. I’m not going to owe anybody anything,” she recalled thinking.

So she asked Gilvarg why Gilvarg wanted her to serve on the commission. Gilvarg told her plans were in the work to develop the Hill; the commission needed a voice from the Hill to vet them.

So Radcliffe accepted. That has meant sitting sometimes for hours, long into the night, to weigh conflicting demands from neighbors and business people and planners, about where convenience stores should be located, how tall buildings should be, where roads should run, how much parking different parts of town need, what our new urban landscape should look like.

At meetings Radcliffe can be counted on to ask tough questions and to keep an open mind. So much so that she has now been selected as the chair, serving in an influential post during the most hectic pace of economic development in New Haven in at least 40 – 50 years.

Radcliffe doesn’t get paid for any of this work. In dollars.

But, she said, ​“I do get paid — in the quality of life. Not just my quality of life. I don’t live in a bubble.

“New Haven is my big family. If my neighborhood is not doing well, then I’m not doing well.”

Step By Step

Radcliffe’s neighborhood and city ​“family” are doing better than they otherwise would thanks to her civic work.

That doesn’t mean that everybody is doing better on everyday.

That point hit home, hard, the Monday afternoon before last, when Radcliffe heard gunfire.

She rushed outside and across the street. She saw the body of a 22-year-old neighbor, Cierra Jones, on a strip of pavement. Jones had been shot in the head. She later died form her injuries.

Radcliffe knows Jones’ family. Jones’ younger brother, especially. He works with her in the Truman Street community garden.

More than a week later, Radcliffe remained rattled. She fought back tears recounting that day.

“It made me feel what I’m doing is in vain,” she allowed.

She also acknowledged: ​“I can’t save the entire world.”

But she can soldier on, a block at a time, to leave the world a better place than she found it.

She was doing that on Friday. She helped bring together neighbors for a gathering at the Truman community garden to process their grief and concerns over last week’s homicide.

A thought occurred after Leslie Radcliffe finishing talking about her life: That the answer to the Leslie Radcliffe Riddle might not consist of a collection of clues, no matter how much they explain parts of what motivate her. The answer may lie in reframing the question. Maybe the true riddle is: What makes a community like New Haven thrive? What makes it a place of neighbors rather than strangers?

The answer to that riddle is more straightforward: People like Leslie Radcliffe.