Poet and counselor Genetha Armstrong
is honored with Douglass award
By TOM RUE

WOODBOURNE - Poet, minister and Liberty tea room owner Genetha Marion Armstrong of Monticello was the honored recipient of this year's Frederick Douglass Award, presented on February 9 breakfast in Woodbourne sponsored by the Sullivan County Association (ASAALH) for the Study of Afro-American Life and History.

The Woodbourne Fire Hall was packed by hundreds of area residents, including county manager Jonathan Drapkin, several legislators, county attorney Ira Cohen, and a host of other public officials and social activists.

Calling Armstrong her spiritual mentor, counselor and friend, former Monticello judge Josephine Victoria Finn presented the award. The event was chaired by ASAALH president, retired clinical psychologist Lewis Howard of South Fallsburg.

Born in Harlem in 1929, Armstrong studied psychology and sociology at City and Marist colleges. She married the late Alfonso Armstrong in 1951. Her son is a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army. One daughter is a nurse and the other a homemaker.

After moving to Sullivan County in 1972, Armstrong worked in the activities office at Sullivan County Community College, founded the first Black Student Union, and took numerous indigent students into her home. For two semesters, she reportedly housed an entire baseball team.

Founder of "God Unlimited of the Mountains" which operates out of her Monticello home, some of Armstrong's students have gone on to become professionals, including a lawyer, chiropractor, speech therapist, physical therapist, and a minister. She has taught classes throughout the U.S. and Caribbean and in area prisons.

A foster parent for many years, to at least 35 children, Armstrong also managed the parole office at Otisville Correctional Facility.

In 1992, she opened Genetha's Tea Oasis, a vegetarian and light cooking restaurant in Liberty. Armstrong also founded the "Africa in the Park Festival" held each summer there. An accomplished poet, her work has been read on public radio.

"There comes a time in everyone's life that you meet someone and if you open your heart to them your life will be changed forever," said Finn, calling Armstrong such a figure in her life.

Armstrong accepted the award with thanks, exhorting the audience to "create the world moment by moment, thought by thought. To create is to make all things new. It is the world of the future," she urged.

Howard presented a $125 check to Jesse York, president of the Million Man March Community Action Organization of Sullivan County, to aid that groups activities.

ASAALH achievement certificates were also presented to:

Monticello native Brenda McCoy, who now teaches fifth-grade at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Magnet School in Syracuse;

Liberty resident Carl Pabon, now a graduate student working in an M.S. program in special education at SUNY-New Paltz; and

Fallsburg High School graduate Donald Buckner, Jr., patrol deputy with the Sullivan County Sheriff's Department. Buckner thanked the officers and members of Bethany Lodge #101 of Prince Hall Masons, and a group of culinary students from Delaware Valley Job Corps Center, for preparing and serving the breakfast.

Filling out the program with music and drama Melanie Taylor, who offered a musical rendition of "Precious Lord," and Oliver Kane who presented a dramatic reading of a work by former slave Frederick Douglass, in whose memory the ASAALH breakfast is held each year as part of Black History Month observations.

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