Profile
May/June 2005
A long time advocate for community
change receives
her own invitation to tranformation
BY NICOLE SEIFERTH
Marion Peng is not a big talker. She says she’s always been a shy person, never the type to initiate conversations with strangers, the kind of person who gets nervous about making a three minute speech in front of her neighbors.
But it only takes a few minutes of listening to her stories about teaching and writing, about her work with her church and her community, to know that while she might not be much of a talker, Marion Peng is a world-class doer. And penchant for action may well be one reason she was recently named one of Trinity Wall Street’s 2005 Trinity Transformational Fellows.
Peng with fellow 2005 Trinity Fellow, the Rev.
Richard L. Witt, Jr.,
as well as Matthew Heyd, chair of the Diocesan
Social
Concerns
Commission and the Rev. Jamie Calloway.
( Photo
by Matthew Davies/Episcopal News Service)
Peng was a teacher in the New York Public School System from 1948 to 1986. She taught kindergarten, first and second grades in several different schools, most of which were located in the East Harlem community that has been her home for many years.
“I always knew from the time I was about six years old that I was going to be a teacher.” And teaching, Peng says, “was a most rewarding experience because I was learning just as much or more than I was teaching.” Her young students “taught me so many things. Their little minds were working from the time they woke up to the time they went to sleep.”
She feels the environment in New York Public Schools has changed a great deal in recent years. When she was a teacher, she and her fellow educators“felt like we were doing a good job and we could see the results and it made us very happy.”
Compassionate action for the community is something Peng’s mother taught her by example. She recalls her mother volunteering to be an air raid warden during World War II, walking up and down the streets of Brooklyn at night. “My mother was out there in front all the time. She was concerned and she got herself involved in things.”
It’s a lesson her daughter took to heart. Peng has been an active community advocate since the 1970s. Currently she works with Upper Manhattan Together, formerly known as the East Harlem Partnership for Change. As she lists the neighborhood problems the group has taken on – from poor mail service to substandard grocery stores – her mild voice takes on a hard, no-nonsense edge that has clearly been honed in years of working with local officials and business leaders.
“We have looked at the housing situation; we are strongly committed to seeing that people don’t live in a house that has a bathroom that has mold and leaks and even vermin,” she says.
“We’ve gone into the supermarkets and told them exactly what we want to see improved. We let them know – you continue this way, we’ll let our people know they are not to come in to this store anymore.”
Peng’s mother also convinced her to move to the East Harlem neighborhood where she taught and to begin attending St. Edward the Martyr Episcopal Church. Peng did both reluctantly at first, particularly church.
“At first I didn’t want to be involved, so I’d go the 9:00 mass. But that didn’t last long. They got me to come to go the High Mass, then they got me into the Sunday School and we’ve worked well together for lo these many years.” Peng has been a member of St. Edward’s since 1970, and it should come as no surprise that some of her fondest memories are of working with the children of the parish. She taught church school for many years, and eventually became Sunday School superintendent. She also helped the children take over layreading duties from the older members of the parish once a month.
“I always liked to see the children get up and read. I insisted on [the children] practicing before they got up there and presenting themselves, and they did such good work,” she says.
