HERE & THERE

20 Years Later at The Hartford News

The Hartford News is celebrating 20 years of publishing community news, and many of us believe that the community is better because of the efforts of a few to promote the activities and actions of the community.

In 1977 the Hartford was in the midst of major changes, with the organization HART being involved in forcing the issues. One of the issues was the lack of positive news from the neighborhoods. The violence, the crime and all of the negative news took the headlines, and the uninformed reader might have thought that there was nothing positive within the City.

The Southside News was born to promote the activities of the Parkville, Frog Hollow, South- end neighborhoods under the tutelage of Robert Pawlowski.

Many were the individuals who were asked to contribute news and columns for the newspaper. I was asked if I would write about the Portuguese community in Parkville, at the time the primary force in the residential and commercial community in that section of the city. Many of the residents moved to the suburban towns but the commercial strip still has very much of the Portuguese flavor.

The column originally was entitled Portuguese Community News, and it was later retitled to Here and There/Aqui and Acola to include not only news and activities of the Hartford Community, but also news that had a national impact.

The objective of the column was initially to promote the positive attitude and trends of Parkville Portuguese residents. Nowadays it is my intent to bring the positive news from the national and local level to raise the positive profile of the community.

There was always a conscious effort to write the column in English so that we may have the ability to share with our English speaking friends the activities and successes of the Portuguese community. It served as a very small window that let those with an interest to learn a little bit more about the struggles, the successes, the accomplishments of a growing but ignored and somewhat neglected community.

The Portuguese being a community that keeps to herself is not a group that is known for all that has accomplished. For example in the Greater Hartford area there many business, professional and institutions that have influenced the life of the region. But people are not aware of them. Here and There Aqui/Acola, provides that glimpse, that window to learn about the community.