Over the last few years, Sandy Sobanski has led a group of Downtown Boathouse volunteers over to Hoboken's Frank Sinatra Park to bring free kayaking across the river. Over time, the Hoboken kayaking program has become a summer fixture. This year, the program will become even more permanent as it moves to the Maxwellhouse Boathouse and becomes it's own independent program.
If you've ever worked with any kind of local government, you know that getting new programs run on public property isn't easy. Sandy's been at this for a few years now and 2008 was all set to be a big year for her and the new program.
That was, until a Hoboken fire destroyed her and her husband's apartment on January 7th.
Since then, they've been staying in temporary housing--a chain hotel... and hopefully they'll be able to move into something more permanent soon.
Her insurance isn't going to cover all of her costs, and it's going to be some time before she's able to get her affairs in order to be able to get back work.
Sandy works tirelessly, without asking for anything in return, to better the Hudson River waterfront and make sure its resources are made available to the public.
To have this happen to her of all people isn't fair... not that anyone deserves to lose everything like this... but to have someone who has given so much back to her local community have her own local environment go up in flames... it's really quite tragic.
That's why I'm helping the Downtown Boathouse raise money to help her get back on her feet. With nearly 2400 mostly local subscribers, I'm hoping there are enough people who have either participated in some of the Hudson River kayaking, or who just care about the waterfront, that are willing to help out someone who has done a lot of great work for it.
I'll be matching donations from my readers up to $500 to help Sandy out.
Here's how you can help... even a five spot will go a long way... there's power in numbers.
You can make out a check to:
The Downtown Boathouse Inc.
West Village Station Box 20214
New York, NY 10014-9998
Memo: Sandy Fire Relief (from Charlie's blog)
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