North Richmond
For Men and Women of Purpose, the model aspires to be: Work now, and the support will come.
More than 1,000 parents and children came to the Richmond PAL Center Sunday for a the 64th Annual Charles Reid Christmas Party, a community tradition begun in 1947 and carried on today by the Charles Reid Foundation and a handful of sponsors.
For more than a decade, Santa Claus and his natural white beard regaled the children at Verde Elementary in North Richmond every December.
The project, started by a local woman who came back after graduating from Howard University, serves food and gifts to hundreds in central and North Richmond on Christmas day.
Dozens of volunteers – many descendents of Charlie Reid, a North Richmond icon – plan to serve more than 1,000 children and parents with food and gifts at Sunday’s Charles Reid Christmas Party, an annual event supported by The Charles Reid Foundation. The event is scheduled for noon-4 p.m. Sunday in the Richmond PAL Community Center at 2200 Macdonald Ave.
Marquis Hamilton was a 20-year-old father of two. On Nov. 25, he became the fifth young adult homicide victim in the tiny neighborhood of North Richmond this year. Before that, a RichmondConfidential.org reporter got to know him a bit, and wants you to know him too.
Mourners and clergy remembered Hamilton, 20, as a fun-loving prankster who snatched the bed covers off his seven brothers and five sisters and borrowed friends’ bicycles without their knowledge – only to return them with a laugh.
Over the last century, as industry grew and the population exploded in Richmond, conflicts between construction and restoration have been inevitable. Development and the natural landscape all over Richmond have been at odds.
Friday’s ceremony to remember the victims of homicide in Richmond has become an annual exercise, as McLaughlin uses her monthly meet-the-mayor meetings every December as a solemn occasion to reflect on the lives lost to violence in the city.