Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, whose compelling life story was mentioned when President Obama nominated to the nation's highest court, visited the Bronx and was feted around her native borough yesterday. Her day started at her former elementary school, Blessed Sacrament, where she hugged students and gave a leadership award to an 13-year-old student, who said, "When I get my own office, I'm going to hang it there."
In the afternoon, the Bronxdale Houses housing project where she grew up was renamed in her honor to the Justice Sonia Sotomayor Houses and Community Center, "I'm so choked up. This is an unbelievable thing. ... I imagine my dad watching me from the window." She reminisced about the neighborhood, "I do remember each time I drive by that White Castle, the hours and hours of laughter that my cousins and I had as we roamed the grounds of this housing project, and played in the playgrounds, and screamed and fought and laughed and lived," and, "Each time I drive south on Bruckner Boulevard, I see my projects."
However, not everyone was happy with the renaming. One resident told the Wall Street Journal that it was diverting attention from the problems at the complex, "We don't have working water—I have to go my neighbor's to take a bath," while another pointed out to the Post, "All this grass cutting and fence painting we've seen recently isn't a regular thing."
At the end of the day, she attended the graduation ceremonies for Hostos Community College, where her mother earned her nursing degree in 1973 and which Sotomayor credits with her family's success. (Her father died when she was nine, leaving her mother to support her and her brother.)The school's president Matos Rodriguez said she would be an inspiration to graduates. "They get their chance to realize their potential and to transform their lives and the lives of their children."
