Our Hometown
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A Fresh Air summer for a Bronx girl Margaret Costello and her family have formed a great relationship with their Fresh Air child, Diamond. This is the sixth summer that 12-year-old Diamond Moyler has come up from the Bronx to stay with Margaret and her two children, John and Mary Rose. Pictured are John, Diamond, Mary Rose and Margaret. Costello, a teacher in the Marion School District, says Diamond's visits are the highlight of the summer for John, 15, and Mary Rose, 13. John attends DeSales High School and Mary Rose is a student at St. Michael School. While staying with the Costellos, Diamond is able to go swimming, fishing, and camping in the back yard, on Charlotte Street in Newark, with her host siblings. She was here a month, leaving on a bus on August 2. She loves to swim, and does so every day if possible! Diamond attended a theater camp in Lyons, 'Curtain Call,' run by Jean Stoep and Mark Wlodarczyk. At her home school, Diamond stays active with music and theater when she can. Other activities during this visit were attending ALASA Academy, going to Sea Breeze and Darien Lake, and visiting the Seneca Park Zoo. Diamond takes great pleasure in the daily routine of life in the country. Margaret Costello mentioned how just climbing the hills in the neighborhood, and running barefoot through the grass of the yard, have been powerful experiences for this inner city girl. One of the biggest obstacles in the early visits was just going to sleep, as she was so used to being surrounded by street lights and so unused to the 'animal sounds of a country night.' Diamond has one brother and one sister back home, and one brother and one sister in Newark, with her Fresh Air family. Plans are to invite her back in 2008. (The Fresh Air Fund is an independent, not-for-profit agency that provides free summer vacations to New York City children from low-income communities. Jenny Morgenthau is the Executive Director. More than 1.7 million children have been helped since 1877 and nearly 10,000 New York City children now enjoy free Fresh Air Fund programs annually. In 2006, 5000 children visited volunteer host families in suburbs and small town communities across 13 states from Virginia to Maine and Canada.) Copyright
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