‘Just One Little Chomp’
Meet Ann Long, Blockworker of the Month
By Cara DeGette
Ann Long took over as Blockworker Coordinator in 1994. It started – as is the case for how many things happened in Park Hill for so many years – at the request of Marge Gilbert.
“Oh sure, I said I’d do it,” Long says.
It was hard to say no to Gilbert, the Park Hill icon whose dedication to the neighborhood spanned decades. Gilbert fought for equality and school desegregation, and against the noisy old Stapleton Airport. Gilbert was the original Blockworker Coordinator and held the record – 40 years – for being the longest volunteer to deliver the newspaper to her block. She passed away last year at 96.
Long lives just a few blocks from the house Gilbert occupied for 66 years at 29th and Locust. When Long inherited the job coordinating the general distribution of the Greater Park Hill News, the system was a long way from being computerized. It was a daunting task, making sure 14,000 newspapers are delivered to homes and businesses every month.
“This was during the paper and pencil days,” Long says. The names and addresses and phone numbers of blockworkers – volunteers who distribute the Greater Park Hill News all over Park Hill – were kept in a card catalog, on 3X5 index cards. There were between 300 and 500 names on file at any given time.
“If you told me where you lived, I could tell you who your blockworker was,” Long says.
Back in the day, delivering the newspaper was more of a social outing, especially for seniors, Long says. They would take two or three days to do it, stopping for long chats with the neighbors along the way. There would be block wine parties, during which neighbors would move from house to house to socialize, have a glass of wine and some hors d’oeuvres, and move on to the next house.
Park Hill’s blockworker program was also designed to serve as a community network system, making sure people knew their neighbors and how to best contact one another.
When Long moved to Park Hill, it was just following a summer of ’93 that was particularly violent and tumultuous, with a string of high profile gang-related shootings and deaths. Blockworkers and neighborhood leaders stepped it up, to help people get to know one another and feel safer.
And when neighbors didn’t like something that was happening, they weren’t timid about making their opinions known. Long remembers joining a group of about 20 people who picketed, with signs, a known drug house a couple blocks away from hers. Eventually, she says, the druggies moved away.
Long held the position for nine years (distribution is now coordinated by Newspaper Manager Melissa Davis).
But Long is still a blockworker, and delivers the newspaper every month to one block – her own. She’s seen plenty, during all these years out delivering. Once, she got bit by a dog. Long insists it wasn’t so bad – he was an old and sick dog and just got one chomp of her leg. She got it cleaned and the dog’s mortified owner sent her a big bouquet of flowers. Long was as good as new.
What made her the maddest in all these years was the woman who answered a knock on the door with a request: Would Long please stop leaving a copy of the Greater Park Hill News at her door every month?
“[The woman] said, ‘I get the New York Times and the Washington Post, and I don’t need it,’ ” Long says. “I was really hurt. Here she was, in touch with the world, but didn’t care about her own neighborhood.”
Note: Is your blockworker as phenomenal as Ann Long? Nominate yours for a blockworker of the month profile by sending details to editor@greaterparkhill.org. Are you interested in becoming a blockworker and delivering newspapers to your neighborhood each month? Contact newspaper manager Melissa Davis at newspaper@greaterparkhill.org.