By Jim McGreevey
Star-Ledger Opinion
Originally Published Monday, May 21, 2012
In 1997, I walked through the dirty, eerily quiet, abandoned streets of Camden. I walked for blocks, through desolate neighborhoods of boarded-up row houses. The only life was drug dealers selling dope on the corners and children playing games in the ruins. It was a lost city.
I spent time as a college student in the Harlem of the 1970s. I never felt the complete sense of abandonment and hopelessness I felt in Camden. I thought, Hell ought not to look like Camden.Despite the hope of committed community activists and a faithful African American clergy, I left Camden with an aching heart, bewildered. How this could be America? How could this be New Jersey? It was as if almost every person who was capable of leaving Camden had left, turning the city’s lights off on the way out.
A year later, in May 1998, I traveled to the Camden region to attend the funeral of George Norcross, Jr. The funeral was a testament to the life of a vigorous man, his love of family, his work, his community and nation, his commitment to the city of Camden, where he was raised, and Cooper Hospital, where he died.
In the years that followed, Norcross’ son and namesake worked assiduously to uphold his father’s fealty to Camden, and his vision for its future. Through the leadership of former Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts and former Sen. Wayne Bryant, New Jersey committed funds to the hospital, brought the state police into the city, and worked to reform a failed school district.Fast forward to last week: The groundbreaking of the Cooper Cancer Institute. I attended to see what – if anything — had changed in Camden, and to Cooper.
There were block after block of new concrete and steel hospital buildings, and gaping holes in the ground pending new construction. The city had an entirely different feel, with signs of emerging growth signalling the rise of an exciting city. After the dedication, I drove around the city blocks, taking in the new and renovated housing. Life was showing in the unlikeliest places.
At the groundbreaking, George Norcross III, who serves as chairman of Cooper Medical Center, made a passing reference to the anniversary of his father’s death, noting his father’s commitment to Cooper and to Camden. It was a comment few noticed, but for the speaker, it was the deep well from which springs his devotion to this hospital and city.
George is an anachronism. He is truthful, even blunt. He never shied from a fight over Camden, if he thought it was the right fight. He advocated – demanded – a fair share for our most beleaguered city and the southern part of the state.
In a business of compromise, George could be resolute, or worse, obstinate. His critics, many of whom I respect and admire, castigate him for his ideas about Camden, and his unwillingness (for right or for wrong) to yield or compromise.
For George, Camden is not a hobby or a passion. Camden is his covenant with his father. At the groundbreaking, I spoke to community activists, including the mayor. Present was a young man with dreadlocks, who I remembered from earlier visits as a firebrand filled with passion, intellect and activism. I asked him about how things were going in Camden, and about housing and jobs. He pointed to George and said, “he’s made me a believer.”
George has made commitments to governors, clergy, legislators, and even young activists about Camden. He has made good on those promises – and, it seemed last week, on the one most important to him. In Camden’s new beginnings, George surely feels the blessings of his father, to the growing benefit of the desperately poor families who battle every day to live in an aching city called Camden.
http://blog.nj.com/njv_jim_mcgreevey/2012/05/jim_mcgreevey_george_norcross.html