(Clockwise from top) Marina Robards, Rosie Hart-Russell, Yvonne Thomas, Belinda Smith and Lily Dunnigan discuss plans for the Eastdale Elementary and Community Annual Festival at Eastdale Recreation Center on Thursday.Rosie Hart Russell and Belinda Sears Smith remember when Eastdale was a place where families helped to raise each other’s children and kids made sure they were home before the streetlights came on. The women want to celebrate that foundation, and they want Eastdale to be known as a family-oriented neighborhood again.
“We want people to know the history and wealth of this community,” said Russell, who lived in the community between the Brainerd levee and Wilcox Tunnel for 11 years. “This is not just a place for gang bangers. We want people to celebrate the positive.”
Smith lived there for more than a decade before moving to next-door Woodmore. Now the two are planning to host an Eastdale reunion Aug. 31, the same day Glenwood and Lincoln Park will hold neighborhood celebrations. The goal in Eastdale is to recognize families still in the neighborhood and create so much fun and unity that they reclaim the area from crime.
“We want the public to know Eastdale wasn’t all about shooting and turf,” said Greg Walton, who has lived in the neighborhood for more than 50 years. “We had the Sears family who started Sears Grocery Store. We had H and H Grocery Store on the corner of Greenwood and Through streets, and Al Miller had Al Miller Music Store.”
That was between the 1960s and the early 1990s, when people in the neighborhood owned their homes. Now most homeowners are elderly and on fixed incomes, and about half the homes are occupied by renters.