Daniel Maurer The movement to honor late councilwoman Miriam Friedlander by renaming the street she lived on is gathering strength: last night, Community Board 3’s Transportation and Public Safety committee unanimously voted to recommend the name change.
Among others, councilwoman Rosie Mendez made an appearance at Tuesday night’s meeting to lend her weight to the proposal, toting letters of support from government representatives and more than 330 signatures from residents and local restaurant owners. “Miriam was a councilwoman for 18 years,” Ms. Mendez said. “I think this would be a fitting tribute to a woman who loved this community so much, and gave so much of herself.”
Ms. Friedlander’s neighbor, Barbara Dydek, has been helping collect signatures. “I just feel that it is something that I should do,” she said. She remembered her friend as a determined woman, still taking ballet lessons at 95, and recalled how in the 1970s, Ms. Friedlander had aided in the effort to reconstruct abandoned tenements for middle-class and lower income tenants. “She helped the poor,” Ms. Dydek said. “She helped women. Man, she helped everybody for as long as she could.”
“If anyone in the whole world should have a street named after her in this community,” said District Manager Susan Stetzer, “it’s Miriam Friedlander.”
