Category Archives: Rotary

Brooklyn Bridge Rotary Club presented a $1,000 check to the Mercy Home for Children at its Feb. 21 meeting.

Mercy’s Visitation Residence for the developmentally disabled suffered severe damage in Hurricane Sandy. Residents of the Red Hook facility had to be temporarily relocated to Mercy’s building in Fort Greene, which was hastily reconverted for residential use.

Rotarian Sandra Dowling presents $1,000 check to Sister Kay Crumlish, executive director of the Mercy Home for Children, as club President Vivian Hardison looks on.

Sr. Crumlish described Mercy’s mission. It began 151 years ago when five young boys, whose home had been destroyed by fire, knocked on the door of the Convent of Mercy on Willoughby Avenue in Fort Greene looking for help, she said.

Thirty-six years ago, the sisters opened Visitation in Red Hook as a group home for disabled youngsters. “We were looking for their abilities, not their disabilities,” she said.

After Sandy, as Brooklyn Bridge Rotary looked to help impacted groups and individuals in its community, Mercy’s plight came to the attention of Rotarian Sandra Dowling. Specifically, the sisters needed new washing machines, and the club committed to buying one.

Instead, when Sr. Crumlish arrived at the Feb. 28 meeting, she was surprised with the $1,000 check — an amount that covered the cost of the new washington machine and more.

“That’s a tremendous gift,” Sister Sister Kay Crumlish, Mercy’s executive director, told the club.