Ann Jawin

“I told them, in front of all these people, ‘If you’ll
all look at each other, I don’t see one woman here!’ and the place was hysterical with laughter. There was nothing really they could say.
I think that was pretty dramatic.”


Neighborhood: Douglaston
Favorite Issue: Women’s Rights

Ann Jawin is the first to tell you that she’s willing to fight for what’s right. But has she ever told off a politician to get what she wanted? “If I have, I wouldn’t tell you!” she joked.

A former guidance counselor for the New York City Department of Education, the Brooklyn-reared, Douglaston resident has spent much of her life fighting for equal rights and helping women.

She started the Center for the Women of Queens (formerly the Queens Women’s Center) 18 years ago and has volunteered countless hours of her time to services for down-and-out women. She’s run for public office, fought the Dept. of Education on its hiring practices and still found time to raise a family.

Most recently, she worked to secure funding for a new home for her center at Fort Totten.

“I’m a very, very, very busy person,” she sighed. “But it’s worth it.”

Greatest Achievement

If you ask her, Jawin will tell you her greatest achievement is the creation of Women’s Center itself.

Over the years it has offered crisis support groups, family daycare classes, legal clinics and several other programs for women. That it’s still going strong - and still growing - after 18 years is what she’s most proud of.

She’s faced several obstacles throughout the years, including having to find a new building two years ago after her lease at Fort Totten expired, forcing her to operate out of limited space at Borough Hall.

“We’ve kept right on going,” she said. “We’re still here helping women every single day and I know people appreciate that.”

Community Character

Jawin admits she’s not afraid to go to whatever lengths that are available to her to get her voice heard.

She says, “you have to be active to get people’s attention,” and she means it. She went to court when she lost the use of Fort Totten the first time and the judge ruled in her favor.

“That made a lot of noise,” she said. Now, two years later, with the help of Assemblywoman Ann-Margaret Carozza and the New York City Council, she was able to secure $1.2 million to renovate an abandoned building at Fort Totten for a new, expanded center.

And in the 1970s, while still working as a guidance counselor, she took on the Dept. of Education when she noticed a lack of women holding principal and assistant principal positions in the schools.

Most Outrageous Act

While fighting the board of education, which eventually became a class action lawsuit, Jawin stood before the all-male board and began reciting statistics of the number of men to women working in higher-up positions.

–Jack Buehrer

Allan Jennings

“They might find it strange I have no fear. Most people are afraid of power and can’t understand why I don’t go along with the program.”


Neighborhood: South Ozone Park
Age: 38

Although Councilman Allan Jennings has been the center of a lot of discussions for the past year, he has also managed to find the time to sponsor community empowerment programs, console individuals who have lost family members and encourage homeowners to file for their rebate. All while fighting cases of harassment brought against him by former employees.

Greatest Achievement

Although many of Jennings’ actions have been frowned upon by fellow elected officials, his main goal has been to have the trust of the people in his community, and according to Jennings, he’s got it.

He is well known in the heavy Asian-populated areas of Flushing and Fresh Meadows, two Queens cities outside of his district. Jennings also helps out in District 28, where he recently started an anger management program based out of his office.

Community Character

Jennings has compared himself to Jesus Christ, saying “Two thousand years ago, there was a man from Galilee who did not agree with Caesar and he too was sacrificed and punished.”

His off-the-cuff antics and actions against Mayor Michael Bloomberg have left him in a league of his own and caused many of his colleagues to keep their distance.

Jennings is also the first serving politician in the history of the city to be knocked off the ballot by his own party. According to Jennings, when the Queens Democratic Party removed him, the race was no longer against him and the Republicans, it was against him and the Queens Democratic organization.

Most Outrageous Act

Although there is a long list of unbelievable things that Jennings has done, there are two that are really unforgettable. One of Jennings’ most shocking moments is when he released the names, badge numbers and job titles of undercover cops at an oversight hearing at the City Council. Jennings said his reason for divulging the names was because the police department was avoiding using civilians to do work assigned to uniformed officers.

Jennings is also known for taking out ads in two Chinese language newspapers broadcasting his love for an Asian woman. His announcement made the front page of a daily newspaper and headlines in another daily. This was Jennings’ way of letting the world know that he has a romantic side.

Working Relationship

When it comes to working with Jennings, many people have opted not to. According to Forrest Miller, spokesperson from Speaker Miller’s office, Jennings had to be removed as chairman of the Civil Service and Labor Committee because “he performed miserably and didn’t live up to rules.”

Another source said that Jennings’ attendance at committee meetings was poor, and he is an embarrassment to the Council.
Jennings considered his attendance to be an improvement from the previous chairpersons. “The councilman prior who held that committee never had a committee meeting at all. Lucy Cruz never had meetings in four years… maybe one.”

–Raynelle Cerica Bull

Phil Konigsberg

“I know that limitations are just obstacles that I can get around. You can tell me ‘no,’ and I can take a ‘no’ for now, but it’s not going to be ‘no’ forever.”


Nickname: The Pitbull
Neighborhood: Bay Terrace
Age: 63
Favorite issue: Smoke-free society

When Konigsberg was eight, a doctor told him that he would never be able to get out of a wheelchair, due to childhood polio that Konigsberg contracted when he was three. He did get out of a wheelchair, and realized while he was still a child that, with enough commitment, anything was within reach. While he admits to having physical limitations and pulmonary difficulties, it has not prevented Konigsberg from, well, anything.

Greatest Achievement

Konigsberg’s greatest achievement may be not in civic action but in his personal triumph, but he did not stop there. Konigsberg is ad hoc chair of the transportation, public safety and parks committees of Community Board 7. For the past five years, Konigsberg has served as president of the Bay Terrace Community Alliance, where he recently successfully fought the installation of parking meters along Bell Boulevard.

The one thing Konigsberg is known for citywide is his battle for a smoke-free world.

“If anything, I am constantly writing to public officials about smoke free legislation. If the subject ever comes up all, eyes immediately turn to me,” he said.

Community Character

Konigsberg seems to come to the aid of anyone who asks him, even on issues that he has absolutely no personal interest in. He is the only male board member at the Center for the Women of New York, an organization that helps women entering the work force.

When the center was being threatened with eviction from their Fort Totten offices, Konigsberg’s community alliance came to their aid, and he has been a board member ever since, recently helping them get a $900,000 grant from the City Council.

Most Outrageous Act

The scary thing about Konigsberg is that no matter how outrageous his behavior may seem, he almost always ends up being right, by virtue of the fact that he wins his battles – and history is written by the victor. When Konigsberg moved into the co-op he now lives in, during the smoking allowed everywhere days, he immediately started pressing for banning smoking in public areas of the building.

“I pursued a smoke free environment with the board, and they were opposed to it,” he said. But he pursued the issue with such tenacity that his parents had to be called in as if Konigsberg was still in high school. “The president of the board knew my parents and she told my father to tell me to quit with the smoking stuff, that I was too much into this. But I proved I was right, and I’ve been on the board of the co-op ever since.”

Working Relationship

As Councilman of the 20th District, John Liu is familiar with Konigsberg’s persistence, citing his “passion for preserving the community” as Konigsberg’s defining characteristic.

“Phil is very tenacious,” Liu said, referring to Konigsberg’s
ceaseless pursuit of local issues.

–Alex Padalka

Lois Marbach

“It’s very difficult to stay true to your principals and bring things home for your community.”


Favorite issue: Electing Insurgent Democrats

Behind a number of insurgent Democrats who ran without the approval of the borough’s powerful Democratic party, there has been Lois Marbach. Short, with round cheeks and a whisper-soft voice, Marbach has been the brains behind some of the most progressive politicians who sought to raise the profile of disenfranchised and under-represented communities.

“People have tried to bully me, [and] coerce me,” Marbach recalled. “This is not an easy place to be. Sometimes you’re public enemy number one.”

Greatest Achievement

First came the laugh, then the thoughtful silence. It isn’t easy to name the greatest achievement for the political consultant who carried petitions for the borough’s first gay candidate, and helped elect the first Queens Hispanic council member, Hiram Monserrate. Eventually, Marbach settled on the 2001 election of a Sara Gonzalez, a Hispanic woman who ran against the Brooklyn Democratic organization. Recalling a similar scenario closer to home, Marbach recalled, “When Hiram won the first time, the people were literally on their knees kissing the floor.”

Community Character

“My consulting comes out of activism,” Marbach said. “My goal is to work with people who are progressive, and disenfranchised.”

For a political operative working outside the party’s mainstream, the inspiration for her life’s work is, by her own account, “cliché.”
“I met John F. Kennedy as a teenager. He came down the street. It was October; we were freezing. He came out [of his car], shook all our hands, and talked about changing the world.”

Years later, Marbach recalled the direction she thought her life would lead. “He made such an impression on me. I was going to join the Peace Corps, or be a diplomat at the United Nations…”

That idealism seems to have been realized. Along with Monserrate and Gonzalez, Marbach is on the verge of another victory. In Flushing, where Marbach’s office is located, there are three Chinese candidates for the Assembly. Whoever wins, they will make history by becoming New York State’s first Asian-American state legislator.

Most Outrageous Act

Some would consider Marbach’s entire career an outrageous act: supporting candidates whose platforms are based on their independence from party leaders. Never was independence from the party needed more than in 1986, after the suicide of Donald Manes, the then-Borough President and Queens Democratic Party leader.

“I ran for Borough President after Manes,” Marbach recalled. “The idea was we needed someone new in borough hall.” Her opponent was Claire Schulman, who was appointed to fill Manes’ term when he died. Marbach’s election would have severed the ties in Borough Hall from Manes’ entourage.

Working Relationship

“I was walking a beat for a street festival, I was still a cop when I met her,” said Monserrate. Working with Marbach, Monserrate defeated an incumbent district leader, then won his city council race, all without support from the county’s Democratic party. “She was a very big part of both victories.”

–Azi Paybarah

Fred Mazzarello

“Every business is responsible for the community.”


Age: 82
Neighborhood: College Point
Favorite Issue: Business
Relations

Just months away from his 83rd birthday, Fred Mazzarello is a College Point institution whose history of civic activism predates the vast majority of newcomers to this thriving and changing neighborhood on the northernmost waterfront of Queens. Today, College Point remains a neighborhood in flux, and Mazzarello is one of the few residents who have witnessed nearly every step in its evolution over the decades.

Community Character

“I lived here all my life,” Mazzarello said. “The population has changed dramatically.” Originally a neighborhood of German, Italian and Irish immigrants, College Point has continued to welcome new residents—but the scale and pace of neighborhood life has become bigger than it was in the old days.

“Years ago, you used to know everyone in your neighborhood. People used to never move away,” Mazzarello said. “Now we find that the younger people move out of the community and we don’t have the camaraderie we used to have.”

A businessman who owned the College Point Bowling Center for 31 years, Mazzarello has been a fixture in the local merchant community. But while most business people have passionate interests that begin and end at their own storefront, Mazzarello has consistently labored to make the well being of the entire neighborhood the foremost concern of all area merchants.

Greatest Achievement

College Point Boulevard, the main business drag in the old section of the neighborhood, still has its old Main Street USA-type charm despite its remarkable growth. Thanks to Mazzarello, however, the business community today has a degree of integration and community spiritedness that did not exist in the old days.

That cohesion is due, in no small part, to the College Point Board of Trade, which Mazzarello founded in 1969.

Before he started the board, “we had various merchants organizations, but they never lasted,” Mazzarello recalled. “When I first organized the businesses, the old timers told me they’d tried for 20 years and it never succeeded.

Mazzarello found a new model, empowering a full-time board executive to free the merchants from the mire of endless meetings. The formula was a success and the Board of Trade grew. What began as an alliance of 30 businesses now boasts over 210 today, with big names such as Pepsi Cola, Verizon, Time Warner and Crystal Windows playing a part.

Most Outrageous Act

A steady and unifying leader, Mazzarello does not often indulge in the bold, outspoken antics used by many activists to draw attention to local issues. He is not afraid, however, to bring his grievances to the streets when he feels that the needs of College Point are being ignored.

When Mayor Bloomberg and city economic officials planned a massive wholesale center for the site of the former Flushing Airport, an open plot of land at the gateway to College Point, Mazzarello saw past the official justifications for the economic proposal.

“It would have had no benefits for the community, no recreational areas for the kids in the area—and that was what we wanted,” he said of the proposal. Not normally a demonstrator, Mazzarello took his frustration to the street—while also bringing his years of experience to bear on high-level meetings with politicians and city officials.

To his community’s relief, the wholesale plan was recently dropped.

—Aaron Rutkoff

Loretta Napier

“A lot of people would prefer that the woman stay quiet, but that’s not me. It’s about saving mankind, that’s what it’s about.”


Age: 67
Neighborhood: Bayside
Favorite Issue: Pedestrian Safety/Child Welfare

Like many do-gooders of her generation, Loretta Napier can trace her awakening as an activist to the day she heard the stirring words of Martin Luther King, Jr.

“My activism began in the Civil Rights movement,” she said. “I did hear Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech in Washington. I have been on the road a long time.”

Born in Bayside, Napier is part of a proud family that has been active in the neighborhood for five generations and has watched a small village morph into a quasi-suburban area.

Community Character

According to Napier, her neighborhood remains strong — but one that has changed over the decades. “Today, I don’t know all of Bayside,” she said. “There are so many people here that are clannish. Where I grew up, it was a little United Nations. We had Jews, Hispanics, Blacks, Italians—everyone. And everyone knew and loved one another.”

As her neighborhood evolves, Napier remains a fixture, consistently advocating for the causes she believes in. A recent addition to Community Board 11, she now practices her outspoken activism both inside the formal leadership organization of the community and outside on the streets, where she works to keep the neighborhood as inclusive and welcoming as ever.
Greatest Achievement

Napier is a champion of social justice who was able to combine her community spiritedness with her career, spending decades as a social worker and psychologist working with juvenile delinquents for the state.

But the battle to save children took a deeply personal turn for Napier after a car killed her 12-year-old grandson, Christopher Scott, while he was biking across the Clearview Expressway in 2000. After a rash of similar deaths in the area this summer, when two young bikers were killed by cars after using pedestrian overpass bridges, Napier stepped up her demands on the Department of Transportation (DOT) to install pervasive safety measures on all pedestrian bridges.

Her activism paid off. Just weeks after joining with other members of CB11 in petitioning the DOT, stop lights and safety fencing materialized at expressway crossings throughout the borough. After four years of frustration in the wake of Christopher’s death, Napier and other community activists achieved success out of tragedy.

Best of all, Napier’s tireless spirit is a model for those around her. During her years of frustration fighting with city officials over pedestrian safety, her young granddaughter sought to console her.

“My nine-year-old granddaughter, who was seven at the time her brother died, turned to me and said, ‘Don’t worry grandma. If you can’t do it, I will.’”

Most Outrageous Act

Napier is normally a soothing figure, and she tends to be more outraged by indifference then “outgrageous” in her tactics.

In the aftermath of her success in the safety campaign, Napier looked back on her anger at the four-year impasse on the issue. “I tried to get the DOT to look at the issue, and I felt I was being ignored. I didn’t think they were doing enough to protect the children in this neighborhood. The politicians were fantastic, but the DOT gave me a lot of nos.”

And when Napier is working for something she believes in, she does not like to hear nos. “

—Aaron Rutkoff

Ray Normandeau

“Rita is searching the website for Americas Most Wanted, because we were both on it.”


Neighborhood: Queensbridge
Age: 60
Favorite Issue: Public Housing

Lot of noise comes out of the Queensbridge Houses, but it isn’t just kids. It is also Ray Normandeau, an actor who moved into the nation’s largest housing project 31 years ago.

His years of complaints have coincided with three decades of changes in how the city operates its subsidized housing projects in the five boroughs.

Normandeau’s voice was part of the chorus screaming for change. But when he screams, it’s not at some faceless operator answering 311 phone calls. When asked if he used the city’s 24-hour quality of life hotline, he said, “No, because I have the email to the chairperson [of the NYC Housing Authority]. 311 is for people who don’t know who to turn to.”

Greatest Achievement

Changes big and small have swept through the city’s housing projects. Normandeau’s greatest accomplishment enabled him to simply lock his front door. Years ago, Normandeau said the NYCHA’s policy was not to lock lobby doors, leaving residents without the most basic level of home defense.

In response, Normandeau turned to The Queensbridge Inquirer, a free weekly newspaper he helped publish at the time.

“We had an ad run pro bono from a lawyer ready to sue the Housing Authority,” he said. The policy was later changed. “I’d like to think I had something to do it.”

Community Character

Normandeau has garnered a reputation for lampooning the Housing Authority and demanding them to fix every streetlight, broken window, unhinged door and obsolete radiator. Normandeau fills the void left by those with no time to log complaints and chase down whoever is supposed to respond to it.

As a landlord, the City has to do more to serve those in NYCHA units, which are reserved for those earning below $31,000.
“Considering it is subsidized housing, there should be a more socialized interaction between tenants and landlords. [NYCHA] should do more outreach with tenants,” he said.

Part of Normandeau unique character is his telephone. After one ring, an automated voice tells the caller: “If you are not a tellemarketer, fundraiser or someone wanting us to vote one way or another, press five right now.”

Most Outrageous Act

To convince the NYCHA to do more for its tenants, Normandeau seems to use his actor’s uncanny sense of drama. His most notable issue of The Queensbridge Inquirer documented a child abuse case involving a crack-addicted mother, under the headline, “Mother Eats Baby Alive.”

The Queensbridge Inquirer has been replaced with www.queensbridge.us, dedicated to the daily trials and travails Normandeau undergoes in his activism. The site links directly with the NYPHA’s insurance company, enabling Normandeau’s audience to log complaints with the little-known entity that could exert some leverage on NYCHA.

Unlike the NYCHA lobby doors, Normandeau’s website isn’t open to just anyone. The site is “only available to those we have met in person.”

Working Relationship
Someone who work with Normandeau use the work “crazy,” but those who’ve benefited from his advocacy call him “helpful.”

– Azi Paybarah


Reverand Charles Norris

“I don’t like to analyze myself. I let other people talk about the things that I do.”

Age: “I’d rather not say.”
Neighborhood: St. Albans
Favorite ISSUE: Community
Development
Rev. Charles Norris, pastor of Bethesda Missionary Baptist Church, has lived in Southeast Queens for over 60 years. He is at every town hall, community board and civic association meeting in his area, and he is extremely vocal when it comes to issues that affect his neighborhood.

Greatest Achievement

Norris does not like to toot his own horn, so he does not define any one achievement as his greatest. One of Norris’ achievements that made headline news across New York City is keeping deceased white Police Officer Edward Byrne’s name off of the new Police Athletic League (PAL) Center in Jamaica. Norris said it would be wise for the PAL not to put the name up on the building because he will take it down. Norris doesn’t think Byrne embodies the spirit of Southeast Queens.

Norris also announced recently that the Southeast Queens Clergy for Community Empowerment, an organization that he is a member of, will be assisting the House of A Million Earrings, an afro-centric boutique in Springfield Gardens. The store has been in the community for over 40 years and Norris said he would hate to see it close down for good.

Community Character

Norris is probably one of the only people in Southeast Queens who will walk out of a meeting before it begins because he does not like the format. “I saw how they were going to run the meeting. Nothing was going to get done, so I left,” Norris said about a recent town hall meeting in St. Albans.

Norris is usually the first person to arrive at a protest in favor of the community, and the last one to leave a community board meeting. He is usually probing someone for answers or an explanation for what is happening in Southeast Queens—and if his questions are not answered there will be hell to pay.

Most Outrageous Acts

What seems outrageous to other people is only normal to Norris. He will interrupt Community Board 12 Chairperson Gloria Black if she is tiptoeing around his question, and he has walked out of a New York State Senator’s town hall meeting without thinking twice.

Norris also protested against the building of a statue of Queen Catherine in Queens because she benefited from the slave trade. If there is an issue that will negatively affect blacks, Norris will be sure to stop it before it turns into a monster in the community.

Working Relationship

Norris is known by every elected official in Southeast Queens, and according to Richard Gibbs, president of the Queens Community Democratic Club in Jamaica, he is an all-around alright guy to work with.

Norris is known as a community activist with a focus on morals. “I’m about doing what is right for the people, I’m doing the right thing.”

–Raynelle Cerica Bull


Tom Nunziato

“When something is developed and it’s bad, where do people file their hardships afterwards?”

Nickname: The Florist
Neighborhood: Maspeth
Age: 47
Favorite ISSUE: Removing Trucks
Tony Nunziato’s own friends will admit that when the florist goes to a meeting, he is “a pit bull.”

Peering out of the windows of Nunziato Florist in Maspeth is the store’s namesake: a florist who doubles as a community activist. His activism against over development and excessive truck traffic leave him fighting for Maspeth into the wee hours of the night. Combining his day and night jobs helped him become the Chairman of CB5’s Environmental Committee.

Nunziato believes Maspeth residents have the same needs as the flowers he looks after: fresh hair, clean water, and an undisturbed piece of Earth in which to lay their roots.

Speaking of roots, Nunziato’s cousin is Councilman Eric Gioia. The Nunziato family tree extends into the Elks Club, Queens Chamber of Commerce, St. Sebastian’s, the Long Island City YMCA, and numerous other civic organizations. “It must be something in the Nunziato blood,” he conceded.

Greatest Achievement

Nunziato rejoiced when Mayor Bloomberg said a park will be created on the 6.5-acre site of the old Elmhurst Gas Tank. Those plans blocked a private developer from bringing to Grand Avenue a Home Depot, Commerce Bank and other stores.

Another project Nunziato is hopeful about is Grand Avenue Truck Bypass Route.

For some time, Nunziato has lamented the condition of the street where his store is located. “Grand Avenue’s not so grand anymore,” because of heavy truck traffic, he said. He and the late Frank Principe, former CB5 Chairman, proposed for westbound trucks on the Long Island Expressway to exit one stop early, and used Maurice Avenue instead of Grand Avenue.

A firm hired by the City’s Department of Transportation is now reviewing the plan. If approved, it would virtually eliminate oversized trucks from the main thoroughfare of Maspeth, retuning it not quite to the days of the horse and buggy, but sedans and SUVs.

Most Outrageous Act

When the weather dipped below zero, and the wind blew snow down a deserted Grand Avenue, Nunziato tucked his head into his chest, and walked into a nearly deserted meeting held by the Department of Transportation earlier this year. The topic: truck traffic on Grand Avenue. Queens Commissioner Connie Moran of the DOT admitted it was “one of the coldest days of the year,” as she greeted Nunziato and others.

Community Character

His hair is slick-backed and graying, his stomach protrudes slightly. His speech is unhurried and whimsical, like a storyteller. But below his affable demeanor, is a seemingly indestructible engine.

“My wife says that when I die, she’s going to look to see where I hide my battery,” Nunziato said.

Working Relationship

“A pit bull,” is how Councilman Dennis Gallagher described Nunziato. He is “dedicated to his community and stops at nothing to fight for what he believes in.”

Not even bricks hurled through the windows of his flower shop have stopped Nunziato. That’s what he found after speaking out against a project popular with some unions. “I was testifying against The Cross Harbor Project. That night my windows were smashed,” he said. No charges were ever filed, and Nunziato hasn’t slowed down for a second.

–Azi Paybarah


Natalia "Saw Lady" Paruz

“Today I have 17 different saws, each one has a different register and different amount of
notes on it.”

Nickname: Natalia Paruz
Age: 29
Neighborhood: Astoria
Natalia Paruz, known throughout New York City as the “Saw Lady” and throughout the world as one of the most accomplished musical saw performers of her generation, just got back from Paris where she judged the International Saw Competition and performed the saw with the Moroccan Philharmonic Orchestra.

Greatest Achievement

At 29-years-old, Paruz has an impressive resume. Although playing the saw is a very specialized skill, it is also a fairly rare instrument to be included in orchestras around the world. Yet Paruz plays in orchestras around the world.

There is no music school for the saw and there aren’t even saw musicians who teach the saw. It is a tradition of the instrument that someone who wants to learn will learn it on their own or by watching others perform. Although not really interested in music when she was young, she took piano and guitar lessons, but not seriously, Paruz saw someone perform and became fascinated by the craft.

“I was in Europe and there was one performance where one guy was playing the saw and I thought it was so cool,” she said. She asked the guy for lessons but he said no. “He said the tradition of the instrument is that you pick it up and figure it out.”

The result is that every saw player has a different technique and each person reinvents the instrument for themselves.

Community Character

Paruz, who has lived in Astoria for 13 years, borrowed a saw from her landlady to get her start.

“It was a rusty saw and it only had a few notes,” she said. “So I went out and purchased a new saw and it had almost two octaves.”

Now she has many, many different kinds of saws that she uses to play. She even has one saw that is so rare very few people know it exists – it is from the beginning of the 20th century when saw playing was popular in vaudeville acts. This particular saw was only made between 1921 and the beginning of World War II. “It is a really fancy saw,” she said.

Paruz got her start performing at the local Salvation Army. At the time its community center was having some financial hardships, they had no funds to provide people with anything, so Paruz volunteered to perform for them.

“They liked it so much they asked me to come back and they recommended me for other senior centers and I started performing for all these senior citizens,” she said.

And so her career was born.

Now, in Astoria, Paruz holds whole gatherings of saw players at her house.

Most Outrageous Act

The most unique performance Paruz said she ever took part in was in Paris at a famous cemetery where a number of famous people are buried, including the vocalist Edith Pilaf, one of her favorite artists.

“I played at this big cemetery, I did a tribute to Edith Pilaf there,” she said. “I played it for her on her grave, it was a very touching moment, it was a ceremony that people were watching, people had tears in their eyes, it was very moving.”

— Peter Gelling