Rosa Bonds, antidrug activist

The other day I got an email from a friend in Philadelphia telling me Rosa Bonds had died. I thought I would put her obituary from the Philadelphia Inquirer on here because she was a rather interesting lady I had the chance to work with while we lived on Pastorius Street. Miss Rosa was one of those people who Obama described the other night in his speech as one of the many nameless people who work every day to make their neighborhood a better place.

I got to know Miss Rosa when a couple of us realized that along Germantown Avenue there was a neighborhood organization whose boundaries ended about five blocks north of the 6100 block of Germantown Ave. and another organization which ended about three blocks to the south of us. In that eight to nine block area there were four to five bars, numerous abandoned buildings, a couple of churches, a music school and a few businesses. We, two white guys, one from rural Indiana, and me from rural Iowa, got the bright idea that we should try to organize this area to see if we could get the city to pay some attention to the area and if we could help improve the area.

I talked with some of my neighbors and they thought it would be okay to try this so we knocked on doors, mailed invitations and had our first meeting. Miss Rosa was one of the foks who showed up and one of the few who didn't try to give us a hard time. After a couple of meetings it was to the point where some of the folks thought we needed to elect officers. Miss Rosa thought I should be the president but since I was one of about three white folks involved I figured it was best that she or someone else do it. At that point I didn't know about some of her other work but it seemed she was quite capable of leading any group that emerged from our meager efforts.

Over the next couple of years we organized a few street cleanings and did manage to get three of the nuisance bars closed. During the course of this Miss Rosa organized one of her anti drug activities. We set up our grills on the corner of Pastorius and Baynton Streets where lots of drug activity was taking place. We got a local store to donate some hot dogs and soda and had a little neighborhood party. We even had a local tv crew show up along with a few unhappy drug dealers and customers. It was one of the more memorable evenings during our time in the city.

So here's to Miss Rosa, a women who worked tirelessly to make her neighborhood and city a better place.

Rosa Bond, fearless anti-drug crusader

Posted on Tue, Oct. 28, 2008

By JOHN F. MORRISON
Philadelphia Daily News

morrisj@phillynews.com 215-854-5573

The senior citizens stood on street corners in East Germantown in all kinds of weather, sweating in the heat and shivering in the cold, for a just and dangerous cause: To chase away the drug dealers.

Their method was simply to find a corner where the dealers were operating and just stand there. These grandmothers and grandfathers took torrents of abuse and threats.

Sometimes they would bark back at the young punks, who needed selling room at a cherished corner. But mostly, the demonstrators just stood there while the dealers hid.

Possibly the most stalwart, and certainly the most defiant, was a feisty grandmother named Rosa Bonds.

"She had a mouth on her," said C.B. Kimmins, longtime drug crusader and a founder of Mantua Against Drugs. "I admired the daylights out of her."

Rosa died Oct. 14 at age 75. She lived in East Germantown.

In pursuit of her crusade, Rosa would hop into her battered old Chevy and drive herself and other demonstrators - and sometimes her grandkids - to the drug hangouts.

Former Inquirer columnist Steve Lopez wrote about Rosa and her cohorts: "Some young turk turning off Osceola Street onto Pastorius with that strut that says they aren't even there, that says they can't touch him. Nobody can touch him."

But Rosa was not intimidated. She raised her trusty megaphone and shouted: "Drug dealer! Drug dealer! Drug dealer!"

The 20-ish youth continued his cocky strut. She shouted again: "You can run but you can't hide! We charge you with genocide!"

In other confrontations, Rosa and the others simply ignored threats of violent death.

"I'm gonna go get my gun," a dealer would shout at her.

"Go ahead," she would reply. "Go get it." The gun never materialized.

The dealers took one look at this brazen grandmom and slithered away. Of course, they came back.

Steve Lopez wrote: "Rosa Bonds is on the megaphone at midnight, backed up by senior citizens fighting to save their homes. Just down the block, barely visible, the devil peeks around the corner."

Rosa was a founder and officer of East Germantown Against Drugs. Members wore white hats stenciled with the group's initials - EGAD.

Kimmins and his Mantua Against Drugs members would travel to East Germantown to stand with the seniors. "We stood out there in the cold. We told jokes, we talked to the neighbors," Kimmins said. "They told us, 'We never saw the block this quiet.' "

The grass-roots antidrug crusade in the city originated with the late Herman Wrice, who was fearless. He would go out with a sledgehammer and batter down the doors of drug dens.

Eventually, C.B. Kimmins and others sought him out and established Mantua Against Drugs. Rosa Bonds and her partners in East Germantown patterned their actions after the Mantua activists.

In 1990, Rosa, a staunch Republican (but later a Barack Obama supporter), ran unsuccessfully against Dave Richardson for the Pennsylvania House from the 201st District.

Rosa Bonds was born in Spartanburg, S.C. She attended school until the fifth grade in Asheville, N.C. After she arrived in Philadelphia as a girl, she graduated from William Penn High School and became a nurse's aide at Temple University Hospital and the American Oncological Hospital, now Fox Chase Cancer Center.

She also worked as a clerk for the city, in the old Philadelphia General Hospital and for the Department of Licenses & Inspections.

In 1952, she married George Bonds, who predeceased her.

She is survived by a daughter, Rosalind; four sons, Anor, George, Chester and William Sr., and nine grandchildren.