[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 12]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 16908]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                      BELLE DEMBY, 106 YEARS YOUNG

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                          HON. EDOLPHUS TOWNS

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, July 26, 2000

  Mr. TOWNS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Belle Demby as she 
celebrates her 106th birthday.
  Ms. Demby is a native of North Carolina who moved to Brooklyn as a 
teenager when her father got a job building the Fourth Avenue subway 
line. When she first arrived in Brooklyn, you could still find fresh 
chickens in open air markets on Third Avenue and Myrtle Avenue. She 
worked for $1.50 a day sweeping the platforms of the BRT subway line 
and probably never earned more than $12 a week throughout all of World 
War I.
  For entertainment, she listened to music. As she recently told a New 
York Times reporter, ``I listened to the radio. What do you call them, 
Victrola? All I can tell you is it was a big box that had music in 
it.'' When the stock market crashed she and her husband both lost their 
jobs. To make ends meet, Ms. Demby worked in factories, laundries and 
anywhere she could get a job. She recalled recently how ``longshoremen 
were walking back and forth to the waterfront to see if a ship came in 
so they could get work.''
  Belle Demby now lives near the Brooklyn Navy Yard in the Ingersoll 
Houses. Family and friends take turns reading her passages from the 
Bible. Although she is blind, she is still able to attend Bethel 
Baptist Church every Sunday with her daughter who is 87 and a grandson 
who at 69 is a grandfather himself.
  Please join me in acknowledging the remarkable life of Belle Demby on 
her 106th birthday.

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