This weekend, Poughkeepsie will honor its dads with the annual Father’s Day Parade.
Organized by John Flowers, longtime Poughkeepsie neighborhood advocate, with help from a few dozen friends, agencies and businesses, this annual affair will reflect the newly forged partnership between Flowers and the Family Partnership Center when it marches down Main Street on Saturday at noon.
The brainchild of Dutchess County Healthy Families, the parade will step off at the corner of Main and Hamilton streets, making its way to a spread of free hot dogs and drinks at Waryas Park, donated by Adams Fairacre Farms, Price Chopper and K&D Deli.
This year, Flowers said, there will even be a carnival with rides and attractions at Waryas.
The parade will feature a number of floats sponsored by local businesses, agencies and government officials, along with three marching bands from area high schools and delegations from the City and Town of Poughkeepsie police departments, the Dutchess County Sheriff’s Office and the New York State Police.
While the audience will be able to enjoy the music, food and fun as they have in past years, a change has taken place behind the scenes that’s less visible but, in the long run, may prove far more significant. That change is the partnership between Flowers and the Family Partnership Center, which is operating under new leadership this year on both its board of directors and administrative staff.
Flowers said the partnership, which began with this year’s annual Easter Egg Hunt in Waryas Park, makes it easier for him to raise money for his community events rather than paying for it all out of pocket. “It makes me a nonprofit organization,” Flowers said, meaning that donations to the Family Partnership Center in his name are now tax-deductible for businesses and individuals.
The partnership also makes his projects eligible for grants from private foundations. For example, he said, he received a grant from the McCann Foundation for the first time this year to help pay for the roses he gives out to senior residences and nursing homes on Mother’s Day. Health insurance firm Wellcare was able to contribute money to the Father’s Day Parade this year to fund a third marching band.
Flowers said he’s planning some bigger and better events with this financial boost. “I can do more now,” he said. “Financially, I was ready to give it up. I’ve been doing a lot of this on my own.”
Flowers now sponsors and organizes five annual community events: the Old-Fashioned Easter Egg Hunt in Waryas Park, the Father’s Day Parade, the Church Picnic Dedicated to God in Earline Patrice Park, and giveaway campaigns at area nursing homes and hospitals that bring senior citizens roses on Mother’s Day and presents at Christmas.
New direction for Partnership
Peter Leonard, the director of fieldwork at Vassar College, was elected president of the Family Partnership Center’s board of directors this year. He said the agency’s relationship with Flowers is just the first sign of a full-scale makeover the new leadership has planned for the agency.
“Up to now, the Partnership Center has been a really terrific idea that has not completely turned into a reality,” Leonard said this week. “We’re returning to the original vision of being a community-based organization.”
Founded in 1997 at its current home, a vacant high school on North Hamilton Street, the Family Partnership Center was conceived by a group of community leaders as a unique community center that would provide office space for a number of different non-profit agencies, aiming to act as both a one-stop shopping center for human services as well as a breeding ground for collaboration, change and hope.
Leonard said the second half of that mission has yet to reach its potential. “The agency has been a little standoffish in ways it shouldn’t have been,” he said. “This was never intended to be a land deal. It was always intended to be a community collaboration between human service agencies, neighbors, activists, artists and others. We’re self-consciously trying to fulfill our original mission.”
The Family Partnership Center also has a new president, Joseph D’Ambrosio. Previous president Edward McCormick resigned in January.
D’Ambrosio was out of town all week and couldn’t be reached for this story, but Leonard said the board of directors is very excited about his tenure, which began about six weeks ago. “He’s very full of life,” Leonard said. “He understands the values … We’re very hopeful that we have a great, energetic leader.”
A resident of Putnam County, D’Ambrosio draws the bulk of his human service experience from running the largest homeless shelter in Westchester County for 10 years, Leonard said, and is excited about strengthening the Family Partnership Center’s role as a force for change in the community.
“We’re going to be a more open institution,” Leonard said. “We’re going to belong more to the community.”