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Last Saturday morning, I had to change from the MD Dems t-shirt that I wore for a canvass launch in Annapolis to a county executive polo for Anne Arundel Rivers Days at the Annapolis Maritime Museum’s magnificent Merrill Family Pavilion on Back Creek. I love the energy of campaign volunteers, but I really love celebrating our rivers.
All four River Days have live music, vendors, and free boat rides, but this one has not only Watermark’s faithful and well-captained Miss Anne boats, but also the museum’s skipjack, the Wilma Lee. We also had one of the superfast and supercool new Anne Arundel Fire boats there, but not for rides. She was on duty.
As much as I love boats and getting people out on the water, the highlight was definitely when the Naptown Brass Band marched through the pavilion, drums beating and horns blowing. They had us all dancing.
Don’t miss the last of the season’s River Days on Saturday, September 12 at the beautiful waterfront Fort Smallwood Park on the Patapsco. You can sign up for more information here.
Later that day I joined some good friends at the 6th Annual African Heritage Festival at Laurel Park. It was early in my first term that Sergio Polanco in our office of Community Engagement and Constituent Services introduced me to the leaders of a new organization that he was working with called Anne Arundel County African Diaspora Affairs, led by Kemi and Yemi Adetola. They wanted to start a festival, and needed a location and some support. They started in the parking lot at the Odenton Library, but outgrew the space quickly. The horseracing folks at Laurel Park have been great hosts ever since, and Kemi and Yemi still lead the organizing team. Today, our new Office of Multicultural Affairs works with and supports multiple cultural festivals. I’m very proud that our county doesn’t just acknowledge our diversity, we now celebrate it, just as we celebrate our rivers!
There was yet another celebration that I joined this week at the Annapolis Senior Center at the Wiley H. Bates Heritage Park. They were celebrating the Senior Center’s 40th Anniversary, but it was twenty years after its founding, September 8, 2006, when County Executive Janet Owens cut the ribbon on the restored building where the Center now operates.
I’ve spent a lot of time at the former Wiley H. Bates High School since taking office. I go to the Legacy Center for Caucus of African American Leaders meetings, to the Boys and Girls Club for their major events, and to the County Department of Aging and Disabilities’ Senior Activity Center for holiday parties, forums on prescription drug affordability, and once to meet with seniors who live in the apartments there about needed repairs. I even took my twin boys there to watch a documentary about the segregated high school that produced a generation of Black excellence in Annapolis.
Bates is a community hub today that would not exist if County Executive Owens had not hired a young man named Carl Snowden who made the case to her that even though the former high school had been closed and crumbling for 25 years, and even though it would cost $27 million to restore, it could and should be done. And she listened, and acted, when many thought she shouldn’t.
I thought about that heart-led decision by Janet Owens as I listened yesterday to the presentations at the quarterly meeting of the Crownsville Advisory Committee at the Nonprofit Center at Crownsville Hospital Memorial Park. My decision to acquire and reimagine that property came from a similar place - the heart - mine and many, many others.
The Advisory Committee is our residents’ first line of engagement to monitor, review, and advocate for implementation of the Crownsville Master Plan that so many contributed to. We created the Committee early in the process, but the Maryland General Assembly passed a bill in 2025 to codify it in state law to ensure that it continues. Senator Gile, Delegate and Chair of the House Health Committee Bagnall, and District 6 Councilwoman Lisa Rodvien all serve on the committee and attended yesterday’s meeting.
We heard some very exciting progress updates on water and sewer infrastructure, roads, trails, the active recreation area, the Campanella Building (indoor gym), the Food Bank, collection of artifacts and art for the future museum, and a Bowie State University Crownsville Oral History Course. My message to the group was simply a reminder that this project will take stamina, but that it has legs because it inspires federal, state, and county leaders, regular people who yearn for healing, and donors. Reminding the public of the vision and purpose will be necessary, year after year, as capital budgets are proposed and negotiated.
And maybe seventeen years from now, people will be celebrating the 20th anniversary of the launch of Crownsville Hospital Memorial Park, of the creation of a community hub, of the green heart in the geographic center of our county where history, empathy, respect and human resilience are promoted as a community project for future generations to build upon.
Until next week…