Funeral service for Mrs. Loree Murray of the H Street Neighborhood

Services for Mrs. Loree Murray will be on Friday April 3rd at Pilgrim Baptist Church, 7th and I Streets NE, Washington, DC. Viewing is from 9-10 am. And the service follows, starting at 10 am. She died on March 27, 2009, at the age of 89.

Former Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly, Mrs. Loree Murray, and Anise Jenkins, at a Free DC (DC Statehood) event. Photo by Carol Moore.

Mrs. Murray was a stalwart stabilizer of the neighborhood for many many decades. I am not sure how long the family has lived in the H Street neighborhood, certainly since World War II, and they have run businesses and owned property on H Street over the years. I don't know all the children and grandchildren, but many are particularly accomplished (one daughter is a PhD and prolific author) and the family has been a strong supporter of the neighborhood schools over the many decades they have lived in the H Street neighborhood.

The neighborhood association Near Northeast Citizens Against Crime and Drugs was founded in response to the crime and drug epidemic sparked by disinvestment and residential outmigration, which came to a head with the "crack" epidemic in the mid-1980s and the particular success of the Rayful Edmond organization (based in the neighborhood and in the Trinidad neighborhood) in marketing and selling drugs in the area of Orleans Place NE (a one block one way street between L and M and 6th and 7th Streets) around the corner from the Murray residence.

She and others organized many demonstrations, built relationships with the police (part of the problem at the time was the area where the Edmond Organization was active was right on the border of the First and Fifth Police Districts, splitting resources between the areas, rather than focusing most directly on the resultant problems), to right the direction the neighborhood was going.

(In 2006, at the age of 85, Mrs. Murray was one of the graduates of that year's Senior Police Academy class, having received further training in neighborhood policing issues.)

She and others helped initiate the creation of the H Street Community Development Corporation, even if many of us feel that in later years that organization strayed from what we might have considered a more ideal direction.

As a result of her involvement in the Near Northeast Citizens, the Murray household was firebombed at least once...

Mrs. Murray and I didn't agree on everything. Still bristling and the thought of being turned away from the then segregated Kavakos Club at 8th and H Streets NE in 1942, she didn't care that the H Street Community Development Corporation demolished what was otherwise a set of historic buildings, one of which was the oldest building on the corridor, dating to 1872. The memory of racism then was still strong, 60 years later.

Mrs. Murray was very supportive of my and other people's involvement in working to improve the neighborhood. Near Northeast Citizens supported successful grant proposals for a public art project in 2001 (which never got built because of wacked ANC opposition at the time) at 8th and K Streets NE and for the first round of historic preservation survey in the neighborhood in 2001 and 2002, the creation of the H Street Main Street program in 2002, and the desgination of the Uline Arena as a historic landmark a few years later.

Mrs. Murray was a longtime proponent of DC Statehood and active in many other pro-city initiatives.

She will be missed.

And I was proud to walk in her footsteps.