SMCCA reflects on changes, Berta Weinstein is sworn in

Berta Weinstein, former vice president of the South Merrick Community Civic Association, was sworn in by State Assemblyman David McDonough last month, succeeding the former president Joe Baker. Weinstein has been an active member of the SMCCA for over 16 years.

“It feels different,” Weinstein said. “Unexpected. But I hope I can do as good a job as the previous president.”

The SMCCA is also seeking new members after the coronavirus pandemic.

“We want to rebuild after Covid,” Weinstein said. “We want to rebuild our civic, get lots of new members and young people, young people with children, middle aged or older people as well. We just want to build our community. We want to keep our community safe and healthy, and nice for other families to move in.

“We didn’t have meetings, so no one could do anything,” Weinstein added. “Things were just very flat. Nothing was done, no one was around. No one was able to do anything. We would help the community as much as we could by possibly helping a neighbor or helping a friend, or a family member that was living around in the area. We couldn’t have our meetings to see who needed help or what neighborhood. Everything was word of mouth, and it was very difficult. It was a really hard time.”

After the pandemic, the association began holding meetings again last year and continues encouraging residents to reach out and be more involved in the community.

“We had a lot of members before Covid, but as Joe (Baker) mentioned, some of the members passed away,” Weinstein said. “The older members passed away, peope moved out, and young people didn’t really know much about us. Through the youth club, we got some new members. We had new people coming in and they found out about us. The kids from the high school got credit for school when we did the cleanups.

“We’re not gone, we’re still here, but we want to rebuild,” Weinstein went on. “We want to reestablish it. We want to make it stronger than it was before, and we want to rebuild it so we can all be working together to make our community the way we want it to be.”

Tracey Morgan, an active member of SMCCA for two years, who has lived in Merrick for over 58 years and the owner of Budd Morgan Central Station Alarm in Bellmore, was also sworn in onto the board by McDonough.

“I want to give back,” Morgan said. “I want to do something for my community. My family and I have four children and they’ve all gone through the same schools that I went through. My interest here was to see what I could do to lend a hand and help out, to make this community a better place.”

“(SMCCA) really needed some help, so I said I’d be willing to lend a hand,” Morgan added. “My business has served the community here since the 1960s, so the community has been very good to us. Now this is our chance to be very good to it. It’s very unusual to have so many people come back into our community but we have multigenerational families here, so someone’s got to do this. The more hands, more ideas, the better our community will be.”

SMCCA encourages residents of all areas in Merrick to take part in the association. For more information, visit SouthMerrickCivic.org or visit the South Merrick Community Civic Association page on Facebook.