East LA Probation Center Named for Mary Ridgway

“Mary would have been upset with us for doing this,” said LA County Supervisor Gloria Molina when she spoke at the ceremony celebrating the renaming of the East Los Angeles Probation Center for the late and legendary Los Angeles juvenile probation officer and gang specialist, Mary Ridgway.

“No, that’s wrong,” said Father Greg Boyle when he spoke after Molina. Mary wouldn’t have disliked this moment, she would have hated it. But we aren’t doing this for her. We’re doing it for ourselves.

And it was true. The intensity of emotion at the dedication was unusually high.

In addition to Molina and Boyle, those attending the Wednesday afternoon event included Probation Chief Donald Blevins, Head Public Defender, Ron Brown, City Council Members, Jose Huizar and Ed Reyes, Father Greg Boyle, and various members of law enforcement and probation command staff and rank and file. Deputy City Atty. Peter Shutan acted as the afternoon’s MC.

Even the most event-weary of the political pros seemed proud of the fact that for once, a public building (or library or park) was being named for someone whose worth was undisputed, who had made a big difference to the health of large parts of this city, —a woman, no less—and yet someone whom no one outside certain circles even knew existed. (Unless of course, you read about her on WitnessLA when she died two years ago, or in the Op-ed I did about her for the LA Times.)

“Her work was deeply rooted in the heart,” said Jose Huizar.

“If there was a tea I could make that would impart Mary’s approach,” said Molina, who admitted she often quarreled with Ridgway, “I’d ask every probation officer to drink it every day.”

With his turn at the podium, Father Greg asked the crowd to stretch their hands out toward the building, then collectively bless it. Then he invoked the poet Mary Oliver.

When death comes….I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

“Mary didn’t need to wonder if she made of her life particular, and real.
She was argumentative.” And her desk was so covered with paper it looked like a crime scene. “But she was never sighing and frightened. She did not simply visit this world.”

However, it was Sal Martinez, once a very active hard core gang member, now a frequently honored, Boyle Heights community leader, who likely had the best line of the day to describe Mary Ridgway.

Martinez, with Molina’s help, was the person who worked the most relentlessly to make this renaming happen. And, like a number of men and women in the crowd—once troubled kids, now probation officers or other helping professions, themselves—Martinez credits Ridgway as having saved his life.

“Mary,” he said of the woman whom we had all come to honor, ” was in the business of breaking curses.”