Tireless advocate with unwavering passion for community issues
Agnes “Aggie” Brose, one of this city’s most tenacious and longest- serving advocates of community safety and social justice, died Wednesday night at Concordia, a residential and rehabilitation facility in Allison Park, where she lived her last weeks. She was 84.
She had been recovering from surgeries that removed cancer from her leg but had been declining, said her granddaughter, Lauren Byrne Connelly.
Ms. Brose was born and raised on Dearborn Street in Garfield, where she raised three children. She was the daughter of union stewards and a blue- collar housewife who performed the classic rituals — raising money for church picnics, taking food to neighbors after funerals, sitting on her stoop with other mothers after the kids were in bed, sweeping the walk.
In 1975, the Rev. Leo Henry, her parish priest at St. Lawrence O’Toole, tapped her to help him start the Bloom field Garfield Corp. to counter the neighborhood’ s mounting losses to crime, vandalism and homeowners walking away from properties they couldn’t afford to bring up to code.
She did that work for 42 years, rising to national prominence in the community development world, fighting banks’ redlining practices and predatory lending, battling policies that gave passes to absentee landlords and blight, and even confronting drug dealers on the streets.
She successfully fought for the closure of nuisance bars. She held regular public safety meetings, forging alliances between police and residents. She led protests against the closing of the Nabisco Baking Co. and campaigned to ensure West Penn Hospital would survive in Bloomfield.
In 1981, she recruited Rick Swartz to be the BGC’s executive director and together they established a new housing program, attracted artists to vacant storefronts and lobbied the state Legislature for blight remediation.
“I think the word ‘ lioness’ applies to her,” Mr. Swartz said Thursday. “With her it was, ‘ You’ll have to beat me with a crowbar to make me go away.’ She wasn’t going to be deterred by red tape and technocrats.
“She had intuition about people and she dealt with people who could get things done.”
When the Urban Redevelopment Authority rebuffed the BGC’s request for help building houses in the early 1980s, Ms. Brose organized a field trip to the URA’s board meeting, Mr. Swartz said.
“We took 45 people in a bus. John Robin, the chair of the board, asked if we planned to stay for the whole meeting, and Aggie said, ‘ Yes, we do, and we will be here at the next meeting, and the next.’
“That was the start of our rebuilding in Garfield.”
The BGC helped establish the Pittsburgh Community Re investment Group ( PCRG) in the process, and worked over the years to stop banks from discriminatory lending and on vacant- property strategies.
Asked to talk about Ms. Brose’s impact on Pittsburgh, Ernie Hogan, executive director of the PCRG, said, “I’m trying to figure out how to sum it up. Oh, my God.
“Her work served to unlock millions of dollars of capital investment in under served neighborhoods,” he said. “She helped create new mortgage programs for women, campaigned against predatory lending, she led the charge that created the land reserve. She took the banks on one by one. She immediately galvanized a room and put her force forward. It was amazing watching her do it.”
The PCRG’s notice of her passing, sent to more than 7,000 people, reads, in part, “Pittsburgh is a much better place because of Aggie. We are grateful for her commitment to this city and its people up to the end, her foresight in the creation of PCRG and Bloomfield- Garfield Corporation, both of which were her true labors of love, and the torch she carried for all of us to follow.”
After retiring in late 2017, she volunteered with the local Veterans of Foreign Wars, organized the Lawrenceville Veterans Banner project and was working on a veterans affordable housing project for Lawrenceville, said Ms. Connelly, who followed her grandmother into community development work.
“As a grandmother, she made everything fun,” Ms. Connelly said. “She was the life of the party, the first on the dance floor and the last to leave. She really took the time to have meaningful relationships with us kids. She listened to us.
“As a mentor, she had done it all. She always knew who she was fighting for. She always went back to the community to make sure they were all in it together. That was why she was as effective as she was.”
Ms. Brose was active throughout her life in the St. Lawrence O’Toole Parish, with the Allegheny County Democratic Committee, and served on the board of Neighbor Works of Western Pennsylvania.
Ms. Brose was preceded in death by her husband, Tommy Brose. She is survived by three children, Thomas L. Brose Jr. of Overbrook, Jeannie Byrne of Stanton Heights and June Mueller of Freedom, and eight grandchildren.
Friends will be received at McCabe Bros., Inc. Funeral Home, 5300 Penn Ave., Bloomfield, from 2 to 4 and 6 to 8 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. The funeral Mass will beat 10 a.m. Monday in St. Maria Goretti Parish, St. Joseph Mission.
Memories and stories can be shared at aggiestories@gmail.com.