New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
MLK Community Breakfast planned Monday in Branford
BRANFORD — The annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Community Breakfast has outgrown its former home and will take place this year on Monday at Branford High School, 185 East Main St., organizers said.
The southern-style breakfast is part of Branford’s 375th anniversary celebration. It begins at 8:30 a.m. The menu includes eggs, pancakes, bacon, sausage, grits, juice and coffee. Tickets, available at the door, are $10 for adults and $5 for children, with all proceeds to benefit the Fuel Bank and the Community Dining Room.
“I think it’s exciting that it’s happening at the high school” after a number of years in St. Therese’s Roman Catholic Church on Leetes Island Road, said organizing committee member Margot Hardenbergh.
The previous location “was just getting too crowded,” Hardenbergh said. “The last time, we had too many for the room, I’m sure. So we had to move . ... The school is being very cooperative. “
The 19th annual community-wide MLK Breakfast — which has roots that date back to 1985 at St. Stephen’s AME Zion Church at 31 Rogers St. — also will feature a home-grown speaker in Beth Chandler.
Chandler, 52, is now the president
“They all come together to reflect on the influence of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and celebrate his influence on our society...” Margot Hardenbergh, organizing committee member
of the Boston YWCA.
But back in 1984, she was Branford High’s class president as well as a star athlete who captained a volleyball team that won three straight state championships and co-captained a nationally-ranked basketball team that won one state championship.
She was inducted into the Branford Sports Hall of Fame in 2001.
Chandler “will speak about how Rev. King influenced her as she moved from being a Branford High School class president, volley ball and basketball star, to Harvard University and onto heading up the Boston YWCA, the largest in the county,” said Hardenbergh.
Chandler, who grew up on Bryan Road, is the daughter of Phoebe Chandler, who is head of the breakfast’s organizing committee and has been involved since its inception. Beth Chandler’s late father, lifelong Branford resident Joseph Chandler, who died in 2011, was a basketball coach at Cheshire High School and was on the Branford Board of Education.
The breakfast also will feature Branford High’s Music Makers.
And because the event is taking place in the high school, “we get to work with culinary arts students from Branford High” who will assist the cooks, said Hardenbergh.
Early on, the breakfast was sponsored by the Branford Clergy Association and has now become a community-wide breakfast with participation from all religions, ethnic groups and many community organizations.
“They all come together to reflect on the influence of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and celebrate his influence on our society in many ways,” Hardenbergh said in an email.
Speakers over the years have included state legislators Edward Kennedy Jr. and Bill Dyson, state treasurer Denise Nappier, Judge John Turner, Yale University Chaplain Rev. Fredrick Street, Gateway Community College President Doris Kenfrick, the late Rev. and Mrs. Curtis and Elsie Colfield, Miss Connecticut Renelle Richardson, TV news commentator Keith Kountz, newspaper columnist Frank Harris III, coach James Barber and Rev. James Manship.