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Steve Simon and Emilia “Toni” Cardona have shared a meal at Coogan’s Restaurant at least once a week, every week for the last 20 years. The meet-ups weren’t planned, the two would just bump into each other.
Simon said he didn’t even realize he and Cardona shared the tradition until she wasn’t around anymore.
“It didn’t quite sink in until she passed,” Simon said.
Cardona, 71, a former educator and vice-chair of Community Board 12, passed away on July 17 in Spain, where she was vacationing with her daughter, Deborah.
The pair was in Spain during the country’s July 11, 1-0 victory over the Netherlands in the World Cup final in South Africa. The two took in the exciting game in a bar in Madrid, the nation’s capitol.
Debbie updated friends and family about the atmosphere in the city during the game and posted photos of the excitement in the bar at the end of the match.
“I can hear the helicopters buzzing above the hotel & fireworks. There's supposed to be a huge party tomorrow in one of the large city parks by the river. Went by it today & heard their sound check. May go to it. I'm 3 blocks from the Puerta Del Sol, it's hopping!” Debbie wrote.
That night or the next day her mother took ill and was hospitalized.
During the week friends and family waited anxiously for Debbie’s updates, sending hopeful missives for her recovery, and then sorrowful notes when Cardona’s health turned for the worse.
As an educator Cardona, who was born in Puerto Rico, taught English as a second language in high school, became a vice principal and eventually a principal, helping to found the Foreign Language and Global Studies High School on Jackson Avenue in the Bronx.
City Council Member Robert Jackson knew Cardona best from serving with her on the panel to select students for Isabella Geriatric Center’s annual McFadden Scholarship where he described her role as one of a consensus builder.
“She was a serious retired educator who believed education to be the key to the future of our children,” he said.
Cardona served on many CB12 committees during her decades-long tenure. In addition to her role as second in command of the board, she recently chaired the public safety committee and Street Activity Permit Task Force, where she was focused on reining in the number of street fairs in Northern Manhattan and streamlining the application process. She used her position on the public safety committee to call for a third police precinct to be located in Inwood within the next 10 years.
In meetings Cardona had a school teacher’s ability to control a room. Regardless of rank or position, those who spoke out of turn could be reduced to cowed school children with her glare, and then easily won over again the next second by her flirtatious smile.
“You really felt as though you were in a classroom” when she ran a meeting, Simon said. “You really felt you could end up in the principal’s office. She could really get strict.”
George Espinal, the youngest CB12 board member until his recent resignation, learned this from the second he met Cardona.
In 2004, Espinal, then 17, attended Cardona’s parks and cultural affairs committee meeting in hopes of having benches reinstalled in the Payson Avenue Playground.
“She didn’t let me speak at the meeting because she said I wasn’t old enough,” he remembered.
When he lost the 2009 election for vice chair to Cardona, he said she was gracious in her victory.
“She told me don’t take this as a negative thing. Take this as a learning lesson,” Espinal said. “Ever since then she’s been giving me good advice.”
“It’s just a tremendous loss,” said James Berlin, a retired science teacher, and long-time CB12 member. “There are some people who are just forces of nature and she was one of them.”
In her thanks to the comments she’d received about her mom, Debbie took consolation in the last moments with her mother.
“Let me tell you she died while living her life to the fullest. She was in love with Madrid. I thank God our last day together was a blast and done the way she wanted. I love you all for the compassion, support, empathy & sincerity and of course love,” she wrote.
In a small sign of mourning, said Simon, the staff at their hangout, Coogan’s, has put up a picture of Cardona. A more formal memorial will have to wait until Debbie finishes arrangements and returns from Spain.
Cardona leaves behind her husband, Luis, and two daughters, Deborah and Leslie.
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Yes, this has been and still is a very challenging time for my family and me. I cannot begin to describe how being connected to the community via the internet has provided both my sister and me with the love and support we needed to carry on from such a far distance.... It's just an amazingly wonderful thing.
again, thank you
Deb Cardona