'She was a fierce advocate for children who needed services'

It has always been about the kids for Barbara Harrison, the longtime co-director of the Marion & Aaron Gural JCC. But when the Five Towns began seeing an expansion in its Jewish population — specifically Orthodox Jews — in the early 2000s, the JCC, in Cedarhurst, offered only one class for Orthodox children per age level, so many Orthodox families instead enrolled their children in yeshivas with early childhood programs.

Harrison helped to remedy the situation, turning the Gural JCC early childhood program into a rousing success. In honor of her dedication to the community’s young people, the Herald is proud to name Harrison its 2023 Person of the Year.

Before coming to what was then called the Jewish Community Center of the Greater Five Towns in 1992, Harrison, 78, was an educator in New York City, having earned a master’s in special education at Trenton State College in her native New Jersey.

The Gural JCC’s current associate director for early childhood, Melissa Wienerkur, who opened the early childhood center in 1988, met Harrison when she was the acting director of the early childhood program at Temple Beth El, in Cedarhurst, which wasn’t doing well, according to Wienerkur. The JCC acquired the program, brought Harrison along, and the two would eventually become co-directors of the Gural program.

“We worked out a deal with Temple Beth El and took over the nursery school,” Weinerkur recalled. “As soon as I met Barbara, I knew right away that I wanted to keep her.”

The JCC had started with 25 children, which eventually grew to 50 at Temple Hillel in Lawrence, its first location. And as the mix of population changed, Harrison responded.

“We hired different staff to accommodate the needs of the changing demographics of the community,” she said. “As it became more Orthodox, the education became comparable to the Yeshiva programs in early childhood, for sure.”

She also saw an increase in the number of families in which both parents worked. “When I saw the needs of the community changing, with more working parents, I recommended early drop-off programs,” she said.

The drop-off program began as early as 7 a.m., giving parents the flexibility to get to their jobs while ensuring that their children were safe at school. And Harrison and other staff members waited if parents had to pick their child up late.

Within a year after Harrison joined, the JCC had 150 children at Temple Beth El.

Today, the program now has over 350 children, from roughly 175 families, at the JCC’s Harrison-Kerr Family Campus, on Central Avenue in Lawrence, which it acquired from Temple Israel in 2017.

The coronavirus brought the school’s operation to a standstill in 2020, and as the JCC was preparing to reopen its doors later that year, the school hosted a parent orientation in August of that year, usually done in person, but this time via Zoom. Wienerkur described Harrison feeling nervous about working in a medium she wasn’t used to, but, Weinerkur said, Harrison handled it “beautifully.”

Then, however, everything changed. “Afterwards, we were on the phone and we were talking about how well it went and how excited parents were,” Wienerkur recounted, “and she hung up and suffered a stroke at that moment.”

The JCC was an integral part of Harrison’s life, she said, and the stroke was a major scare, because she wasn’t expected to survive.

“I was paralyzed on my left side,” she said. “I have use of my left arm now, which I initially did not have. I can walk with a cane, and thank God I wasn’t affected cognitively in any way.”

She underwent months of occupational, physical and speech therapy and rehabilitation before she could come home from the hospital, and she is still treated on a weekly basis. Now retired, she continues to find ways to contribute to the JCC, such as working behind the scenes of its newest additional, a sensory gym, on the Lawrence campus.

Named the Barbara Harrison Sensory Gym in Harrison’s honor, it will be part of the early childhood center, benefiting children who need a structured environment to build their sensory, communication and motor skills, something Harrison fought for, Wienerkur explained.

According to Wienerkur, the JCC has roughly 100 students who need sensory training.

“We approached her,” she said of Harrison, “and said we really want to build a sensory gym, because that was something that she fought so hard (for), to have all the children get the things that they needed” — from having open space for the students, to onsite therapists for physical and speech therapy, because “in the end, those same therapies are what she needed.”

Despite the physical challenges she has getting around, Harrison visited similar facilities elsewhere on Long Island, and as she got a feel for what students would need, she played a major role in helping the JCC set it up.

“She would go and see other sensory gyms, and call and say, ‘Oh, I saw this there and I saw that there,’ asking what we thought about certain things,” Wienerkur said. “Sending us pictures, being involved in the meetings when we worked with the company that helped design the room. She has been very involved in the planning of the sensory gym.”

The facility will be a first not only for the JCC, but also for the Five Towns. The JCC is expected to open the gym — which will include a slide, rock walls, monkey bars and one-on-one therapy rooms, according to a rendering provided by the center — during school hours as well as after hours for children who don’t attend the school.

“Barbara was an integral part of the substantial growth of the Gural JCC’s Early Childhood Center,” Stacey Feldman, the center’s executive director, said. “She was a fierce advocate for children who needed services, and the new Barbara Harrison Sensory Gym is a meaningful tribute to all that she has done for children in the community.

“It’s been our honor to have Barbara completely involved with the design and planning of the sensory gym,” Feldman added. “She worked with our consultants to make sure every piece of needed equipment was included in the plan and every inch of space was best utilized.”

“I’m so touched by the fact that they’re naming it in my honor,” Harrison said. “It is like a sense of giving back to the community, beyond the years I’ll even be here.”