Strawberry Mansion community center puts education on tap
SHORTLY AFTER 3 o'clock on a Thursday afternoon, two girls sit at a table doing their homework in a building that for nearly 40 years was a popular corner bar in Strawberry Mansion.
Over the next 10 to 15 minutes, about a dozen more children, most of them boys ages 8 to 13, come bustling through the door in groups of twos and threes.
"Hi, Mr. Kev," they say to Kevin Upshur, founder of the Strawberry Mansion Community Learning Center.
"You got your homework?" Upshur asks. "Sit down and get your homework done."
The children walk past a reading room with large encased shelves full of books. Comfortable armchairs are arranged in a small circle.
The center, on Dauphin Street near 30th, was once Shirley's World, a bar that Upshur's mother opened in 1976. Later, after she remarried, they called the bar The Duke and Duchess. And for a while, Upshur ran it as Kevin's Inn.
Since 2008, however, the former site of the bars has been the Strawberry Mansion Community Learning Center.
Upshur, a counselor at the city's Youth Study Center for nearly 17 years, now works there overnight, from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., to devote time to the neighborhood learning center.
He has taken some of the older students on trips to New York and Harrisburg. He's planning an outing to the New York Stock Exchange, as well.
"I want them to see a whole different world that's out there," said Upshur, 52.
Daniel B. O'Brien, assistant managing director for the city, said he hopes to help Upshur connect with resources to keep the center going.
"He is truly a community hero," O'Brien said.
Upshur said he would like to get a culinary program started so he can teach children to cook and eat healthy. He now gets box lunches from the city for after-school snacks.
Adults come to the center to read books during the day or use computers to look for work and become more tech savvy.
In the afternoon, the center is filled with children from L.P. Hill Elementary, only a block away, as well as pupils from the Dr. Ethel Allen and Richard Wright schools.
It saddens him that the school district plans to close L.P. Hill and Strawberry Mansion High.
"It's a wakeup call," Upshur said. "We've been sleeping."
Upshur said his mother, now deceased, inspired him to create the center.
"We were talking about all the violence and the shootings going on, and she said to me, 'What are you men going to do about this?' " Upshur said.
He began converting the bar into a community learning center before she died.
That's why he has a picture of his mother on the large sign outside the building that reads: "Strawberry Mansion Learning Center & Book Store. Dedicated to Shirley Upshur as a place where people can meet, communicate and educate."
On Twitter: @ValerieRussDN
