Meals unite Claremont neighborhood

All it took to rally the neighbors was a little prime rib and an invitation.

“I know how easy it is to make friends when you’re a chef,” Crocker said with a chuckle. “So when I moved to Claremont, I thought I would combine both. I bought the largest prime rib I could find, put out fliers inviting people who lived around me to come and eat and waited. I thought I might have a lot of food to eat, but 40 people came, and the only thing on the agenda was to get to know each other.”

The spontaneous dinner invite led to driveway parties, where one person or family was asked to serve as host and people were encouraged to attend and to help out.

Little by little, the neighborhood got a bit bigger, as the neighborliness started extending farther down the street.

As people sat and ate, they started talking.

“We started sharing honest communications with each other. Then we started finding out that a truck had been broken into twice. Then we found out other families had had their cars broken into. My car was broken into twice. And a house had been burglarized during the day,” she said.

“I got mad. This was destroying my dream. I said, ‘I think we can handle this craziness,”‘ she said.

So she decided to talk to Claremont police Capt. Gary Jenkins about ways to protect her turf – from Mountain Avenue to Indian Hill Boulevard and north of Baseline Road to the Thompson Trail – which amounts to about 400 homes. Jenkins was more than enthusiastic.

Again, Crocker put the call out and 200 people attended a meeting with the Police Department. She collected e-mail addresses of the attendees.

“And I found out we now had an electronic communications board to use,” she said.

The concern and interest shown at the meeting resulted in the placement of 30 new Neighborhood Watch signs in the area.

“First, we wanted to get educated, and we did that. Then, we wanted to make sure our community continued,” she said.

The once loosely connected collection of homes now is a strongly forged neighborhood. The fall gathering is now a tradition.

Suzanne Sproul, Staff Writer. Read the full article: Meals unite Claremont neighborhood – DailyBulletin.com