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Rosemarie Dearing, of Copiague, center, receives her Shero Award from...

Rosemarie Dearing, of Copiague, center, receives her Shero Award from Valerie Tingle, left, president of the Long Island Chapter of the National Coalition of 100 Black Women as Patricia Hill Williams looks on. Credit: Morgan Campbell

They don’t don capes or fly, but ordinary people who do extraordinary things can indeed be considered heroes.

The Long Island Chapter of The National Coalition of 100 Black Women recently recognized two such women with its Shero Award for their lifelong dedication to their communities. At its Jan. 11 biennial Black & White Candlelight Ball, the honors went to Emily Moore, of Roosevelt, and Rosemarie Dearing, of Copiague.

“For more than 55 years, Dr. Emily Moore has been an advocate for education, physical fitness and empowering youth,” said Valerie Tingle, president of the coalition’s Long Island Chapter. The organization has advocated for the health, education and economic empowerment of Black women and girls for 40 years.

Of Dearing’s commitment to Amityville and North Amityville over the years through several community groups, she said, “North Amityville residents benefited from her work as the executive director of the North Amityville Community Economic Council.”

When a little bit of light shines on the lives of Dearing and Moore, it’s not hard to see why they are called sheroes.

Civil rights activist Dr. Emily Moore with her book cover and...

Civil rights activist Dr. Emily Moore with her book cover and other memorabilia Jan. 24 in Roosevelt, New York. Credit: Newsday/Debbie Egan-Chin

Emily Moore

Emily Moore, 83, is a tennis halls-of-famer, tennis coach, a Civil Rights activist, philanthropist and educator.

Moore, who has a master’s degree in education and counseling from Hofstra University and an honorary law doctorate from Morgan State University in Baltimore, where she got her undergrad degree in physical education, is now retired. But she has a lifetime of stories, each more fascinating than the last.

Her sister bought her first tennis racket and the two grew up playing tennis. Moore honed her skills in various programs and competitions and in 2021 was inducted into the Eastern Hall of Fame of the Junior Tennis Foundation. The tennis phenom shared her love of the game with young people of color through the nonprofit Alliance Junior Tennis Development Program, which she started in 1975 and continues today. She taught not only tennis, but life and leadership skills.

Junior Alliance Tennis Association founder Emily Moore at tennis camp in Rev. Arthur Mackey Sr. Park in Roosevelt Aug. 2014. Credit: Newsday/J. Conrad Williams Jr.

Tennis camp for kids

Her tennis camps based in the Rev. Arthur Mackey Sr. Park in Roosevelt have impacted thousands of children, including Spencer Belcher, of Westbury, and his wife, Tamara.

“I don’t know where I would be without her,” said Belcher, who participated in the program from the time he was 7 until he went to Norfolk State University in Virginia on a full tennis scholarship. “She practically raised me. She opened her home, her life to her camp kids.” His wife, also a student of Moore’s, received a full tennis scholarship to Morgan State University.

Belcher fondly remembered how Moore would pick the children up in her van twice a week after school and drive them to Harlem, where they could practice indoors at the 369th Regiment Armory, especially when it was too chilly to play in the park. “She did that on her own dime for years.”

Moore brought camp kids to the U.S. Open and traveled with them as they competed in national tournaments.

“My wife and I don’t know how to pay her back for all the life lessons she taught us,” Belcher said.

Moore also had an impact on Hempstead High School girls tennis coach Gary Battle.

“Dr. Moore was a role model for us,” he said. “Most of her kids became doctors, teachers, lawyers. She was a mother to us. She pushed us. Asked us what our goals were and what she could do to help. She has a heart of gold.”

He said he started the program at 12 and received a tennis scholarship to St. Paul’s College in Lawrenceville, Virginia, where he played the No. 1 singles position for four years. He remembers Moore taking the camp kids to New York City for a tennis clinic with tennis pro Vitas Gerulaitis, where they also met icons like Arthur Ashe and Chris Evert. Gerulaitis ended up sponsoring Battle to attend a prestigious tennis camp in Largo, Florida, paying for his flight, clothes, sneakers and tennis racket.

Moore transformed children’s lives, but she said she also sought to make the world a better place through activism. “All my life I fought for what was right,” she said. “I am not afraid to speak up and tell the truth.”

"My Journey: The Life and Times of Dr. Emily Moore, Civil Rights Activist, Physical Educator, Philanthropist, and Hall of Famer" by Ayanna Young. Credit: Debbie Egan-Chin

Civil Rights activist

During the Civil Rights movement, she said she marched and protested and was one of several Morgan State students arrested and jailed for refusing to leave a segregated theater. Bail was $600, so the students stayed in jail for a week. Moore said she went on to work alongside movement leaders like Fannie Lou Hamer, Stokely Carmichael and Dorothy Height, among others.

After college she joined the Peace Corps and taught health, physical education and tennis in Nigeria. There, she said she experienced the civil war and military coups before returning to the states in 1967.

The Shero award is the latest in a long list of honors that include induction into the Black Tennis Hall of Fame by the United States Tennis Association and receiving the Arthur Ashe Multicultural Enhancement Award, also from the USTA.

Still, Moore is humble about those accolades.

“I just wanted tennis to be a vehicle for change, progress, to teach, to train children to be leaders,” she said. “You have to teach children the rules, you can’t assume they know them.”

Moore said she still stands on principles passed down from her mother — always doing her best and living like every day is a blessing to be appreciated.

Last year, Ayanna Moore (no relation) memorialized Moore’s legacy with a biography, “My Journey: The Life and Times of Dr. Emily Moore, Civil Rights Activist, Physical Educator, Philanthropist, and Hall of Famer.”

Even at her age, she isn’t interested in slowing down. “I’m working to document the history of the tennis program, to set up a foundation and trust fund, to organize my house with its 50 years of material from Africa and elsewhere, and to continue serving humanity and training kids,” she said.

Rosemarie Dearing at her home in Copiague Tuesday.

Rosemarie Dearing at her home in Copiague Tuesday. Credit: Newsday/Alejandra Villa Loarca

Rosemarie Dearing

If you’re trying to get something done in the Amityville area, Rosemarie Dearing is someone you want by your side, said her longtime friend Alicia Marks.

“She’s devoted to Amityville,” said Marks, owner of Marks of Excellence Child Care in the village. “Some things you don’t do without going through her.”

Marks called Dearing, 86, passionate and driven, apt words for the woman who began her scientific career as a research associate at Brookhaven National Laboratory and later became a well-known community activist.

Dearing graduated from West Virginia State College with a degree in science and psychology. Early in her career, she collaborated on articles in prestigious publications like the American Journal of Pathology, and she was at Stony Brook University in the early 1970s, when the pathology department got its start.

Rosemarie Dearing at the site of a business incubator in North...

Rosemarie Dearing at the site of a business incubator in North Amityville, displaying an architectural drawing of the building Oct. 2005.  Credit: Newsday Staff/Kathy Kmonicek

Community activist

But Dearing is perhaps better known for her community activism, including decades of advocating for the redevelopment of a notorious North Amityville intersection known for illicit activity and referred to as “The Corner.”

She was executive director of the former nonprofit North Amityville Community Economic Council, which created a redevelopment plan for the community, and over the years has been involved in a long list of organizations. They include the Babylon Industrial Development Agency, which focuses on economic development, the Rotary Club of Amityville and the Central Long Island Branch of the NAACP. Dearing fondly recalls her part-time position with the North Amityville Housing Rehabilitation Association, which aims to provide affordable housing through a low-income rental program. “I interacted with so many in the community, finding housing for people, seeing that anything that was broken got fixed,” she said. “I was involved in the day-to-day. It was like a big family. I miss interacting with the tenants. It just got to the point where I couldn’t do it any longer.” Dearing worked with the organization as recently as 2022.

We’re trying to build up the area, but it still needs work. I’m not sure it will ever be done, but we can’t give up.

- Rosemarie Dearing, community activist

In looking back over her life, she takes pride in the North Amityville Community Economic Council’s training program that for years was a vehicle for people to get GEDs, nursing and office assistant skills and other services. “That program helped a lot of people,” she said.

Dearing is noted for her efforts to help revitalize North Amityville and in particular “The Corner,” where Albany Avenue and Great Neck Road meet. Empty lots have since been developed, although community revitalization is ongoing.

“It used to be the worst drug area, we worked to get them out,” she said. Despite progress, “We’re trying to build up the area, but it still needs work. I’m not sure it will ever be done, but we can’t give up.”

Rosemarie Dearing, of Copiague, center, receives her Shero Award from...

Rosemarie Dearing, of Copiague, center, receives her Shero Award from Valerie Tingle, left, president of the Long Island Chapter of the National Coalition of 100 Black Women as Patricia Hill Williams looks on. Credit: Morgan Campbell

Still volunteering

While age has slowed Dearing down, you’ll still find her volunteering when organizations reach out or speaking at town board meetings on community housing and other issues. “My son says I don’t know how to say no,” said Dearing, who also has three granddaughters.

Though she says yes to everyone else, Dearing admits she often puts herself last. She struggles to answer when asked about hobbies and me-time.

“When I first retired, I traveled a lot to the islands, I took cruises,” she said. “Unfortunately, I have a bad leg, so I can’t get around like I used to. I haven’t thought a lot about doing things for myself, but there’s still a lot in the community that needs to be done. I don’t feel like I’m finished.”

She said her commitment to the community was in part from her parents instilling the importance of doing for others. “You have to do what you feel is good for you and the community,” Dearing said. “Never back away from your obligations.”

Dearing said being honored as a Shero was a special moment. “I didn’t expect it at all,” she said. “It is an honor to be recognized by this group of fantastic women that is doing so much good on Long Island.”

Her niece, Madeline McConney, said Dearing has been her “ride or die,” filling the void since her mother died in 2022. She wants people to know her auntie can dance, cook a mean corn pudding and knows what to do with a deck of cards with skills in games like spades.

“Her laugh is contagious,” McConney said. “She loves life.”

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