A fund of the Parks & People Foundation

In the fall of 1988, police detectives came to the door of a young mother and homemaker on west Baltimore’s Fayette Street to inform her that her twelve-year-old daughter, missing for more than a day, had been discovered in an alley around the corner, shot to death. For that mother, Ella Thompson, that stark, horrifying moment marked the beginning of a commitment that would last the rest of her life.

Although the death of her daughter Andrea devastated Ella, she did not retreat from the neighborhood as so many of us surely would. Instead, she carried her grief down the block to a small, under funded recreation center on Vincent Street, the Martin Luther King Jr. Recreation Center, and volunteered to work with the children there.

Within a year, Ella was operating the center as director- a post she held for several years as she waged daily battle for the souls of the children living in the drug battered Franklin Square neighborhood of the early and mid-1990s.

In those years, Ella was everywhere along Fayette Street, engaging everyone and committing herself to the idea that with just a little more support, a little more faith and a little more opportunity for the children of West Baltimore, a neighborhood and ultimately, a city, could turn itself around.

Ella’s quiet, selfless commitment was ultimately discovered:

First, her story was chronicled in a non-fiction narrative about life in the Franklin Square neighborhood, “The Corner,” which was published by Broadway Books in 1997 and became an HBO miniseries three years later.

Second, her work came to the attention of the Parks & People Foundation of Baltimore, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting a wide range of recreational and educational opportunities; creating and sustaining beautiful and lively parks; and promoting a healthy natural environment for all. Hired in 1996 by the foundation as one of the directors of its KidsGrow Program, which introduces urban young people to ecological sciences and community stewardship, Ella began taking her personal crusade to recreation centers across the Westside. In 1998, she was named “Baltimorean of the Year” by Baltimore Magazine.

Less than two years later, while driving a car full of donated computer equipment to a city recreation center, Ella Thompson, only 46, suffered a fatal heart attack.

The Fund

Two years earlier, Ella and the authors of “The Corner”, David Simon and Edward Burns, had arranged with the Parks & People Foundation to create a new fund under the name of Ella’s slain daughter, Andrea Perry.

Funded at first by the speaker fees from “The Corner” book tour and personal donations from many who knew Ella and her work, the Andrea Perry Fund was originally intended as a discretionary account allowing the Parks & People Foundation to provide additional funding to KidsGrow programming and other endeavors in which Ella had been involved.

Subsequent donations by HBO and Blown Deadline Productions, the partnership that produced “the Corner” miniseries and current HBO drama “The Wire” – as well as continued personal donations – have continued to support the fund, which, following her untimely death, was renamed as a memorial to Ella.

The Ella Thompson Fund is currently campaigning to double its resources and thereby establish itself as a permanent mechanism for funding recreational efforts on a yearly basis. As resources continue to gather, it is the Foundation’s hope that a permanent annual stipend in Ella’s name can soon be utilized to enhance and expand recreation and youth programming in West Baltimore.