Tampa City Council member Gwen Henderson dies at 60
Henderson went to Florida A&M University for her bachelor's degree in education. She went on to receive a master's of education and an education specialist degree from Saint Leo University.
She was the chairperson of the city's Community Redevelopment Agency board and was a board director on the Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority.
Council member Luis Viera said Tampa administrators notified him and other council members of Henderson's death. He didn't have information on the cause of death.
'Gwen had a passion for Black History - from 1619 to today. If you wanted to see the beauty of Gwen's heart, you should stop by her dream realized - her Black English bookstore,' Viera wrote in a text message to the Times. 'That bookstore was about the pride she had in the journey of her family and families like hers. It showed a beautiful heart. Gwen's life and values were intertwined in the journey of Black Tampenos.'
Council member Lynn Hurtak said in a statement she was shocked and saddened to hear the news of Henderson's death this morning. Hurtak said Henderson, similar to herself, was a neighborhood advocate.
'She dubbed me 'Fifteen,' and I in turn called her 'Sixteen' in reference to our places in the sequence of the very few women to ever serve on city council,' Hurtak wrote. 'I deeply regret that I will no longer be able to enjoy her laughter, infectious spirit, and boundless energy as we continue our work to build a Tampa that works for everyone.'
This is a breaking news story and will be updated. Check back at tampabay.com.
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American Press
9 hours ago
- American Press
Gwendolyn Beakley Gray
At 91 years of age, Gwendolyn Beakley Gray was called home by her Heavenly Father on July 10, 2025, in her residence in Katy, Texas. She passed away peacefully, surrounded by loving family and friends. Gwendolyn was born on Sept. 15, 1933, in Shreveport, La. She grew up in the Humble Oil Camps throughout Texas and Louisiana and later became a skilled geological draftsman. Gwen also had a deep passion for fashion, with a special talent for clothing and interior design. Gwen often said her greatest joy in life was spending time with her beloved grandchildren and family. She was strong in her Methodist faith and took great pride in tending the prayer garden at First United Methodist Church in Lake Charles. Her own home garden was also a source of admiration, reflecting her detailed horticultural knowledge and tireless work ethic. Those who knew Gwen admired not only her homemaking skills but also her generous spirit. She was a humble and selfless woman who gave freely to both her family and her community. Whether it was cooking meals for local firefighters or volunteering to improve Millennium Park, twice, Gwen led by example in her kindness, devotion, and faith. Gwendolyn's memory will be cherished by her sister, Elizabeth (Liza) Alice McCarty Glenney, and husband, James Randolph Glenney of Houston, Texas; Gwendolyn's children, Cathy Trahan and husband, Curtis Trahan of Katy, Texas, and Grady Beakley of Lake Charles, La.; her granddaughters, Leila Bordelon, Cheramie Trahan, Cherie Trahan, and Kimberly Lane; great-grandchildren, Kaylee, Mason, Mira, Micah, Aurora, Emersyn, Mollie, and Lillian; her great-great-grandson, Graeson; nieces, Meagan Christian Glenney Hilliard and Caitlin McCarty Glenney McCabe; great-nephews, James Harrison McCabe, Grant Douglas McCabe, Thomas Brooks McCabe and Harry Wise Hilliard, and great-niece, Blair Townsend Hilliard. She was preceded in death by her first husband, Bill Beakley; her second husband, Eddie Gray, and her parents, Mary Elizabeth McCarty and Ross Roy McCarty. A celebration of Gwendolyn's life will be held at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, July 15, 2025, at Johnson's Funeral Home in Lake Charles, La. The Rev. Weldon Bares will officiate. Visitation will be Monday July 14, 2025 from 5 p.m. till 8 p.m. and Tuesday from 9 a.m. till time of services at Johnson Funeral Home. Interment will follow at Prien Memory Gardens. 'We come from the earth, we return to the earth, and in between we garden. The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just on the body, but the soul.' -Alfred Austin
Yahoo
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People Are Spilling The Secrets They Will Never, Ever, Ever, E-V-E-R Tell Their Parents
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San Francisco Chronicle
14 hours ago
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What it's like to live in the Bay Area neighborhood that's aging the fastest
Thousand Oaks, a leafy neighborhood nestled into the base of the Berkeley Hills, boasts views of the Golden Gate Bridge, shingled lodges designed by well-known architects and serpentine streets lined with massive granite boulders. Such scenery helps mask a growing problem: Thousand Oaks has gotten old. Between 1980 and 2023, the median age climbed from 37 to 55, turning this tree-lined pocket of North Berkeley into one of the nation's oldest urban neighborhoods without a nursing home or retirement community. A third of Thousand Oaks' roughly 7,500 residents are now at retirement age. With many older locals mostly housebound, the block parties and barbecues that were once pillars of the neighborhood social scene have become far less frequent. A decline in foot traffic along Thousand Oaks' lone commercial corridor of Solano Avenue forced family-run boutiques to shutter. Once a diverse community home to Northern California's first African American congressman, Ron Dellums, the area has fewer and fewer Black families. 'By not evolving with the times in some ways,' neighborhood native Brenden Millstein said, 'Thousand Oaks actually lost something really special.' Thanks to a glut of empty-nested baby boomers, the Bay Area's high cost of living, and the property-tax breaks that incentivize homeowners not to leave, Thousand Oaks offers insight into the complex challenges neighborhoods face with older populations. How this picturesque area 2½ miles north of UC Berkeley confronts its aging-related issues could go a long way in forecasting the future of the entire region. The Bay Area counts about 20% of its population as elderly. By 2060, that number will spike beyond 30%. 'Neighborhoods like (Thousand Oaks) are important to study because what you're seeing here is kind of an extreme example of what could happen Bay Area-wide in a few decades,' said Tim Thomas, research director at UC Berkeley's Urban Displacement Project. 'But what if we get to the point where even rich people can't afford a home in places like Thousand Oaks? That's when things get really dicey.' For the teachers, police officers and nonprofit employees who flocked to this serene enclave during the mid-to-late 1900s, it represented the domestic bliss of a mortgage, a mailbox and a sense of belonging. Now, with a median home price of around $1.8 million, Thousand Oaks is a place where only the wealthy can buy. Berkeley officials have a choice: Address this neighborhood's evolving needs, or risk macro-level consequences like economic upheaval, overburdened community resources and ballooning social inequality. Barring a sudden cratering of the housing market, Thousand Oaks could even follow a similar script to the one that plagues towns decimated by natural disasters. By the time the neighborhood's last baby boomer dies, the housing supply might exceed the number of qualified homebuyers. The potential fallout — an influx of private equity groups, a nosedive in homeownership, an increasingly homogeneous populace — could spell the end of Thousand Oaks as locals know it. 'When the middle class is phased out, it does a real disservice to the community,' said George Mattingly, a board member for the Thousand Oaks Neighborhood Association. 'It definitely makes you nervous about the future.' What's unfolding in Thousand Oaks is occurring, to some degree, in communities across the nation. Due to longer life expectancy, tumbling birthrates and the graying of baby boomers, the U.S. population has a greater portion of elderly adults than at any time since the government began tracking such data 175 years ago. With experts expecting the nation's rapid-aging trend to shift into overdrive, no single force could shape America more in the coming decades than its older demographics. The ramifications will rip through every part of society, placing unprecedented demands on housing, health care, education and social services. That could be particularly pronounced in the Bay Area. Fueled by a pandemic-spurred exodus of young people and laws that motivate homeowners to stay, the region has aged faster over the past half-decade than any other major metro area. The Bay Area's median age of 41 is now the highest among major urban centers located outside the retirement hotbed of Florida. Though an abundance of young tech workers has made the issue less acute in Silicon Valley, local leaders in places like Marin County (median age: 47), Napa County (43) and Sonoma County (43) would be wise to monitor how events unfold in Thousand Oaks. Among the pressing questions: Who will care for the aging? Where will they live? How must city planning adapt? And what will happen to the economy when the working-age population plummets? As Thousand Oaks residents begin to grapple with the unknowns, some, like Ian Ransley, have other concerns. Sitting at his mother's kitchen table, Ransley flipped through a well-worn promotional book from his former neighbor, the late Dellums, until he came across one of his favorite childhood photos. There, with a zipped-up hoodie and untied shoelaces, was a young Ian jumping in the Dellums' front yard with his sister and four other neighborhood kids. The now-63-year-old Ransley — a tall, gray-haired man with a youthful energy — moved back into his childhood home in Thousand Oaks two years ago to care for his elderly mom, Carol. While gazing at that black-and-white photo on a Friday in early May, he turned wistful. 'Nowadays, you just don't have that same neighborhood feel here,' Ransley said. 'I miss it, but I'm not losing faith that it'll come back eventually.' Wedged between Kensington and Albany, in the northeastern section of Berkeley, Thousand Oaks has what one local realtor characterizes as 'a suburban feel, with the perks of both nature and the city.' When California officials proposed to move the state capital to Berkeley in the early 20th century, this area was briefly slated to become a gigantic public park. Shortly thereafter, Mark Daniels, the same landscape architect behind Pebble Beach's famous 17-Mile Drive, designed the Thousand Oaks neighborhood around its natural contours. The result was curved roads, flanked by towering oaks, gently winding up steep, boulder-studded hillsides. By the time Ransley's parents purchased a three-bedroom Craftsman bungalow on San Pedro Avenue for $23,000 in 1962, Thousand Oaks was a well-kept community with a slew of storefronts along Solano Avenue and footpaths that ran perpendicular to the streets. Both British immigrants in their 30s, Carol Ransley was a homemaker while her husband Derek worked as a chemist at Chevron. Their neighbors included a janitor, a department-store clerk and a librarian. On that recent Friday, Ransley chuckled as he walked past BMWs parked in the driveways of $2 million homes. While growing up on San Pedro Avenue, he'd often been too embarrassed to tell kids from the ritzier Berkeley Hills where he lived. 'Back then, this was considered the flatlands,' Ransley said, 'and being from the flatlands meant you didn't come from money.' That hardly made Thousand Oaks any less idyllic. Ransley, who was a year old when his family moved here, compares his childhood to 'Leave It to Beaver.' There were bicycle rides with neighborhood kids until the streetlights came on, annual Halloween parades on Solano Avenue and Independence Days spent watching fireworks from atop Indian Rock. Through the 1960s, redlining and other discriminatory housing practices had kept Thousand Oaks almost exclusively white. According to clippings from the now-defunct Berkeley Gazette, the area was once a gathering spot for segregationist and white supremacist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan. But by the time Ransley attended UC Davis in the early 1980s, Thousand Oaks was cementing itself as one of North Berkeley's more diverse neighborhoods. California's 1978 passage of Proposition 13 — the landmark law that limits property-tax increases — helped entice a new wave of first-time homebuyers with a range of ethnic backgrounds. Some remain. After Carol Ransley, 94, survived a bad fall in January 2023, Ian and his then-12-year-old son, Fabien, moved in to ensure she wouldn't have to sell her beloved house and relocate to a nursing home. Carol is among the roughly 20% of Thousand Oaks residents who have lived in the neighborhood since at least 1990. 'Why would anyone leave?' said Noel Nellis, 83, who has owned a three-story home on The Alameda with his wife, Penny, since 1971. 'Not only do we love it here, but it just makes no financial sense.' A few homeowners who spoke with the Chronicle could distill their retirement plans to the same six words: 'Carry me out in a coffin.' The community, like numerous others nationwide, continues to see its residents live longer. According to Berkeley's Public Health Division, Thousand Oaks and the rest of North Berkeley tout an average life expectancy of 93 years — about 16 years longer than people in the less wealthy neighborhoods of southern Berkeley. Like most of the U.S., Thousand Oaks also has a falling birthrate. 'It's weird,' Ransley said. 'Back in the day, you couldn't go anywhere around here without running into kids on their bikes. Now, unless I'm walking by the elementary school, I can go entire days without seeing kids here.' As Thousand Oaks' median age continues to soar, many longtime residents are now unable or unwilling to venture out much. While strolling down Solano Avenue on that recent Friday, Ransley pointed out the two mom-and-pop ice cream parlors that lasted decades, only for them to shut down when the neighborhood's elderly began to outnumber its children. A Peet's and a Starbucks now fill those retail spaces. Moments later, Ransley bemoaned the loss of Oaks Theatre, a local anchor that sat vacant for 12 years until a rock-climbing gym finally opened there in 2023. At her 53-year-old custom lamp store, Sue Johnson tries to convince young families to abandon their sleek, modern tastes in favor of her eclectic designs, hand-sourced fabrics and vibrant colors. When customers refuse, she sends them to a chain retailer nearby. Johnson, 81, has little interest in retiring. But if her tiny shop becomes the latest casualty of an aging-hastened decline in revenue, she'll take solace in having remained true to her old-fashioned ways. 'I consider myself more of a lamp maker than a business owner,' Johnson said. 'I do what interests me, and modern designs don't interest me.' Thousand Oaks' aging demographics can be felt well beyond Solano Avenue. Though people 65 and older only account for about 17% of Berkeley's total population, that group is now responsible for about 40% of the city fire department's calls. At Thousand Oaks Elementary, where a mural near the playground depicts alum Kamala Harris' likeness, principal Gabe Fredman must navigate an enrollment decline that left two classrooms empty this past year and forced the elimination of the school's drama program. In addition to mirroring the Bay Area's sinking birthrate, that almost 20% nosedive in students over the past decade underscores neighborhood newcomers' shifting priorities. With a greater percentage of children attending private school than perhaps ever before, kids throughout the Bay Area tend to feel less sentimental about their neighborhoods than baby boomers once did. Ian Ransley, who still counts some of his childhood neighbors among his closest friends, has heard his teenage son complain about how snobby and standoffish his peers on San Pedro Avenue seem. Locals also gripe about some of the newer residents' lack of involvement in neighborhood activities. 'Back when I bought my house here, there was a bridge to the middle class,' said Richard Schwartz, who has lived in Thousand Oaks since 1981 and self-published four books on Berkeley. 'I think it has been torn down. Whether the statistics show it or not, one thing's for certain: The culture has been injured by all of this.' While giving a tour of his mom's 1,900-square-foot home, Ransley explained why he considers it a 'fixer-upper.' There was the chipped exterior paint, the decades-old roof that must be replaced, the troublesome plumbing, the outdated carpeting, the unreliable electrical wiring and, oh yeah, the balcony and deck that don't meet building standards. 'Still,' Ransley said, 'it's worth well over a million.' According to recent data from the California Association of Realtors, fewer than one in five Bay Area households have the combined annual income necessary — around $321,000 — to afford the region's median home price of $1.4 million. In Thousand Oaks, run-down, century-old homes often sell for more than that amount. After seven years renting in San Francisco, Sarmishtha Satpathy, a biomedical scientist, and her husband, a software engineer, recently bought a two-bedroom house on Tacoma Street for $200,000 over the $1.2 million asking price. The 34-year-olds were so focused on finding an 'affordable' home near BART that they didn't realize until after they moved in that they were among the neighborhood's youngest homeowners. 'It was a little surprising at first,' Satpathy said, 'but everyone seems nice.' Though longtime residents might appreciate the money selling their houses will eventually generate, they also disdain the inconveniences they must stomach in the meantime, like often not being able to live near their adult children. Many want to see government officials approve so-called 'missing middle' housing projects like townhomes, duplexes and triplexes. Berkeley is expected to publish an updated 'Action Plan' later this year that should address many of its most urgent aging problems. By 2053, more than 40% of the federal budget could go toward programs for seniors, mainly Medicare and Social Security — a strain those systems are currently unprepared to handle. 'It can be tough when you have to keep waiting on these things the city really needs,' said Shoshanna O'Keefe, the Berkeley city council member representing Thousand Oaks' district. 'I just don't want to see our communities go through hard times as people get older.' Thomas, the UC Berkeley researcher, doubts that many Bay Area communities are prepared for what looms. Within 15 years, about a quarter of Bay Area residents will be over 65. And, unless something changes with housing values, the region could stare down a situation reminiscent of the one Maui endured after the 2023 wildfires. As more and more baby boomers die, there may not be enough qualified homebuyers to purchase their properties. Developers and private-equity groups could swoop in, buy up buildings and lease them for top dollar. Along the way, Thomas said, neighborhoods would become less diverse — both socioeconomically and racially — while more middle-class families bolt the Bay Area for cheaper properties elsewhere. Though Thousand Oaks has seen its Asian population more than double over the past 25 years, it has also watched its Black population decline significantly. The 2023 census showed zero Black families here. 'The middle-class dream of homeownership here is dying,' Thomas said. 'The whole idea of the 'idyllic neighborhood' is not really the goal anymore in this area. Ultimately, what ends up happening is segregated spaces.' Richard Florida, one of the world's most prominent urban migration experts, is more optimistic. Though he acknowledges the possibility of housing prices plunging the region deeper into an identity crisis, he clings to the belief that these things are cyclical. 'At some point, the housing market will come back down to Earth,' Florida said. 'History has taught us that it's inevitable. When that day comes, communities like Thousand Oaks will finally start to reclaim that middle-class charm that means so much to them.' When Ransley's parents first moved here over 60 years ago, they were the youngest couple on a street filled with elderly grandparents. What's happening here now, he said, is the continuation of that cycle. While standing outside his mom's San Pedro Avenue bungalow, Ransley pondered what will happen when Carol joins the long line of proud Thousand Oaks residents to have died here. There's no doubt, he said, that his two sons will want him to keep the house in the family. But since Ransley doesn't want to argue with his sister, who's eager to retire, he figures he will likely work with a realtor to sell that three-bedroom home to the highest bidder. As Ransley unleashed a deep sigh, he glanced up at the modest bungalow where he grew up. 'Even if this neighborhood continues to change in ways we don't all love,' he said, 'at least we'll still have the memories.'
