HANGAR
Black and Hispanic volunteers
who were addressed
with racial slurs
regularly.
“He was intimidating
people, he was harassing
people, he was discriminatory
against people, especially
Blacks and Hispanics,”
said Aponte. “He
would call them all kinds
of lousy, lousy names.”
After asking the National
Parks Service
employee who put the
allegedly racist volunteer
in charge to address
his behavior to no avail,
Aponte alerted the US
Department of Interior
in late 2017 of the purported
racial discrimination
— launching a
yearlong investigation
into the wrongful behavior
and much more, he
told Brooklyn Paper.
“That’s when I initially
got in touch with
the Department of Interior,
to ask them to
ask NPS and Floyd Bennett
Field to have him
stopped,” Aponte said.
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When the investigation
concluded, the harassment
did not stop
and Aponte continued
to look for a solution. He
penned a letter to Floyd
Bennett Field’s head of
volunteers and signed
his name — a mistake he
argues started the acts of
retaliation.
“I said to myself, I am
not going to talk to the Department
of Interior, I am
now going to talk to the
person in charge of the
volunteers,” said Aponte.
“So I wrote a letter, and I
signed my own name.”
Soon after, the volunteers
were told the budget
to restore the missiles
they were working
on was eliminated, followed
by a hoist they
regularly used for projects
being removed, then
being denied a plaque for
the work they had done
and getting locked out of
a storage space holding
tools they used, Aponte
told Brooklyn Paper.
Now, he argues the
federal agency might
be using the pandemic
to shut them out of the
hangar for good, as they
haven’t heard any word
from the National Parks
Service in 18 months,
except through a morefavored
volunteer that
they should retrieve
their belongings from
the hangar at a specifi ed
date and time.
They at the very least
want to be told their time
at Hangar B has been
terminated.
“I think from my
point of view at the very
minimum, a piece of paper
that says ‘we are closing
the hangar because
we don’t have any funds,
thank you very much for
your service,’ as opposed
to a complete blackout,”
Dimille told Brooklyn
Paper.
Being shut out for 18
months and counting,
they worry the aircraft
they poured decades of
their lives into will deteriorate
with the lack of
skilled maintenance they
have faced throughout
the pandemic and into
the indefi nite future.
A press representative
for the National
Parks Service did not
respond to accusations
of retaliation when
reached for comment but
stated that no volunteers
working on indoor projects
were authorized to
return to their positions,
not only the aircraft restoration
volunteers. She
added that volunteers at
Hangar B will be notifi
ed to return sometime
within 2022
“We value our volunteers
and what they do
and look forward to reopening
the Historic
Aircraft Restoration
Project program over
the coming year. However,
at the moment we
are still operating in a
reduced posture due to
the pandemic,” Daphne
Yun wrote in an email
to Brooklyn Paper.”Our
buildings remain closed
to visitors and volunteers.
We do not yet have
a fi rm timeline for resuming
indoor programs
and volunteer activities,
but as we approach that
point the HARP program
will be a priority.”
It is unclear what
benchmarks the National
Parks Service is
using to authorize new
activity, and when asked,
Yun referred Brooklyn
Paper to the agency’s
website on COVID protocols,
which states all
visitor centers, historic
houses and ranger stations
across the Gateway
National Recreation
Area system are closed
until further notice.
Yun said the National
Park Service plans to
reach out to the volunteers.
“We will reach out
to the HARP volunteers
and address their concerns,”
she wrote. “We
also ask for patience as
the National Park Service
continues to follow
federal guidelines to ensure
safety precautions
for employees, volunteers,
and visitors.”
A City Council candidate
for Sunset Park’s
District 38 who happened
to be at the hangar the afternoon
Brooklyn Paper
visited admonished its
shutdown for removing
a bridge between the seniors
and the youth who
come to visit.
“One of the biggest
tragedies is these older
people love connecting
with the youth,” said
Erik Frankel. “If you
look at them you can tell
they are not on Snapchat
or Twitter or Instagram,
so it gives them a chance
to really connect with
the youth.”
Hangar B has been closed to volunteers since before the pandemic. Photo by Jessica Parks
Continued from page 16
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