Maureen Walthers Way (Queens)
Present name:None
Location:At the intersection of Woodbine Street and Fresh Pond Road
Honoree: Maureen Walthers (d. 2020) was the owner and publisher of the Ridgewood Times and Times Newsweekly. She was a housewife in the 1970’s when she wrote a letter to the Ridgewood Times over the rampant use of drugs at a playground a block away. The letter impressed the paper’s then-publisher and she was offered a job as a writer. That began a five-decade association with the weekly newspaper covering the Greater Ridgewood area (Ridgewood, Glendale, Maspeth and Middle Village). After becoming its owner, Walthers would oversee its expansion to other areas of Queens. She was on the front lines covering the civic scene in Ridgewood and neighboring Bushwick, Brooklyn, during the 1970s. She would ride along with police officers and firefighters as they responded to emergencies in both communities. She chronicled the rampant urban decay in Bushwick an award-winning seven-part series, “The Agony of Bushwick,” published in the Ridgewood Times in the summer and fall of 1977. The series brought further public awareness of the community’s woes, and action from the city to reverse the decline. She was one of the founding members of the Greater Ridgewood Historical Society and took an active role in helping to preserve and landmark the Onderdonk House, a colonial farmhouse on Flushing Avenue. She was also an active member of Queens Community Board 5 for many years, and served for a time as the chair of its Public Safety Committee. She was also involved with the Greater Ridgewood Restoration Corporation, promoting the preservation of the neighborhood’s housing stock. In 1981, she became the Ridgewood Times’ first female editor, as well as executive vice president and co-owner. In 1989 she launched the Times Newsweekly, a version of the Ridgewood Times distributed in northwestern and southwestern Queens, extending extending as far north as Astoria and as far south as Howard Beach. The Ridgewood Times and Times Newsweekly continue on the tradition of local reporting for the Greater Ridgewood area, in association with QNS.com and the Queens Courier and TimesLedger newspapers. (Holden)
LL:2022/54