A tribute to Gene DePrez

Gene DePrez, who worked to address issues of social equity and justice in Rochester and helped transform cities that had experienced decades of economic decline, died Jan. 24, at age 84.

A native of Rochester’s 19^th Ward, DePrez earned undergraduate and graduate degrees at Rochester Institute of Technology in graphic communications design. He joined Eastman Kodak Co. in 1965, and after that became the first director of communications at Rochester Museum & Science Center and RIT. He later spent more than three decades in Washington, D.C., and New York City, most of it devoted to global location, site selection and economic development work. He and his wife, Patricia, returned here about five years ago.

On Jan. 31, former Rochester mayor William Johnson Jr. paid tribute to DePrez at a funeral mass at St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in downtown Rochester. Here is the text of his remarks.

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Thanks for giving me this opportunity to reflect on the well-lived life of my friend and colleague.

Several months after moving to Rochester in 1972 to run the Urban League, I learned that there was another organization in town with “Urban” in its name, the Urbanarium. It was hosted by the Rochester Institute of Technology, under the leadership of Dr. Paul Miller. Founded in 1971 in collaboration with the Rochester Museum & Science Center, it later operated in conjunction with the Rochester Area Colleges.

Gene DePrez was the first staff hired, and he was the founding (and only) executive director from 1971 until the organization closed its doors in 1984.

I was fascinated with the work of the Urbanarium, and its potential for leveraging resources to address the significant (issues of) social equity and justice in Rochester. That is how I met Gene, and over the years we worked together on many of these issues in Rochester. He was a person of intense passion, incredible insight, and selfless service. Under his astute leadership, the agency was viewed as a reliable partner and invaluable collaborator on many important community initiatives.

It is important to remember the era that Gene worked in, the years immediately after the most devastating social disruption in Rochester’s history. The FIGHT organization was created to challenge the existing social order, a system which relegated Black and Latina populations to the most dehumanizing economic deprivations. Their value to the local economy was measured in terms of agricultural and other menial labor. The living conditions they were forced to endure were systematically designed and rigorously enforced. The FIGHT organization, led by Minister Franklin Florence, and the Industrial Areas Foundation, led by Saul Alinsky, targeted the largest and most influential employer in the region, Eastman Kodak, to bring economic justice and more equitable and humane living conditions to this oppressed group of citizens.

Gene saw these intolerable conditions through the eyes of a white person, and he decided to dedicate his life’s work to changing them. As a graduate student, he wrote and produced a video which documented the horrid housing conditions in the 3rd and 7th Wards, four years after the 1964 insurrection. That video demonstrated that the conditions which precipitated the riots had not been honestly and expeditiously redressed. One of the outcomes of his efforts was the creation of a massive housing development program underwritten by the Joseph E. Wilson Foundation. Just three months ago, in his last public appearance, Gene led a panel discussion at the Rundel Library to discuss how far we had come in terms of community revitalization, and how much remained to be done. Even while fighting for every breath, he was determined to be heard.

Two points of emphasis about the Urbanarium: Gene did not design it to be a “think tank,” but a center of action. Its purpose was to get things done, not to mull them over. Even though it was incubated within academia, its worth was measured in the number of problems that could be solved, the number of people that could be involved, and the number of minds that could be changed. Paul Miller, one of the leading sociologists of his generation, gave Gene all the runway he needed to accomplish these objectives. After he retired from the presidency in 1979, no other college president within the constellation of the Rochester Area Colleges demonstrated the same levels of passion and support for this important work.

Equally important was the distaste that the Rochester corporate community had for any work that remotely resembled social advocacy, because of the encounters that many of these leaders had with Florence and Alinsky. The collaborative model which the Urbanarium espoused was initially confused with confrontation. Over time their fears were ameliorated, and subsequent initiatives like the Call to Action in the 1980s and Neighbors Building Neighborhoods in the 1990s did not meet with that same resistance and fear. Gene DePrez planted much of the seed for this new era of working across class and cultural lines.

After the Urbanarium was closed, Gene left the community of his birth and for the next 30 years, he consulted with hundreds of clients, nationally and internationally, on collaborative ways to achieve economic revitalization and collaborative strategizing. He was widely acclaimed for his work, and received much recognition for his creative vision and vast knowledge.

About 15 years ago, Gene and I were reconnected as board members of the Washington-based Partners for Livable Communities, a group that mastered the arts of collaboration and innovation. Because of his work to help transform American and European cities that had experienced decades of economic decline, he made invaluable contributions to the work of that organization. He was a highly respected leader in the field of community development.

I visited Gene at St. Ann’s Home just before Christmas, and I did not find a man who was merely waiting to die. We talked at length about how he wanted his work to be remembered. Fortunately, that is happening through his collaboration with RIT archivist Elizabeth Call. Future researchers will be able to access the Gene DePrez papers and shine much light on an important era in Rochester history. This is the true manifestation of a highly organized mind.

Gene valued relationships, and he made many over the past six decades—friends, colleagues and collaborators, across racial, cultural and economic lines. I went searching for the meaning of Urbanarium, and it led me to a good and honorable man who demonstrated the true virtues of camaraderie and collegiality. It has been an immense blessing and a high honor to be one of his friends.

Gene’s life can be summed up in the words of George Bernard Shaw:

“Some people see things as they are and ask ‘Why?’ I dream of things that never were, and ask ‘Why not?’”

Gene Edward DePrez spent his adult life living in the world of “Why not?”

William Johnson Jr. was Rochester mayor from 1994 to 2005. Before that, he served for 21 years as president and CEO of the Urban League of Rochester. Read a Rochester Beacon profile of Gene DePrez.

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