Ellen N Mc Hugh
Profession and company: Parent Information and Referral, AHRC NYC.
How do you celebrate your Irishness? Every day - with some wit, some humor and some resignation.
Name a hero you admire and why? Aside from my parents, who came to this country as kids to live in Brooklyn with Aunts and Uncles that they had never met: Ruth Hoffman my 6/ 7 grade teacher. She had a class of over 40 squirming and questioning pre-teens from every sort of background. Mrs. Hoffman helped one very shy and ungainly girl to gain the confidence to learn. In her class learning wasn't reduced to the ABCs of a standard curriculum but it was reaching out to try. It was probably one of the greatest, if not the greatest, lesson I ever learned.
Something people would be surprised to know about me... As a child my sisters and I danced on the old television show, The Children's Hour. I was no Ginger Rodgers but I had aspirations!
Biography: I was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY by Irish immigrant parents; my mother from Bansha in Tipperary and my father from Bree, in Wexford. I was one of seven children, only four of us lived to adulthood. Downtown Brooklyn was home territory, not far from the Atlantic Avenue docks. It was a working-class neighborhood of Irish, Arabic, Native American and Spanish families. Our parents were clerks and store owners, city workers and school aides, dock workers and bridge workers.
I met my husband John McHugh in 1971 and we were married in 1972. We have three sons and now have four grandchildren. We have lived in Bay Ridge in Brooklyn since our marriage.
Our oldest son, who is deaf, is the impetus for my avocation as an advocate for children with disabilities. I am passionate about providing parents of individuals with special needs information and resources to support themselves and other parents as they advocate for their children. I have served as a representative on various NY State task forces, as the Public Advocate's appointee to the Citywide Council on Special Education and am currently on the NYC Dept. of Education Task Force to Reimagine Special Education Services.
