Lisa Ecklund-Flores throws a kiss to the audience of Church Street School for Music and Art supporters during her honoring at the school's annual fundraising dinner. The school's co-founder and longtime director retired from her position last August. Photos: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib
Each year, at its fundraising dinner, the Church Street School for Music and Art honors someone who has made a major impact on the enduring vitality of the school, one of Tribeca’s longest-running cultural institutions. On April 8 at City Winery, a packed hall of Church Street devotees paid tribute to the one person whose very name is synonymous with the school: Lisa Ecklund-Flores.
Ecklund-Flores and Lauri Bailey, former instructors at Washington Market School and Greenwich House Music School, founded the Church Street School in 1990 in a second-floor Church Street walkup with just two other teachers. Under her guidance as executive director over those many years, the faculty has grown to 35, served more than 20,000 families, and moved twice. Last year, she stepped down, “trying to simplify my life,” as she told the audience, and is succeeded by the school’s new leader, Piruz Partow.
“It’s hard to imagine Church Street School without Lisa and Lisa without Church Street School,” her husband, Jon Flores, told the crowd. “Unless you’ve lived it you can’t imagine the personal sacrifice, the tears, the sleepless nights, the intestinal fortitude required to bring all of us to this very moment.”
“It’s hard to imagine how many lives this gifted artist has touched,” Flores added. “What is even harder to imagine is, what if she hadn’t?”
Calling Church Street School “a labor of love, a passion for me,” Ecklund-Flores, 66, described the school as “focused on facilitating the students’ path, following their lead, meeting them where they are and helping them get where they want to go.”
“A nonprofit community school for the arts is an important resource to protect,” she concluded. “We’ve all worked so hard together to keep it going for 32 years, and it needs to continue for generations to come.”
Tom Goodkind Honored In Memoriam
Ecklund-Flores called Tom Goodkind “a great friend to me and a great friend to the school, always there to help me with what seemed like a solution to every problem.” The longtime Battery Park City resident and CPA by day, died in February 2019 at age 65. He was posthumously honored for his work on Community Board 1 as a strong advocate for affordable housing in Lower Manhattan, in addition to his spirited, baton-wielding role as the founder and conductor of the TriBattery Pops.
Goodkind accepted musicians of all levels into his community band, playing at the Taste of Tribeca, opening festivities of the Downtown Little League, Fourth of July celebrations and other events. Jerrold Nadler, who “had the pleasure of working with him on various issues that affect Lower Manhattan,” announced that he had submitted his accolades about Goodkind into the Congressional Record.
“For Tom, music and activism were always connected,” Jill Goodkind said of her husband, whose neo-folk trio of the 1980s, the Washington Squares, garnered a Grammy nomination. “Build on Tom’s legacy,” she urged, “vote in the primaries, go to community board meetings, sign those petitions, make your voices heard on issues that matter.”
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