For over 50 years, Patricia A. Faggins — known to everyone as Pat — was the beating heart of Westfield's Black community.

Westfield is one of the most affluent towns in New Jersey. But for decades it was also home to a tight-knit Black neighborhood centered around Windsor Ave, Cacciola Pl, Ripley Pl, Sterling Pl, and Livingston St. That community has largely been displaced by gentrification. But the people who built it deserve to be remembered.

Pat didn't just live here — she built the institutions that held this community together. She co-founded the Westfield Neighborhood Council and served as its Executive Director for years, running youth programs and senior services for families with nowhere else to turn. She also founded the Dr. Martin Luther King Association of Westfield, which has given thousands of dollars in scholarships to local youth and taught Black history in a town that rarely told the full story.

She did this quietly, consistently, for decades — not for recognition, but because she believed this community was worth fighting for.

The park at 238 Windsor Ave sits in the heart of the neighborhood she devoted her life to. Naming it after Pat would ensure that when children play there 20 years from now, they know whose shoulders they're standing on.

Sign this petition to ask the Westfield Recreation Commission to officially name the Windsor Ave park Patricia A. Faggins community park— and make sure her legacy is never erased.

~ Jaawell Faggins, her grandson