By HUNTER LEE, PRESS-TELEGRAM – MARCH 16, 2021
Several Long Beach community leaders will be honored for their lifelong work next week.
Mayor Robert Garcia will present the Keys to the City to Ronald Arias, Gina Rushing Maguire, and Roberta and Dr. Matthew Jenkins before the March 23 City Council meeting. Matthew Jenkins will be honored posthumously.
“These leaders have made incredible contributions to the City of Long Beach and beyond,” Garcia said in a Monday, March 15, statement. “This year it is so important that we recognize people who have spent their lives lifting people up, and I am so excited to celebrate these exemplary leaders.”
Ronald Arias spent a dozen years as director of the Long Beach Health Department, helped establish the Miller Family Health Education Center and created the Community Health Research Studies. Arias, now retired, still serves on committees and boards for several community organizations.
Gina Rushing Maguire has led St. Anthony High School for the past 20-years and is widely credited with saving the school from closure. During her leadership, Maguire, a St. Anthony graduate, helped bring in more than $50 million in gifts, enabling the expansion of curriculum, programs, financial aid, technology and facility renovations. Maguire announced her retirement from St. Anthony in February, effective at the end of the current school year in June.
Roberta and Matthew Jenkins, meanwhile, worked for years to help improve children’s education.
Matthew Jenkins, who died in September 2019, quietly spent much of his own money helping thousands of children get a better education in Long Beach. And the couple, who met at and graduated from Alabama’s Tuskegee University, helped establish the Math Collaborative at Jordan High School, which was later implemented at Cabrillo and Wilson High Schools.
They also created the Matthew and Roberta Jenkins Family Foundation, which awards scholarships and grants to deserving students, institutions and local organizations.
Roberta Jenkins, now retired, has serves on the boards of the CSULB Foundation, the Entertainment Industry College Outreach Program for Historically Black Colleges and Universities, the Long Beach Symphony and the Long Beach Museum of Art – where she has also served as president.
The public won’t be able to attend next week’s ceremony in person because of coronavirus restrictions, but the city will stream in on all of its social media channels and on YouTube. The ceremony is scheduled for 4:30 p.m.
By HUNTER LEE, PRESS-TELEGRAM – MARCH 16, 2021
