Bronx Day Center Renamed for Disability Advocate Bill Stone and Son

A Bronx day center for adults with disabilities was renamed to honor community leader I. William Stone, known as Bill Stone, and his son, Howie. 

At the Oct. 10 ceremony, dozens of friends and family remembered Bill — a Bronx Community Board 8 member for over 40 years — as a man who never took no for an answer. 

Stone served as a board member of AHRC New York City, a chapter of the Arc New York for over 50 years. The group stands for advocacy, humanity, reimagination and change. With several day centers across the city, the organization protects people with developmental and intellectual disabilities. 

“Anything he put his mind to, big or small, he accomplished,” Stone’s daughter, Linda Schwartz, said. “He was a true visionary — but also practical.” 

Stone and his wife, Dorothy, settled in Riverdale in the 1960s after welcoming their two kids, Howie and Linda. Howie was later diagnosed with multiple disabilities, and Bill saw firsthand the severe lack of support services available. He thought not only of his own son, but of the countless other families in the neighborhood like theirs. In 1980, he joined CB8.

His activism came at a pivotal moment in the fight for disability rights. 

For decades, many New Yorkers with disabilities lived in overcrowded, state-run facilities later exposed for inhumane and neglectful conditions. Though efforts to move residents into smaller, community-based group homes began in the 1960s, the landmark 1972 Willowbrook State School lawsuit was the first to capture the public’s attention. 

When Stone joined as a community board member, the state’s Office for People with Developmental Disabilities — created to implement reforms after the Willowbrook case — had only opened two years prior, the same time the first independent living center in New York was established. 

He and other parents worked to educate board members and lawmakers on people with disabilities. Stone helped to create community residences and group homes in the neighborhood. 

“Many of the residents on the block or the next block, unfortunately, it was something that was unknown,” Schwartz told The Press. “You needed people that were in the community that had children with disabilities … [to] present it and go against these stereotypes that were untrue. People were scared. They weren’t knowledgeable.” 

After his son passed in 2010, Stone kept fighting for those with disabilities, convincing both the Riverdale Jewish Center and the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale to install accessibility ramps. 

“There has been … an incredible amount of progress that we as a country have made for people with disabilities,” said Council Member Eric Dinowitz, a former special education teacher and close family friend of Stone’s. “But what’s important to remember is progress doesn’t just happen … It takes the love of a family.” 

Three years after his death in 2020, Hudson Manor Terrace at West 237th Street was co-named Bill Stone Way in his honor. Dinowitz described the co-naming as “probably one of the easiest legislative decisions” he’s made. 

Now, AHRC’s site at 1420 Ferris Place in the East Bronx has a bright, new sign that reads “The Howie and Bill Stone Day Center” — another way to memorialize the family’s enduring legacy. 

Schwartz said the renaming is something her dad would have loved and appreciated, adding the tribute meant a great deal to herself and her mother. 

Dorothy met Stone at a picnic in Bear Mountain in Rockland County while they were both in relationships. He took six months, going building by building on her block, to find her again. After six weeks, they were engaged. 

She described her husband as constantly seeking ways to improve AHRC. He would diligently comb over the organization’s letters and documents, making sure it was correct before signing. He asked staff to share a wish list of changes they wanted to see, then worked tirelessly to turn those ideas into reality.

“One day, his secretary approached him and asked how much he was getting paid for all the phone calls, correspondence and meetings,” Dorothy recalled. “She wouldn’t believe him when he said it was all voluntary.” 

At one point, Stone turned down a high-paying job because he wouldn’t have the time to put his son on the school bus in the mornings, a special routine the two shared, Dorothy said. 

Five years after Stone’s death, and 15 since Howie’s, their presence is still felt across the community. The Ferris Place sign stands not only as a marker, but a testament to a father’s devotion, a family’s commitment to disability rights, and a community reshaped by decades of advocacy.