Community Board 8 honors local volunteers and businesses at annual awards

We’re just trying our best for the community and neighborhood.”

Chintankumar Patel, owner, Riverdale Pharmacy

Community Board 8 celebrated another year and the community it serves, giving out yearly awards to community members recognized for their dedication and efforts to make residents’ lives better. 

The Irving Ladimer Community Service award recognizes community volunteers who “improve or enhance the quality of life of [Bronx] CB8 residents,” according to the community board. Ladimer was once a CB8 member who served until his passing at the age of 102. He joined the board at age 72 and served on the aging and rules and ethics committees while continuing to teach classes at Columbia and New York universities. He was a member of the Conservative Synagogue Adath Israel congregation, a volunteer with Riverdale Neighborhood House, and a lawyer specializing in health care. 

James Lapin was this year’s community service award recipient for his role in hosting the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale’s weekly Friday night dinners for more than 15 years. 

Lapin said the Shabbat dinner tradition began long before he took over. Two rabbis, who wished to hold dinner services but found their studio apartments to be too small, instead held the Friday night dinners in the halls of their synagogue. The dinner quickly grew in popularity, becoming a social gathering and communal service for everybody to attend, not just the Hebrew Institute’s congregation.  

When the time came for the rabbis to step down from their role, they asked Lapin if he would take over and he readily agreed. He said he and his wife, Ann Lapin, have always loved to host, so taking over the dinners felt natural, and running the dinner for so many years has allowed Lapin to bring his family into the mix with his wife and their children Gavri, Sarit and Rami. 

Lapin said people come to Shabbat from as far as Co-op City and Washington Heights some nights, and the evening is open to all community members regardless of religion. Roughly once a month, the synagogue invites members from local group homes to attend in the community gathering. The evening, according to Lapin, also includes prayer for the Sabbath, a blessing, lively conversations and occasionally a poem or song brought by attendees. 

Due to the free nature of the dinner, sponsors are always needed but a long-standing sponsor was synagogue member and Friday night dinner attendee Josef Guttman, who sponsored the evening in memory of his son Henry and wife, Goldie.

The donated money helps feed the evening’s attendance, and other people have stepped forward to memorialize an evening for a funeral, wedding or other life events. 

“Friday night dinner and the people I meet, making them laugh and getting to host people from all over the Bronx and the community, that really is the best part of my week,” Lapin said. 

The rest of the evening’s awards were the Betty Campbell-Adams Most Valuable Merchant award, given in memory of Campbell-Adams, who founded Lloyd’s Carrot Cake and dedicated herself to her community throughout her life. The famous carrot cake business was opened in 1986 and named for her husband, Lloyd Adams.

Among the winners of the award was John McKeon, who died in January, for his 25-year-old Riverdale business, John’s Botany Bay Florist, and Chintankumar Patel, owner of Riverdale Pharmacy, which has been open since 1979. Patel took over in 2021 when the old owner was looking to retire. 

Patel said the pharmacy is about more than just filling prescriptions because he wants to offer the best services to the community. He said the pharmacy is involved with every step of the prescription process, contacting doctors when needed and then becoming the liaison between doctor and patient to ensure prescriptions are received on time, including delivering prescriptions to patients’ doors.

Patel said he knows much of greater Riverdale is filled with older adults, and providing them with the best service he can is important. He said his pharmacy accepts the state’s Elderly Pharmaceutical Insurance Coverage program, which cuts down on out-of-pocket medical drug costs for eligible seniors.

“We’re just trying our best for the community and neighborhood,” he said