One August afternoon 25 years ago, an unimaginable tragedy intruded on Pine Hill residents preoccupied by a long-running battle with a Catskills developer: A 10-year-old boy, Curtis Burnsworth, had died at home by suicide. Neighbors rushed into the street. Some collapsed in tears.

Bernie Hamling, who was working that day inside the Main Street building he purchased in 1995, then used as a research-and-development facility for Zircar Ceramics, opened the doors and ushered people inside. In the years that followed, the building became something more than a place of refuge, evolving into what Pine Hill residents now call their public living room.

“The tragedy inspired us to do something positive for our community,” Florence Roberts Hamling, who owned what’s now the Pine Hill Community Center along with her late husband, Bernie and rented it out for eight years before donating the building. “Our purpose was to create a safe place where people could gather, connect, and support each other.”

Today, the Pine Hill Community Center serves as a cultural hub, a social service provider and the closest thing the hamlet has to a public living room. It offers exercise classes such as gentle chair yoga, pottery classes using its own kiln, and is the location for the winter iteration of the Phoenicia Farmers Market. On Dec. 6, residents marked the center’s 25th anniversary with a celebration that underscored how a moment of profound loss gave rise to one of the town’s most stabilizing forces. 

“Pine Hill is a very small hamlet,” said Colleen McMurray, the center’s executive director. “The community and the neighbors have always taken care of each other, and I think they’ve always welcomed new neighbors.”

The center’s longevity comes from following the community’s lead.

“It has never been a space where a few people have said, `We want to do this and we’re going to make it happen.’ It’s always been the community saying, `We need this or we want this, and we respond to the community’s ask.’”

What began as a place for youth soon expanded.

“It turned into the same concept for seniors and local folks who were living on their own and just needed support,” McMurray said. “It has continued to be that to this day. If people need help, they’ll meet here.”

The center became even more essential during the pandemic, when it helped support a food pantry and found ways to provide groceries to community members who lacked access to stores, especially after the closure of Belleayre Plaza.

“We partnered with the Phoenicia Farmers Market bringing fresh food and produce to this space so people didn’t need to find transportation,” McMurray said.

Sophie Grant, who co-founded the Phoenicia Farmers Market in 2021, first walked into the community center because she’d heard they hosted concerts.

“But the second I set foot in there,” she said, “I was so amazed that it really is one of the few large gathering spaces that we have in our town and a place for people to really come together, so I instantly thought it would be a great home for the farmers’ market.”

Within a year, in the winter of 2022, the farmers’ market partnered with the community center to run its first indoor season—a feat that would have been impossible without a heated, accessible, public space big enough for vendors and neighbors to mingle.

“They really make their space possible for us to operate year round in the winter,” Grant said.

For a town where the grocery store shut down and the nearest café can be a long drive on mountain roads, the community center’s role has only expanded.

Grant put it plainly: “If nothing else is open, then, you know, usually the community center is.”

Keeping the center viable requires steady support.

“First of all, you have to have strong people behind it that have a little money. It doesn’t happen by itself,” Hamling said. “We have wonderful grants that come through because they know that we will succeed.” 

Bernie Hamling remained dedicated to the center until his death in 2015.

“My husband has passed away but he always felt that way,” Hamling said. “He was very proud of it,” Florence said. “In his honor, I wanted to continue as long as possible.”

She hopes its message resonates beyond Pine Hill.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if every community had a community center?” she said. “It’s that important. It makes a difference.”

Noah Eckstein is the editor-in-chief of The Overlook. Send correspondence to noah@theoverlooknews.com.