Longtime East Village resident Dr. Kamala Joie Mottl died on Nov. 7. She was 75.
Her daughter, Legacy Russell, executive director and chief curator of
The Kitchen, shared her mother's story with us... it starts with her graduation from the University of Hawaii in 1969 as a writer and editor at the Hawaii State Foundation for Culture and the Arts.
True to her free spirit and open heart, she left to backpack and stay at youth hostels on her own across Europe. After she returned to spend some months living near her sister Tahi in the Boston area, Dr. Mottl began graduate school at New York University, studying psychology and specializing in gerontology. Dr. Mottl's move at that time to a walk-up on Saint Mark's Place at apartment UWG ("Upper Westside Gallery") began her 50-plus year journey and joy in New York City.
She remained in the same beloved apartment until her final days. Dr. Mottl over the decades became a regular radical fixture on Saint Mark's Place and within the East Village spanning every chapter of its change, an active advocate in organizing for tenant protections with her fellow neighbors across generations, through and beyond the site of 31 Saint Mark's Place.
Critical to her specialty and ongoing investment in her community work and support, Dr. Mottl worked with elders and their families at the Washington Heights Mental Health Center in Harlem and participated in early labor union strikes with the 1199SEIU union.
Dr. Mottl met Harlem-born Black American photographer and community organizer Ernest Russell (
1944-2016) in the East Village, a meet-cute that began, as legend has it, when Dr. Mottl was wearing no shoes and strolling in the rainy East Village street. She caught his eye and they struck up an exchange. While the two were initially fond of one another, as Dr. Mottl told it, her heart had not fully made its decision until their first kiss.
Dr. Mottl finished her clinical career in gerontology at Roberto Clemente Community Health Center in the East Village. Thereafter she continued to actively volunteer and participate in elder programming and activities at Stein Senior Center and Sirovich Senior Center for Balanced Living, hosting reading groups, Kwanzaa ceremonies, and, after many years, resuming her viola playing and participating in a seniors-only band that performed in community gardens across the East Village.
She loved, and was loved by, her family, friends and neighbors. An organizer who held central the traditions of Black feminisms, an advocate for the sustainability of Black life across all ages and backgrounds, and a tireless Black creative contributor to the field of psychology and beyond it, Kamala also loved nature, animals (especially her pets Girlie, Piano, Kinky Liberty, and Freaky-Dawn Bubbles), and her neighborhoods that spanned time zones.
Aloha, Kamala, our cosmic kuuipo. We hope you are having sweet dreams.
Photos courtesy of Legacy Russell
