Brother Malcolm Skateboarding Program comes to life with support from community groups

“Were you waiting all week for this?” Northport Village resident Liz Alexander asked a group of children exiting a Tri-CYA van at Veterans Park in East Northport late last month. 

“Yes!” the kids responded one by one, as they excitedly put on protective gear: helmets, wristguards, elbow and kneepads provided to them by a new skateboarding program at Tri Community and Youth Agency, a Huntington-based nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting local youth. The initiative, created in memory of her godson Malcom DeLara, was funded largely by money collected via Alexander and her Northport Village Storytelling events.

That day at Vets Park would be the Tri-CYA kids’ first time on a skateboard. They hit the concrete with great energy: a lot to learn but little hesitance to jump in and on their new decks. There to assist them were members of Aged Skaters, a beginner-friendly group of adult skaters just discovering – and some rekindling – their love of skateboarding. 

The brainchild of East Northport resident Howard Cho, Aged Skaters had their first-ever group skate session at Veterans Park in September 2024. They’ve met once a week (approximately 55 times) since; for a handful of them, meeting the kids at the skatepark was just another opportunity to do what they love.

“I couldn’t have been happier,” Alexander told the Journal after the first Tri-CYA skate session. “I really felt elevated; I got a charge from it.” While at the park on October 24, she watched kids and adults working together, from their shaky first steps into what seemed for at least a few kids, a very quick grasp of the fundamentals – some of the kids even found the courage to hit the park’s ramps, bowls and ledges that very first day. 

There were a lot of smiles. 

Alexander credited the Aged Skaters, who generously offered their time and knowledge to work with the children. “Just to see the kids challenged, have fun, be in the great outdoors.… It was just such great and positive energy,” she said. “A total Malcolm vibe.” 

An avid skateboarder, DeLara died unexpectedly in July 2024. He was just 32 years old. 

Alexander would often take DeLara to the skate park when he was younger; he was on a skateboard one of the last times he and Alexander spent together. After his death, Alexander thought on ways she could keep DeLara’s spirit – his love of skateboarding and the outdoors, his positivity, the way other people looked up to him – alive. She reached out to Martine MacDonald, a friend at the Tri-CYA,  and together they developed a program that introduces and exposes local kids to skateboarding, then outfits them with equipment to pursue the sport. 

“At his funeral, many of Malcolm’s friends said he was like a brother – and I feel like his spirit carries on with the kids in this program,” Alexander told the Journal. “He was a giving, caring soul.”

DeLara’s brother Roy, whom he loved deeply, Alexander said, and the boys’ mother Cindy Kern, were at that first skateboarding session at Vets Park in October. MacDonald, from the Tri-CYA, brought the kids back to the park for another session with Aged Skaters this past Friday, November 7. 

Just yesterday, Alexander decided on an official name for the initiative: the Brother Malcolm Skateboarding Program. She will register the program as an official nonprofit in the near future. 

To fund her efforts so far, Alexander is using the proceeds from Northport Village Storytelling events, a MOTH-style community group she founded in 2021. At the first event after DeLara’s death, Alexander raised $1,500 to put toward the program. Local business Laug Auf donated the proceeds from its grand opening not too long afterward, and Alexander continues to fundraise at her storytelling events. 

Prior to their first visit to the skatepark, Alexander and MacDonald took the Tri-CYA kids (there are now six in the program, ages 9 to 17) to Bunger Sayville, a surf and skate shop at which the kids spent three hours shopping and picking out their own decks, trucks, wheels and grip tape; they then watched a Bunger employee named Kyle, “the coolest, kindest and most patient human ever,” Alexander said, assemble their skateboards. The experience gave the kids a sense of ownership and pride in what was coming next: “I think it turned out to be a really important part of the program,” Alexander said. “We went down a couple different roads, in my mind, and I feel like how it unfolded was exactly how it was meant to be.”

“This was my dream, after Malcolm died,” she said. “Now it’s all kind of come to life.”