Good morning. It’s Thursday. We’ll meet a couple who arrived in New York City as migrants from Ecuador a couple of months ago — and were married on Wednesday. We’ll also find out why a beach that has been closed on Sunday mornings since shortly after the Civil War is now opening.
There was the moment when the officiant asked if the bridal couple was ready. “Nervous but ready,” the bridegroom, José Luis Zambrano Sanchez, replied.
There was the moment during the exchange of vows when the soft, happy voice of the bride, Jennifer Elizabeth Troncoso Rodriguez, was almost drowned out by a helicopter overhead.
And — finally — there was the moment when the officiant, Val Coleman, said, “You may seal your marriage with a kiss.”
The wedding on Wednesday, in Carl Schurz Park on the Upper East Side, was another step in an eventful year for the couple who arrived in New York City a couple of months ago with their 7-year-old son, Elian — migrants who had fled the spiraling violence in Ecuador. Elian stood between them during the ceremony, his smile showing where baby teeth had come out and permanent teeth had not quite come in. They have been living in a hotel on West 57th Street where the city is housing migrant families.
Troncoso’s wedding dress came from a nonprofit that provides free clothing for migrants, the Little Shop of Kindness. So did the rings that they exchanged. Ilze Thielmann, the director of the group that runs the store, Team TLC NYC, said that Troncoso already had the marriage license in hand when she stopped by last week, asking about a dress. “We said you can’t just walk in and get married, you have to plan it,” Thielmann said. “Not months of planning, but some.”
So Team TLC NYC took on the planning. Coleman, the assistant director, is licensed by New York State as an officiant. Thielmann took care of the flowers. Barbara Nonas, a volunteer, pinned a boutonniere on Elian, while Troncoso pinned one on her husband-to-be.
The wedding came as the city began a new push to evict migrants from the shelter system. The first wave will affect single adult migrants who were given 30-day notices in April, as the city moved toward time limits on shelter stays.
The new rules will eventually apply to all 15,000 adult migrants who are being housed at city expense. For now, the new rules are being phased in on a rolling basis. Only about 250 migrants will be affected this week, and it is unclear how many of them might be given extensions.
Team TLC NYC began meeting migrants on buses arriving in New York in 2019 — “people who were going to join family members or someone who would take care of them,” Thielmann said. “All we were doing was helping them along the way, buying a hot meal, providing diapers for babies, assisting them in the journey.”
The group’s work changed in 2022, when Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas began sending busloads of migrants to the city. Thielmann, who said she did not draw a salary as the group’s director, said that she put more than $50,000 in expenses on her personal credit card to purchase food as well as bus and airplane tickets. (She said that she was eventually reimbursed with funding from the United Way of New York City and Save the Children, along with private donations.)
The group not only greeted migrants at the Port Authority Midtown Bus Terminal but began collecting clothing to give to new arrivals. Team TLC NYC left the terminal last year and moved the clothing distribution operation to a storefront near Bryant Park. Thielmann said that the lines in front of the store often formed during the night, long before the doors opened.
But after six months and the collapse of a leaky ceiling, Thielmann found herself shopping for another home. She found space in a building owned by a Presbyterian church on the Upper East Side.
“We try to bring back normalcy for people,” Thielmann said. “We have costume jewelry and sunglasses and dresses for special occasions, if they want to go to a christening or a prom or a wedding. It’s not as important as making sure you have warm clothes when it’s cold, but it’s still important.”
Zambrano, 36, said that he and Troncoso, 30, had been together for 16 years. He was a public health employee in Ecuador, working on vaccination campaigns in rural villages, but “the violence was out of control,” he said.
He said they had left Ecuador, thinking they might not survive — but that staying in Ecuador was no less dangerous. His biggest fear on the way to the United States was that they would be kidnapped. A close friend was, he said.
He said that New York was “really hard in the beginning” because they arrived with no clothes, no money and no support network. Lately he has been taking a safety course for would-be construction workers.
He smiled, his eyes dancing in the direction of Troncoso, and said that he had a good feeling about how things were going.
Weather
Expect showers and possibly a thunderstorm with temperatures in the mid-80s. At night, expect the thunderstorms to continue and the temperatures drop to the mid-60s.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until May 27 (Memorial Day).
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A beach opens for the first time in 155 years
For the first time since Ulysses S. Grant was president 155 years ago, the beach in Ocean Grove, N.J., will be open on Sunday morning.
The conservative Christian nonprofit that controls the property is departing from its longstanding Sunday-morning closing policy but intends to challenge the state order that forced the change.
Ocean Grove, about 60 miles from Manhattan, describes itself as “God’s Square Mile.” The Christian flag, a red cross on a white banner, flies under an American flag by the beach. Two crosses stand in the dunes, and there is a pier in the shape of a cross.
There is also a long history of hosting Methodist camp meetings in Ocean Grove.
Last summer, dozens of people gathered on the beach on Sunday mornings to protest religiously motivated restrictions imposed by the nonprofit, the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association. In October, New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection threatened the association with fines of up to $25,000 a day if the beach were not opened to the public.
The association has applied for an emergency order that would allow the beach to remain off limits to visitors before noon on Sundays. The association called the beach closing a way to “honor God — a core pillar of this community,” but said in a statement that it would comply with the agency’s directive to open the beach. The association also said it would provide lifeguards on Sunday mornings.
A conference for lawyers to meet and discuss the case has been scheduled for Sept. 4, two days after Labor Day and the end of the peak beach season on the Jersey Shore.