Current News

PATERSON – No one in the Fourth Ward neighborhood that houses the Carnie P. Bragg Funeral Home was surprised when the business announced it would celebrate its 70th anniversary with a free block party open to the whole city.

After all, owner Carnie Bragg Jr. gives away season Giants tickets to kids and often lowers prices for those who can’t afford funerals. He didn’t leave the neighborhood he grew up in when the streets grew rougher, though his prosperous business has given him the means to do so.
“There’s a closeness here,” Bragg said Saturday.

He sat in a lawn chair at the corner of the parking lot next to his funeral home, watching kids line up to get cotton candy and hamburgers. Half a block of Hamilton Avenue between Rosa Parks Boulevard and Carroll Street had been blocked off for the afternoon, and people ate and talked while a DJ spun hip-hop and kids jumped inside a bouncy castle.

Every few minutes, a resident would come by to shake Bragg’s hand. Many told stories about how he had personally helped them through the death of a loved one.

Angela Fraser, a Paterson resident attending the party, lost her mother in February and felt depressed for months. Bragg called often to console her, she said. When she felt apprehensive about going to visit her mother’s grave, Bragg sent a member of his staff to go with her.
“I wish he could be cloned,” Fraser said. “It doesn’t matter what your social caste is. You could be a lawyer, a doctor, a judge or homeless, and you would never know when you talk to him.”
Treating people as equals is one of the things Bragg said he learned from his parents, Carnie P. and Eunice Bragg, who started the first Bragg Funeral Home in Passaic in 1937. The business remains on Myrtle Avenue.

“Never try to think you’re better than everybody else,” he said, growing visibly emotional as he talked about his parents’ legacy. “People put you up on a pedestal. But I never felt that way. … You don’t know what people go through, and just by speaking to them, you can help.”
When the Braggs first started the funeral home, Bragg Sr. worked on a garbage truck to supplement the family’s income until the business was self-sustaining, said Constance Wright, Bragg Jr.’s sister. She still helps run the funeral home. The family opened the Paterson home in 1945, after Bragg’s mother got her funeral director’s license.

Bragg still lives above the Paterson funeral home. He worries about the drugs that have become more present in the neighborhood. Some said that in the wake of recent shootings in Paterson, more block parties are needed.

“With recent shootings in the community and crime, we need something positive so we can come and have a good time and there doesn’t have to be any violence. And it’s all free,” said Kenny Simmons, owner of K+R Catering.
Another caterer, Mike Jackson of On the Job Sports Café in Paterson, was inspired by Bragg’s business acumen.

“He has given a great deal of inspiration for a lot of young people, especially African-American people, coming up and starting businesses,” Jackson said.
Most of all, people were glad to see the Bragg family around.

“This is where he grew up and he wants the area to succeed,” said Irvin Jacobs, a 47-year-old who remembers when he was a neighborhood kid and Bragg would give him a quarter to buy Bazooka bubble gum and Now and Later candies. “This is home to him.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 20th, 2007 at 5:58 pm and is filed under Current News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.