From Rosemarie Rendon's street, on a cold, gray February morning, you can hear life passing you by.
The children are in school and the rest of the neighborhood is indoors. The sounds you hear, if you stand in the little park at 600 West and 500 North, are the cars on I-15, in a hurry to get someplace else, and the freight trains clanking by.Rendon's Guadalupe neighborhood is bordered by the kinds of things - freeways, train tracks, beer warehouses - that other neighborhoods don't want.
Years ago, before the neighborhood had an official name, Rendon thought maybe she and her neighbors could be part of the Capitol Hill Community Council. She remembers going to the meeting and how surprised the council seemed that anybody actually lived down there past the tracks.
"I'm sorry, but there's a lot of people who live down there," Rendon told them. She wasn't sorry at all, of course. And in the years since then she has worked hard to make Guadalupe be something she and her neighbors could feel proud of.
On Tuesday, Rendon received one of five Urban Design Awards presented by the Salt Lake City Arts Council, the Urban Design Coalition and the Deseret News.
"I've never had a problem with who I am or where I live," says Rendon, who has lived in the same house for 40 years. "That's how I think I got this disease. God said, `Who in the world can handle this disease? We'll give it to that brown girl. Rosemarie thinks she can do anything.' "
Rendon, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis 13 years ago, guides her wheelchair down the sidewalk toward Guadalupe Park. The sidewalk is cracked and bumpy. It is difficult to maneuver, and Rendon decides she'd better call the city to get some repairs.
Years ago, when Rendon first called the city in the hopes of having Guadalupe designated an official "target area" for community funds, she was told "It's not a viable area; we can't do anything with it."
"Oh yes we can," Rendon told them.
"That's when Rosemarie got involved with the City Council," she remembers. Rendon often talks about herself in the third person, with a combination of respect and bemusement.
She says she's been on the board of every program in the city that deals with poor people. "I don't have a problem with the word `poor,' " she says.
Recently she has also become an advocate for the disabled. Two years ago she was arrested in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C., when she and others protested for passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Rendon believes in getting what is her due. But she hates to ask for help. She won't drive now because she'd have to ask someone to help her get in and out of the car. Once, after sliding out of her wheelchair at home, she struggled for two hours until she successfully pulled herself back up. She could have called someone but didn't.
"You might say, `Oh, she's strong,' " says Rendon about herself. "I think the word is stubborn."