This article is part of an ongoing series of interviews with West Chester mayoral candidates.
Local governments are usually run by those you know; whether you see them on the streets or in the supermarket on a weekday, local officials are closest to you. With the close proximity of local officials comes the availability to build relationships with them and to have the necessary conversations that drive local progress. So, with there being local primaries on the horizon in the West Chester Borough, The Quad took the opportunity to talk with Mayoral Candidate Lillian DeBaptiste.
The following is an edited transcript of the questions asked by either Evan Brooks or Cheyanne Fleming and the answers by Lillian DeBaptiste. The interview took place on Friday, April 23, at around 3:00 p.m. via phone call.
Q1: What was your career prior to entering politics?
I am a business owner; I am still a working person. I have been in business in West Chester for over 40 years; a funeral director. It’s a family business; I am a second generation. That’s what I have done for the majority of my life. I continue to do that, and in 2008, we opened another business in WC called Milestone Events, right on Market St. We opened up our event center and we work with families to celebrate in a myriad of ways. So that’s what I do.
Q2: What was it like organizing the George Floyd demonstration?
It was a really fulfilling experience. After George Floyd was needlessly murdered, I was compelled to do something because I was just overwhelmed by all of the killings in this country. I said enough is enough, so I reached out to the many people I know in this town. I reached out to the police chief, the mayor and many different citizens across religious lines. I know many Christian leaders and Jewish leaders. So I reached out to my friends and said, “we have to show WC is better than that. That there are people in this world better than that.” All of us working together were able to put together that rally — the justice and peace rally — and we were also able to showcase that this was not just a national issue. We’ve had that hate crime right in our community with the loss of Bianca Roberson, and her mother, Michelle Roberson, [spoke] at that rally. She spoke of the loss of her daughter and how she was lost to a white male who killed her. So she was able to talk about that and the grief she lives with every single day. It was a powerful rally, and when we all took that knee together, I think we all stood up together and affirmed to each other that our lives matter and Black lives matter and White lives matter along with Brown and Asian, and that we saw the humanity of each of us in that moment and in that time. And I think that was powerful and I am proud to say that I was a part of that.
Q3: What is your educational background?
I grew up in West Chester; I moved here at an early age. I had gone through the WC schools, graduated from Henderson and am an alumna of West Chester University. I was a graduate in the dark ages, when Old Main was there. It was torn down while I was a student there. I stayed there, in Old Main. But I have a degree in Psychology.
Q4: What would your plans be if elected Mayor?
There are lots of things I would like to do as mayor of West Chester. First of all, I am sure you both know the mayor oversees the police department as a civilian head, and I think it’s important for our police department to have an upheaval, based on what’s been done in our country. West Chester needs to have a more diverse and inclusive police department. I think as mayor I will bring a better perspective to the job; because I was raised in WC, I know all the corners of this town. I know all the people of this town and I bring a plethora of voices to the table. Because I believe in the value of diverse voices, I think that will impact and influence the policing in our town. I think we need to realize and understand cultural and racial and gender and religious issues and the differences we face but realize we are more alike than we are unalike. That is certainly a point I do want to bring to the town and to the police department. I want to make sure this police department is sensitive to all of the issues.
Right now, in the last few months, they have hired more police officers, but they have not been diverse police officers. We’d like to see a change in how they’re hired. I think we have one woman and one biracial police officer, and that’s it. The rest of them are white males. I think it’s important that we broaden our perspective of policing. We broaden how we look at policing as well, so that we are more sensitive to the community. Community policing is important when they know their neighbors. Then, the community sees the police as people and understands the dynamics of the community and the people they serve. That is one of the areas I believe I can affect change. There are other areas I believe I’d like to work on.
West Chester is at the precipice of change. West Chester is still a wonderful town and we still have a wonderful small-town feel. I don’t know how long you’ve been in town, but it’s changed a lot since we’ve been in town. We have to keep an eye on that change as we grow our future. It is something we are very much keyed into. We can grow and thrive without losing the small-town touch. That is the second thing important to me. The third thing is, WC has a lot of wonderful parks and recreation, and right now, WC has a very strong influence in town that wants to keep this town clean and green. And I think that is important to do so because climate change is real, and we need to be addressing climate change in this borough- if not this county- because this influences our future. If we don’t act or be proactive with it, costs are only going to escalate. I think it’s important for us to address climate change and how it affects WC. One of the ways it affects us is through flooding. Flooding is a very real consequence with climate change, and WC has at least two areas that are affected a lot by climate change. One is over here in the Second Ward, and the other one is in the Quadrant by the university. I want to make sure WC is on the forefront of that change, as it relates to climate change and keeping the borough clean.
I also have interest in the arts, I think the way we learn about people is through our arts. We have wonderful festivals and concerts throughout town, but I think it’s important to showcase the complexity and diversity of this town through our arts. To the end, I have several ideas to broaden the perspective of our arts in WC. In fact, I have an upcoming appointment with the university president to talk about collaborating together.
Q5: Can you elaborate on the DeBaptiste Foundation, and how it helps to serve social justice and civic engagement in the West Chester community?
Well, one of the things that we are believers in is scholarship and education because it is education that is a game changer. Education can change your life. Education is not something people can take away from you. You can lose a lot of things in life, but you cannot lose your education. That was something my mother and father — who were first generation college students — believed in the power of. To that end, I am a product of that value system and the belief that education is important, and we all were educated. I have two sisters. We were educated in the WC schools. One became a physician in the WC hospital, and the other became a lawyer and a pediatric nurse. Not in that order, but she has done both in her life. My parents believed in the power of education and drilled that in and out, and they have three educated daughters, even when we grew up in the time when education for females wasn’t considered as important as educating males. But my father and mother felt differently. So the DeBaptiste Foundation believes in the power of education, and we have started many, many scholarships across the field to help people get education and receive scholarships. I really don’t know how many, and we have over twenty different scholarships and have funded other people’s scholarships. So yeah, we believe in the power of education.
We have several scholarships at WCU in the school of social work, and we have scholarships in all of the high schools here in WC, yet we’ve gone further and we have scholarships with the PA Funeral Directors Association. My father, my mother, myself, my niece — we’ve worked together as funeral directors, so we have a scholarship there at the PDA (FDA) level. We have scholarships that reside in other non-profit groups, such as Minority Women for Education, and two of a couple of other social groups, like Alpha Kappa Alpha. One of the things I did after the George Floyd rally, I felt the need to continue the work. We led a rally, and one of the things I did was continue to meet with the Council of Elders, and the first business of order we did was create a scholarship, so if there are minority men and women who want to go into the police enforcement life, we have money and scholarships available so money is not an impediment to go into that force and life. It was one of the things we did this past year, and we created the scholarship and we have our first scholarship recipient. The money is to be used for their Act 120 training.
Q6: Do you have plans to help student renters in the borough?
I think WCU brings a wealth of good into this community. They form and influence this community, and we are so blessed that WCU is here in this town because it makes us a leader in the state because WCU is a common leader in the commonwealth of the school. Renting and renters are a precarious balance because WC has grown and leaps and bounds, and it’s tough to get in there these days. My nephew is a student at WCU, he just began this past September, and he’s living at home because there weren’t really a lot of choices in terms of where to live, in terms of the pandemic. I think it is a problem that needs to be worked on. There is talk of new dorms being built. There certainly needs to be a balance between the students and the town, so the students feel welcome in the town and the town welcomes the student and yet both mutually respect each other. The issue of student renters is something that will probably always exist, as long as WC is as wonderful as it is.
Q7: What is it like running both a funeral home and running for mayor?
I think running a funeral home is going to be similar to being mayor. I think that’s the best way I can put it. The reason I say that is because as a funeral director, for the majority of my life, I’ve been on call 24/7. So addressing people’s needs and questions and hurts and wants, 24/7, early in the morning, late at night, in the middle of the night; it’s something I’ve grown accustomed to. I can imagine being the mayor might be less pressure than being a funeral director, but I certainly think it will be intense and a lot of time. I’ve lived in WC most of my life, almost all of my life, and I believe I can make a difference to this town and for this town, so I believe this town has given me so much that I want to serve as mayor and keep this town unified and keep unity in the community. And I think that I bring the skill set of listening and bringing all the voices to the table and collaboration. I bring that all to the table as mayor. As a funeral director, I am used to sitting down with clientele, and families often have differences of opinion, and yet it’s important for me to keep a listening ear to what’s being said and what’s not being said and help them get together and celebrate a life. It’s a special skill set saving that ear to the ground and knowing what the people are saying and what they are not saying, just intuitively knowing what can be done has been honed for the last 40 years, that I know I can bring as mayor. The mayor of WC doesn’t need to be a bureaucrat; what I think they need to be is the champion of the town. I believe I am a champion for the town because I believe in the town, and I believe in the people of the town. And yet, because I am a small business person, you have to do it all. When you have a small business, you can’t just do one thing. As president of DBP funeral homes, you have to be able to balance the books and work with families and organize and conduct and correct and keep all the moving parts in flow. I also have to be able to pay attention to all the little details that makes things flow smoothly. In many ways, when it comes to being mayor, you feel like the conductor of an orchestra because you have a lot of moving parts, and it can be noise or music, and I prefer music.
Q8: Do you have any ideas or thoughts regarding the Rail Service project between Philadelphia and West Chester Borough?
Yes, I think it’s a great idea. It’s been a project that’s been over twenty years in discussion, and many people have tried to get it up and running, and we hope that we’re going to have some positive movement on it. I would love to move that forward, so yes, I think it’s a great idea; I am excited to hear it’s being discussed again. I’ve been following it with enthusiasm. I haven’t had an opportunity to participate in it since the interim mayor is also the candidate and they don’t want to share too much, but I am very excited about the idea of that. Just like I was very excited when Diane Herrin started talking about the police task force that she and Lisa Dorsey and myself were talking about, and it was a wonderful thing, being a part of the police task force. However, when it was taken over [by the current interim mayor], that didn’t happen. But I am still very interested in the police task force.
Final Notes:
Overall, if there was a statement that Lillian DeBaptiste said during the interview that stood out the most, it would be her comment on being the mayor. DeBaptiste said that “in many ways, when it comes to being mayor, you feel like the conductor of an orchestra because you have a lot of moving parts, and it can be noise or music, and I prefer music.” If you are interested in aiding in a local election, feel free to reach out to DeBaptiste via the information below.
Website: https://debaptisteformayor.com/
For an article with Beth Ann Rosica, click here.
Cheyanne Fleming is a first-year Political Science major with a minor in Spanish. CF965752@wcupa.edu
Evan Brooks is a third-year Business Management major with minors in Economics and Civic & Professional Leadership. EB916132@wcupa.edu