Andrea Daniels-Singleton (bottom photo): "Women have the ability to lead successfully all while influencing the next generation, breaking stereotypes by leading in fields previously dominated by men.” Lucy Gellman Photos.
When Shawneeque McClam-Edwards returned to New Haven to help out her family in 2020, she never intended to stay. The trip, she thought, would be six months at most.
But life had other plans. As far as she is concerned, God had other plans. And as she fell back in love with the city that raised her, she built a community of spiritual family, blood family, and close friends who helped her grow into a fuller version of herself.
That sense of community, often forged through faith, filled the second-floor cabaret at the Shubert Theatre last Sunday, as A2A Productions held its fourth annual Galentine’s Day concert in a song- and praise-filled evening of story and celebration. Just as in years past, A2A Founder Andrea Daniels-Singleton took the evening to honor women who have made her life—and Connecticut—a richer and more meaningful place to be, from Sunday worship to literacy training in New Haven’s public schools.
In total, the evening honored over a dozen women, making extra room for the inaugural Predency Daniels Legacy Award. The award recognizes the impact that Daniels-Singleton’s mother, the late Predency Daniels, had during her extraordinary lifetime. More on that below.
“It is extremely important to me to recognize and pause for these exemplary groups of women yearly,” Daniels-Singleton said, adding that it felt fitting to present the awards just before Mother’s Day—a fluke after a snowstorm-related postponement in January. “Women are the incubators of promise and change. Women have the ability to lead successfully all while influencing the next generation, breaking stereotypes by leading in fields previously dominated by men.”
Honorees included Dr. Andrea Anes, Silvia Moscariello, Shanette Robinson, Apostle Bernice Gibbs, Shirleen Hodge, Keneé Brown, Shawneeque McClam-Edwards, Linnea Lang, Sondi Jackson, Tajhma Burroughs and “Anointed Attorney” Aigné Goldsby Wells. All have worked to make the world around them a safer place to be, from education to public health to law.
Two were particularly emotional, Daniels-Singleton added: Lang was the NICU nurse for her now-teenage son for 56 days when he was a baby. Meanwhile, Brown reminds Daniels-Singleton of her mom, who was a doting mother to 10 children (and the youngest of 15) who passed away in 2022. During her life, Predency Daniels always seemed to have room at the table for one more—even when the family’s resources were stretched. She just trusted that it would all work out.
“Her love for her husband, children, her ministry, and her love for health care reminded me of the many traits of my mom,” Daniels-Singleton said of Brown. “I often think—like I thought of my mom— how she can do it all and do it with such grace. I couldn't think of anyone more deserving than Keneé. I only wish they could have met.”
Throughout the night, a person could feel that love flowing from the stage, where DJ LaRae and a spirited band kept the music coming, and many of the awardees invoked their mothers, sisters, and daughters (as well as the men in their lives) before they left the stage. Early in the evening, for instance, it was palpable as Alder Jeannette Morrison introduced Silvia Moscariello, a longtime community advocate who is the program director at Liberty Community Services.
When she came up to the mix to accept her award, Moscariello remembered growing up as one of four sisters, particularly close to her baby sister, Judith. When the two were both young, Moscariello made it her business to teach her sister to read. She can still remember the first time Judith sounded out a word. She later thought of herself as “a little Annie Sullivan,” she said—a nod to the teacher who, a century ago, taught a young Helen Keller how to read.
“I was like, ‘Okay, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life,’” Moscariello said of that moment. And she has: Moscariello has worked in public health, AIDS prevention and awareness, homelessness services, and housing accessibility since the late 1970s. In New Haven, she’s also been a mentor in the Yale School of Public Health, working with students as they learn how to do work both empathetically and in community. As she spoke, smiles rippled across the room
That momentum kept going as Steffon Jenkins honored Apostle Bernice Gibbs, who is the founder of New Flame Restoration Christian Church on State Street (and formerly on Sheffield Avenue) in New Haven, and runs a food pantry there that sees close to 200 people a week. That’s been especially vital as hunger rises in New Haven, where 24 percent of city residents reported experiencing food insecurity last year.
For decades, Gibbs has seen her faith as a path to sustain and nourish the community around her, from a conference for Christian women that she founded in the 1980s to church-affiliated housing for adult men in recovery. In addition to her work at New Flame, she helped found and runs Rhema Community Development Inc., an extension of the church that allows expanded outreach work in the greater New Haven community.
No wonder, then, that the corner at 1375 State St. was renamed in her honor three years ago.
“I don’t take it lightly to be recognized,” Gibbs said, adding that her work is “to serve the community with love, not hate, but love and compassion.” Everything she does, Gibbs added, comes back to this belief—which her own faith has carried for decades.
Co-emcee Samantha Myers-Galberth, who runs the hair salon Style 2000 on Whalley Avenue, chimed in with praise before Gibbs left the stage. She remembered the fear and uncertainty that she and employees faced in the first half of 2020, after the salon was forced to close its doors to stem the spread of Covid-19. Across town, Gibbs learned that Myers-Galberth was making masks to supplement her income. She put in an order for 100 of them.
“You paid a bill,” Myers-Galberth said, getting emotional. In a period where the world seemed completely upside down, Gibbs had stepped in to provide financial assistance. It was more than just a bill: it was a way of saying I see you.
Nowhere, perhaps, was the sense of tight-knit and loving community more present in the room than when Daniels-Singleton and her sister, retired New Haven police sergeant Robin Higgins, honored their mother in joyful song and speech, bringing Brown to the stage to accept an award that bore Predency Daniels’ name and memory. As family members prepared to give the award, a small crowd filled the stage, with members of Daniels’ friends, children, grandchildren, and church family all there to honor her life and legacy.
“My Mom, my mom, my mom!” Daniels-Singleton said fondly afterwards, remembering her mother’s sheer strength in birthing seven children, and then welcoming another three into her family. “The strongest, wise, no-nonsense, respected, humorous, intellectual woman I know … as a mom, she ran a strict, orderly house. She made sure all of her children were respectful, hard working, and knew the importance of faith and having a relationship with God. Mommy was a woman whose life reflected strength, compassion, and unwavering faith.”
For as long as Daniels was alive, remembered her daughters, she was brilliantly present in all she did. At home, she was not just a giving and generous mother but also a deeply devoted wife, who for over five decades shared her life with Eddie Daniels, Sr., whom she met and fell in love with in New Haven.
Outside of it, she was a member of St. Mary’s Union Free Will Baptist Baptist Church for over four decades, and a care provider and phlebotomist at St. Raphael’s Hospital. She was also an early and vocal advocate for HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention work, working closely with the late Elsie Cofield when HIV was still shrouded in stigma and mystery. When, during the presentation of the award, vocalist Lisa Brown took it to church with a cover of “Wind Beneath My Wings,” the selection felt fitting—and there was likely not a dry eye in the house.
“My mom was a great caregiver,” said Higgins, who is now the coordinator for the Deescalation Training Project at the University of New Haven. “We used to think there was a shelter in our house, because every time we turned around there was a new person. If there was someone who needed help, she took them in.”
“She was always laughing, always smiling, you’d never know if she was having a bad day,” Higgins added. “We all have that outreach within us. We’ve seen our parents do it and emulate it.”
As a brief intermission faded into the second half of the evening, attendees took time to champion women across healthcare, education, social work and law, shouting out an extended family of advocates and sister-friends in the process. Jackson, for instance, has worked as an educator in the New Haven Public Schools for over 30 years, with a focus on special education.
She grew up in New Haven, returning to teach after studies at Tufts University and Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU). For years, she worked as an “itinerant” speech pathologist, traveling between different New Haven Public Schools, before two and a half decades at Wexler-Grant Community School. Then two years ago, she was promoted to supervisor of speech and special education at the New Haven Board of Education.
As department supervisor, “I try to advocate for voices on a larger scale,” she said, adding that it’s part of her work to support a team of therapists and special educators that work across the district, even and especially when their resources are stretched.
Like many of the evening’s recipients, she took a moment to remember her own mother, a steadfast educator who served New Haven for 45 years. When Jackson was just a kid, she saw her mother’s dedication firsthand: Jackson was rarely allowed to stay home from school, and if she was too sick to go, she sometimes ended up accompanying her mom to work.
McClam-Edwards, meanwhile, remembered growing up in New Haven in the 1970s and 1980s, when she still wasn’t sure what the world had in store for her. After graduating from Wilbur Cross High School in 1987, she went on to Norfolk State University—and then fell in love with the South.
For a while, McClam-Edwards was in the military, then she taught middle school science in Virginia, then she switched to kindergarten education. She never thought that she would leave, she said. And then her brothers, who run McClam Funeral Home, asked her to come home to help them out.
She assumed the transition would be temporary. Then Covid-19 brought life as she knew it to a standstill—and she rebuilt her life in New Haven. Six years later, she’s glad to still be in the city where she grew up.
“God has a plan,” she said.
“The night was magical!” Daniels-Singleton said afterwards. “Such an uplifting inspiring night for all, especially if you're a woman. It served as a reminder that you can achieve anything you desire in this life. … Their stories of triumph and how they've become instrumental in the community, serves as a source of hope to all.”