“Mrs. Vera Leone Irvin, organizer of the movement which was responsible for the founding of the South Side Community Center in Ithaca, died Saturday Dec. 5, 1942, at her home 119 Cleveland Ave.
Mrs. Irvin was president of the Francis Harper Women’s Club, a group of Negro women who understood and met some of the needs of their people, when it organized the Serv-Us League in March, 1927.
Under her leadership they raised $229 for the ‘hope chest’ of the new organization which in 1930 became the South Side Community Center. She took part in the dedication of the center Feb. 17, 1938, when Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated the new building, built by the Works Progress Administration.
Mrs. Irvin was a member of St. James AME Zion Church, Vashti Court 15 of OOC, and Cayuga Temple 54 of IBPOE. She was president of the latter two organizations.
Funeral services will be held at 2:30 p.m. Wednesday in the Herson Funeral Home, 110 S. Geneva St., and interment will be in Lake View Cemetery. Friends may call at the funeral home Tuesday.
She is survived by two daughters, Mrs. Eleanor I. Hardy of Auburn and Miss Cornelia Irvin of Ithaca; two sons, William and Edward of Ithaca; and aunt, Mrs. Ola Riley of Rochester, and three grandchildren.”
“South Side Leader Dies,” Ithaca Journal, December 7, 1942, 2.