City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams joined the King of Kings Foundation and southeast Queens community leaders to unveil “Alyce L. Feurtado Way” at the intersection of 142nd Street and 106th Avenue in Jamaica to honor a longtime teacher at Concerned Parents of Jamaica Early Learning Center, where she worked for more than two decades.
Feurtado’s three sons, Tony, Lance, and Todd, founded the King of Kings Foundation in 2005, a local nonprofit organization that empowers at-risk children, youth and young adults by addressing their long-term challenges through comprehensive programs that focus on physical, economic, cultural, and spiritual development.
“Alyce L. Feurtado touched countless lives as an educator, mentor, and community leader in Southeast Queens,” Adams said at the street co-naming ceremony earlier this month. “Her contributions as a caretaker of the neighborhood and its youth will be remembered forever.”
Born in Alabama in 1940, Feurtado married NYPD police officer Owen Feurtado and gave birth to three boys, who were raised in Jamaica, where she began her career as an educator as one of the first teachers at Concerned Parents of Jamaica Early Learning Center. She started an after-school program, providing snacks for youngsters who often waited long hours for their parents to get off work to pick them up. Feurtado was known for mentoring young girls, hosting community toy drives, and taking neighborhood children and students to pumpkin patches as a way for them to visit areas outside of New York City.
“Alyce’s mentorship became a guiding light for young people in this community, particularly for girls and young women,” Adams said. “She inspired them to work hard, to persist despite facing obstacles, and to reach for their dreams with confidence.”
She died in July 2006, a year after her three sons founded the King of Kings Foundation, an anti-gang, anti-gun violence organization established by her sons, who came up during the crack epidemic that ravaged Southeast Queens during the 1980s. Lance and his brother, Todd, were members of the Seven Crowns and did prison time before they, and their brother Tony, devoted their lives to reducing violence in all its forms.
“Her sons, Tony, Lance, and Todd Feurtado, have built on their mother’s work through their King of Kings Foundation, which continues to change lives through holistic youth development programs,” Adams said. “The Feurtado brothers are the pride of our community. Your mother would have been so proud to see what you have accomplished—and will continue to accomplish—as a living extension of her legacy.”
She added that when community members look up at the intersection, they will see their mother’s name etched into the streetscape of the city.
King of Kings Foundation Executive Director Lance Feurtado thanked Adams for honoring their mother.
“My brothers Tony, Todd, and myself are humbled and honored to know that our mom’s name and legacy as an educator in Southeast Queens will live on by the co-renaming of this street where our family has resided since 1965,” he said.
State Sen. Leroy Comrie, Congressman Gregory Meeks, and Council Member Selvena Brooks-Powers took part in the unveiling.
“The co-naming of this street in honor of Mrs. Feurtado recognizes a life spent lifting others up,” Comrie said. “Through her teaching, mentorship, and community programs, she shaped the lives of countless young people, many of whom, like her sons, continue to carry her legacy forward through the King of Kings Foundation. Today, we celebrate her commitment, her compassion, and the enduring mark she left on Southeast Queens.”
