Gretchen Dykstra (born NY August 22, 1948) was the founding President and CEO of the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum Foundation,[1] Commissioner of the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs under Mayor Bloomberg,[2] and the founding president of the Times Square Business Improvement District (now the Alliance) throughout the 90s.[3] Trained as a teacher, Dykstra worked at the Rockefeller Foundation, the NYC Charter Revision Commission, and the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation.[4] She taught English in Wuhan, China from 1979-1981.

Dykstra currently writes full-time. Her first book, Pinery Boys: Songs and Songcatching in the Lumberjack Era, (University of Wisconsin Press, 2017) was a team effort with James P. Leary, pre-eminent folklorist, to re-issue the classic Songs and Ballads of the Shanty Boy (Harvard, 1926), written by her grandfather, Franz Rickaby.[5][6] It includes new material, an introduction by Leary, and a biography written by Dykstra. Her book Civic Pioneers: Local Stories of a Changing America, 1895-1915, was released in the spring of 2019.

References

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  1. ^ Pogrebin, Robin (2005-04-08). "Leader of Times Sq. Revival to Head Ground Zero Agency". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-01-31.
  2. ^ Lynda Richardson, “You Can Go Home Again (In a New York Minute), The New York Times (12 March 2002)
  3. ^ Doug Steward, “Times Square Reborn,” Smithsonian 26:1 (Feb 1998) p. 34
  4. ^ "75 MOST INFLUENTIAL WOMEN;THE ADVOCATES". Crain's New York Business. 2006-09-19. Retrieved 2023-01-31.
  5. ^ Rickaby, Franz; Leary, James P. (2017). UW Press: Pinery Boys: Songs and Songcatching in the Lumberjack Era. University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 9780299312640.
  6. ^ online review, saying much about Gretchen Dykstra