BRONX NEWS: Daly: Family fights drug dealers, red tape

Six American flags flutter outside 2319 Prospect Ave., and you would be right to conclude this is not just another boarded-up Bronx building with a VACATE – DO NOT ENTER notice on the door.

For this is not just another example of what went wrong, not just another abandoned hulk like the building next door at 2321 Prospect Ave., which was gutted by fire after its owner walked away from a subprime and let drug dealers move in.

The family that owns the building with the flags is determined to return and resume a plan embodying the virtues that made America great and should guide us all in these bleak times.

The family remains undeterred even after being robbed and terrorized by drug dealers, failed by the local police and threatened by a city Buildings Department with a ,000-a -day fine for supposedly running an illegal SRO.

What the family was running was an all-American Dream that began in 2006, when Chancy Marsh used retirement funds from his years as a school principal to buy 2319 Prospect Ave.

The plan was to bring their six grown children under one roof so they could save on rent and expenses while they paid off college loans.

A son became a doctor, a daughter a basketball coach. Another daughter and son followed their father into education. Another daughter graduated with a degree in psychology. The other son is in engineering school.

“We could improve our family generationally,” the matriarch, 58-year-old Gayla Marsh, explained. “They could move out debt-free, have a decent income and be able to do anything.”

Even as their building became a palace of the American spirit, drug dealers took over the first floor of the foreclosed building next door. A fire broke out there on April 25, killing three tenants who had continued to live upstairs.

The Marsh family escaped unhurt, but the building was ordered vacated. The family scattered.

“We’re displaced all over the place,” the father said.

The drug dealers took the vacate order as an opportunity to loot the home on May 9, taking everything from the clothing one son wore to teach school to a gold medal the father won as a national champion in the 800 meters while running track for Power Memorial High School.

“Gone,” the father said.

The thieves also took sneakers a daughter collected while coaching the Monroe College women’s basketball team to an NCAA championship. The thieves brazenly wore them around the neighborhood.

“Walking down the street with her sneakers on their feet,” the father said.

The situation took a scary turn on July 21. The mother and a son stopped by to care for a dog they posted inside to prevent break-ins. The drug dealers suddenly attacked, breaking a window in the son’s car and going after the mother with a hammer.

Cops identified the one with the hammer and produced an address, but he has yet to be arrested. I knocked on his door Monday and there he was, having just wakened at midday. He, of course, knew nothing about anything.

Meanwhile, the family convinced the Buildings Department they were not running an SRO. They may still face a ,600 fine for two partitions built before they bought the place.

But those flags still flutter out front, and the family hopes to move back in by next spring.

“We have to fight the good fight and not let these obstacles get in our way,” said a son, Chancy Marsh Jr.

mdaly@nydailynews.com