Serving Southeast Fort Wayne: Oxford Community Project

Fort Wayne is blessed with hundreds of these tightknit, thriving neighborhoods – some storied and destinations themselves, others quietly serving their people year after year, drawing no attention and in little need of change. Just five minutes south of Fort Wayne’s downtown is another kind of neighborhood – the kind filled with every walk of life, a modern-day melting pot of cultures, and led by people of vision, pride and energy! Oxford.

Oxford had a need. It turns out the street that bears the neighborhood name, and as I soon discovered is the center of all that is Oxford, had an unassuming, grassy lot that sits along Oxford’s main street. Neatly mowed and landscaped, the narrow gem is anchored by a majestic, fifty-year-old spruce and a pair of small, weeping fruit trees that flank a granite monument marking the history of the Oxford Neighborhood. Tucked between the neighborhood association building, Earl’s Barber Shop (everyone honks when they drive by) and the Eden Mart, the busiest little grocery and deli I’ve ever seen, it isn’t hard to give it passing glance, think, “That’s nice,” and move on. But Diane and Jan had something else in mind. They saw a place to gather-perform-celebrate, a place to rest an aching mind and soul at times, and a place that paints a picture for Oxford’s youth that says, “Anything is possible.”