In the fall of 1988, police detectives came to the door of a young mother and homemaker on West Baltimore's Fayette Street to inform her that her twelve-year-old daughter, missing for more than a day, had been discovered in an alley around the corner, shot to death. For Ella Thompson, that stark, horrifying moment marked the beginning of a commitment that would last the rest of her life.
Although the death of her daughter Andrea devastated Ella, she did not retreat from the streets of her neighborhood as so many of us surely would. Instead, she carried her grief down the block to a small, underfunded recreation center on Vincent Street, the Martin Luther King Jr. Recreation Center, and volunteered to work with the children there.

Within a year, Ella was operating the center as director–a post she held for more than seven years as she waged a daily battle for the souls of the children living in the drug-battered Franklin Square neighborhood of the early and mid-1990s. In those years, Ella was everywhere along Fayette Street, engaging her neighbors and committing herself to the idea that with just a little more support, a little more faith and a little more opportunity for the children of West Baltimore, a neighborhood and, ultimately, a city, could turn itself around.

Ella's quiet, selfless commitment was eventually discovered: First, her story was chronicled in a non-fiction narrative about life in the Franklin Square neighborhood, "The Corner," which was published in 1997 and became an HBO miniseries of the same name three years later. Then Ella's work came to the attention of the Parks & People Foundation in Baltimore, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting a wide range of recreational and educational opportunities, creating and sustaining beautiful and lively parks, and promoting a healthy natural environment. Hired in 1996 by the Foundation as one of the directors of its KidsGrow Program, which introduces urban youngsters to ecological sciences and community stewardship, Ella took her personal crusade to recreation centers across the westside.

In 1998, Ella Thompson was named "Baltimorean of the Year" by Baltimore Magazine. Later that year, while driving a car full of donated computer equipment to a city recreation center, Ella, only 47, suffered a fatal heart attack.