Bob Ellis, 1928-2002

When The DOME Project started in the early 1970s, Bob Ellis was installing top-of-the-line home entertainment systems (they were known as hi-fi systems then) to individual customers in Manhattan. He needed a helper, and he usually chose some scruffy youngster with a history of minor but recurring problems with school authorities and the law.

Taking these young men into the homes of the rich and famous required a leap of faith that few professionals would have considered, but Bob never doubted the power of trust and personal involvement. As soon as he heard about The DOME, he volunteered to teach a class in electronics. Soon the first DOME students were spending one or two afternoons a week, soldering components onto printed circuit boards in the basement of All Angels’ Church.

Bob had more righteous indignation in him, if that’s possible, than the entire audience of an angry West Side school board meeting. When he felt a youngster was getting a bum rap from authorities — and he often did — nothing could stop him until he had exhausted every conceivable avenue of redress. Many a youngster owed his second (or third, or fourth) chance to Bob’s determination to overcome what he saw as bureaucratic brutality.

It wasn’t long before Bob’s car was full of youngsters requiring his constant attention, and his customers were being put on hold. Something had to be done.

The Juvenile Justice System was created as a means of funding the ad hoc program Bob had started by responding to the individual needs of youngsters who were increasingly being referred to him. The DOME saw the opportunity to institutionalize the force he represented and secured funding from the Juvenile Justice Department of the State of New York for The DOME Project's Juvenile Justice Program.

Bob never looked back. Despite major heart surgery and advancing years, his commitment to the program never flagged. Hundreds and hundreds of youngsters were helped by him and his colleagues, whose influence extended far beyond these individual cases. It is said there is only so much one man can do to change the society in which he lives. Bob obviously never understood or accepted that assumption, and New York is a better place because he didn’t.

— John Simon, founder of The DOME Project in 1973