Editor’s note: This is the fourth in a series of articles in honor of Black History Month.

Evon Hernandez remembers basking in the spotlight with the Dunkirk High School football team during its run to the state Final Four. It left a major impression.

“I saw how the community came together when we did our football run in 2017,” he said. “I’ve always enjoyed the support and how the community rallies when something good happens.”

A lifelong city resident, he was born in 1999 and graduated in 2017. He then went on to Jamestown Business College for two years and earned an associate’s degree in marketing and management.

Soon after Hernandez got together with high school friends to form the Small Town, Big Minds podcast as a way to spread unity in the community. “My buddy A.J. Morales came up to me and said we should do a podcast and then Chris Rodriguez had the equipment and Raul Rosado was one of our best friends, so we said let’s do a podcast,” Hernandez said. “We were brainstorming one day and we wondered if we could throw a big festival with all the races and all the ethnicities around here and then that turned into the mural.”

Soon after came the ice rink near the former School 6 on Benton Street, another project masterminded by the podcast. “The ice rink came about because during the winter months there’s really nothing to do. You can go to the college, but this is more centrally located,” Hernandez said.

Not one to brag, Hernandez was taken with all the attention the ice rink received from the media, which stretched to Buffalo. “It was pretty awesome, I really just did it just to do it, I was really starstruck by all of the publicity.”

Hernandez’s most recent endeavor is coaching Dunkirk’s JV basketball team — a job that literally fell in his lap. “I was sitting home one day and the old coach, Billy Pittman couldn’t really coach anymore due to work,” Hernandez began. “So Luke Gullo got a hold of me, having known me from basketball camps at the Salvation Army and I was more than willing to accept it.”

Hernandez works at the Salvation Army as their recreational program assistant doing basketball leagues and after school programs. He’s also spearheaded a football camp that he runs along with Morales in the summer. The camp ran two years in a row before COVID hit.

When asked about the stresses in the African-American community due to changing dynamics with police and racial relations Hernandez said that “around America I think it’s been a little crazy, it’s more taking sides than coming together.

“If you’re on one side, you just have to think about that side instead of just doing what’s right,” Hernandez said. “Around here, because the police officers are from here that I know of, they understand what everybody goes through so it never really gets to that level that I’ve seen, hopefully it doesn’t ever get to that level. It’s a choosing side thing and that’s wrong. Unity is a big thing for me. I’ve seen families and friends spread apart because of it, I really wouldn’t like to lose family or friends over something that doesn’t need to be argued about.”