Yvonne B. Haskins, longtime attorney, groundbreaking law enforcement official, and lifelong social welfare activist, has died at 88

Yvonne B. Haskins, 88, of Philadelphia, longtime real estate attorney, the first woman regional director for what is now the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, the first woman district director of the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole, the first woman head of security at the University of Pennsylvania, one of the first women Philadelphia police officers, interim city attorney for Camden, former manager of the old police community relations department of the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations, and tireless local community development and historic preservation activist, died Tuesday, Sept. 29, of metastatic breast cancer at her home in Germantown.

Born in Atlanta and reared in several small Georgia towns, Mrs. Haskins came to Philadelphia with her two sons in 1962. She worked briefly as a secretary, and, on impulse, tested to be a Philadelphia police officer. To her surprise, she said later, she passed the exam and joined the Police Department in 1965.

That job, she told department colleagues years later, kicked off her climb to nearly a dozen local leadership roles in law enforcement, government, education, and community development. She was especially focused on serving young people at every stop.

“Young people need what we all need,” she told The Inquirer in 1992. “We all have to have hope, and we all have to have self-esteem.”

Mrs. Haskins earned a law degree at Temple University night school in 1986, specialized in real estate law and community revitalization, and opened Haskins Law Firm with offices in Philadelphia and Camden. She became an outspoken expert on zoning, financial, and political issues, and was appointed by then Camden Mayor Arnold Webster to serve as interim city attorney for 90 days in 1996.

She had already spent much of 1994 writing most of Camden’s proposal for a multimillion-dollar community zoning federal grant. A fellow Camden community activist told The Inquirer in 1994: “She knows how to lay out a plan, get back to you, follow the rules, and play the game the way it’s supposed to be played.”

While working for the police from 1965 to ‘69, Mrs. Haskins earned a bachelor’s degree with honors and awards in social welfare at Temple in 1968. She was assigned to juvenile aid, human relations, and criminal justice planning for the police, and, as a liaison to the city’s Commission on Human Relations, helped organize the city’s first police-community workshops.

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“I’m assigned to a police and community program,” she told The Inquirer in 1968. “The community to understand the police, the police to understand the community. Understanding. That’s really the whole thing, isn’t it?”

She joined the Commission on Human Relations full-time in 1969 and left for the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency in 1973. There, she oversaw a project budget of $100 million, funded the nascent local chapter of Women Organized Against Rape, and established a juvenile law project.

As Philadelphia’s district director for the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole from 1977 to ‘87, she directed a $4 million budget and a staff of 175. She was also a community program planner for the School District of Philadelphia, the first woman head of security at Penn in 1973, and a senior business development officer for the Fannie Mae mortgage organization.

In her beloved West Mount Airy and Germantown neighborhoods, Mrs. Haskins helped found the Germantown United Community Development Corp. She was executive director of the West Mount Airy Neighbors group, board member of the Mount Airy Business Improvement District, and active member of several other groups.

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“Our house was a hub of community activity,” said her daughter, Kristin Haskins Simms. Neighborhood colleagues recently renamed Trolley Car Park on Germantown Avenue after her and placed a plaque with her nickname, “Good Trouble,” on a nearby bench.

Friends and colleagues called her a “giant,” a “tenacious fighter,” and the “perfect combination of passionate and effective” in online tributes. One said: “She made organizing fun.”

She told The Inquirer in 2011: “Sooner or later, human beings figure things out.”

Yvonne Rozlyn Blakeney was born Feb. 23, 1938. Her extended family was full of scholars, and she was enrolled in school when she was 3.

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She graduated as valedictorian of her high school at 15 and took pre-med classes and made the dean’s list for two years at Spelman College in Atlanta. She left Spelman after her sophomore year, married Walter Booker, and they had sons Russell and Randall.

They moved to Washington and, after a divorce, she moved to Philadelphia, where her parents lived.

She met Harold Haskins, also a social activist, through a mutual friend, and they married in 1969. They had a daughter, Kristin, and lived in West Mount Airy. Her husband died in 2020, and she moved to Germantown.

Family and friends called Mrs. Haskins “Peachy” because of her Georgia roots. She played piano and enjoyed gardening and impressionist art.

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She lived for years with myeloma cancer and walked in many cancer research fundraisers. She never really retired and wrote about her 2024 breast cancer diagnosis on Facebook. “As much as I want to stay engaged and busy, I may not be able to do much,” she said. “Your understanding and keeping me in the loop of things will be much appreciated.”

Her daughter said: “She didn’t believe in retirement. She wanted to do the work, stay engaged, fight for justice.”

In addition to her daughter, Mrs. Haskins is survived by a grandson, a great-grandson, a brother, and other relatives. Her former husband and sons died earlier.

Services are to be at 11 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 7, at First United Methodist Church of Germantown, 6001 Germantown Ave., Philadelphia, Pa. 19144.

Donations in her name may be made to the American Cancer Society, Box 6704, Hagerstown, Md., 21741; First Union Methodist Church of Germantown, 6001 Germantown Ave., Philadelphia, Pa. 19144; and Salem Baptist Church of Abington, 2741 Woodland Rd., Abington, Pa. 19001.