By Noah Powelson<\/p>\n
For countless Queens residents who felt lost in the legal system when suddenly faced with threats of foreclosure, bankruptcy or debt collection, their saving grace was Mark Weliky.<\/p>\n
For more than 25 years, Weliky was the executive director of the Queens Volunteer Lawyers Project, a nonprofit legal assistance program sponsored by the Queens County Bar Association that connects low-income and indigent Queens residents with attorneys, free of charge. Under Weliky\u2019s leadership, QVLP served tens of thousands of Queens residents facing civil suits that otherwise could have cost them their homes or completely upended their lives. <\/p>\n
But low-income residents of the World\u2019s Borough lost one of their strongest advocates when Weliky passed away on July 23 following a months-long fight with brain cancer. He was 76.<\/p>\n
A longtime fixture in the QCBA who was regularly seen manning the organization\u2019s registration table or selling raffle tickets for events, Weliky\u2019s passing was a shock to many in the Queens legal community who viewed him as a friend and mentor.<\/p>\n
Jonathan Riegel, the QCBA\u2019s executive director, said the success and growth of QVLP can widely be credited to Weliky. <\/p>\n
It was Weliky, Riegel said, who secured the funding and filed the paperwork that kept QVLP staffed with the resources needed to help thousands of Queens residents with their civil cases each year.<\/p>\n
\u201cMark is probably single-handedly responsible for finding grant funding QVLP has received over the years and receives to this day to allow it to function,\u201d Riegel told the Eagle. \u201cMark had the perspective of, \u2018let’s help as many people as we can, and if someone needs help, we find a way.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Weliky became an attorney after leaving a job as a technician at the New York Telephone Company, which would later become Verizon. He attended night school to earn his law degree, and decided to focus his practice on public interest law.<\/p>\n
When Weliky became the QVLP\u2019s executive director in 2001, taking over from founder Ivan Werner, QVLP only had two staff attorneys on hand. Under Weliky\u2019s watch, QVLP grew to employ as many as five staff attorneys, while also connecting Queens residents with a roster of more than 200 volunteer lawyers.<\/p>\n
For indigent Queens residents who often face banks or landlords with teams of attorneys on call in court, QVLP was often their only lifeline. QVLP has assisted countless Queens residents with evictions, foreclosures, divorces, consumer debt cases, bankruptcies and the drafting and execution of wills.<\/p>\n
Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, QVLP continued to operate a consumer debt clinic and assisted clients with their housing needs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat’s going to be his enduring legacy,\u201d Riegel said. \u201cWe will carry that legacy on.\u201d <\/p>\n
Queens Supreme Court Justice Sandra Munoz, a longtime friend of Weliky who also worked at QVLP, said the program thrived because of the passion Weliky showed every client and every case.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was such a community guy,\u201d Munoz said. \u201cHe really loved what he was doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI never heard him complain once about what he was doing,\u201d she added. <\/p>\n
But Weliky\u2019s impact went beyond QVLP\u2019s legal services. Over the years, Weliky mentored numerous attorneys, many of whom have become fixtures of the Queens legal community.<\/p>\n
Kristen Dubowski-Barba was one of those mentees.<\/p>\n
Dubowski-Barba first met Weliky when she interviewed for a staff attorney position at QVLP. It was one of the first job interviews she had done as a new attorney, and Dubowski-Barba recalled feeling intimidated when she walked through the QCBA\u2019s front doors. But within seconds, Dubowski-Barba said, that trepidation disappeared once she realized how kind and caring Weliky was. <\/p>\n
Weliky hired her for the role, and Dubowski-Barba worked alongside him for more than 15 years. It was also from that job that Dubowski-Barba became increasingly invested in QCBA, where she eventually became president in 2025. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Noah Powelson For countless Queens residents who felt lost in the legal system when suddenly faced with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324465,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-324464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}