A LETTER FROM THE GATEWAY TO THE HUDSON

HIGHLANDS, MAY 2009

In the past month all kinds of activities have burst forth from Peekskill High School to enliven our atmosphere.

It all started for me when Mrs. Sharon Cummings, who teaches at the High School and who has to do with advertising for the Yearbook of the Class of 2009, stopped at my office and was kind enough to sign me up for a small notice, “In Memory of Dorothy Anna (DeBroske) Bums, Class of 1945. May Your Lives Be As Full As Hers Was.”

In the course of our conversation we talked about my being a veteran of World War 2 and that it might prove useful if I talked to one of her classes so that the students might get a look at a fast?disappearing relic of American History. I have read that those of us who are veterans are leaving at the rate of 1,000 a day, or so.

On Monday of last week Mrs. Cummings introduced me to a class of sophomores taking a World History course and we settled down for a little chat; I was anxious and they were probably curious that anyone as old as I am would be able to walk and talk ? I hope that I was able to make some sense to them. They may have been a little awe?struck by my Going?To-­Surrogate’s-Court suit with the small American flag in the lapel, my red-­white?and?blue bow tie and my snow?white head of hair and beard.

The forty?five minute class seemed to go well; the students were polite and patient and even asked some questions as I outlined to them what the students at PHS did while waiting to go into the service while also helping the war effort and what a teen?age Medical Department soldier did for three years in the Army. (I was drafted the day after I graduated, on a Tuesday in June, 1943, along with Bob Skene and John Hrouda. Bob died only recently but I have been talking with John within a year or so and in retirement he is still flying his light plane up and down the Hudson Valley. I told the students that Aviation was offered as a Science course in High School, taught by Merritt Lindsey, in which John led the way because he had become a licensed pilot at the age of sixteen. (John would talk Mr. Lindsey through the rough spots.)

I talked about rationing and bond and scrap drives and how serous and intent we all were; I showed them my cousin, Lucille Carey’s (Eible) 1943 wartime yearbook, The Searchlight, which was a lot less glamorous than the yearbooks the young people get these days. Somebody swiped mine at our 50^th Class Reunion. (Lucille died just about this time last year.) Lucille was one of the young women who joined the Student Nurse Corps and she and

others made their lifetimes at that profession. Betty Knickerbocker also of our class of 1943, stayed in the Army Nurse Corps and retired as a Colonel to play a lot of golf in Albuquerque.

I told them that while in PHS, I had worked, among other places , for DeChristopher’s Pharmacy; one of the students in the World History class was Nick DeChristopher, Charley’s grandson, who played the role of Big Jule, the big?time crap shooter from Chicago in the Drama Club’s production of “Guys and Dolls”, which my son?in?law, David Lawter, and I went to see a couple of weeks ago at the High School auditorium.

“Guys and Dolls” blossomed forth on Broadway in 1950 and its lively script has been revived often since then. In 1997 Martin Vidnovic was featured on Broadway as Guy Masterson, the lead male character, and as part of the school’s cultural enrichment program he was able to join the Peekskill cast in rehearsal which was recorded on tape and replayed on the Educational Channel on local television.

I always enjoy going to the High School productions and am pleasantly surprised at the depth of talent and the hard?working industry the young people exhibit.

A major problem for any Peekskill High School production is the limited help the auditorium provides; solving the acoustics is always a major problem and the sound in this play was managed well by Kyle McDonald, the son of Lori (Blackman) McDonald, and the grandson of my secretary, Mary Blackman, who retired a few years ago when our Italian typewriter, of which she was very fond, finally died and we couldn’t get replacement parts and Mary decided that she didn’t want to tackle a computer’s word processing function.

The settings for the play were really imaginative; the major set of Broadway and 46th Street featured a neat representation of the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building in the skyline of Manhattan.

The large cast was enthusiastic and the lead parts were played with polish and ease. Juliana Terejesen as the Mission Doll, Sergeant Sarah Brown of the Save?a?Soul Mission, and Jason Dick as the Big?Time New York Gambler, Sky Masterson, did well with their duets; Vertis McMillan as Nathan Detroit, the tin?horn organizer of the Oldest Established Permanent Floating Crap Game in New York, and the love of his life with whom he had been engaged to marry for 14 years, Miss Adelaide, played by Catie Davis, had the show?stopping numbers and everyone seemed to have had a grand time with the whole thing. (The program tells us that Catie Davis has

been accepted at the Tisch School of Dramatic Arts at New York University, (an accomplishment in itself.)

There were many good voices in the ensemble and when I spoke with John Hahn, who teaches in the music department, I suggested that the next PHS Big Band Jazz Festival might feature some of those voices doing Duke Ellington or Johnny Mercer songs.

The PHS Jazz Festival is an annual springtime event featuring big Bands from Peekskill, Lakeland, Ossining and Somers High Schools; each band played a set of three numbers and then an All?Star group featuring several players from each band played an additional three?number set which all came off quite well.

John Hahn, who bought the Saltzman house at Nelson Avenue and Phoenix Avenue, I’m told was in the pit orchestra for “Miss Saigon” during the run of the show on Broadway. He had the PHS Marching Band in fine form for the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade and last year had a sizable group for the Memorial Day Program.

One of the livelier spots in Peekskill on Saint Patrick’s Day over recent years has been PJ Kelly’s Restaurant at the old Peekskill Railroad Station in the space once occupied by the Railway Express Agency. A recent edition of the North County News had a feature story by Jim Roberts telling that the restaurant was closing its doors. When we drove by there on Sunday it was apparent that the food area was, in fact, closed and the last day of operation for the rest of PJ Kelly’s is set for Father’s Day. Matt Kelly said in the interview that he is planning to return to Notre Dame for a graduate degree.

The restaurant had been an anchor for the Railroad Avenue area for fifteen years.

Incidentally the reporter, Jim Roberts, is the son of the late Deacon Jim Roberts of the Church of the Assumption and of the late Margaret Volkman. Jim writes a pretty good story.

I have just returned from voting in the School Board election on a perfect late Spring day; three folks were running for two open seats on the Board and I hope that I voted correctly; I, as always, voted for the budget. I am philosophically opposed to voting on school budgets. I have known many members of School Boards and I know how hard they worked to keep things reasonable and still do the important job of educating the children, so that our country’s future is secure, having done a positive thing by training those children to take up the responsibility of governing when their time arrives. Only school budgets are voted upon by referendum; not City, not

County, not State, not Federal. In every instance we elect representatives to do the difficult work and if we do not agree with them we have the opportunity the next time we enter the polling booths to throw the rascals (out.

John Halinan, who has been a very active member of the Board for several terms has decided to step aside and let someone else carry the load for a while. John was around during the planning and nearly?completed construction of the new Middle School on Ringgold Street which is supposed to be as up?to?date as anything built in Peekskill in a long, long time and is an investment in the futures of all of those young people making their ways through the grades.

I talked earlier today with Tommy Dabbs, he of the golden baritone voice, and he told me that he has been asked to sing the National Anthem at the dedication ceremony for the new school in September. He is pleased.

The Snowbirds have about all returned from lolling around the pools in Florida; I spoke with my brother, Eddie, and his wife, Charlee, on Sunday and they told me that their drive from Jupiter to Fairfield was uneventful. They aren’t fond of I?95 and the Blue Ridge Mountains were really pretty this Spring. Their knee operations last year now seem to have healed nicely and Eddie is ready for the first tee and all of those tournaments. Their oldest granddaughter, Christina Nielsen, is entering NYU in the fall; my sister Madeline Stinson’s granddaughter, Kristin Burns, is getting married in Lake Tahoe in June while another of her granddaughters, Mary Colleen Buchanan, is getting married later in the year in Maine. Kristin’s Mom, Pamela, visited Boise, Idaho, last week, where her husband, Joe Burns, has found new employment and Patrick, their son, was able to spend a day at the school he plans to attend in Autumn. Just think, we all started out in Verplanck and Peekskill.

As the man with the portentous voice used to say in the newsreels, “Time Marches On!”

Promise me that you will continue to be as good to each other as you can be.

P.S. The Budget passed, the only one which lost was in Mahopac by four votes. What a waste of time and money

Posted: May 28th, 2009 under Around Town.
Comments: none

A LETTER FROM THE GATEWAY TO THE HUDSON

HIGHLANDS, FEBRUARY?MARCH, 2009

As I write this, many of our flock of Peekskill Snowbirds are whooping it up at the annual East Coast Peekskill Day at Carlin?Park in Jupiter, Florida. A Cold Front has just whipped through the Lower Hudson Valley and there are bits of light snow falling through the gathering darkness, and the breeze is brisk.

It has been about a year since I’ve sat down to compose one of these missives; just about a year ago Janet Weaver wrote to tell me that her husband, Doug, my PHS classmate, had died after a bout with Alzheimer’s Disease; shortly thereafter my cousin, Lucille Carey Eible, another classmate, died; then my Cousin?in-­law, Ralph Othus ( he married my cousin, Dorothy Gogarty), died, and then her brother, George Gogarty, died shortly thereafter. The litany continues with Bob Collier, John Isabella, Stuart Weinger; my grandson’s other grandfather, Stew Carlin. Sam D’Onofrio’s children, Michael and Laura, honored me by asking me to do the eulogy at his funeral. Then Len Carrington, another classmate who left school early to join the Navy in WW 2. Don Levor, one of Highland Park’s early residents died on Christmas Eve. Last year Dolores Baisley was a lively figure at the West Coast Peekskill Day. She left us a few weeks ago. (just in the last week or so we have lost John Leslie and Jerry Hersh. I haven’t really been too enthusiastic writing about all of those deaths as they happened. This last was added just before I sent this in the mail.

To change the pace a little: getting back to Carlin Park, my brother, Eddie, has a condo overlooking the Park and he called me yesterday to tell me that he was looking forward to today’s Big Bash. Last year he was feeling rotten and couldn’t go to the party. This year he is recovering nicely from knee?surgery and will start working on his golf swing any time now. Charlie, his wife, has had both knees replaced and her recovery is proceeding on schedule.

Eddie will report to me tomorrow and I shall probably have a few remarks. (I shall pause right here; I have to go to pick up my sister, Katie, who bowls each Thursday with her friends at the Keon Center and at Norwest.).

It is the following Monday: Katie bowled a 79 and a 96 with a couple of strikes in the second game; Eddie called and told me that on Friday he played his first round of golf since the knee surgery and he shot a lousy 42 on the back nine (he didn’t really discuss the first nine.)

Eddie also tells me that there was a fine turnout for the Florida East Coast Peekskill Day in Jupiter, probably nearly 300 and that everyone seemed to have a dandy time.

Among the high spots in the past year was when the Bertoline Family brought the Budweiser team of Clydesdale horses here last summer to honor the 75th anniversary of the D. Bertoline & Sons, corporation. Marie and I sat at a table in front of Ruben’s Restaurant on North Division Street, about where the Colonial Restaurant used to be. The team of massive horses stopped in front of us while Dominick delivered cases of beer to the nearby restaurants. There are two events which seem to jam downtown Peekskill with people, the first being the annual Saint Patrick’s Day procession and the other whenever the Budweiser Team shows up. (The food at Ruben’s was pretty good as well.)

Another high spot was the annual Holiday Concert which Mary Mancini and her husband, Mario Tacca, performed just before Christmas at the Church of the Assumption. Mary’s soprano voice was never richer and Mario is the master of the accordion. The widely varied program included some Usual Carols but also selections by the talented Victor Lionti String Quartette. The percussionist for the evening was Randy Smith, whose dad, Harold Smith, was the percussionist for my generation., along with Eddie McGinnis.

The program included pieces by Bach, Mozart, Vivaldi, some traditional carols and holiday music, some of which is included on a lovely CD which was available after the concert but I wasn’t able to get to the Recreation Hall downstairs (the legs no longer are spry enough to tackle those stairs which were a breeze in my kindergarten days.) When I wanted to get copies of the disc Mario and Mary were extremely kind enough to interrupt their kitchen preparations for their family Christmas on Christmas morning while I went to their home to get a half?dozen copies of the disc for my family. (The music on the disc is gorgeous.) Later:

I am now composing these deathless words on the Tuesday after the Peekskill Saint Patrick’s Day Parade which was once again a marked success. Piper Joe Brady and a color guard from the Fighting Sixty?Ninth Regiment New York National Guard led off the procession, which is not really a parade, and moves at a stately pace through down?town Peekskill. Joselle Cunane, who for many years was one of the organizers of the event, was a very popular Grand Marshall and assumed the top hat of the office with aplomb. The weather was fine, the little children were fun, the seemingly hundreds of emergency vehicles from all points of the compass were in their usual full?throated disposition, blasting their homs and sirens with abandon. It was, after all, the first opportunity to stretch after a very confining winter.

It is, today, Saint Patrick’s Day, and I am wearing my bow­tie with the shamrocks printed thereon and my green sleeveless sweater. I watched the start of the New York City parade this morning and there was Joe Brady out front, once again piping his way up Fifth Avenue with a large contingent of the Fighting Sixty ­Ninth marching behind him.

It used to be that on Saint Patrick’s Day we would go to the Sorrento where Uncle Frannie Scaramellino made as good Corned Beef and cabbage as could be found. In the absence of both the Sorrento and Uncle Frannie, in recent years the Little Sorrento would oblige. Sadly, on this Saint Patrick’s Day, only their usual delicious Italian Menu was offered.

Madeline suggested that we call Cole’s Market and sure enough, they were making the traditional feast. It was delicious. As good as Uncle Frannie’s. There was also enough left over for seconds a day later.

Corned beef and cabbage seems to be a uniquely Irish­ American dish and I’m told, not heard of in the Old Country at the Saint’s Feast Day, (which marks the anniversary of the day he died, not when he was born.) One suspects that it was a traditional Irish America dish because it was cheap and healthful with the boiled vegetables, and all. One also suspects that it was borrowed from our Eastern European neighbors on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The Mom and Pop kosher deli’s in New York City were renowned for the dish. There will be no extra charge for this information.

Another bit of news which may have escaped your notice: Bill Geis has sold his various automobile sales agencies to Curry Motors. It seems strange to no longer see his signs on East Main Street. When I talked with him about it he said, “It was time”. It doesn’t mean however, that he plans to sit around and count his feet. He enjoys being active.

One of the highlights of each long Winter season is the annual granting of the Chester A. Smith Award by the Board of Trustees of the Peekskill Library, given to someone who has been thought to be a person who has added significantly to Peekskill over a period of time. This year’s honoree was the Peekskill High School Basketball coach, Lou Panzanarro, Junior, who has guided decades of young men from the High School to national prominence on the basketball court and to successful lives off the court.

As I wrap up this letter, Lou has once again guided his team to the New York State Finals in Glens Falls and they made it all the way to the championship game which they lost in overtime by two points, The youngsters were, of course, devastated by the loss but we all must be impressed by their remarkable record. Those of us with long memories will recall Lou’s dad who was a member of the Armory Big Five just prior to World War 2and how proud we all were of their exploits, playing all of the major traveling teams of the day, including the Original Boston Celtics and the Harlem Globe Trotters – and holding their own most of the time.

To keep you up to date: Katie’s scores last Thursday were 108 and 106 with four spares in one game and two spares in the other. Katie isn’t good enough for the Special Olympics, but she is about ready to take on President Obama any time he gets to Jefferson Valley.

Until we meet again, BE VERY GOOD TO EACH OTHER, remember that, as the song says: ” The days grow short when you reach December.”

P.S. I just came from Jerry Hersh’s Memorial Service at Ned Curry’s. It was class, just the way he intended it to be. Joanne’s brother, Jim Pines, made it from Maryland and her sister, Doris, all the way from Houston.

Posted: March 29th, 2009 under Around Town.
Comments: none

Rejoice with me, on May First I marked the fortieth anniversary of the start of my jogging/running career. On that morning I went to the old cinder track at Depew Park and walked fifty paces, jogged fifty paces for a mile and one?half. I nearly died. I was in dreadful condition and hadn’t done much physical exertion, except for an occasional round of golf, since I had gotten out of the Army 21 years earlier. I stuck to it, however and got into such good shape that I was able to Marathon a couple of times, and probably have rolled up more than 50,000 miles in those forty years. This seems like a lot but isn’t really when you faithfully get out on a nearly daily basis.

I have made a lot of good friends because of my running and I have run in many races and I am really happy that I started on that May Day in 1968. I no longer am able to run far or fast; the legs have a lot of years and a lot of miles on them. So my style and effort is something less than it used to be. I get out usually on Saturday and Sunday for two or three leisurely miles and perhaps a couple of times during the week. There are still four of the Peekskill Marathon Team functioning, none of us in tip?top racing form but we manage to solve most of the problems of the day as we have our tea and graham crackers after the run. Depew Park is still one of the prettiest places around and has changed very little since we were young. Chauncey M. Depew really had foresight.

The month was, as I remember, chilly and cloudy much of the time. The Tampa Bay Rays, I told my daughter, Amy early in May, have a fine young team, and she scoffed at the thought. Look who is in first place on June 1! And those Cubbies are looking very good as well. Wouldn’t that be a fine match?up for October? Jerry Desmond’s Red Sox have made the breakthrough; perhaps this is Charley DeChristopher’s year. Charley and I have been good friends since he borrowed my good baseball bat in 1938 and broke it; he was a Cubs fan then, as I remember. I did not put the curse on the Cubs because of the bat. He also tried to teach me the responses to the old Latin Mass, which didn’t work out all that well.

We ended the month with the usual Memorial Day service at Monument Park and John “Pete” Donohue was the master of ceremonies and asked if I would make the usual speech in honor of the day. After a short show of modest apprehension I agreed and I am about to inflict it upon the readers of this space. The loudspeakers didn’t work very well and much of the gathering had trouble hearing what I had to say. It was preserved for posterity by the television crew. I have been waiting for an agent to call to sign me up. They must have the wrong number.

In any event I may have something to say about June in a few weeks. In the meantime, be very good to each other, you’ve only got each other.

MEMORIAL DAY, 2008

Memorial Day is, and should be, a solemn occasion. We come together, as people have been doingfor many years, to honor the memories of those who have served the United States faithfully and well.

When I was a child, seven years old or so, Decoration Day, the forerunner of this holiday, a really large parade wound through the streets of Peekskill. I can remember two very old veterans of the Civil War riding in an open touring car; there was a sizable contingent of veterans of the Spanish?American War and a much larger group of young men in white shirts and ties, who were veterans of World War 1. This was only 14 or 15 years following the Armistice of November 11, 1918 which marked the end of World War 1. Each if these generations, all of them now gone, had a fair claim to be called, “The Greatest Generation.” In those days members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars wandered through the crowd, dispensing small red paper poppies in memory of those who died in World War 1. We would see these poppies worn for several weeks. The tradition seems to have gotten lost here.

When I was in the Ninth, Grade at Peekskill High School, about the age of the members of the PHS band with us this morning, just before the beginning of World War 11, I went out for the track team. Peekskill High School was a member of the Hudson River League in those days, which consisted of Peekskill, North Tarrytown, Washington Irving and Hastings. We had a really fine track team in 1939. I was a mediocre dash man, about eleven seconds for the 100 yard dash. Sheldon Craddock, Donald MacCrea, and Dickie Lent, were all faster than I was; Shel lived with his mother in that tiny house just down the hill on Hudson Avenue, around the comer from Washington Street, he was her only child and her pride and joy; Donald lived, as I remember, in Finktown, on Park Street. Dickie Lent lived on Harrison Avenue. John Walsh, called, “Shagger”, came from Putnam Valley and was a really fine half?mile runner; (his sister Priscilla, is marriedto former Mayor Fred J. Bianco) Thomas Roe was our red?headed miler; Billy Stem and Dave Kiley put the shot. Billy had the highest IQ in my High School Class of 1943. Dave and I started Kindergarten together at the Guardian. None of them came home.

Shel Craddock died in New Guinea; Donald McCrea died in Italy; Dickie Lent’s “Lucky Destroyer” was hit by a Karnikazi suicide plane and went down with all hands in the Western Pacific; Shagger Walsh died in the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium; Red Roe died in the European fighting as well; Billy Stem was a member of the crew of a submarine which was sunk in one if the Fjords in the Aleutian Islands just off Alaska; Dave Kiley was a Marine who was last seen storming an island beach in the South Pacific. Five members of my High School Class died during the Second World War, out of about 85 boys in our class

.

A few years ago, Tom Brokaw, one of those talented people who read the news on television, published a book, “The Greatest Generation”, which is about the World War 11 Generation. MY generation, and the generation of many of the gray?haired people surrounding us this morning. Of course, it’s flattering that he has such a high opinion of us. I hope that he wouldn’t mind if I disagreed with him.

I believe that the greatest generation was the very first generation to call itself “American”, those who, with much courage and through great hardships wrested a nation from the clutches of the English monarchy. Those who fought and managed the American Revolution were a remarkable group of people.

It is fitting that our ceremony today be held on a, spot which once heard the whistle of enemy shot flying overhead; a spot which once heard the tread of enemy boots as well as the tattered boots of the Continental Army; a spot which once heard the hoof beats of the horses of General George Washington, of Alexander Hamilton, of the Marquis De Lafayette, of General Seth Pomeroy, of Israel Putnam and other leaders; also, probably, those of the arch?traitor Benedict Arnold.

The road just behind the Band was once known as the King’s Highway; it was the road Washington and the members of his staff rode upon nearly every day from the VanCortlandt Upper Manor house a couple of miles up this road where he lived with that Patriotic Family, to his headquarters at the Birdsall House on Main Street, which was located on that small, bare, patch of land right next to Kathleen’s Tearoom. Washington knew that it was absolutely necessary that the Hudson Highlands be the barrier blocking the progress of the British Redcoats and their mercenary’s plan to ravage the Valley and meet with British forces descending from Canada in order to sever the New England States from the rest of the nation on the south, which would have probably meant the collapse of the rebellion. If this plan of attack were to succeed the portrait of the English Queen might be on our postage stamps and coins.

In 1777, as part of that effort of King George III to subdue the rebels, a landing force of British troops came ashore at Lent’s Cove, that inlet of the Hudson separating the Bertoline Warehouse on John Walsh Boulevard from Indian Point. (Incidentally, the Bertolines are marking their 75th Anniversary in business with an appearance of the Budwieser Clydesdale horses on June 6 in downtown Peekskill.) In those days, what we now know as Lower South Street was part of the King’s Highway, the only road leading from New York to Albany and it wound through Peekskill to Continental Village and beyond.

That roadway just behind the Peekskill High School Band was part of that King’s Highway. The hill to our left, known as Fort Hill Park, was occupied by Continental Army troops and Continental Village was a major storehouse for the revolution. The British rapidly placed four light artillery pieces at Drum Hill and aimed volleys across the valley toward Fort Hill and in this direction. One of those shots aimed in this direction sailed out this road; a young American solider was taking a drink of water from a spring next to the road and was struck by one of the cannon balls and badly injured. Nathan Brown was taken to Fishkill where he became one of the first fatalities of the fighting. Historian Emma L. Patterson places that spring at about Phoenix Avenue and others camped at the site of the reservoir of the Peekskill Water system on Frost Lane.

Where we now stand is known as Monument Park for obvious reasons. In the early 1900′s the people of Peekskill and Cortlandt erected the impressive granite monument just behind me to honor the memories of those who fought at the many battles inscribed upon the monument. Those lifelike statues show the men who then served in their uniforms of the day. Just to the north of me is a plaque with all of the names of those who served in World War One; there are probably close to a thousand names, including those of my uncles James and Joseph Dugan, both of whom died as a result of that war; they were my mother’s brothers; James was a regular army man who had been part of the punitive expedition against Pancho Villa along the Mexican border and was stationed at Fort Benning , Georgia as a member of the training cadre when he fell victim to the vicious influenza epidemic which killed many millions of people all over the world. Joseph Dugan was part of the fighting in France, was gassed and died as a result just after I was born in 1925.

Another monument contains the names of all of those who died in World War One and then immediately adjacent is a list if those who died in World War Two, and a list of those lost in Korea. The Viet Nam casualties include the names of William Dorsey, Jr. whose family has operated that funeral home just up Cortlandt Street for many years; it has the name of Lawrence Osborne, whose family lived just down the street on Paulding Street; the name of Oliver Chase, Junior, and Bart Creed are there. They were both airmen and were shot down. The body of Lt Chase was recently identified and brought home for burial at Custer Nat ional Cemetery; no trace of Creed has ever been found.

We of the so?called “Greatest Generation” are fast fading away; I saw recently that 1600 World War Two veterans die each day. Twenty years from now, which must seem a lifetime to the young people in the band, we almost surely will all have gone (a sobering thought).

We hope that those now active in the services and others will be on hand to keep these ceremonies going. Twenty years from now you people in the band and your contemporaries will be in your productive years, taking on the responsibilities of maturity in our society. You may be here on some future Memorial Day with your children, you may be taking your turns on the school board, on the Common Council, as police officers, as members of Congress, you may be scientists , authors, jurists, it will be your time to shine, you will be staking your claim to be called “The Greatest Generation.”

When I was a child, someone always read at these ceremonies a famous poem of the day “In Flanders Fields.” Flanders is just across the English channel from England, where France and Belgium meet and is part of each of those two countries; in 1914 and 1915 there was vicious trench warfare in Flanders and the English and their Empire forces suffered very heavy casualties in a relatively short time. Colonel John McCrea was a physician in the Canadian Army and he wrote this poem in 1914, it was first published in 1915 and quickly caught favor. Colonel. McCrea caught pneumonia and died in 1918.

In Flanders Field

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That marks our place; and in the sky

The Larks, still bravely singing,

fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe;

To you with failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

This poem was taken from “Best Remembered Poems” by Martin Gardner and published by Dover Publications, Inc.

The poem, I think can be read in a couple of ways; as a prayer to the God of War for victory over the foe or as a prayer that the peace and tranquility that reigned just before that awful war might return.

Thank you all for coming out on this pretty spring morning to help us remember.

(speech delivered by Jack Burns, Memorial Park, Memorial Day 2008)

Posted: June 15th, 2008 under Around Town.
Comments: 3

The Saint Patrick’s Day Parade on a bright, sunny, warm Peekskill March Saturday afternoon was everything that it promised to be; the Top Hat of the Grand Marshall fit Vinny Vesce (class of 1965) perfectly. It is easy to say that Vinny was in “rare form”, he is always in rare form.”

The “Parade” is more like a leisurely procession, starting on South Division Street next to the Church of the Assumption, thence moving to Main Street and Bank Street, disbanding on Brown Street.

The sound of Joe Brady’s Bagpipes bounced off the building fronts throughout the parade route as he was decked out in full regalia.(For those of you who watch the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade in New York City on Television, Joe is that single piper who fronts the Fighting Sixty?ninth Regiment detachment each March 17.)

The many, many children, from kindergarten through the Peekskill High School Marching Band seemed to enjoy the event immensely. The enlarged Marching Band played “Danny Boy” at a march tempo as it moved out at the start of the parade.

There were about a dozen fine bands, heavy on the pipes and drums, with one singularly effective all?brass band and it seemed that every emergency apparatus in Northern Westchester and Putnam Counties rolled at the end of the parade,

each with its sirens and horns wailing at full blast.

Ernie DeBroske’s First Robin of the Spring made a belated appearance in mid?March; ordinarily the fat rascal makes it back in mid?February. The bird, it would seem, has had a successful winter in Florida along with all of the other snowbirds who seem to be wandering back right about now, with more of them slated for an early May arrival.

Judge Norbert Ehrenfreund of the (class of 1939) graduated from the University of Missouri School of Journalism before entering the Army in World War Two, where he was an officer in the Field Artillery and fought in the Battle of the Bulge and received a Bronze Star. He went to Paris following the war and joined the staff of Stars and Stripes, the serviceman’s newspaper, where he was assigned to cover the Nuremberg Trials of the principal Nazi War Criminals.

He returned to the States and attended Law School at Stanford University, settled in San Diego and became a California State Judge. His background has engendered a book, “The Nuremberg Legacy”, recently published, which discusses the effects which the decisions made in that trial have had on subsequent legal thinking throughout the world. On a recent Sunday afternoon at the Peekskill Field Library he gave a lecture about the book. I am about halfway through the book and find that Judge Ehrenfreund, a legal scholar, writes with the ease of a trained reporter. ( Lawyer?like prose tends to put people to sleep.)

The following Wednesday afternoon he shared lunch with about a dozen of his High School classmates at the Reef and Beef Restaurant on Annsville Circle where they seem to have had a fine time pulling old memories into the forefront of their conversations. While the other folks were reminiscing we sat apart with the Judge’s baby sister, Laura Lohman, who lives in Irvington and who graduated in 1947. She and her husband, Maury, were able to trace members of the Ehrenfreund family in official records while they were traveling in Eastern Europe.(An Ehrenfreund grandfather was one of the millions murdered in the Holocaust by the Nazis). The third, and eldest of the Ehrenfreund children, Rose E. Treat, will be 100 years old in December. She and the judge are both included in the Peekskill High School Wall of Fame. Rose may well be the oldest surviving graduate of Peekskill High School (class of 1926). Their father ran a hair?net factory on Howard Street for many years.

Laura’s husband, Maury, served aboard the Aircraft Carrier, USS Windham Bay, CV92, in the western Pacific in World War Two and he has sent me copies of four photographs of Ernie Pyle, the legendary War Correspondent taken aboard the Windham just about a week before Pyle was killed by a sniper’s bullet on le Jima, a small island off Iwo Jima. These had to be among the last photographs taken of Pyle during his lifetime.

My kid brother, Eddy (class of 1951), didn’t make it to the East Coast of Florida Peekskill Day on the third Thursday in February, he was not feeling up to snuff. Those of you who know Eddy will realize that he had to feel really rotten to miss the affair. Despite the weather being less than perfect that day I’m told that about 200 people made it to Carlin Park in Jupiter.

My Martha (class of 1974), who lives in Port Richey, went to the West Coast Peekskill Day in Tarpon Springs, joined by my daughter, Amy Carlin (class of 1971) and by my grandson, William J. Carlin, Third, (Stewie Carlin and I share the same grandson), where about 40 people were able to make it, and the weather was fine and I’m told that the company was interesting. Billy was one of these people who were let go when Country?Wide Mortgage started to cut back when the panic in mortgages set in, and he was able to fill in as a member of the security squad at the Yankees Spring Training games in Tampa. I sent about 30 copies of Bernie Yudowitz’ (class of 1951) Peekskill High School Commemorative Booklets to Martha which were quickly scapped up.

Incidentally, John Curran (class of 1963) at the Peekskill Museum has more copies available and he would be happy to send one on and the price would be two dollars to cover the cost of mailing.

I went to the “new” PHS auditorium recently to take in a performance of “The Sound of Music” which was a joy. The story, of course, concerns the VonTrapp family and their efforts to get out of Austria, hotly pursued by the Nazis, and who later made their home in the United States. My memory is that the VonTrapp family gave a concert at OUR Peekskill High School Auditorium at about the time of World War Two, which gives the current performance added meaning.

When I was in Junior High School in about 1939, the PHS music department performed Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Mikado” instilling in me a life?long love of the G&S operas. My recollection, which might not be all that razor?sharp, is that Kate Grab and Milt Powers (class of 1940) sang the juvenile leads, while Bernie’s book tells me that Don Doherty (class of 1938) , Grace Gould and Raul DeCastellano, were featured. (Kate doesn’t specifically remember doing the Mikado, but does remember that she and Milt sang many programs together and also remembers that they were known as the Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy of PHS.)

I went out for the track team in the Ninth Grade and I have a further memory of Milt standing on a bench in the locker room after a practice of the team, singing from the Mikado at the top of his voice, “A wandering minstrel I, a thing of threads and patches, of ballads songs and snatches, and dreamy lullabies. . .” Stark naked!

With any luck, and, as Arthur Godfrey used to say, “the crick don’t rise, ” I’ll get back to you in the near future.

In the meantime, be very good to each other. –JACK

Posted: April 27th, 2008 under Around Town.
Comments: none

It is at least a couple of years since I have attempted to write anything along these lines; I have had a note from webmaster Ron Abbey – in Tavares, Florida, who has kept this Site open for about a decade and he suggested that I might add something in the order of what I used to churn out for the Peekskill Herald and for Tommy Antonucci’s magazines.

Let’s get started:

I’m not sure about the general knowledge concerning OUR Peekskill High School building, more recently the Peekskill Middle School, which is soon to be demolished to make way for a new state-of-the-art Middle School on the same site. Construction of the latter is moving along nicely and it should be ready for occupancy by September for the start of the 2008-2009 school year.

Our City Historian, John Curran, PHS 1963- has a pile of commemorative booklets concerning OUR Peekskill High School, sponsored by the class of 1951, spearheaded by Bernie Yudowitz, and John tells me that copies can be had by contacting him at the Peekskill Museum, 914-736-0473 or at brainman2u@yahoo.com and the cost will be Two Dollars to cover handling and mailing charges. It really is well worthwhile, and once the wrecking ball had done away with the building this may be the only real reference to memories which one may have. (My copy of the Searchlight, which I took to our fiftieth anniversary reunion, disappeared that night. If someone out there from the Class of 1943 has an extra copy with nice things said about “Jack” or “John” it might very well be mine and I’d love to have it back.)

There has been much concern about the preservation of those lovely murals dating from the 1930′s. I’m told that, once again, Bernie and his group are making a real effort to have them removed properly and that a suitable, display space for them be found somewhere in the community. It is a really tough job, as I understand it. The Homestyle Bakery on Water Street, which makes the best NewYork-Style cheesecake, regularly hires youngsters from the High School to work behind the counter; last Spring, I was shopping there and the young lady waiting on me was wearing one of the those Tee-shirts with a full list of the current year’s graduating class printed thereon; “Class of 2007, I asked her, “I was the Class of 1943.” “Oh, my God” she replied.

The other day I was standing on line at the Peekskill Post Office just behind Phil Hersh; Lou Panzanaro, Jr. was just behind me. Our conversation, naturally enough turned to sports and the progress of Lou’s PHS basketball team this year. They swept the regular season’s schedule and as of this writing they have won the Sectionals and are marching toward the Fourth Straight New York State Championship; a truly remarkable feat. Phil says that Lou is the finest high school basketball coach in the United States and I won’t argue with that assessment.

Lou’s father, now 93 years old, was one of my childhood heroes when he played with the Armory Big Five basketball team in the years just before World War 11. Lou Sr. was a fine PHS player who was offered a full scholarship to play with Claire Bee’s LIU team, then among the finest in the Country. In those Great Depression years a job which made a little money was important to families. Lou, Sr. never misses a practice nor a game.

Lou, Jr. went out for basketball in High School and didn’t make the cut; he was edged out by a classmate, one George Pataki, who went into another line of work. Phil went to college at Arizona State, where Bobby Valentine was his roommate and good friend. Phil has been Bobby’s lawyer and confidante ever since. He tells me that Valentine’s team in Japanese major league baseball is starting spring training for this season. He also told me that a documentary film is being made for Japanese television about Valentine and his team and Valentine told him that Andrew Jenks, whose family resides just down the street from Phil’s family, is making the film.

Andrew’s mom, Nancy is a nurse with Hudson River Health Care. It is, to coin a phrase, a small world, and all roads seem to lead to Peekskill.

Plans are in place for the nineteenth annual Saint Patrick’s Day Parade in Peekskill on March 15 th , a Saturday afternoon, and Vincent “Fitz” Vesce is this year’s Grand Marshall, who will don the traditional top hat with, I’m sure, a lot of pride. This parade is usually the most fun of any parade during the course of the year, with a lot of smiling youngsters joining the line of march. Joe Brady’s pipes will lead the way. It really is more of a stroll than a martial parade, with the tempo set by the shortest legs of the shortest child along the way. Many of the detachments have special routines worked out for performance before the guests of honor on the reviewing stand so the relatively short distance takes a lot of time to be traversed, and no one seems to mind a bit. All of those who practiced many hours at step-dancing classes all winter long will have the chance to show off their progress.

I I am not really sure whether this article is what Ron had in mind; I shall send it off to him and if it meets with his approval perhaps we can continue on a relatively regular basis. It would be good for my ego; perhaps you would enjoy what I have to say from time to time.

In the mean time, be very good to each other.

c.2008 Jack Burns

Posted: March 13th, 2008 under Around Town, High School History.
Comments: 7