Update 5-21-13

Hi,

 

Much longer than our recent newsletters, but as compact as I can make the research Amy Kassak Bentley and I -- with the help of others -- have done about the boy who drowned in the creek near Green Acres:

 

Amy:  Regarding the drowning, I have the same recollection as Larry Rugen.  Exactly.  I remember the boy walking on Mill Road, crossing over the bridge by Mill Pond, and heading north.  That is where I always saw him.  The drowning would have to be in some newspaper, such as the Mail Leader or maybe Newsday.  The Mail Leader is on microfiche at Hofstra, but it is not indexed, so you would have to know the date of the reporting in order to find the article.  Please ask Larry Rugen what year he worked at Frank’s Deli on Cochran.  He should also be able to remember the season.  That will be a good lead, and we could find the newspaper article based on that information.

 

Larry:  It was after I worked at Newsday and prior to 1965.  Say ‘63 to ‘64.  Also, I do recall that the police surmised he was walking over the ice-covered creek, and I believe that was early January.  It had to be January ‘63 or ‘64.  I recall it was a very cold winter that year.

 

Amy:  Yes, 1963 or 1964 makes sense.  I would have been 10 years old.   He was around 20 years old, don’t you think?  It doesn’t appear as if anyone knew him.  He probably did not go to South High.

 

Rich:  He did seem to be a few years older than I was, so 20 could be a good guess.  And I never remember him being a student at South or Forest, but that may have been how people like him -- who today might have been termed “mentally challenged” -- were treated in those days. Obviously, he was independent enough to be able to wander around Green Acres and the surrounding areas without his parents worrying, and I always remember him wearing a black, maybe a Greek fisherman's cap and a black Navy pea coat.  But those memories could entirely be wrong because he couldn't dress that way in the summer.  But everyone in our neighborhood seemed to know him, maybe because we all always seemed to be outside and because he lived just around the corner from us.  I also don't ever remember him speaking to any of us, so he may simply have been deaf.  But no one ever taunted him, maybe because he seemed like an adult.  And it's interesting that he smoked and bought cigarettes at the candy store.  And the boy lived on Flower Road, just around the corner from me.  South side of the street, odd number, from 33 to probably 43.

 

Barnet Kellman, Bernie Scheidt, Marc Fishman, Chuck Gleichmann, Andy Dolich, and Jeff Levin -- all of whom lived in that area -- remember nothing about the boy.

 

Amy: You mentioned that you thought his name was Dennis.  Ask Larry if he thought that.  Maybe it will trigger something.

 

Larry:  Can’t recall.  But he was perhaps in his 20s or early 30s.

 

Linda Tobin Kettering:  According to public records, which don't always go back to the original owner, here are the earliest recorded owners available:  #35 Deckel.  #37 Faragher.  #41 Arndt.

 

Rich:  Thanks.  41 -- Arndt -- was that house you were selling, so their kids are accounted for.  I’m pretty sure it wasn’t 33 anyway, because I don’t remember the man living in the corner house.   From a quick Google search:  35 Flower Road -- Gilda and Harold Deckel.  37 Flower Road -- Dennis Faragher.  But Dennis Faragher might be coincidence.  I can't pull anything useful from Dennis Faragher off the Social Security Death Index, though a Dennis Faragher died in Queens in 1981 and Ethel Faragher died in Nassau County in 1995.  Queens could have been the location of the Veteran's Hospital because my dad died there though his home address was still in Green Acres.  Dennis could have been the son's name as well, and it didn't turn up in the SSDI because he never collected social security.

 

Amy:  Remember Peggy Cooper Schwartz said in the newsletter that his name might be “Jimmy.”

 

Rich:  His name could have been Dennis, Jimmy, or anything else.  A Joseph Faragher also turns up on Google as a relative of Ethel and Dennis, so he may have been a son.

 

Barnet:  I remember the Deckels though I didn’t know them well.  The Faraghers, I remember well.  Nice people.  My dad always told me that Faragher was a Basque name.

 

Amy:  I don't recall ever seeing "Jimmy" anywhere except on Mill Road, next to Mollie and Leo's candy store.  Are you sure he lived in Green Acres?   Also, Jimmy had a very strange look.  I can remember him clearly to this day.  He was always alone, never ever with anyone.

 

Rich:  I still think we're looking at the Deckels or the Faraghers.  When you do a Google search, in addition to Gilda and Harold Deckel and Ethel and Dennis Faragher, you also get Brian Deckel and Joseph Faragher.  But Brian Deckel, although the right age to be a son, lives in California, so he might be unrelated to the Green Acres Deckels.  Joseph Faragher though seems to be Ethel and Dennis' son.  He seems to be a priest in his 60s.  Now, I was thinking Faragher might be an Irish name, so the son was possibly named Dennis after the father and the brother who was a priest.  But if it’s Basque and Catholic, the father-son name could hold.  Or Peggy could be right, and the boy could have been named Jimmy.  I remember him being dark-haired, not particularly tall, and a little Neanderthal looking, which is to say intense.

 

Amy:  How is it possible that no one can recall his name?  If he lived in Green Acres, this is next to impossible.  And it seems strange that he drowned in January.  I can understand being tempted to go in the water in the warmer months, even if one couldn't swim.  But in January?  The creek might have been partially frozen.  Maybe he tried to walk across the creek and fell in.

 

Rich:  As you said, he was always alone.  He also may not have been able to speak, which is why I don't remember him responding when I said "hello."  That may be why he had no friends and why none of us can remember his name.  But I saw him around my immediate neighborhood a lot, which is why I knew he lived near the corner of Forest and Flower.  I may even have seen him go into his house because my friends and I  were always biking and playing in that area.  It was also on our way to the shopping center.  The other place I often saw him was along the section of the creek where I always figured the police found his body.  That was between the bridge on Mill Road and the bridge to South, and I knew that area because Nancy Garfield lived close to it, and that path along the creek was one of our playgrounds from childhood on.  I may also have seen him from the bridge, when I was coming back from South.  And remember that Steve Zuckerman wrote that the kids frequently cut across the ice, but it was sometimes thin on the creek and kids often fell through.  Other kids had to pull them out, but this kid was always alone.  And Larry Rugen wrote that it had been a particularly cold winter, so the creek probably froze and didn't thaw till spring when the body was supposedly found.

 

Amy: 1940 census.  The father is Joseph, not Dennis.  The son is Joseph, too.  Born 1937 approximately, so he would have been around 26 when he drowned.

 

Rich:  Good work on the census.  I looked at a copy but it said it wasn't indexed by names, so I gave up.  A Joseph Faragher still turns up as a priest in Ohio.  Another one turns up as buried in New York in 1989.  As I mentioned, Dennis Faragher turns up as dying in Queens in 1981.

 

Amy:  I spoke to an old friend from Green Acres, and she said that "Jimmy" did not live in Green Acres.  She said she believed he lived in Gibson.  I am not convinced that he lived in Green Acres, either.  I know you said he lived on Flower Road, around the corner from you, but no one else seems to have that memory.  If he did, I believe that we would have known more about him.

 

Rich:  The man who might have been Joe Faragher, Jr. was in my neighborhood all the time. There's a possibility that he didn't live there, and that Flower Road was just the shortest route to the shopping center, where a lot of people hung out.  But I often saw him in that block of houses just east of the Forest/Flower intersection.  And when he went missing, it was immediate neighborhood news, not just a story about some guy from Gibson.  By contrast, we never heard about John Cairns' death in the Mott’s Creek drowning a few years earlier.  And we still also don't know who lived at 33 or 39 Flower, next to the Deckels and between the Faraghers and the Arndts.

 

Amy:  My my friend has rethought her memory.  She said he could have been from Green Acres and said “Dennis” sounded right.  I also recalled that my mom knew who the boy was, though I don't know if she knew his name.  If she knew him, then maybe he did live in Green Acres and walked around there.  I also clearly remember the police searching the creek in boats with lights, but I had no idea the boy lived in Green Acres.  My brother also mentioned that he remembers the boy/man hanging out at the creek closest to Mill Road.  He was told to stay away from him.  I also just asked my mom, and she now denies having said that he was a local boy.

 

Rich:  I think, especially if the man was a Faragher, that his name might have been Joe, Jr., and that's all because of the information you found on the 1940 census.  I suspect that the Dennis Faragher who died in Queens in 1981 was the brother or cousin of the Joseph, Sr. who lived in Green Acres with his wife Ethel and died in 1989.  I also tried to check to see where Joe Faragher, Sr. lived in the 1930 and 1920 censuses, and what relationship he might be to Dennis. They might be listed as brothers.  If Joe, Sr. was 28 in 1940, he should have been born in 1912, but I don't seem to be able to search censuses as well as you can.

 

Amy:  The boy’s name could have been Joseph Dennis Faragher.  Sometimes people use their middle name instead of their first names.

 

Rich:  But was Joe Faragher's middle name Dennis in the census?  That could be, since he seemed to have a relative named Dennis.  And you’re right, guys who are juniors, sometimes use their middle names to differentiate themselves from their dads.