Update 6-4-13

Hi,

 

While people were trying to help Amy Kassak Bentley and me remember Jimmy O'Neil's name during the last few weeks, some other information was included.  Here's about half of it, in the order the notes arrived.

 

From Ed Albrecht:  We used to fish and spear fish in the creek along Brookfield Road.  Played a lot of cards with Bob Cairns at that time.  Mostly at the overpass down from the Valley Stream train station. 

 

From Betsy Fels Pottruck:  I also swam in the creek with Valerie Nelson.  Her neighbors had a great dock you could dive off.

 

From Andy Dolich:  As a young fisherman plying the piscatorially rich waters of the creek and Mill Pond, I caught, snagged, netted, and trapped the following:  white perch, yellow perch, northern chain pickerel, carp, killies, herring, snappers, blue crabs, spider crabs, and box turtles.

    I send you this missive from Hvar Island in the Croatian Adriatic.  Cheers.

 

From Barbara Blitfield Pech:  Just a quick note in response to the Watts Creek posting.  While I
haven't done anything more than just remember it, there is a Watts Place that feeds from and runs parallel to Mill Road and ends at Dubois Avenue in Gibson.  While there may be no correlation, nonetheless, there is no doubt that it isn't a coincidence, either.

 

From Amy Kassak Bentley:  Joseph H. Watts was the farmer who Watts Creek was named after.  His farm was approximately where the open green space is before you enter Green Acres / Mill Brook.  I've found census records for both Joseph and his wife, Mary Jane.  The mill at Watts Pond was a pumping station for the Brooklyn Waterworks, but it also powered a mill.  Another Watts, George, lived just north of the Long Island Railroad, north of the present library.  Sand Road was the original name of Mill Road.  Emil Reisert was the owner of the farmland on which the Green Acres community was built, but the farm was first sold -- in 1929 -- to build Curtiss Field.

 

From Evelyn Read:  Here's a picture of me shopping in Texas, in a souvenir Mexican sombrero and serape. 

I arrived safely.  It was a beautiful, sunny flight, and our area had the most beautiful fluffy clouds of all the country.  Some areas had not a single cloud, and I could clearly see cars, houses, trees, and water.  The rivers looked muddy, and there was one river that zig-zagged like a snake.

     The last three days have been very busy with tests and meeting the doctor.  They are still waiting for my lung slides from New York Presbyterian, but I don't want too much time to pass before they do something here.  They did a PET today.  Since there was a significant change from the December to March scan, I am worried that there may be more changes since the last scan two months ago.  I am amazed that my body just keeps going and going, although I have been very tired.  There is much walking to do.  Love and thoughts.

 

From Helen David:  Just a bit of trivia.  When South opened, both 7th and 8th grade science were only half-year classes.  Ninth grade science was a full year.  Traditionally, 7th and 8th grade science were one-half year courses, but our Science Department was anxious to extend them to be full-year classes, and so it happened.  I joined South in 1957, along with 25 other teachers.  The school was adding an 11th grade -- or was it a 10th? -- and there was a need for teachers as a result.  Ralph Foster was among the 25, and, like me, he remained through his retirement.  Also, probably after many of you graduated, biology classes were extended to 7 periods a week, presumably to provide more time for lab classes.  Things do change.

 

Finally, from Philip Dorin:  I have been following the newsletter for years now, and I keep promising myself that "tomorrow" is the day I will finally join the discussion, but -- warning: mixed-metaphor ahead -- inertia is a powerful drug.  At the moment, I'm traveling with my wife, Joyce, in western Massachusetts and typing on an iPhone.  This is not my favorite way to communicate, but I did want to help out with the Case of the Drowning Boy.  I can also add a few memories that touch upon things I've read about in earlier newsletters.

    I was in that Cub Scout group (den?), and I was "signed up" around fourth grade,  which would've been 1958-59.  I had to go to Andy Dolich's house to do it -- I suspect his mom was the den leader that year -- but I seem to recall that the meetings were at Gary and Roy Sherwood's house, which was somewhere near Gene Barkin's house on the creek.  After the meetings, we played punchball in the backyard.

    Punchball !  We played it endlessly -- in the schoolyard at Forest Road School, and -- more often -- in the street.  I grew up at 84 Forest Road but spent countless weekends on Lotus Oval North, playing punchball with that crew.  It consisted of:  Paul Breiter, Joe Lieberman, Harvey (and younger brother, Gary) Krasilowski, and Simon Skolnick, all class of '66.  Also, Mark Gleicher (who left for private school, but whose sister, Andrea, graduated South circa 1969), Jesse Mendelsson, and Mark Beckerman ('71).

    As Eric Hilton recalled in some previous newsletters, my dad had a studio in the Green Acres Shopping Center, so I (and sister, Barbara) can add a lot on that subject.  Dad always spoke very fondly of Mr. Chanin and had great affection for him as a landlord.  I recall that Dad was on something like a triple net lease -- i.e., the better (or worse) he did, the more (or less) the landlord received -- but he never seemed concerned about getting renewed.  When I once asked him about this, he said, very matter-of-factly, that every mall needed a mix of stores.  "They can't all be shoe stores."  Dad was the the photographer, and Chanin understood that.  I think about that a lot, because, here in Los Angeles, the prevailing thought appears to be something like, "They can all be shoe stores."  At least, they can all be running-shoe stores.  That explains why the once-trendy Westside Pavilion, close to where I live, looks like a ghost town seven days a week.  But, I digress...

    OK.  Enough.  It's too big a pain to type on my phone.  I'll weigh in again once back in Los Angeles.  Best regards to all.   By the way, it's summer vacation for me, and I'm off from the university (Loyola Marymount) until nearly Labor Day.  Let's finally make that plan to get together with the rest of the Angelenos.

 

The South '65 e-mail addresses: reunionclass65 . blogspot . com

 

The South '65 photo site: picasaweb . google . com / SouthHS65

 

 

Rich