Hi Congress of Alumquahics:
Mini-Reunion of WHS alumni of the 50’s was a success:
Arnie Kohn (56)
Fourteen fellow Weequahic grads gathered for lunch today (3/11/22) at the Spanish
Tavern in Mountainside. They ranged from the classes of 1950-1956.A plethora of old memories were restored. The gathering was all organized by my classmate David Cohen. Arnie
David Cohen (56)
Arnie is right, Weequahic alumni of the 50s did meet, but it is restricted to no one and would welcome anyone to contact me if they would like to be included in our next lunch. My e-mail address is nbbsdc@aol.com.
Over the years, we have had some great honored guests like the cherished Phil Barone. Recently, Billy Pollak (1/53) showed up. Richie Roberts (6/56) sat on my left and Sam Weinstock sat on my right. The second table had Lenny Strauss, Arnie Kohn (56), Mel Lissner (53), Tody Lubetkin (6/49), Mike Fine (1/56) and Howie Sharenow along with Ronny Klein. We also had Sandy Karr (5/56), Arty Walsh and Ira Cohen (52) at our table.
Lenny passed out Weequahic baseball caps and pens. We heard lots of tales of days gone by that only we would recall or understand. When we finally left after hours just telling great stories about our great school, it was a little sad knowing we might not see some of these great people again.
There is no schedule for these things; someone just gets an urge and it starts up again. Sorry, foolishly we took no pictures. I'm not sure why. David
Deborah Williams Lee (70) seeks a Weequahic alumni assist in locating a friend:
I am trying to locate Arnold Harris, Class of 1970. I think we ran into one another in Chicago in 2002 at Water Tower Place but I did not make the Newark connection at the time. When I realized who he was, he was gone. We lived on Chadwick Avenue. Arnold, my brother James, my sister Kathryn and I were all friends at Peshine and Weequahic. He had two brothers, Bruce and Robert, and a sister named Sharon.
Arnold and I went to a Sly Stone concert in Wichita, Kansas in 1971. He was in the Service and I was on my way back to school in Salina, Kansas. That was the last time we spent any time together. I would love to know how he is and what he has been doing since 1971. I would appreciate any feedback sent to me at simplydawl@aol.com. Deborah
Michael Botnick (68) shares an offer:
I found my mother’s 1939 Year Book from Maple Avenue School. It’s possible that it’s from two different years as the page sizes are different. So, it might contain 1938 or 1940 as well. If you know someone who went to Maple during those years, email me and I’ll look to see if there is a picture of them, I can send to you. Michael (Botkant@gmail.com).
Jacqueline Kaufer Klein (66) reminisces about Weequahic Park:
After reading another recent edition of the weekly “WHS Note,” my mind wandered to Weequahic Park and I began thinking about how much it meant to me. Alan Ginter (6/64) wrote that his dreams are sometimes populated with visions and remembrances of his Chancellor childhood and it made me think of Weequahic Park and how exquisite and dreamlike my remembrances of it are. I have not gone back to the park since I was a senior in high school, so this is just what I remember. I know that it was created by Frederick Olmsted. I have read its history, but what I remember was far removed from that.
Perhaps this will remind others. At the entrance on Lyons Avenue, you could look up and see the incredible, marble Romanesque Dividend Hill pavilion. It truly did seem like something out of a dream, so out of place, as if it should have been in the English countryside by a lake. It was so beautiful. I climbed up to it twice on very hot days and it seemed so romantic and mysterious.
Because my mother worked so much, my friend's kind mother would include me on outings to the park. I clearly remember that near the Lyons Avenue entrance there was a grove of beautiful chestnut trees with benches under them. We would sit where scattered on the ground were hundreds of chestnuts in the spiky green wrappings. But if you were able to open them, inside were perfect, polished chestnuts. I couldn’t believe, even as a little girl, that you could find wild chestnuts in Newark.
I loved my times in Weequahic Park so green in the spring and summer with trees and brush wild and beautiful. My very biggest discovery was that walking on the gravel path parallel to Elizabeth Avenue there was wild brush on the right side on the way to the Rose Garden. I once found the most extraordinary thing, a bush with one bright, large, chartreuse round object hanging off of it, the size of a grapefruit, covered with warts and all lime green. I couldn’t believe my eyes and I never forgot it. Of course, I was scared to touch it. Only about ten years ago did I find out it was something called an Osage Orange.
I absolutely loved the Rose Garden where there were all different colors of rose bushes and climbing roses with a rough lodgepole fence and a pergola. In the center was a Victorian looking water fountain; we would turn the knob on and drink out of it. The path was all gravel and behind it was a green, grassy hill. It was long and sloping and the most intrepid thing I did in my childhood was to roll down it. There was nothing I loved to do more than to roll down that hill. I can still hear the laughter. Although the rose garden was so beautiful in the spring and summer, I remember a special time in the winter. After a big snowfall, my mother took my sled to the top of the hill and I rode it down to the Rose Garden.
The restrooms were in a marble edifice that looked like it was fit for royalty.
So did the playground. Even the sandbox was in a Romanesque marble pavilion. I remember the metal slide and wooden merry-go-round that you would propel with your feet. I recall the wooden seesaws that went up with a squeak and down with a crashing thud. I recollect wearing white sandals from Brody's Shoe Store with ankle socks. Sometimes I had on saddle shoes. And, after time in the area there was a need to shake the sand from my socks.
And I remember on Saturdays, my Aunt Bea and Uncle Max would pick me up at my mother's store and we would go to Weequahic Park’s playground. Uncle Max gave me the gilded paper ring off of his cigar. He would always make me a sailor hat out of the Newark Evening News which I would proudly wear. We would skip pebbles into the puddles. Aunt Bea and Uncle Max are long gone. They lived on Clinton Place in a little apartment. I still think of them so often and I miss them. He worked in a drug store on Broad Street and Aunt Bea worked in Kresge’s.
On hot summer late afternoons, after my mother closed her store, we would sometimes drive to the lake in Weequahic Park. It was almost sundown and so peaceful and lovely. I know that my mother had her own memories, too. She would tell me that there used to be trotter horses there and her father would take her to see them (track pictured, below) and they would sometimes go canoeing in the lake.
