Hi Fans of Weequahic OBA United:
CORRECTION:
Thomas Lewis Brown (71) highlights a Newark hero:
With apologies to Thomas Lewis Brown (71), the name of the Newark hero he highlighted was misspelled in the last newsletter. Michael Dewitt Swangin (not Swangine) (64) was killed in Vietnam and credited with assisting in saving the lives of numerous men that day.
Lou Gittlin (6/62) and Mark Sarver (WHS 65-66/Millburn 69) eulogize relatives:
My sister Lenore Gittlin, Class of June, 1961, passed away on December 30, 2021 after a short battle with lung cancer. She was 78 years old. Lenore will be truly missed by our entire family, as she always loved our family get-togethers and being with her grandchildren. Rest in peace my sister; you will always be in my heart. Notice of her passing is available at Lenore Gittlin Obituary. Lou
My beloved father, Charles Sarver, passed away recently, a month short of his 93rd birthday. Dad was a proud graduate of Peshine (1942) and Weequahic (1946) and a devoted reader of these alumni emails. Dad was raised in the wonderful small-town environment that was Newark then and loved to share the adventures about his early life there, a place in time that now exists only in memory.
When he was courting mom (Jean Lindenberg), they would jump off the Maple Avenue bus by her Hillside home. The driver went on to the end of his route and on the return, always stopped in front of the house to pick up dad for the ride home. One night, the driver forgot to stop. Eventually realizing his mistake, the bus turned around (with its passengers) and went back for him. Dad and mom were married for 51 joyous years until she passed in 2001. They raised three children, Mark, Lynn and Drew. Thirty years ago my parents moved from New Jersey to Arizona where my father lived independently until the end of his life.
Dad maintained great lifelong friendships from childhood, especially with Nate Stein, his best friend of 70 years. At the 1946 Weequahic class reunion in 1977, six classmates and their spouses re-bonded to form the “Peshine Pishers” and spent the rest of their lives visiting and vacationing together. This included mom and dad, Nate (and Steffie) Stein, Harry (and Phyllis) Mix, Dan (and Lil Mont), Harry (and Gladys) Monastersky] and Elaine Schill (and Saul Shevelove). Harry, Phyllis, Dan and Steffie are still with us.
Dad was kind and quiet and family was everything to him. He loved us and was our anchor who guided us with his practical nature, common sense and basic goodness. We will miss dad always. Mark
Susan Handler Gibbs (1/62) has important message for alumni of the Classes of 1962:
The reunion committee of the classes of 1962 is considering canceling the 60th reunion due to an inadequate response significantly lower than anticipated and for which contracted with the caterer. We understand the reluctance to commit to this occasion considering Covid, but unless we can meet the Old Mill Inn's required number of people to continue the event, we will have to cancel.
To any member of the classes of 1962, please join us at the Old Mill Inn in Basking Ridge on Sunday, May 15, 2022, from 12:30 to 4:30. We hope that we don't have to cancel this milestone reunion, but without enough people to attend we will have no choice. "Please respond by March 10, 2022."
For all who wish to attend or if you have any questions, please call me at 201-463-7690 or Bonnie Vogel at 732-956-6643. Hoping to see you on May 15th. Susan
Ray Drake’s (1/50) Weequahic Word Association, Part III and final:”
Sam Wasserman's Deli-on Bergen near Harding Terrace where they sold pickled tongues from barrels placed just inside the walk-in fridge.
Red Lehr's-newspaper, cigar and cigarettes' store on Bergen two doors from Jack T's deli.
Price's Furrier-owner Jack lived on the first floor at 144 Shephard and on his day off he sat on the front porch drinking tea and reading the Jewish News while popping sugar cubes in his mouth with each swallow of tea.
Bennie Price-Jack's son who bought one the first Hudson cars when they came out.
Mrs. Lettice-gave out nickels on Halloween.
Sandra Levine-was well endowed, lived in the Goldberg's house where they parked their trucks for their Prince Street store.
Vincent McMann-my grammar school friend who had a sister named Noreen. His German shepherd dog bit my left leg.
Herb Samuels-lived on Mapes Avenue and his father was a bedridden invalid.
Florence Kravitz-lived on Huntington Terrace and asked me to be her boyfriend
Dave Finkel-lived on Leigh Avenue near Osbourne Terrace and was friend with Herb Schoenwetter who lived on Harding Terrace.
Osbourne Terrace Newark Public Library-where I read all the books on deep sea diving. A September storm blew down the large trees on the front lawn.
Shimmy Pickholtz-a rotund boy who lived next door to Gary Skolloff on Shephard near Bergen Street. Gary's dog was a cocker spaniel and his father a professional musician.
Bergen Street Bakery-made the best Jewish rye bread with seeds and prune and cinnamon Danish pastries.
Ashes from coal burning stoves-were placed in cans in the back yard and on garbage collection day, a man would drag them to the curb.
Fat books and comic books-were traded with your friends.
Norm Krueger-his father had a green Chevrolet that Norm used to drive. His mother was a fantastic baker. Tommy Hennigan lived next door.
Buses-8 Lyons Avenue, 48 Maple Avenue and 9 Clifton all used Bergen Street and cost 5 cents to ride.
Prince Street-the place to shop for everything.
Barber Shop-on Bergen between Shephard and Mapes Avenues which was the gangsters’ hangout; large cars were always doubled parked.
Park Theater-near Leigh cost 9 cents on Saturday showing a newsreel, cartoons and two movies.
Hal Halpern Photo Studio-was on the corner of Mapes and Bergen. A couple of doors toward Shephard was Strulowitz’s, a kosher butcher store. That was Len's father's shop.
Sledding on the snow on Shephard Avenue-Newark did NOT plow for small snow falls, so the snow was packed down by cars using the street. We would sleigh ride on our bellies downhill from Don Schact's house to Bergen Street. When the tire tracks wore down the snow to the blacktop, we would ride on that portion between the edge of the snow and parked cars. Many times, we would have to stop as a car was driving in the street.
Asbury Park-my Aunt Nell rented two rooms in a private house on a street that was a white concrete roadway lined with big trees that overlapped in the middle of the street creating a canopy of green. My mother, grandma, myself and Aunt Nell were there for a week. We ate in the diner on Asbury Avenue and rode the Whip, Octopus and Merry Go Round on the boardwalk. I got two brass rings for free rides. We rode the train from Newark to Asbury Park and back.
Eastern Air Lines- their flights were only about 500 feet above our houses.
Weequahic Park-boating, fishing in the lake for sun fish and playing baseball and pick up tackle football. At the golf course, my Uncle Joe, the golfer, would have me catching golf balls in my baseball glove as he hit them from the tee 250 to 300 feet. It was good practice for me when I played center field on the Purolator hard ball team in the Industrial League.
You must try it to exercise your brain. Ray
Warren Bratter (1/60) concludes the essay on WHS friend and football teammate Eddie Barker (6/59):
More than 50 years after that surreal instant on a football field, another of my Weequahic teammates and close friends, Sammy Skuratofsky (59), re-entered my life in the way people do these days, through the Internet.
Sammy was still Sammy. Even after all this time, I recognized him instantly in the jpeg photos that accompanied his emails; and this, in surroundings so unfamiliar, Thailand, as to make me blink in disbelief. So far removed was he from the recognizable geography of our Weequahic neighborhood. Still generous of spirit; still filled with an infectious sense of humor. And still in contact with many of our former friends, I promptly requested Ed’s email address.
I wrote to him. Ed and his wife Sue invited me to their western New Jersey home. The reunion and my introduction to Sue was a revelation. There was an ease and familiarity between the three of us which belied the years of separation. As much as our lives athletically, professionally, geographically, personally, and socially had taken very different paths, the essential truths of our nature and the bonds that had united Eddie and I so long ago as friends and teammates were remarkably intact.
Ed had been a big, fast, and powerful running back. I was small, shifty, and could throw. Ed was quiet and brainy. I was noisy. Ed was relentless and demanding of himself and others. I was intense and persistent. Neither of us liked to lose, but even as youngsters we seemed to understand how to analyze defeat and not be broken by it. We trusted each other. We liked each other. We went to the Prom together with Skuratofsky, Fromkin, and Zupko. We did not get in each other's way.
So here we were now separated by so much time and space, sitting in Ed's kitchen, eating at his table and talking about the future. Ed's wife Sue pulled into the conversation, because as much as we reminisced about times past, it was clear that that the present was just as important as the long ago. Sue's voice had as much to say as the two of ours.
It was not until I was back on Route 80 heading east towards New York, thinking about what I had just experienced that I finally remembered Ed's ghostly visitation on that frozen football field light years removed from his New Jersey home and the Newark of our adolescent world. Yet, as I concentrated on adjusting to the rhythms and patterns of New Jersey lane-changers and its breathtakingly fast drivers on each side of me, I understood why, of all the people I had ever known, my wife, all the family members who had ever cared for me, all the friends I had shared intimacies with and of all the literary characters whose lives I had vicariously assumed, it was Ed Barker who my imagination had conjured in my moment of frozen athletic despair.
It was Ed Barker, my high school football teammate who taught me about goal setting. It was Ed Barker, my quiet backfield comrade, who taught me how to disassociate immediate physical discomfort in order to focus on continuing with the next series of downs. It was Ed Barker, my reliable friend, whose unselfish blocks set me free so many times to find running room. And it was Ed Barker, my buddy, who showed me how loyalty and friendship intersected.
As I crossed the George Washington Bridge and headed now along the Cross Bronx to the Throgs Neck Bridge, I continued to riff about that moment now no longer frozen in my past, of this friendship suddenly revived. I was grateful as well to be off Route 80 heading eastward towards Long Island, a world with which I was as familiar and certain of as I was now certain that my friendship with Ed Barker. That accidental meeting of two Weequahic High backfield partners so long ago, had not unaccidentally survived the cold winter of time and distance outliving adolescence to blossom again in my old age.
Here is photo taken at 60th reunion (October 2019), left to right, Jerry Field, me, Danny Enzer, Eddie Barker. Warren
