THE MOST VALUABLE SOURCE material for this memoir was a series of interviews with my sisters, childhood playmates, school friends, and teachers. Though we moved from Southard Avenue more than forty years ago, I was able to track down almost every person who lived on my block. Most of these people I hadn’t seen or talked to in more than three decades. Finding them again was the most satisfying part of writing this book.
Elaine Friedle and I had lost touch with one another several years after she moved to Albany. When I started my research two years ago I found her living in Germany, where she teaches English literature. After we exchanged more than a half-dozen long letters, we made arrangements to see each other at her brother’s house in Connecticut. It was an extraordinary evening, not only because Elaine has a photographic memory for our childhood, but because once we started talking, the years began to fall away. I could see once more the face of the young girl who had been my best friend, I could hear the familiar voice that had reached my bedroom window so many nights before we both fell asleep.
I found Eileen Rust living in New York City, where she runs an art gallery; Elaine Lubar Moskow married with children on the West Coast; Rose and Sid Lubar in Baldwin, New York; the Barthas and Joe Schmitt’s widow, Anna Mae, in Florida; Julia Rust and Max Kropf’s wife, Melitta, in Long Island; and the Greenes in California. Each of my old friends and neighbors had a particular store of recollections that remained uppermost in their minds. As we talked, we sparked each other’s memories; half-forgotten details slowly began to emerge.
In addition to my childhood playmates, I interviewed about a dozen school friends and teachers who generously shared with me their own recollections, along with diaries, letters, yearbooks, pictures and reading lists. I am grateful to Robert Geise, Ken Jenkins, Susan Gilman Krieger, Judy Lehman Ruderman, Valerie Ger Ostrower, Jill and Lillian Fine, Howard Rabinowitz, Robert Fastov, Marjorie Rosen, Marsha Gillespie, and Marjorie Garber.
My thanks also to the staff at South Side High School, especially Dorothy Zaiser, who was always available to help with her time and knowledge of South Side and Rockville Centre history; the staff at the Rockville Centre Public Library, including Rhoda Friedland, Ruth Levien, and Gretchen Browne; the staff at the Nassau County Museum, the Long Island Studies Institute, Dr. Barbara Kelly and Dr. Mildred De Riggi; the Schimmenti family; Diane Hackett, owner of the present Bryn Mawr Delicatessen; and Eugene Murray, mayor of Rockville Centre. For information on St. Agnes and recollections of growing up Catholic, I am grateful to Reverend Monsignor Robert Mulligan, Rector, St. Agnes (deceased); the Sisters of St. Dominic, Amityville, New York; Elissa Metz; Marilyn O’Brien; Margaret Williams; Pam Shannon; Nancy Dowd; and Grace Skrypczap. I thank Mary Stuart, who played Joanne Barron on Search for Tomorrow and shared her experiences as a pioneer in early television. For information on the urban renewal project, I owe thanks to Barbara and Jim Bernstein, Toni Ehrlein, Rockville Centre Historical Society, Doris Moore, and Reverend Morgan Days. For sharing remembrances of the Dodgers, I thank Neil Krieger and Barry Moskow. For general research on the fifties, I turned to my longtime research assistant, Linda Vandegrift. For the original idea of writing a memoir about my years as a Brooklyn Dodger fan, I thank Wendy Wolf.
At Simon & Schuster, where I feel I have found a warm and welcoming home, I owe thanks to my publisher, Carolyn Reidy, whose enthusiastic response to the book spurred me on when I wasn’t at all sure I was going to finish on time; to Liz Stein, who once again shepherded the book through its various stages with good cheer and consummate skill; to Lydia Buechler and Terry Zaroff, who copyedited the manuscript with flawless skill; to my publicists Victoria Meyer and Kerri Kennedy; to Wendell Minor, who painted the elegant cover; and, of course, to my longtime editor and good friend, Alice Mayhew, whose continual support, confidence, good judgment, and editing prowess proved critical once again. It is now more than twenty years that we have worked together and I look forward to twenty more. This is my first book with Binky Urban as my literary agent, and what an absolute pleasure it has been to have her at my side in a relationship I deeply treasure.
For additional readings of the manuscript, I thank Clark Booth, James Shokoff, and Janna and David Smith. To my good friend, Michael Rothschild, who read and critiqued every chapter, I am more thankful than he can ever know.
I am especially grateful to two of my old friends, Nancy Adler Baumel and Barbara Marks, who helped me with every single phase of the research: searching through archives at the Rockville Centre Public Library and other archival repositories for historical data and pertinent photographs, reading old newspapers, making contacts, conducting interviews with local sources, checking facts, reading and editing draft pages. This memoir owes a great deal to their cheerful and tireless efforts. Nancy’s son, Richard Baumel, was also of great help in researching the 1951 and 1955 Dodger seasons.
To my sisters, Charlotte and Jeanne, who provided countless hours of interviews and a lifetime of love and support, I dedicate this book.
Finally, my deepest thanks to my husband, Richard Goodwin, my best friend and companion, who worked with me at every stage of this work, as he has done with all my previous works, listening to my stories, suggesting themes, editing my words, critiquing my drafts. As a child, I had dreamed of sharing a marriage like that of Carl and Edna Probst, the husband and wife team who ran the corner delicatessen, working side by side all day with no separation of the work place and the living place. With my husband who, like me, writes at home, I have found just such a marriage, except, of course, that we deal in words rather than cold cuts and potato salad.