Hi Orators of Comments on Weequahic Life,
Bill Slate (64) and Don Mont (46) eulogize long-time friends:
With a heavy heart, I wish to inform the Weequahic community of the death of my lifelong friend Steven Duchon (64) on May 2 in Arlington, Massachusetts at age 75. Steve suffered a debilitating stroke 20 years ago but persevered thanks to the care of his devoted wife, Anne Keefe, and a wide circle of friends.
A product of Newark schools (Hawthorne Avenue elementary, Clinton Place junior high, and Weequahic), Steve was an excellent student known for his nimble mind, pen and tongue; his colorful personality; his deep love of literature; and his broad sense of humor. While at Weequahic, Steve styled himself an iconoclastic “angry young man” who idolized the City of Paris, read the existentialists and took to smoking Gauloises. Steve wrote poetry and edited Ergo, Weequahic’s literary magazine.
Steve went on to earn a bachelor’s degree from Columbia University and later entered Stony Brook’s graduate program in Philosophy. Between studies he sampled “la vie boheme” during an extended stay in his beloved Paris. Returning home, Steve settled in Boston where he held administrative positions at several high-tech companies. Later, he changed course and became a high school English teacher in Swampscott, MA. There, his openness, natural good humor, informality and unstuffy manner connected him easily with students. One morning he found “Mr. Duchon Rocks!” written on his blackboard. What teacher could ask for more?
Steve was a unique and beloved friend to many who mourn the loss of his warm, kibitzing nature, his wide-ranging intellect and his probing conversations. He is survived by his dear wife Anne. A short notice of Steve’s passing can be found at Steven Duchon's Obituary. Bill
It is with deep sadness that I report a lifelong friend of mine, Dr. Harry Mix died on April 6th. We first met in kindergarten 88 years ago at Peshine Avenue School. Harry was for many years the Superintendent of schools in Portchester, N.Y. There were six of us which I dubbed "The Peshine Pishers.” They were me, Harry, Elaine Schill Shevelove, Sammy Monastersky, Natie Stein and Charlie Sarver. Sadly, I am the only one left. It was great while it lasted and I miss them very much. Harry’s obituary can be read at Dr. Harry Mix's Obituary. Dan
Fred Goldman (6/62) pens a correction:
I just got a call from Lenny Wallen (54?) who I identified as connected to basketballer Alan Friedman (6/62) in my note last week. Lenny also read my obit about him that he had died. I had gotten that info from the man that worked for him at the time Lenny’s store was closed. So, Lenny wasn't mad but he would like all our readers to know that he’s alive and well and umping girls’ softball, boys’ baseball and kids’ soccer and lives in Verona. Fred
More Mosque Musings:
Bobbi Fechtner Bierman (1/54)
The Mosque brings back memories. Leonard Bernstein conducted young people’s concerts on Saturday matinee. My sister-in-law, Sondra Reiss Fechtner, would accompany me. Beginning of culture and end of Martin block. Bobbi
Bette Krupenin Kolodney (6/60)
Newark gave NYC a run for having impressive cultural activities despite being just across the river to the great mecca. The Mosque Theatre was certainly a magnificent venue. I wonder how it acquired its name.
My two personal memories are unique and strange. When I was 8 years old my parents decided to enroll their pigeon-toed daughter at a ballet school somewhere in downtown Newark. I can't remember the name though, I think, it started with the letter M. My feet did not cooperate with first position, second, third, fourth and fifth positions requiring the feet to point outward. I also was never a performer.
The end of the year ballet recital was held at the Mosque. I was dreading it and was praying for some miracle. The miracle occurred when my costume could not be found. My parents were upset and I was elated. I remember thinking," There is a Ballet God."
That was the end of my ballet career and it was also the end of my Hebrew school career at Young Israel Synagogue on Maple and Weequahic Avenues that I wrote about some months ago when that was a “WHS Note” topic. My parents never again tried to enroll me in anything and let me have the wonderful childhood I had freely running around the streets of the Weequahic section finding unstructured fun (sometimes mischievous) things to do.
The second Mosque memory occurred a decade later and it involved my being invited to see the opera, Madama Butterfly. Halfway through the performance an usher confronted my date and me saying that our tickets were not valid and asked us to leave. We did and returned to my Clinton Avenue apartment and told my father who told us to go back to the theatre. We returned in time to see the final act. We were never given an explanation and it remains a mystery.
So here was, and still is, this fabulous theatre. While one can think these were negative experiences, I think of them as strange and humorous happenings. Bette
Esther Gordon (6/52)
It was gratifying to read how other alumni appreciated the Mosque Theater and the great culture it brought to Newark back in the day. For me, at about age 8, the Mosque was a torture chamber, the place where, on Sunday afternoons, I was forced to sit and listen to guys like Rubinstein and Horowitz play that awful classical stuff on the piano. And were they serious! Once, to gather enough strength to strike a really loud chord in Chopin's "Military Polonaise," Rubinstein actually stood up, and then dropped down on the piano bench, forcing his entire body weight onto the keys!
It was as a student of Maestro Alex Chiappinelli's Pianoforte Institute of America (Randolph Place corner of Girard), I was given free tickets and "encouraged" to attend these performances. Finally, my friend Audrey Keller and I figured out how to make them palatable. We'd load up paper bags with Raisinets, red burnt sugar peanuts and Walnettos (which sponsored the Lone Ranger on the radio). Thus fortified, we'd climb up in the dark to the last row in the last balcony. Then, at that giggly age, we'd sit next to the projection booth, stuff our faces and laugh our heads off. Esther
Berthe Weissman Nathanson (6/59)
I also attended Hortense Greenwald’s Dance School. I did perform at the Mosque when I was 5 years old. I recall, however, that I was at the end of the line of little girls and when we were supposed to pirouette right, I pirouetted left and danced right off stage behind the curtain. Oh well, I was only 5. I also recall attending a concert of Peter, Paul and Mary at the Mosque with my husband many years later. It was still a beautiful theater. Ah memories. Berthe
Margery Ziegler Goldstein (70)
The Mosque Theater was indeed a wonderful venue. I remember seeing Isaac Stern there among other great performers. But they wouldn’t hire girls as ushers. Boys of the same age were acceptable. This was in the late 60s. Margery
Warren Bratter’s (1/60) personal journey back through the W-Hood, Part II:
The gas station too on the corner of Aldine and Chancellor has been replaced by Surah’s Pizza and Deli, the current neighborhood’s only pizzeria. None of this is of and by itself really different from any other living organism that is an urban neighborhood. That is, change --physical, ethnic, economic-- is always part of the social evolutionary cycle of cities. It is here, however, on this corner of Chancellor Avenue that I wish to link the present to the past.
Making a U-turn, I headed back again to the traffic light at Clinton Place, coming to a stop on my right in front of 254 Chancellor, a now-boarded-up, free-standing two story, undistinguished brick building. This is where the past meets the present. There is no faded sign here to tell you what this building used to be. There is no longer a blimp-sized exhaust fan visible from the street in the back of the building that expelled the heat skyward from the activity that used to take place inside. Exiting my car now and standing in front of the building, I, of course, can no longer smell the sweet aromas that used to come from the business that had been here. After Syd’s, the activities inside and outside the doors of this modest building became my favorite neighborhood pursuit. This is where the Indian Pizzeria, the neighborhood’s first and then only pizzeria used to be. Now its hulking emptiness is just down the block and on the same side of the street where the past meets the present, Surah’s, today’s neighborhood’s only pizzeria.
If the Greeks and Romans had the mythological twins Castor and Pollux to invoke in times of danger or outside threat, for us, aspiring Weequahic tough guys and scholars, we had the real-world warriors Feinblatt and Zupko to look up to, to admire, to extol and to seek their protection if necessary. I knew both of those proud, determined, and larger-than-life heroes of the renowned, undefeated 1951 Weequahic City Championship football team. Membership on that team alone would confer immortal legitimacy on either one of them in our Weequahic neighborhood. They were, however, more than ballers. Incomparable and indispensable standouts at their positions, both were mensches (up standing folks).
Andy Zupko was the quieter of the two. I saw him frequently because his younger brother Bobby and I were tight, loyal friends and football teammates from 1955-59. Feinblatt, like Zupko had a first name, Marvin, but I don’t remember using it very much. He was always just “Feinblatt” to me, even in casual conversation. He was positive, exuberant and, like Zupko, physically powerful with the unspoken potential for retribution towards anyone who violated their deep sense of personal and community honor, their menschkeit.
Weequahic Park recollections:
Jac Toporek (6/63)
Thank you to Jacqueline Kaufer Klein (66) for sharing wonderful memories of Weequahic Park, my front yard while living at the corner of Meeker and Elizabeth Avenues from 1959-1966. Could not have been a better place to be located for the young ones of our local “hood,” offering a haven for the sporting genes we carried whether it was baseball (home of youth and negro leagues), soccer WHS and South Side home fields), football (wide grassy areas where we “spiraled” out of control and “tackled” our emotions to emulate the NY Giants), basketball (clay courts not too distant from the horse track oval), tennis (courts near the entrances between Lyons and Chancellor Avenues), horse track (“future paramutualists” honing betting skills watching the trotters pace the laps at the track right off the Frelinghuysen Avenue entrance/exit to and from the park), track & field (pathways to test one’s cross county skills [remembering Bobby Mack, Class of 6/60] or finding open pastures for throwing the discus further and further [Billy Belfer, Class of 6/63]).
Alan Berlin (64)
My dad’s nephew Carlie served as a Seabee in the Philippines in WWII. After the war, barracks housing was built in Weequahic Park for returning service men and their families. Charlie and his wife and children lived in one of these small barracks houses. We’d visit frequently and I’d go fishing in the lake with my cousin Ricky. Lovely memories. Alan
