Dear Editor:
I send a big thank you to Jessica Rosero for her well-crafted and informative article, “Discover your roots” (9/30) which dealt in part with the nature of genealogy and the formation of Hudson County Genealogical Society.
The Society’s first meeting will be at the Secaucus Public Library on Oct. 13 at 11 a.m. If you have an interest in your West Hoboken, Union Hill and Union City relatives a generation or more ago, I invite you to attend. Genealogy or tracing your family tree and compiling a family history, is my keen and absorbing hobby. It stands to reason that I would want to give a plug for it in my city.
The Hoboken Public Library has a staff of volunteers devoted to recording the recollections of residents to preserve for future generations. I would like to see an oral history project of this kind undertaken in Union City; perhaps by Friends of the UC Public Library or history major students in our schools. Even our local veterans could get involved recording stories of surviving veterans.
Recently I chatted with a woman whose style of house I admire on Palisade Ave. As we talked nonchalantly, I discovered her father went to school with Fidel Castro and her father who had become a doctor sometimes treated Fidel. I know there are stories and anecdotes which can be gathered from our residents which need to be heard and shared with our family and neighbors and community.
In my own neighborhood on the 200 block of New York Ave., Richie, recounted his memories of New York Ave. When it was a two-way street and the trolley ran along its path. A woman who’s now in a nursing home told me that as a child she retreated to the leafy canopy of shade provided by dense woodland in what’s Washington Park in order to stay cool during a heat wave. Who would have known?
Let us find a way to preserve our stories before we give up the ghost. We all have a story inside us yearning to be set free. Hope to see you on October 11.
Your neighbor,
Tony Squire