Ruth Elder, first feminine to aim flying the Atlantic Ocean
By Mary Hoar, Yonkers Historian, President Emeritus Yonkers Historic Society, recipient of the Key to the Metropolis of Yonkers, recipient of the 2004 Key to Historical past, Yonkers Landmarks Preservation Board Member, Revolutionary Yonkers 250 Chair and President Untermyer Performing Arts Council
Monday, March 10th
March 10, 1944: Yonkers Board of Schooling Trustees refused to seat two trustees appointed by Mayor Curtis Frank and confirmed by the Widespread Council!
Frank appointed Philip Cornick and Abraham Elkind to interchange Abraham Rosenblum and Board President William Crocker. Just one Trustee, John Class, supported seating Frank’s appointees. Class made the movement to seat them; no different trustee seconded the movement. Cornick and Elkind left.
The movement was tabled, pending a court docket resolution on the issue. Crocker acknowledged, “Schooling is a state matter… since a neighborhood board operates underneath the State Schooling Regulation… motion in instructional insurance policies is topic to the recommendation and route of the State Division of Schooling.”
The assembly was attended by a big crowd. Westchester Grand Jury Foreman J. Kendrick Noble, Councilman Edith Welty, and plenty of different residents not solely crammed the room, they overflowed into the hallway.
Tuesday March 11th
March 11, 1922: Throughout a heavy storm, Dr. Elmer Sheets noticed a tattered American flag flying from Yonkers Metropolis Corridor flagpole. He instantly known as Mayor Taussig to complain, telling the mayor if town couldn’t substitute the flag, he would donate one.
After investigation, Taussig discovered Yonkers used a particular flag throughout unhealthy climate. Our common flag was taken down throughout storms and returned when the climate cleared.
March 11, 1937: The Faculty Fifteen PTA known as a particular assembly as a result of they disagreed with our Well being Division! Twenty college students within the college had mumps; mother and father wished tighter quarantine restrictions. They wished kids saved residence if their siblings had mumps to guard different kids from being uncovered to the illness.
Well being Commissioner John Faiella instantly vetoed their thought, stating it could improve the likelihood siblings would get mumps.
Wednesday, March 12th
March 12, 1930: Grey Place’s Robert Snody wrote and directed the brand new movie simply accomplished at RCA Gramercy Studio. “The Love Kiss” storyline centered round a wager two teenagers made about which one would kiss their good-looking instructor first. Snody later grew to become a director, editor and manufacturing supervisor, working in NY studios. He finally left Yonkers and moved to California.
March 12, 1936: Yonkers Police Division officers circulated a petition asking the Board of Police Commissioners to grant patrolmen one evening off in every16 days, as an alternative of 1 evening in each 20. The boys believed this plan might be implement with out disrupting the division.
Thursday, March 13th
March 13, 1930: Launched by Nicholas Lasko, President of the Affiliate Hungarian Societies of Yonkers, Rely Mihaly (Michael) Karolyi, Hungary’s first president, spoke within the Masonic Temple on Anti-Fascism. Sponsored by the Yonkers Committee of the Anti-Horty League, it was Karolyi’s second go to to Yonkers, visiting first in 1914.
March 13, 1931: One individual was killed and 36 injured when a runaway one-man trolley automobile plunged down Palisade Avenue and crashed right into a constructing close to the nook of New Faculty Avenue. Mayor John Fogarty, listening to of the accident, introduced he would search an injunction in opposition to one-man trolley automobile operation in Yonkers.
It was Friday the 13th.
Friday, March 14th
March 14, 1921: After listening to the proposal to annex a part of Yonkers to Bronxville, Mayor William Wallin got here up together with his personal; he instructed Yonkers annex the whole City of Eastchester!
March 14, 1944: Eighty-eight yr previous George Kittredge dispelled myths about pigeons whereas chatting with Yonkers Rotarians about elevating pigeons. He revealed it wasn’t true pigeons mated for all times; it took about half-hour earlier than they sought a brand new mate. He additionally defined pigeons had been fighters and their coo was a “cuss phrase!”
Rotarian Sam Hayward disclosed Kittredge members of the family had been multi-generational Yonkers residents; their household residence, 592 North Broadway, had remained within the household because it was inbuilt 1784.
Saturday, March 15th
March 15, 1930: Silent Display heroine Anita Stewart tried a comeback right here by way of vaudeville! She debuted at Loew’s theater as a “talking stage actress” in a “musical diversion” created for her by playwright Edgar Allen Woolf. Woolf later coauthored the screenplay for “The Wizard of Oz!”
March 15, 1944: John Wenzel, former proprietor of Yonkers White Cross Milk Firm, arrived right here on the Swedish alternate ship Gripsholm. He had been held in a German internment camp.
After promoting his firm, he moved his household to France to run the Grand Café de la Rotond in Dijon. Though he was captive for 18 months on the Compiegne Internment camp, his American spouse and daughter weren’t interned. Germans didn’t detain moms with younger kids.
On arrival right here, he praised the Pink Cross, saying he didn’t know what he would have executed with out them. Internees acquired 4 Pink Cross packages a month, wanted due to the poor high quality of internment camp meals. Wenzel acknowledged, “They saved us. The Pink Cross did an incredible lot for all internees.”
After a short keep in Yonkers, he moved to his sister’s Waterbury residence to get better from the ordeal.
Sunday, March 16th
March 16, 1928: Ruth Elder, first feminine to aim flying the Atlantic Ocean, was made an honorary member of the Yonkers Aero Membership at a ceremony held at Lowe’s Theater.
The “Miss America of Aviation,” Elder tried transatlantic flight in 1927 with pilot George Haldeman on a aircraft named “American Lady.” They ditched the aircraft 360 miles from land however set the over-water endurance flight file of two,623 miles, the longest flight made by a lady.
March 16, 1930: Westchester County Historic Society members selected a ten ton boulder to mark Thomas Valentine’s homestead on Valentine’s Hill, a web site used a number of instances by Basic George Washington and the Continental Military.
Yonkers’ Keskeskick Chapter of the DAR offered the massive plaque to be connected to the large stone.
Questions or feedback on this column? E mail YonkersHistory1646@gmail.com.
For data on the Yonkers Historic Society, Sherwood Home and upcoming occasions, please go to our web site www.yonkershistoricalsociety.org, name 914-961-8940 or e mail info@yonkershistoricalsociety.org.
