Thank you, Stephanie, for inviting me to tell you about the Oral History Project.

I'd like to start by recounting a few stories I've culled from the files, then tell you about the work we are doing, and finish by trying to answer any questions you might have.

I expect that some of you are up on local history and already know some of these stories. Let's see who has heard what.

• Did you know that in the 20s, a trolley connected Boonton and Denville, via the Boulevard?
  • Path followed the Boulevard
  • Cut up across what is now St. Catherine's parking lot
  • Crossed a man-made rail bed through one of the lakes at Lake Arrowhead and
  • Continued toward Denville.
  • If you walk around the far side of the lakes and look across in the right direction, you can still see the shape of that rail bed.
  
  
  
• Before there was a high school in Mountain Lakes:
  • Lake Drive went up to the 9th grade.
  • Students went on to Boonton or Morristown High to complete high school educations.
  • Rivalry between the two schools was intense, in part because of the Mountain Lakes contingents.
  
  
  
• It was the tragic drowning of two boys who crossed Mountain Lake, broke through thin ice and fell into the icy waters that led to a borough ordinance that the police had to measure the ice thickness before kids could skate.
  
  
• When Hapgood went bankrupt, and around the time of the Depression
  • Many of the homes above the Boulevard were half-built and stood in a state of disrepair.
  • One person remembered the whole hill being pitch black at night.
  • Another person remembered how these half-finished homes became the hide-and-seek playground for daring kids. They would punch out the unplastered lathe-work to create ladders and climb from one floor to another.
  
  
  
• In 1938, when a census of the borough was taken, it showed that nearly 25 percent of the working men of Mountain Lakes were engineers, a good number of them employed by Bell Labs and AT&T.
  
  
• The Market was Yaccarino's, downtown included a butcher shop and a notions store and the butcher, like most other tradespeople delivered. But there was no postal delivery in town. According to one person, a few enterprising young men would go down to the post office, located where the Lionel train store is today, pick up the mail and deliver it on a postal route, much like a newspaper route.
  
  
• How many of you have heard of the illustrious police chief, Harry Dennis. He ran a two-person police force and seemed to have quite a way keeping rowdy kids in line and away from what was then known as the 'juvenile committee.'
  
  
• Mountain Lakes was a haven for the artistic. Famous actors and actresses sought refuge here from the city's lights, among them, I am told, Fredric March, who lived in my house in the 1920s.
  
  
• And as you probably have heard, there was plenty of outdoor exercise and revelry. In the winter months, there was sledding and skating. Sledding down Pollard Road, which would be shut off to cars. Hooking up your flexible flyer behind the milk truck as it made its morning run along the Boulevard. Because the roads were unpaved, the early snows created an icy base for adventurous sledders - young and old alike.
  
  
• Skating at the Cove was also a regular weekend event, complete with bonfires, and huge vats of hot chocolate and roasted hot dogs provided by nearby residents.
  
  
• In the summers, there was lots of swimming, but not where you think. There was no beach at Birchwood or Island Beach until much later. Way back, people swam at the dam on Mountain Lake, across from where Rockaway Terrace ends at Lake Drive. And they swam at Sunset Lake, near West and North Pocono, near the saw mill and ice house.
  
  

These are just a few of the vignettes we've captured through the Oral History Project. There are lots more to be uncovered.

Taken individually, each oral history is

A wonderful opportunity for long-time residents to recall their memories and record them for posterity.

Each interview offers a glimpse of what life was like, and how individuals experienced the important events of their day.

Taken together, these individual histories

Overlap and reinforce each other to create a tapestry of what made Mountain Lakes a unique community.

The Project Itself

Tapes dating back to an interview from 1962 about the Early History of Mountain Lakes by Norman Grimes

Oral history taking began in earnest in the early 1990s, and has been under the purview of the Borough-appointed Historic Preservation Committee.

One of our long-time League members, Ruth Harrison, was a stalwart of that early group of interviewers, as was Louise Davis and Muriel Berson.

Original committee folks drew up a list of people who were alive and had been important to the growth and development of the borough.

Did their homework, because they gathered information about how best to conduct oral history and prepared materials for volunteers.

In the mid 1990s, committee members conducted about a dozen interviews. These include

• Skip and Ruth Watts
• Janet Borchert
• Myrtle Kingsley
• James Macfarland
• Mildred Williams
• Jack Lee
• Carl Schnoor
• Marian Rohrer
• Dick Wilcox

Some of these folks were public figures, such as Mayors Wilcox, Schnoor and Macfarland. John Lee was an attorney and active for years on the Board of Adjustments. Skip Watts just died, but made a meaningful contribution to borough life. And many of the women mentioned grew up in town and went on to be active members of the community.

The transcripts are wonderful, and the personalities of the individual just sing off the page. I've spent quite a few hours reading about how John Lee put himself through college and law school during the Depression, with one meal a day!, and how much fun Marian Rohrer had the day she snuck out to her girlfriend's to play the victrola and dance all afternoon, while the girl's mom was at the Club, bowling.

Not much has been done in the last 5 years or so. Joan Nix asked me to join the HPC to resurrect the project and do some interviews.

We have the names of at least a dozen more people to interview, as a start. And I've found that by conducting interviews, we learn about more people to contact and hear from.

With very few volunteers at present to conduct interviews,

• We are focusing on extremely elderly residents, who may not have much longer to make a contribution.
• Ruth Harrison and Tim Delchamps have helped identify the most frail and found where they are, some very far away!

One of our volunteers, council member Phil Tutchek is

• Very interested in the history of the fire department and of the public works.
• Will interview the descendents of the first public works director, the formidable Vito Mola
• Instrumental in many of the sound public works decisions that made Mountain Lakes what it is today.

Another resident plans to talk with her neighbors. They are an elderly couple who has lived in town for a long time and with whom she already has a comfortable rapport.

I am currently focusing my attention on two people from very different walks of life in the borough:

• Gordon Tasker:
  • Practically grew up on Sunset Lake, fishing and hunting for rabbits, and who
  • Knows amazing facts and stories about the infrastructure of Mountain Lakes and how it fits into the region.
  • Many of you might recognize Gordon as the 'substitute' crossing guard with the orange jacket.
  • His mother and her family were early settlers in Mountain Lakes, and his memories are vivid and informative.
  
  
  
• Tim Delchamps is my other charge.
  • A member of the HPC for many years and is quite the archivist/historian.
  • Some of the stories on the ML website are his, and he has hundreds more, waiting to be heard.
  • Tim was 1½ when he came to Mountain Lakes, and he spent his whole childhood here, returning several times and finally settling in his current home with his wife Nancy on Laurel Hill Road.
  • Tim's father was president of the school board at the time the three referendums took place to decide the fate of a high school for ML, now Briarcliff. He tells the story of his father going to the "no vote" leaders to discuss the merits of the school and convincing them to sign on.

Overall, our goal is to

• Complete a number of interviews this spring and
• Set in place a plan for how we will capture the material we record in user-friendly ways.
• We want residents to be able to read and learn from these wonderful records.

The time I've spent on the Project has been rewarding and eye-opening.

The shared memories give us a rootedness and a sense of how this community distinguished itself, even in its early years.

And it helps us to understand the qualities of the place -

• the importance of the natural setting and open space
• a welcoming openness
• a family friendliness
• and a sense of belonging.

These are qualities that have persisted and we recognize here today.

Before I take questions, I'll finish with a request and one more anecdote.

• If you are interested in the history of the borough,
• If you enjoy being with and listening to older people,
• Why don't you consider conducting an interview for us?
• We have the materials to explain how to conduct an interview
• We'll furnish you with cassette tapes to use in recording an interview and
• We'll offer you as much encouragement and support as you need to get an interview done.

Finally, one last tidbit... and a poignant one, to me.

• When I was preparing for today's talk, I re-read the transcript of the interview of Marian Rohrer, taken in 1995.
• In it, Mrs. Rohrer described her first home in the borough: The house at the foot of Briarcliff Road, on Morris Avenue, with a wide u-shaped driveway set off by pillars at either end. Her father paid $10,000 by check for a double lot that, while full of boulders, became a lovely side yard and home.
• Sound familiar? It was the Bates House, at 198 Morris, which came down in December to make way for two new homes.

The house is gone. So far, the pillars remain. And so, too, do her memories, thanks to the Oral History Project.

Thank you.

Questions?