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BACK IN THE DAY - 11/16/2008
(by Bryan La Placa - Web Editor and Argus Managing Editor - November 19, 2008)
A dangerous road, local doughboys, and the old tree
NORTH JERSEY - Here’s a look at what was published in Suburban Trends around mid-November over the years.
Nov. 21, 1963 to present – Kinnelon Road is dangerous
Too many people have been hurt or killed on Kinnelon Road right up to 2008. The speed limit in the road was recently reduced from 50 to 40 miles per hour in response to two pedestrians that were killed there two years ago.
On April 20, 2006, Mayada and Athear Jafar were killed when struck by a car as they walked along the shoulder of Kinnelon Road. They were headed for the Clearview Cinemas located in Kinnelon Mall.
At the time of the fatal accident, Mayada Jafar was 15 and a sophomore at Kinnelon High School and Athear Jafar was 16 and a sophomore at Jefferson Township High School. The two girls were 1.8 miles from Mayada’s home when they were struck and killed by a blue, 2005 Kia Optima operated by Eugene Baum, a Dover resident. Baum had rented the car.
There have been many other deaths and injuries along the county road over the years. Kinnelon Road, running from Route 23 to Fayson Lakes Road, was completed in the summer of 1962 as part of the realignment of the old Kiel Avenue.
Here’s the story of what was perhaps the first casualty of Kinnelon Road:
Bary McKinnon, 16, was walking along the road when he was struck by a car driven by a West Milford man on Friday, Nov. 15, 1963.
McKinnon was walking home from football practice at the high school at dusk when he was hit by a car. The youth was in Chilton Memorial Hospital recovering from a broken leg and other injuries.
Dale Reinhardt, superintendent of schools, said Butler was asked to install the streetlights promptly, but that the county needed to approve first. There is no explanation in the source article as to why Kinnelon would have needed Butler to install the lights back then.
Reinhardt said that Kinnelon High School would continue to warn students to walk facing oncoming traffic.
The Kinnelon school board also sought permission to mark the walking area along the road with yellow cones. The road as it looked back then had the shoulder divided from the main roadway by a solid white line. It looked almost like another lane, causing some motorists to drive on the road’s shoulder.
The youth’s mother, Mrs. Richard G. McKinnon, leveled criticism at those responsible for the ambiguous striping of the road.
“Somebody goofed,” she charged. “This has caused a lot of confusion. There’s no speed limit, either.”
Mrs. McKinnon told Suburban Trends that she contacted Borough Clerk Gifford Miller and Morris County Engineer Robert Curtis to get action.
She reported that Curtis told her he was contacting Trenton and that Miller was doing the same.
Mrs. McKinnon stressed that she wasn’t angry with anyone over the situation that resulted in her son hospitalized.
“I just don’t want anyone else to get hurt,” she said 45 years ago.
Nov. 21, 1963 – JFK assassinated
In the Nov. 21, 1963 edition of Suburban Trends, the last mention to a living President John F. Kennedy is made. He would be assassinated the next day.
“President Kennedy appeals for CARE food crusade,” ran the headline.
The source article explains that President Kennedy “added his voice to the current CARE Food Crusade appeal to help the world’s hungry people.”
“Every package sent through CARE bears a message of hope and a promise for a brighter future,” said the president. “Each is an expression of America’s sincere concern and friendship for the advancement of peace and prosperity in a free world. I urge all Americans to express their personal concern by supporting the CARE Food Crusade for their fellow men.”
The goal of the fund drive was to deliver $6 million food packages in the names of Americans who gave a dollar per package to the CARE organization. The gifts were to be distributed as part of a yearlong CARE plan to help feed 35 million people in 33 countries. The food being sent was mainly surplus from American farming.
“Through our Food For Peace program,” said Kennedy, “the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Agency for International Development work in close cooperation with such humanitarian organizations as CARE in a common effort to further our nation’s objectives for a lasting peace.”
Unfortunately, the rest of the Suburban Trends from November 1963 are missing from the archives, so we won’t get to take a look at the local reaction to the beloved young president’s assassination.
Nov. 21, 1963 – Swearing gets you banned
Here’s a weird little story from the time.
An 18-year-old man from Montville was ordered by Magistrate Herbert Irwin not to come into Pequannock for two months or else he would go to jail for 30 days.
That man must have done something terrible to be banned from an entire town, you think. But no.
The man appeared before the magistrate in Municipal Court because “he was charged with using obscenities at a Pequannock High School dance by faculty members William Cromie and Carl Wilhjeim.”
Principal Dr. Matthew Weiner said he had ordered the man to leave the high school because the dance attendance was restricted to students, their guests, and alumni.
He had already been told several months prior, “after he was found guilty of annoying a resident in attempts to see her daughter. He has also been convicted of motor vehicle violations here,” it was reported.
Nov. 10, 1968 – Long lost cannon
A U.S. senator promised to search Washington, D.C., for Butler’s long lost cannon.
In the research necessary for a Veterans Day feature in Suburban Trends, we discovered that the Borough of Butler was missing a war memorial.
At the end of World War I, two cannons were obtained from an ammunition dump in Newark by a committee of Butler Legionnaires, Warren Hopper, Claude Post and Doug Morse.
The cannons were given to Butler and placed in the park. The borough gave one of those cannons away to its sister borough of Bloomingdale.
At the beginning of World War II, a representative from the Defense Department asked Butler and Bloomingdale to return the cannons so that they could be used in training soldiers.
Butler surrendered its cannon immediately, but Bloomingdale was slow to act, and kept the cannon in Sloan Park on Hamburg Turnpike. Butler didn’t get its cannon back after World War II.
However, U.S. Senator Clifford P. Case, speaking over the phone to the newspaper from Washington, said that he would do all in his power to discover what happened to Butler’s cannon and return it to the town, or find another cannon just like it.
Nov. 10, 1968 – Armistice Day
Veterans Day used to be known as Armistice Day to observe the anniversary of the end of World War I and honor those who served and were killed. The name of the day changed to Veterans Day in 1954 to honor all U.S. veterans from all of our nation’s wars.
In 1968, it was the 50th anniversary of the end of World War I, and in Butler, there was one memory that stood out in connection with The Great War.
The Borough of Butler was where an ambulance company trained in 1917. A local man who enlisted with the ambulance team was also the first man from Butler to be killed in World War I. His name is John A. Dean.
Butler’s American Legion Post No. 154 was named for Dean. He had joined the men of Ambulance Co. No. 33 just before the group left Butler to serve on the front when the U.S. Army took over the company.
In the spring of 1917, a charter was obtained for the formation of American Red Cross Ambulance Co. No. 33. Dr. Wm. H. Lawrence of Summit was credited with the idea.
“The nucleus of enlisted personnel was gathered from among the young men of the neighborhood. Many of these young men joined because they expected to be sent overseas in a few weeks but it wasn’t until a year later that their hopes were justified. In the meantime, they underwent months of training, drilling and instructions to prepare them for their overseas duties,” it was reported in the source article.
From Summit, about a dozen men left the group to go to Butler by automobile to prepare for the arrival of more. Two days later, a convoy of about 30 automobiles provided and driven by residents of Summit, transported the men and their baggage to Camp Van Wyck in Butler.
At the camp, the men got their first real taste of Army life. Barracks were available for housing, but as more and more men arrived, some had to sleep in tents. A rigid schedule of work was set up and for two months the men stuck strictly to it.
In August 1917, while awaiting orders to deploy “over there,” the men of the ambulance company left Camp Van Wyck to go back to Summit and from there to other Army camps in the Northeast. Finally, on May 18, 1918, the men boarded the S.S. Hororata and set sail from New York City for England.
On July 2, six men from Co. No. 33 were called to help in the Battle of Belleau Wood that took place during most of June of that year and is remembered as one of the bloodiest battles ever fought by American soldiers.
John A. Dean was carrying a wounded Marine when a shell exploded near him and mortally wounded the man from Butler.
Edwin H. Perry, of De Graw Road in Riverdale, was also a member of Ambulance Co. No. 33 and was often John A. Dean’s partner on details.
Excerpts from letters Perry sent to his mother during the war:
“I am sorry to say we have had one man killed, out in no man’s land, who was a litter bearer. His name was Jack Dean. You remember, I used to speak about him to you every once in awhile. He got hit by shrapnel,” Perry wrote on July 11, 1918.
From a Sept. 7, 1918 letter: “We felt pretty bad when we heard about Dean. I was with him at the front, but I was not with him when the accident happened. I saw him about an hour after it happened at the Aid Station, where he died when a piece of shrapnel caught him in the neck and shoulder.”
From a May 30, 1919 letter: “This afternoon we are going to have a little Company Memorial Service for our four deceased members. They are as follows: Jack Dean, Henry Stevens, William Gavin and Horace McPherson. It is too bad these fellows are gone, but we were lucky that there were not more of us killed. So that is a lot to be thankful for.”
Nov. 14, 1973 – Butternut Tree
The Suburban Trends office is located in the Butternut Plaza – a small office building it shares with a bank. But before the office was constructed, the old Butternut Tree that the “plaza” is named for stood unassuming near the Meadtown Shopping Center on Route 23.
Thirty-five years ago, it was reported that Kinnelon residents were worried that the construction of the Kinnelon Mall would destroy the tree. There are varying estimates of how old that tree is, but in the source article the tree is “reportedly 175 years old.” It is the oldest of one of the oldest trees of its kind in the state, or in the entire East, depending on the source.
“Many residents have been clamoring for the borough leadership to take some sort of official action to prevent these projects from damaging or completely eliminating the tree,” said longtime Kinnelon Mayor Glenn Sisco back in the day.
Sisco said he had every confidence that the construction workers would honor the borough’s request to do no harm to the tree.
Some residents didn’t think that was enough, and proposed that the borough council adopt a law to prohibit any defacement of the tree.
“As far as I’m concerned, people are getting too excited over this,” he said.
“Many residents have been clamoring for the borough leadership to take some sort of official action to prevent these projects from damaging or completely eliminating the tree,” said longtime Kinnelon Mayor Glenn Sisco back in the day.
Sisco said he had every confidence that the construction workers would honor the borough’s request to do no harm to the tree.
Some residents didn’t think that was enough, and proposed that the borough council adopt a law to prohibit any defacement of the tree.
“As far as I’m concerned, people are getting too excited over this,” he said.
That old tree still bears fruit and scatters nuts all over our parking lot.
Rich Dean, a Butler resident and local history buff, sent the following comments to Suburban Trends:
Bryan, I read with interest your column today. It's always good but coming from a family that has roots here in the Tri-Boro area going back over 100 years and before that in the Charlotteburgh village of West Milford Township to about 1829, I wanted to advise of several things.
First, Kinnelon Road. The reason that Butler was contacted to install street lights is because Butler Borough Power & Light has served Kinnelon since the 1920's as the electric utilty, at least in 95% of the municipality. As for Kinnelon Road being dangerous, the idea of pedestrians walking along the side of that thoroughfare when it was a 50 zone is scary, and I used to do it.
Interestingly, New Jersey law requires pedestrians to walk opposite to traffic as far to their left as possible where there are no sidewalks installed. Kinnelon Road from Route 23 in Butler to Fayson Lakes Road was opened in the fall of 1962 as I recall. The section west of Kiel Avenue from Kinnelon Road to the Boonton Township line was renamed Kinnelon Road at that time; that section has treacherous curvers where many of those fatal accidents take place.
Second, Camp Van Wyck was actually in the Apshawa section West Milford Township on Macopin Road with part in Bloomingdale. Since the late 1940's it has been Camp Vacamas, www.vacamas.org. The reason that US Army records list it as Butler is because the Butler Post Office delivered mail to the southern part of West Miford from the 1880's until the early 1970's, and it was RFD Butler NJ. My uncle, John Dean, was a buddy of Edwin Perry, father
of Bill Perry Sr and grandfather of Bill PerryJr, both of whom have been prominent in our local business community for years.
Third, Butler Park had two cannons. Both of which were turned over to war effort scrap drive.
I do believe that the author of the stories about Camp Van Wyck and the lost cannons was my mother, Betty Dean, a stringer with Suburban Trends from about 1967 until her passing in November 1981. I remember subsequent stories about an effort to obtain replacements in the late 1960's with help sought from Congressman Peter Frelinghuysen, father of Rodney.
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