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BACK IN THE DAY - 05/25/2008
Poppies, mobsters and many empty seats
NORTH JERSEY — Here’s a look at what was published in Suburban Trends around Memorial Day and the unofficial start of summer over the years.
1998 – Why there are poppy pins
There are less than 20 verified WWI veterans still alive in the world today. Ten years ago, there were about 500 living in New Jersey, and one who lived in nearby Wayne was honored by a local American Legion post.
Herman Peters was 102 and bedridden, but members of the Pompton Plains American Legion Post 242 dropped by his home in Wayne to place a poppy on the World War I veteran's lapel.
But Peters, a who spent many years in Riverdale, already had his own poppy from the First World War, when the poppy tradition began.
The poppy emblem was chosen to honor veterans because the flower bloomed across some of the worst battlefields in Flanders during World War I. That’s where Peters got his poppy. The red flowers were considered an appropriate symbol for the bloody war.
“He picked it in Flanders right after the war,” Peters’ wife Radia said. “He’s kept it in his wallet. I wouldn’t dare touch it – it would crumble.”
“You remember the poem?” she asked. “In Flanders Fields the poppies grow, between the crosses, row on row.”
In addition to his poppy, Radia said her husband had held onto other Army keepsakes.
She proudly brought out Peters’ army-issue shave kit and mirror, his helmet, and his unit's (the 79th Division) patch – the Cross of Lorraine.
“He was so proud of his service,” she said. She also produced Herman's mess kit, on which the then 22-year-old Peters carved all the places he visited in 1918 as one of the Doughboys.
Topping the kit was Cherbourg, where Peters arrived aboard the USS Leviathan, a captured German ship that was turned into a troop carrier. Other places inscribed on his kit had more sinister connotations. One such place was Verdun – the 1916 battlefield that claimed more than 700,000 British and German casualties.
Peters apparently had combat time because he served in a machine gun company of the 311th regiment that saw action in the Meuse-Argonnes region, which was one of the few offensives the US participated in during the war.
Before the war, Peters lived in Waldwick, and according to his induction papers, he was a “shoe clerk.” He was drafted in May 1918 in Ridgewood.
Radia said she met her husband in the early 1930s when she was living in Prospect Park, and married him in 1936.
“I married him when he had nothing,” said the 97-year-old.
Radia said she and her husband lived on an 11-acre farm in Riverdale that became the present Armory property.
America has only two living verified World War I veterans, and neither lives in New Jersey.
Old Blue Eyes dies
The Chairman of the Board died on May 14, 1998. He was 82. Longtime Suburban Trends columnist David Mann, a professional songwriter, shared his personal memories of Sinatra.
Mann said he first met Sinatra in 1939 when Sinatra was the vocalist with Harry James, and he was the piano player in the Charlie Spivak band.
“In those days, most musicians frequented certain watering holes where we made our contacts and got our jobs (we hadn't yet adopted the present-day vernacular term, ‘gigs’),” said Mann. “The most important of these saloons, on 7th Avenue and 51st, was called Charlie’s Tavern. And that's where I met Frank for the first time.”
The little-known singer from Hoboken had “a certain brashness and conviction in him,” wrote Mann, “Before he became the assertive, self-possessed Sinatra the world would come to know.”
Sinatra was the best of the world’s best singers, opined Mann. He was one of the very few artists that Mann said he implicitly trusted to interpret the songs he had written.
“No one else would devote himself so faithfully to the original intention of the writers,” said Mann.
Mann owed the success of the song, “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning,” which he co-wrote, to Sinatra’s crooning performance of it, even though other famous singers had performed it too.
He lashed out at the tabloid press for digging up dirt on Sinatra and trying to vilify him. Sinatra’s legacy would long outlive his critics, said Mann.
“He was the best, and that's an incontrovertible fact. To know him and to work with him was an enriching experience and a rare pleasure. Rest in peace, Frank!” concluded Mann.
1988 – Ay Tony, fuhgeddaboutit!
Federal authorities indicted eight reputed mobsters of the Genovese crime family, including Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno, considered one of the most powerful mobsters in the nation, in an alleged extortion plot to take over a 300-acre sandpit straddling Pequannock and Lincoln Park.
In an indictment unsealed in Newark by US Attorney Samuel A. Alito Jr. (now a Supreme Court Justice), the eight were accused of attempting to take over Wayne Sand and Gravel Corp., a company contracted to purchase the sandpit owned by Pio Costa Enterprises of Fairfield, by pushing out Wayne Gravel's original owners, one of whom was murdered in an apparently unrelated incident.
The defendants were accused of attempting to take over the tract for its potential as a landfill and an eventual housing development. However, local and environmental problems proved insurmountable for even the alleged mobsters to overcome and seal the deal.
“This case stems from a broader investigation beginning in 1984 of alleged organized crime activity.” said Special Attorney Jeffrey A. Bronster of the Newark Strike Force, an arm of the US Attorney's office.
The indictment charged that Robert DeFilippis and Andrew Giordano, of New York, and Cosmo “Gus” Aiello, of Caldwell, who was murdered in Clifton in October 1984, formed Wayne Sand and Gravel in July 1984, with the intent of purchasing the sandpit. It was believed the sandpit would have generated as much as $10 million from the sale of gravel, $40 million from use as a landfill, and even more from its development.
DeFilippis allegedly approached other alleged mobsters for help in financing the $3 million needed to purchase the sandpit. Instead of providing financing, the defendants, according to the indictment, conspired to push out the company’s founders and divide it up between them.
The company was later divided again, over the objections of DeFilippis, who was left sharing half of a one-third share with other alleged mobsters, and with Salerno sharing a third.
The indictment alleges that Salerno was made a partner “because of his position as boss of the Genovese Family of La Cosa Nostra, and for the purpose of intervening on behalf of the other defendants, and if necessary, with other families of La Cosa Nostra, including the Bonnano Family.”
Jackson ‘88
While it looks like Barack Obama has all but wrapped up the Democratic Party nomination to run for president in November, 20 years ago the second-ever black presidential candidate was seeking primary votes.
Jesse Jackson eventually finished second to Walter Mondale in the Democratic nomination race 20 years ago, and an advertisement for his 1988 campaign ran in Suburban Trends. He was seeking New Jersey’s primary votes on June 7.
“It’s Time To Change America!” was the slogan above a photograph of a smiling Jackson. His platform was presented to the left of the photograph.
It included such bullet points as “Hope, not dope: Stop drugs at the borders,” and shifting money from the military budget toward educational initiatives.
He also wanted to, “stop corporate greed and the export of jobs, end the purge of workers, create job-intensive programs to rebuild America's decaying infrastructure, end hunger and homelessness.”
Jackson advocated for a national health care system, expanding AIDS research, and creating more affordable housing. He presented himself as a pro-environment candidate, saying if elected he would eliminate toxic waste sites, make recycling mandatory, and ban offshore drilling for oil.
He also wanted to phase out nuclear power plants in favor of so-called greener energy sources, like water, wind, solar and “agricultural byproducts.”
Many empty seats at AIDS meeting
The AIDS panic was engulfing the nation and our area. Area residents were outraged that AIDS patients were being admitted to the Wanaque Convalescent Center.
The Wanaque Family Life Center held an “AIDS awareness meeting,” but hardly anybody showed up. Clergy, elected officials and other area community leaders were invited to attend, but did not. The affair was decidedly one-sided, as an old article reported. During the meeting, a videotape of speaker Gene Antonio was shown. Antonio was reported to be a “pastoral counselor who has been researching the AIDS virus for the past few years”
In the video, he claimed that the media was not telling the public everything it should know about the disease. The title of his speech was “AIDS: What You Have Not Been Told.”
The purpose of showing the tape, according to borough resident Lorraine LaNeve, who spoke at the meeting, was to present residents with “the other side” of the AIDS situation.
“We're going to court on the matter of the admission of AIDS patients to the Wanaque Convalescent Center, and I felt this tape would help our attorney prepare his case,” LaNeve explained, adding. “However, our attorney is not here and neither is the council.”
Since the meeting was a bust, the reporter just wrote about Antonio’s video.
In the tape, Antonio held up a copy of his book, “The AIDS Cover-up?: The Real and Alarming Facts about AIDS,” and stated that an AIDS plague similar to the one in Africa could also occur in this country. Antonio’s book can now be had for a single cent on Amazon.com.
“There is also a mutant strain of AIDS in India now, but the media doesn't report it,” Antonio said. He said the reason for the alleged omission of AIDS information was homosexual special interest groups putting pressure on the media.
“There is an intensely powerful gay lobby in this country,” he stated. “We have allowed the courts to take away the Judeo-Christian ethic and replace it with the gay lifestyle.”
Antonio complained that homosexuality was being taught as a lifestyle in some of the nation's schools and also cited documentation that a virus similar to AIDS was allegedly spread to sheep by coughing.
“Also,” Antonio staled, “insects can spread anemia in horses, and that is similar to the AIDS virus. It's not that far-fetched and the disease is not that difficult to catch, contrary to what physicians say.”
The videotape ran approximately two hours in length. Afterwards, LaNeve concluded the program.
“The innocent victims of this disease must be recognized, but we must also show our elected officials we are not pleased with the way the Department of Health came in here like stormtroopers and are telling us what to do,” she stated. She was particularly concerned about AIDS patients moving into her neighborhood, and urged those in attendance to write their elected officials and state their displeasure over the matter.
Antonio is not exactly considered an expert on AIDS. He got a young Sean Hannity kicked off his first radio show on University of California volunteer college radio in 1989. Hannity had Antonio on his show, and the two had a dialogue that was deemed intolerable on the left coast.
Hannity was offered his job back after the ACLU, of all things, intervened on his behalf, but Hannity declined and embarked elsewhere in Radioland to spread his conservative message.
Happy summer!
In parting, here are some words of wisdom from the May 25, 1988 Suburban Trends in an editorial cartoon promoting sobriety: “Enjoy Memorial Day… Don’t Become One!” because you’d hate to become a holiday.
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