Stage Actor Lewis Morrison in 1905
By Mary Hoar, City of Yonkers Historian, President Emerita Yonkers Historical Society, recipient of the 2004 Key to History, Member of the Yonkers Landmarks Preservation Board, and President Untermyer Performing Arts Council
Monday, August 14th
August 14, 1943: City Clerk Francis Heafy gave the order to ship 6,000 cigarette packs to Africa, Sicily, Australia, the Southwest Pacifica and Alaska for the soldiers serving in those combat areas. Of course, each pack was labeled as a gift from the people of Yonkers!
August 14, 1946: Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt was shaken up but uninjured except for a bump on her forehead after she dozed while driving on the Saw Mill River Parkway near Lockwood Avenue. Her sedan crashed into two vehicles.
By coincidence, ten-year-old Joe Garan, an enthusiastic autograph collector, heard about the accident. He grabbed his autograph book and ran to the scene. He asked the late president’s wife for an autograph; Mrs. Roosevelt thought she had a better idea. She picked up a piece of her broken metal grill and handed it to Joe, saying she thought it would be better than an autograph. Obviously the former first lady had no idea Joe’s dad, Joe Garan, Sr. was an auto wrecker and had a big auto “graveyard” on Saw Mill River Road; this souvenir was nothing new to little Joe!
Tuesday, August 15th
August 15, 1918: Yonkers bank directors announced they would hire women to work as bank clerks in case there was another large draft and organized 30-day banking classes for women to prepare for that possibility.
August 15, 1930: The seventh airplane in four days landed at Empire City Racetrack; the pilot lost his way flying from Ohio to Curtis Field (Roosevelt Field).
August 15, 1931: Reconstruction of the inferior steel frame of the new Health Center in City Hall Park began under the supervision of Hinkle Iron Works. Construction had to be stopped four months earlier in April when it was discovered the steel did not meet specifications.
Wednesday, August 16th
August 16, 1922: Rumors floating around Washington reached Yonkers, intimating Henrietta Livermore of Park Avenue would resign from the American Commission to the Brazilian Centennial Exposition. The Commission then was recalled to Washington by Secretary of State Hughes. It came out Livermore and other members of the group wanted the president to remove Frank Harrison, appointed Deputy Commissioner while Commissioner General D. C. Collier was away. Collier, Livermore and two other committee members wanted President Harding to remove Harrison, claiming he falsified commission records and was wasting funds. Harrison made countercharges again her, which she strongly stated were “totally unfounded and ridiculous.”
Livermore was a leader of the New York State suffrage movement, founder of the Women’s National Republican Club, and close friend not only of President Harding, but also Presidents Coolidge and Hoover.
Thursday, August 17th
August 17, 1899: The first two movies filmed in Yonkers were shot at the NY State Firemen’s Convention here. The first was titled “The Water Throwing Contest, Between Hand Engines;” the film showed two volunteer fire department companies battling to win a competiton. The Greene, NY, “Oceans” and the Brooklyn “Exempts” competed by energetically pumping an old-fashioned fire pump in this short from the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company.
The company shot a second short film, “A Volunteer Fire Company,” (Oceans Fire Company) that day. The director of both films was Frederick S. Armitage.
August 17, 1942: Vera Rushforth, who grew up on Halladay Avenue and attended Roosevelt High School, was selected as the “almost personification of the average American school teacher by Look Magazine. Featured in the magazine’s story, “The School Teacher in Wartime” in a series of 13 photos. Rushforth, according to the story, was “literally and professionally, one in a million.”
Friday, August 18th
August 18, 1920: Joseph Pearman of 625 South Broadway finished second to Italy’s Ugo Frigero in the 10,000-meter walk at the Olympic games in Antwerp, Belgium. Born in Manhattan, the silver medal winner was a member of the NYAC and worked in advertising.
August 18, 1921: The steamship Rogers, first of 35 Standard Oil Company ships to be put back into active service after lying idle in the Hudson River off Yonkers for several months, weighed anchor and sailed for New York where it loaded a cargo of oil for Canada.
Saturday, August 19th
August 19, 1911: Yonkers own runaway bride returned home from Italy.
Helen Whittler Andrus Hobbs was daughter of Congressman John E. Andrus. Because of her parents’ objection to the marriage, Helen told them she was going to NYC on a shopping spree. Once there, the couple married, with Alice Fose and John Kilpatrick acting as witnesses. Immediately after the ceremony the couple went to Boston and sailed for Italy two days later.
The bride had known the groom, Henry Hobbs, for two years; Hobbs, a tackle on the 2009 Yale football team, was employed at a Springfield MA department store at the time of the marriage.
Upon arriving back in NY, Mrs. Hobbs declared the couple was “perfectly independent and glad to be so.”
Mr. Andrus was not in a forgiving mood when he learned of the marriage. Five years later, Mrs. Hobbs sued for a divorce for desertion in Reno. At the time Hobbs was with the American Red Cross in France. After the divorce was final, she returned to her parents’ home with her four-year old daughter Elinor.
Sunday, August 20th
August 20, 1906: Acclaimed Actor and Civil War veteran Lewis Morrison, grandfather of actresses Joan and Constance Bennett, was buried in Nepperhan Heights, Yonkers
August 20, 1949: Twelve-year-old Don Sylvestri of Linn Avenue appeared on a WPIX TV program; he entertained the studio audience with a jitterbug tap dance. Sylvestri was a student at St. Denis School.
Questions or comments? Email YonkersHistory1646@gmail.com.
For information on the Yonkers Historical Society, Sherwood House and upcoming events, please visit our website www.yonkershistoricalsociety.org, call 914-961-8940 or email info@yonkershistoricalsociety.org
