Ruth Elder, first female to attempt flying the Atlantic Ocean
By Mary Hoar, Yonkers Historian, President Emeritus Yonkers Historical Society, recipient of the Key to the City of Yonkers, recipient of the 2004 Key to History, Yonkers Landmarks Preservation Board Member, Revolutionary Yonkers 250 Chair and President Untermyer Performing Arts Council
Monday, March 10th
March 10, 1944: Yonkers Board of Education Trustees refused to seat two trustees appointed by Mayor Curtis Frank and confirmed by the Common Council!
Frank appointed Philip Cornick and Abraham Elkind to replace Abraham Rosenblum and Board President William Crocker. Only one Trustee, John Class, supported seating Frank’s appointees. Class made the motion to seat them; no other trustee seconded the motion. Cornick and Elkind left.
The motion was tabled, pending a court decision on the problem. Crocker stated, “Education is a state matter… since a local board operates under the State Education Law… action in educational policies is subject to the advice and direction of the State Department of Education.”
The meeting was attended by a large crowd. Westchester Grand Jury Foreman J. Kendrick Noble, Councilman Edith Welty, and many other residents not only filled the room, they overflowed into the hallway.
Tuesday March 11th
March 11, 1922: During a heavy storm, Dr. Elmer Sheets saw a tattered American flag flying from Yonkers City Hall flagpole. He immediately called Mayor Taussig to complain, telling the mayor if the city couldn’t replace the flag, he would donate one.
After investigation, Taussig found Yonkers used a special flag during bad weather. Our regular flag was taken down during storms and returned when the weather cleared.
March 11, 1937: The School Fifteen PTA called a special meeting because they disagreed with our Health Department! Twenty students in the school had mumps; parents wanted tighter quarantine restrictions. They wanted children kept home if their siblings had mumps to protect other children from being exposed to the disease.
Health Commissioner John Faiella immediately vetoed their idea, stating it would increase the possibility siblings would get mumps.
Wednesday, March 12th
March 12, 1930: Gray Place’s Robert Snody wrote and directed the new film just completed at RCA Gramercy Studio. “The Love Kiss” storyline centered around a wager two teens made about which one would kiss their handsome teacher first. Snody later became a director, editor and production manager, working in NY studios. He eventually left Yonkers and moved to California.
March 12, 1936: Yonkers Police Department officers circulated a petition asking the Board of Police Commissioners to grant patrolmen one night off in every16 days, instead of one night in every 20. The men believed this plan could be put into effect without disrupting the department.
Thursday, March 13th
March 13, 1930: Introduced by Nicholas Lasko, President of the Associate Hungarian Societies of Yonkers, Count Mihaly (Michael) Karolyi, Hungary’s first president, spoke in the Masonic Temple on Anti-Fascism. Sponsored by the Yonkers Committee of the Anti-Horty League, it was Karolyi’s second visit to Yonkers, visiting first in 1914.
March 13, 1931: One person was killed and 36 injured when a runaway one-man trolley car plunged down Palisade Avenue and crashed into a building near the corner of New School Street. Mayor John Fogarty, hearing of the accident, announced he would seek an injunction against one-man trolley car operation in Yonkers.
It was Friday the 13th.
Friday, March 14th
March 14, 1921: After hearing the proposal to annex part of Yonkers to Bronxville, Mayor William Wallin came up with his own; he suggested Yonkers annex the entire Town of Eastchester!
March 14, 1944: Eighty-eight year old George Kittredge dispelled myths about pigeons while speaking to Yonkers Rotarians about raising pigeons. He revealed it wasn’t true pigeons mated for life; it took about 30 minutes before they sought a new mate. He also explained pigeons were fighters and their coo was a “cuss word!”
Rotarian Sam Hayward disclosed Kittredge family members were multi-generational Yonkers residents; their family home, 592 North Broadway, had remained in the family since it was built in 1784.
Saturday, March 15th
March 15, 1930: Silent Screen heroine Anita Stewart attempted a comeback here through vaudeville! She debuted at Loew’s theater as a “speaking 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 owner of Yonkers White Cross Milk Company, arrived here on the Swedish exchange ship Gripsholm. He had been held in a German internment camp.
After selling his company, he moved his family to France to run the Grand Café de la Rotond in Dijon. Although he was captive for 18 months at the Compiegne Internment camp, his American wife and daughter were not interned. Germans did not detain mothers with young children.
On arrival here, he praised the Red Cross, saying he didn’t know what he would have done without them. Internees received four Red Cross packages a month, needed because of the poor quality of internment camp food. Wenzel stated, “They saved us. The Red Cross did a tremendous lot for all internees.”
After a brief stay in Yonkers, he moved to his sister’s Waterbury home to recover from the ordeal.
Sunday, March 16th
March 16, 1928: Ruth Elder, first female to attempt flying the Atlantic Ocean, was made an honorary member of the Yonkers Aero Club at a ceremony held at Lowe’s Theater.
The “Miss America of Aviation,” Elder attempted transatlantic flight in 1927 with pilot George Haldeman on a plane named “American Girl.” They ditched the plane 360 miles from land but set the over-water endurance flight record of 2,623 miles, the longest flight made by a woman.
March 16, 1930: Westchester County Historical Society members chose a ten ton boulder to mark Thomas Valentine’s homestead on Valentine’s Hill, a site used multiple times by General George Washington and the Continental Army.
Yonkers’ Keskeskick Chapter of the DAR provided the large plaque to be attached to the huge stone.
Questions or comments on this column? 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.
