By Mary Hoar, President Emerita, Yonkers Historical Society, recipient of the 2004 Key to History
Monday, December 7th
December 7, 1909: Leo Baekeland patented Bakelite, the first thermosetting plastic.
December 7, 1941: Army and Navy officials requested all members of the Yonkers Police Department stop soldiers, sailors and marines seen in Yonkers and instruct them to return to their commands at once, as “messenger boys” were busy delivering telegrams ordering servicemen back to duty. Because of the attack on Pearl Harbor, all leaves were canceled.
December 7, 1942: Private First Class Frank Suchy of Nepperhan Avenue, assigned to the Hawaiian Ordnance Battalion, was pleasantly surprised when he read about the many accolades for The Herald Statesman’s “Bumpers for War” program in the Honolulu newspaper! He not only sent his parents the clipping, but also asked them to pass along his congratulations to The Herald Statesman for its “splendid effort” in finding an important way for Yonkers to help the war effort.
Tuesday, December 8th:
December 8, 1922: During the Yonkers coal crisis, public schools were allocated 100 tons of coal. School Five on Lockwood Avenue suddenly closed because of a fuel shortage; authorities immediately began an investigation to find why the school ran short of coal.
December 8, 1927: Public Works Commissioner Goldsmith announced there was not much hope for an airport to be built in Yonkers. He believed a site would be selected in a less foggy area of New Jersey, so eastbound mail planes would not have to cross the frequently foggy Hudson River.
December 8, 1952: The Crowell-Collier Publishing Company in Ohio reached out to The Herald Statesman to help them find a Yonkers subscriber! Publisher of three national magazines (Collier’s, Woman’s Home Companion and The American Magazine), the company had received an envelope with more than $50 in cash. The only identifying information on the envelope was “money from Mr. Archilla,” with no address, and they had no subscriber on their subscription lists with that name. Although, the envelope was postmarked Yonkers, neither the Chamber of Commerce nor the Yonkers Post Office was able to identify the man. The company they turned to our local paper.
Wednesday December 9th:
December 9, 1949: Mayor Edith Welty appeared on the cover of the US Marine Corps recruiting bulletin; with her was Major Louis Wilson, of the New York Marine Recruiting Headquarters. The cover was captioned “The Major and the Mayor.”
December 10, 1929: Yonkers electrician Richard Stradling of Hawthorne Avenue was seriously injured in a fire in the Pathe Film Company’s Studio in New York City that killed ten people. Two days later, Pathe VP John Flinn of Yonkers was arrested; well over 50,000 feet of film were stored in a room that was not fireproof. The law allowed no more than 5,000 feet of film to be stored in rooms without proper protection. Stradling’s brother Harry went on to become an Oscar-winning known motion picture director and cameraman.
December 10, 1936: Welfare Commissioner Nicholas Ebbitt was touched by the letters of thanks he received from a class in School Twelve on Ashburton Avenue. The children not only wrote to thank him for the Welfare Department’s free milk, many also created little poems
Friday, December 11th:
December 11, 1920: Joseph Morrison of Bayley Avenue represented Cornell University in the first international intercollegiate meet in England; Cornell was competing against a team comprised of students from both Oxford and Cambridge Universities.
December 11, 1930: Dr. Guiseppe Brancucci, local Italian Royal Consular Agent, awarded Crosses of the Order of the Crown of Italy to Dr. Virginio Minervini, Gaetano Conti and Father Ercole Rossi, pastor of Mount Carmel Church.
December 11, 1931: Leadership of the Hawthorn Lodge, F. and A. M. was a family affair! Chauncey Chadburn was elected Master of the Lodge, succeeding his brother Arthur Chadburn. Before Arthur’s leadership, brother John served as Lodge Master.
Saturday, December 12th
December 12, 1942: Sergeant Gregory Holub of Locust Hill Avenue, home on a few days leave from Camp Pickett, VA, told about seeing flying sardines! Seems he was on maneuvers in the desert, where the temperature reached 150 degrees. It was so hot, he said, that the oil and gas in tanks began to boil. One unlucky member of the tank crew rested a can of sardines on top of his tank; the can suddenly exploded, sending most of the little fish all over the poor man who just wanted to enjoy his lunch.
December 12, 1946: The annual Yonkers Chamber of Commerce Dinner meeting featured two well-known guest speakers, humorist-columnist “Bugs” Baer and Larry Newman, International New Service war correspondent. Baer was the author of the King Features syndicated columnist “One Word Led To Another;” at one point in his career, he was a sports cartoonist for the Washington Times, and incorporated weird little bugs into his cartoons. Newman had had just returned from a tour of naval bases in the Pacific, bases from San Francisco to Tsingtao, China. He spent more than two years as a war correspondent in Europe and Africa and was the reporter who coined the name “Battle of the Bulge,” for Hitler’s last major attack against the Allies.
Sunday, December 13th
December 13, 1931: Mayor-elect Joseph Loehr quietly let it be known he planned to end the policy of appointing people at the top of the Civil Service lists to competitive jobs at City Hall, ending the policy initiated by the administration of Mayor Fogarty.
December 13, 1931: John Law of Yonkers spoke on “Knute Rockne and Notre Dame” before St. John the Baptist’s Holy Name Society. Law was captain of Notre Dame’s undefeated football team in 1929, coached by Mr. Rockne.
December 13, 1937: The Reconstruction Finance Corporation awarded Yonkers contractor Thomas Brogan more than one million dollars to build a huge apartment complex on the former Colgate estate in Glenwood.
For more information on the Yonkers Historical Society, Sherwood House and upcoming events, please visit our website www.yonkershistoricalsociety.org, call 914-961-8940 or email yhsociety@aol.com.
