By Mary Hoar, President Emerita, Yonkers Historical Society, recipient of the 2004 Key to History, Member, Yonkers Landmarks Preservation Board
January 25, 1937: Although strikers were warned they would be forcibly ejected, one lone striker resumed his post in the Federal Music Project office in the Sears, Roebuck building.
January 25, 1945: Yonkers learned the appreciation of local soldiers for a little reminder of home. Although many, many miles away, 1st Lieutenant Frank Cotter of Pondfield Road West broke out in a broad smile when he opened his K rations. Inside, a lump of sugar was wrapped in a paper bearing the name of a Pondfield Road West restaurant! Cotter, attached to the Army Amphibious Forces, wrote to his mom, that it was “a small world after all.”
Tuesday, January 26th
January 26, 1916: The Flagg Building in Getty Square, touted as Yonkers most modern office building, held its grand opening.
January 26, 1936: Three Leake and Watts boys, Robert Twiford, William Pinkus and John Smith, rescued twelve-year old Tom Kavanagh who was caught on an ice floe and in danger of being carried downstream in the swift current of the Hudson River. The quick-thinking boys rescued Tom using a ladder. Twiford was a local basketball star and went on to Syracuse University to play; Coach Lew Andreas considered him to be one of the team’s best offensive players
Wednesday, January 27th
January 27, 1943: Lieutenant Colonel Egbert White of Plymouth Avenue was featured in the New York Sun. While patrolling with American Forces in North Africa, the Yonkers man was caught in crossfire. White escaped by crawling across the desert on his stomach to a ditch and what he thought was safety. Just as he got there, the Italians began firing mortars. When the mortars stopped, he headed downhill to safety, machine gun fire ringing all around him. The company dispatch the next day stated, “… only one routine patrol activity on the Tunisian front.” When Colonel White read the communiqué, his immediate reaction was, “Routine? Hell!” A WWI veteran, White established Yank Magazine a month after Pearl Harbor, accepting a commission as lieutenant colonel. General Osborn removed him from the Yank Staff in 1942 and ordered him overseas to create the North African/Mediterranean edition of Stars and Strips newspaper from its beginning in December 1942. He was sent home mid-1944; he wanted to run American newspaper article about the Presidential campaign, something army command “forbade.”
January 27, 1956: Yonkers resident Joe Lapchick resigned as coach of the NY Knickerbockers.
Thursday, January 28th:
January 28, 1914: While speaking at the Electric Vehicle Association of America, Yonkers resident Charles P. Steinmetz, the greatest electrical engineer of his time, predicted the gasoline automobile craze would die out and we would turn to electric cars.
January 28, 1928: New York broker A. R. Martine of North Broadway and pilot Roger Q. Williams made a successful test of a portable radio telephone, recently installed in the “A. R. Martine” monoplane. Martine and Williams, made the test flight over Yonkers; messages broadcast while flying over our city clearly were heard at Curtiss Field in Long Island. The plane made its fourth attempt to break the world’s endurance record at Richmond Virginia a few days later. Unfortunately, the plane was wrecked, but both pilots were uninjured.
Friday, January 29th
January 29, 1943: Thousands of Alexander Smith & Sons Carpet factory workers rallied to pledge to meet the challenge “to work as hard for our boys on fronts all over the world” levied by visiting Army and Navy officers visiting the plant. The military officers viewed the workers making duck, blankets and other equipment for war.
January 29, 1946: The two hundred-fortieth and final issue of the Yonkers Home News was published. Sponsored by the Alexander Smith Memorial Foundation, it was a digest of what happened in Yonkers and mailed free to every Yonkers resident in the Armed Forces, no matter where in the world he or she was serving. The first issue was published June 17, 1941, several months before Pearl Harbor; the paper was instrumental in keeping our fighting men and women in touch with their hometown, to let them know Yonkers had not forgotten about them.
Saturday, January 30th
January 30, 1932: New Yonkers resident Jerry Elario of Halstead Avenue, owner of a Second Avenue speakeasy, was shot early in the morning at McLean Avenue and McCollum Place. Shortly after leaving his “restaurant,” he realized a small coupe was following him. After being forced to the curb, he ducked behind the steering while his enemies shot three bullets into his car; one struck his left arm above the elbow and embedded behind his shoulder blade.
January 30, 1932: The President Roosevelt, one of the great passenger ships of the United States Lines, was seriously damaged when it was rammed in severe fog off New York by the Roma, an Italian deluxe ocean liner. Captained by Yonkers own hero captain George Fried, the Roosevelt was anchored and sustained damaged above the water line, damage serious enough to necessitate it to head back to port for repairs. The Coast Guard sent cutters from Staten Island to assist the two ships.
Sunday, January 31st
January 31, 1906: Samuel Untermyer of Greystone, added two dogs of “unusual merit” to his kennel of high-class collies. Untermyer purchase the collies from Mr. Ainscough, one of the best-known dog-fanciers in Great Britain. He announced he would enter them in the coming show of the Westminster Kennel Club held in Madison Square Garden.
January 31, 1919: Nationally known baseball umpire William J. Klem of 610 South Broadway, declared in an interview it was only a matter of time until baseball would become “America’s national game and the world’s favorite sport.” Later a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, Klem had an uncanny eye for calling balls and strikes and was known as the “Old Arbitrator.”
For more information on the Yonkers Historical Society, Sherwood House and our upcoming events, please visit our website www.yonkershistoricalsociety.org, call 914-961-8940 or email yhsociety@aol.com.
