By Mary Hoar, President Emerita, Yonkers Historical Society, recipient of the 2004 Key to History, President Untermyer Performing Arts Council
Monday, October 11th
October 11, 1930: When Charles Cannon appeared before City Judge Charles Boote on a disorderly conduct charge, he was surprised by the Judge’s outrage. Cannon, told to move on from a Yonkers Avenue corner by Officer Stewart Freeman, instead, chose to hurl indecent language” and “insults on racial grounds” at the African-American officer. After sentencing him to ten days in City Jail, the good judge stated strongly, “The President of the United States and the Governor of New York could intercede for you, and it would do you no good!” Boote sent him back to his cell to begin his sentence and think over what he had done.
Tuesday, October 12th
October 12, 1930: Murder at a local dance hall ended with a stunned crowd watching the victim’s wife—and attacker– walk away! Nellie Kotellis of Orchard Street became enraged when she saw her husband Andrew walk into a nearby establishment, just behind a woman “who had been chasing him.” Mrs. Kotellis followed him into the club and asked him to go home with her. When he ignored her, she thrust a potato knife into his chest and went home. The next afternoon, she became hysterical and collapsed when learning he died.. Mrs. Kotellis was founded guilty of second-degree murder, but judged to be insane and committed to Matteawan Hospital for the rest of her life.
Wednesday, October 13th
October 13, 1929: Shonnard Place Police station officers investigated the burning of a huge cross on top of the Roberts Avenue hill visible from all over Yonkers. More than two-dozen neighborhood residents had tried to pull down the flaming cross, but were driven off by the intense heat.
October 13, 1933: Welfare Commissioner Nicholas Ebbitt announced enrollment of the 100 unemployed Yonkers men to be sent to the of the Civilian Conservation Corps winter camps had begun.
October 13, 1949: Albert Lipinski of Palisade Avenue was appointed a member of the Research Department of the Atomic Bomb Commission at Los Alamos. The following year, he coauthored a paper on the rotating mirror camera design.
Thursday, October 14th
October 14, 1942: Yonkers native Robert Shayne Dawe, former School Thirteen student and son of Grosvenor Dawe of Belmont Terrance, played the lead in the 600th performance of Claudia in a downtown New York theater. Beside appearing with Ethel Barrymore in White Oaks, he had previously had roles in “This Land Is Bright,” Both Your Houses,” and “Night of January 16.” Professionally called “Robert Shayne,” he went to Hollywood shortly afterwards and signed with Warner Brothers. He probably is best remembered for playing Inspector Henderson in the 1950s series, Adventures of Superman. In the early 1950s, an ex-wife accused him of Communist associations and he briefly was blacklisted until the charges were proved unfounded by the House Un-American Affairs Committee
October 14, 1983: Former Yonkers Board of Education President Robert Jacobson testified in US District Court Yonkers officials destroyed the education environment of School 10 in Southwest Yonkers. The Board of Education was promised land on Riverdale Avenue to create a playground for the students and neighborhood; instead, Jacobson said, “The city cannibalized park and recreation property to build a shopping center around the school,” calling it an “air shaft” school in the middle of a housing project and shopping center. Former City Manager Scher told the board although they were promised land surrounding the school, Yonkers needed it to add more low-income apartments to make Riverview “financially worth building.”
Friday October 15th
October 15, 1946: Yonkers received final refusal from the Federal Public Housing Authority for its request for siding for the veterans’ temporary houses on McLean Avenue. Mayor Curtiss Frank had sent telegrams to Senator Mead, FPHA Commissioner Myer and William Wyatt, administrator-expeditor in the National Housing agency, stating material similar to beaverboard was used on the McLean Avenue units without siding and the material, “already was buckling.” All veterans’ temporary housing was built of surplus Government facilities and moved from site to site. They took “satisfaction from the fact that… (they)… have been able to move and re-erect hundreds of such structures without the use of finished siding,” according to Frank. The FPHA assured the mayor that they would do anything necessary to put site accommodations in a livable condition before the veterans moved in.
Saturday, October 16th
October 16, 1902: Samuel Mellor of the Hollywood Inn Club won the Hamilton, Ontario, 19-mile marathon race, the second long distance race that Mellor won in 1902. He also won the Boston Marathon. His trainers were Yonkers marathon runners William Schlobohm and E. C. Starr.
October 16, 1903: Mr. and Mrs. Julian Edwards of Sunnyside Drive returned from Europe on the Kaiser Wilhelm II after meeting with Madame Ernestine Schumann-Heink about an opera Mr. Edwards was preparing for her for 1904.
October 16, 1966: Former WWII WAC Technical Sergeant Mary Sullivan Keller passed away. A resident of Mohegan Village on Tuckahoe Road, she was awarded the Bronze Star during WWII for her extraordinary service with the Army Signal Corps.
Sunday, October 17th
October 17, 1910: Armour & Company held an open house to celebrate the opening of their new “branch house” at 87-89 Woodworth Avenue. All were invited to investigate what they termed one of the largest, cleanest and best-equipped packing plants in the world, representing “the best that experience and money can buy to secure sanitary perfection and absolute cleanliness.”
October 17, 1923: Although City Judge Charles Boote declined to actively campaign for reelection because the work of the court did not leave time for him to do so, more than 100 people volunteered to form a committee to do the electioneering for him. Boote felt tending to the court was more important, even if it cost him the election.
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