| John Grossmann: |
Let's begin by discovering the origin of your nickname.
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| Duke Smith: |
I tell the story that I wasn't the toughest kid or the fastest kid in town, when I grew up with the name Adrian in the 1930s. So I switched my name to my uncle's nickname, Duke. His name was Adrian, too.
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| JG: |
You chose your own nickname?
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| DS: |
I chose my own. Yes, I did.
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| JG: |
And it's served you well?
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| DS: |
I think so, except when I went to the University of North Carolina, when I hated Duke and there I was with the nickname Duke. But I survived that, too.
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| JG: |
When the town celebrates its centennial in 2011, you'll be celebrating your 50th year in Mountain Lakes.
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| DS: |
That would be right.
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| JG: |
Why did you choose to move here in 1961?
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| DS: |
We came down from Rochester, New York, to see where we wanted to live -- northern New Jersey or Westchester County, New York. When we drove into town we were entranced with the trees, with the ambience of the town itself, how lovely it was with the lakes. We came here and drove down the Boulevard and said: "This is it." We had made a list before we came here, of what we were looking for: good schools; walking to school was important to us; trees, which we had few of in the development we lived in Rochester; water, for kids to swim in.
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| JG: |
Everything on your shopping list?
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| DS: |
Right. Everything on our shopping list. We haven't changed our minds since.
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| JG: |
What house did you move into, the same one you're in now across from Briarcliff School?
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| DS: |
Same one, 22 Bellvale Road. It was built in 1947. We're the third owners. And we've been there 46 years.
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| JG: |
Never saw a need to move or relocate like so many in town seem to do?
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| DS: |
We contemplated maybe looking at the lake years ago, then we decided against it. We were happy where we were. It was the perfect location for our kids. We were close to the schools. All five of our kids always walked. The only time they every got driven to school was if they were late, or sick and we had to go get them. They walked. Rain. Shine. Winter. Summer. They loved it, loved it because they made great friends, chatting along as they walked. It was the perfect location for us. Close to the library. Close to the Boulevard. Close to the train station.
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| JG: |
Tell us about your family and which children were born here in Mountain Lakes.
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| DS: |
As I said, we had five children. The oldest was born in Berkeley, California. The next two in Rochester, New York. Our last two were born in Morristown.
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| JG: |
You mentioned about the kids walking to school and walking to the lake, tell us some other reasons why Mountain Lakes was a good place to raise a family.
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| DS: |
The easy involvement in community affairs. There were so many activities that my wife Dot could take part in and that I got interested in. It was a very open, friendly town. It was easy to make friends. I commuted to New York for 28 years and a good number of my early friends were made on the train going into New York. As in most cases with families, my wife and her association with other young parents in town, was the glue that made our commitment to this town possible.
There are still a tremendous number of activities you can get involved in here. Intellectual activities, all kinds of clubs. Political groups, social groups. You have to really hide out not to get involved. You can hide out, but I don't recommend that to anybody. Get involved. It's part of the life of this community.
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| JG: |
Did you ever wish your own boyhood was spent here in Mountain Lakes?
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| DS: |
I don't think I've ever thought about that. I relate Mountain Lakes in many ways to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where I went to university and where my wife grew up. It has the same ambience, without the university. And it has the same intellectual, stimulating society. I don't know if you know Betty Smith's book, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, but she refers to Chapel Hill as the southern part of heaven. This is the northern part of heaven. So I felt very much at home here.
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| JG: |
That's nicely put. How long do you think it was, after first moving to town that it felt like home, that you really belonged here. Possibly there was even something that happened that cemented it for you.
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| DS: |
It happened very quickly, within a year, certainly not more than a couple of years, when we established a good network of friends, through my wife's association with kids' parents and my being on the train with local people I spent hours with going back and forth to New York. We became lifelong friends and great associates. We felt very much at home right away. This was a reach out community in those days. You knew all your neighbors. The older you get you find out that doesn't happen as often now because you're so up to here with friends anyway you don't really have much time to make new ones.
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| JG: |
I assume it was your job that brought you here to New Jersey. Tell us about your job.
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| DS: |
I worked in the men's tailored clothing industry for my whole career. Started out in retail in California, then Philadelphia. Then went to work in Rochester, New York, with a clothing manufacturer, Hickey Freeman. When they decided they wanted to move me down here to the New York office, that was the motivation for us seeking out a place for our family to live. The men's clothing industry was a great one in those days. As you know and I know, it's practically disappeared in this country. But it was a marvelous industry in those days, and very vibrant.
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| JG: |
You mention making friends going in and out of New York on the train. We've had other people tells us what it was like commuting on the train from Mountain Lakes back in the 30s and 40s, when at 7 o'clock at night the whole town was down at the station waiting to meet the men coming home. What was it like a couple decades later?
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| DS: |
Well, when I started commuting in the early 60s -- there were a good number of people who left every morning on the train. The 7:25 was a popular train. It was a very interesting train because it was non-stop from Boonton into Hoboken. It was faster in those days than it is today. We got on in Mountain Lakes, the next stop was Boonton, and then it was dead-on to Hoboken, and then we took the tube train or ferry into New York. I took the tube train. It took about 50, 55 minutes to get to Hoboken, then it was another 25 or 30 minutes to get into the city. It took about an hour and twenty-five minutes.
A few years after I started commuting I discovered there was a special commuter car on the train, a Pullman car with comfortable seats that had bridge tables in it. It was a private car. A group of men here formed an organization and people from Boonton Township, Boonton, and Montville joined the train in Boonton and we had our own car. It cost $60 a year for the car, plus your ticket, so it was $5 a month to have this private car.
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| JG: |
Did the organization have a name?
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| DS: |
Not to my knowledge. If it did I don't remember. A fellow by the name of Buzz Bedford was my introduction. He was the treasurer, I think, in those days. It was a close bonded group of people. There were bridge tables at each end of the car and we played bridge every morning going in. Other people played poker at night coming home.
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| JG: |
Did they serve beverages on that car?
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| DS: |
No, but you could bring a beverage aboard in the evening. You could buy a drink in Hoboken and bring it on and pour it yourself. There was one big party every year. That was a Christmas party on the train. There was food and we did bring drinks aboard that day. The train was slower than ever coming out.
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| JG: |
Intentionally slow?
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| DS: |
Yes, the conductor was part of it. We slowed the train down so we had longer to party.
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| JG: |
The rest of the commuters suffered at your expense?
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| DS: |
Yes they did. And the wives did meet us at the train. It got so crowded at the station that we passed an ordinance many years ago. In fact, I introduced the ordinance that restricted parking down there. We still have that, where you have to have a parking sticker. That was about 1974 or 1975. Before that, cars were all over the place. They were up on Midvale Road. They were starting to park on Woodland. We put a three-hour parking limit on those two streets between certain hours to keep people from parking. That ordinance is still in effect. The sticker cost $5 in those days, I think.
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| JG: |
These days, you don't see many cars with stickers. Clearly there are not as many people commuting by train.
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| DS: |
No there are not. I brought that up a few years ago, before I got off the borough council, of maybe doing away with the stickers and maybe encouraging more people to use the station.
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| JG: |
But there was a real camaraderie, commuting in those days?
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| DS: |
Absolutely. And there were enough people down there on the 7:25 that when people campaigned for local office and even some county officials would actually be there starting at 7 o'clock, campaigning on the platform. They actually sold tickets one day a week in the downstairs part, where the restaurant is now. Just on Mondays. Everybody bought a weekly. You waited there in cold weather and walked up those steps and got on the train when the train came.
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| JG: |
What train would you typically take coming home at night?
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| DS: |
I'd take the 5:30 from Hoboken, which got us in here about 6:30. That train was not a non-stop coming back. It was a little slower.
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| JG: |
You've had a long, distinguished career serving Mountain Lakes in various capacities. How did your ongoing public service here in town first get started?
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| DS: |
Bill Harrison, of the Harrison family, who are legendary in Mountain Lakes. Bill Harrison and a group of men invited me to join them. It was kind of a homeowners' association called the Mountain Lakes Residents' Association. This was back in the 60s. There were about 15 of us, I think, and we would meet once a month or every six weeks and chat about local issues and we'd take turns attending planning board meetings, board of adjustment meetings, council meetings. Mostly municipal government, not schools.
We had pretty much of a one party government in those days.
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| JG: |
These were non-elected, public watchdogs in effect?
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| DS: |
Yes, very benevolent watchdogs. We did not have any agenda, but we'd go and keep an eye on things and then call very quietly to an official's attention if we saw things that needed attention. I got interested in that.
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| JG: |
So that gave you a window on public government in town. And peering through that window, what did you discover?
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| DS: |
Interesting enough, what got me really interested was going to council meetings at the old borough hall at the corner of Briarcliff and the Boulevard, what's now Kaufman Park. It was a very small building, but it also had a fire department underneath and we had a man who slept in that building who ran the fire truck.
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| JG: |
As long as were on it, tell us a little bit about that building.
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| DS: |
Well, that was the borough hall when I moved here.
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| JG: |
When did it come down?
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| DS: |
It came down in the early 70s, after they built the new borough hall and they were going to sell that triangular piece of property off.
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| JG: |
To whom?
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| DS: |
Maybe a future homeowner. That was one of the driving forces of stopping the sale of public property in Mountain Lakes. Because it seemed to me that it was far better to tear that building down and not put a house there. Just have it as a park. Building another house there would have added to the school population and all the reasons that people give now for not selling property.
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| JG: |
Was the building in disrepair?
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| DS: |
Yes. It was a worn out old building. The council, in its wisdom, had previously sold many partial lots in town and some lots owned by the town for additions to homeowners' property to add to the tax rolls. So that lot was going to go up for sale, as was the Lake Drive School. That was proposed when it ran its course as a school. There was talk of taking it down or turning it into a condominium or some other use.
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| JG: |
There was actually talk of taking that building down?
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| DS: |
Maybe it didn't get to the stage about taking it down. But when you start that process that's usually one of the options that people offer. But anyway, I used to go to the council meetings, and they started at 8 o'clock. And at 8:30 they were over. Half-hour. That's how long council meetings lasted. I thought that was rather strange. They were wonderful guys, like people are today.
One night I went there and then went home and got my kids and took them to Denville for ice cream. Coming home, as I drove by the borough hall, I saw the lights still on. I stopped and looked in the window. There they were, at 9:30, talking away.
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| JG: |
And you learned what about local government at that moment?
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| DS: |
It was a private club. I never found there was anything they'd done that was terrible or damaging to the community. Their motives were high. A lot of things were done beautifully. But it was my idea of a bad form of government.
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| JG: |
This was before sunshine laws?
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| DS: |
But interesting enough, in the early 1970s when the three Democrats were elected, that was the first thing on our agenda to have an open meeting resolution, which was passed long before the state open meeting law. And we've operated under it ever since.
They used to have meetings, I understand, at the Club. I wasn't part of the group. They'd decide who was going to be coming on the council, who was going off. It was a closed group of well-meaning, dedicated guys
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| JG: |
Even though there were public elections.
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| DS: |
Often in Mountain Lakes, even recently, we have no opposition. Three openings, three candidates, and they get elected. They're really appointed by the Republican committee -- they were for years.
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| JG: |
When did you first run for the council?
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| DS: |
In 1969 or 1970 I ran for mayor. I didn't intend to. There were three of us. The mayor was elected directly by the people then, before our change of government, and the fellow who was going to run for mayor as a Democrat dropped out and they asked me if I'd put my name up, and I did run. I was defeated by the incumbent mayor, Walter Lilly.
Then we ran again in '71, three of us. Joe Gibson, Joyce Leuchten, and myself. Three Democrats against three Republicans.
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| JG: |
Had there ever been three Democrats on the ticket?
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| DS: |
I don't think so.
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| JG: |
Has there been since?
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| DS: |
Yes. And we won. And Joyce Leuchten became the first woman to be elected to a council position in the history of Mountain Lakes and we were the first Democrats since the early days, back in the 30s when there were a few Democrats elected.
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| JG: |
When were you elected mayor?
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| DS: |
In 1995. That was under the current format, where my colleagues on the council elected me. I was a council member beginning in 1972 and served for 11 years. Then I retired, was off for six years. And then returned and served for 12 more years. So 23 years in all. I was elected to council six times. I ran twice for mayor, under both forms of government -- and lost both times. But every time, I went door to door. Some years I only did 25 percent of them. But twice I went to every house in this town. When people weren't home, I left a handwritten note that I'd been there, thanking them for reading what I was dropping off. It was the only real effective way that I knew that somebody could get a message out to the community that they were really intent on trying to serve.
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| JG: |
What was behind the hiatus? Why did you retire?
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| DS: |
I had a change of job in New York. The clothing industry was getting more and more difficult and I was finding myself under great pressure to do more traveling.
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| JG: |
And rejoining town government?
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| DS: |
I just never got it out of my system.
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| JG: |
In your second tenure on the council were you often the only Democrat on the council?
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| DS: |
Yes, more years than not.
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| JG: |
Did that pose any problems? How did that play out?
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| DS: |
I have to say that politics in this town has always been above and beyond what most communities experience. There's never been that terrible, bitter infighting. There isn't anybody who ran for office on either ticket who didn't put Mountain Lakes first. The real major disagreements were on the issues. Well, I always said that the Democrats looked ahead and dreamed about what could be done and the Republicans were very, very firm in saying it's wonderful as it is, and we can improve, but let's not do it too fast and too vigorously. So the issues were never partisan in the sense of local matters, except when it came to electing a mayor.
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| JG: |
Let's talk about issues. Can you take a second to think before you answer. In your years in town, and this probably would apply mostly to your years serving on the council, when you had a bird's eye view, what do you think were the two most significant issues that the town and the town fathers and mothers have grappled with?
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| DS: |
Well, there have been more than two. Number one was open government. Believe it or not, we had quite a lengthy debate about that issue. The Democrats were in favor, originally, and the Republicans were opposed. They thought there were all kinds of reasons not to be able to talk out freely in public, that you wouldn't be as honest. But when the vote came, it was seven to nothing. So that went through.
Secondly, change of government was a very important move in this community. We went from a strong mayor-council form of government to a manager form of government. We have a professional running the community. That's been a big plus. Because these were part-time, very dedicated people, but they had their hands full, working and also running a community and keeping up with federal and state regulations.
The third thing, I think, was sewers. That wasn't a unanimous feeling in this community, that we needed sewers. Even though we're a lake community. That was quite a battle.
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| JG: |
When did they go in?
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| DS: |
Sewers were back in the mid 70s. Until then, it was all septic. And we had a lot of problems. People who didn't have problems were dead set against it. There were problems done near the Mountain Lakes Club. Bad problems. People forget, or they weren't here. "How could you not have sewers?" a lot of people today ask. But it was a fight.
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| JG: |
Those were three issues that went back early in your service. More recently, what have been the key issues in town?
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| DS: |
We had the historic district issue. That was a very well thought out program. Took three years to develop by the commission and when it was presented to the council after great study, the first reading (vote) by council was five to two, in favor of it. Then, a group of people, same as with the sewers, got vociferously opposed and went public with it, with flyers and with what I considered scare tactics. All of a sudden, the support collapsed. The final vote was six to one, against. Because it had gotten so contentious, the chairperson, Mrs. Harrison, recommended the council vote against it. The final vote was six to one. I was the only one who voted for it. I didn't understand how all the groups, the planning board, the League of Women Voters, were all in favor of this, which was really modeled on Montclair's, pretty non-invasive ordinance. You could do what you wanted inside the house and in back of house, and so forth, but not necessarily with the streetscape, in front of the house.
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| JG: |
That was just before I moved to town 10 years ago. And we haven't gotten past that.
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| DS: |
That's exactly what happens so often. The forces opposed to movements have a great deal of strength in opposing things because they wait and spread out the story they want to get across and they raise all kinds of fears. I'm not accusing them of bad motives, but all kinds of fears about what will happen, if? What happens to your property values? All these issues that have been decided in other communities.
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| JG: |
In the meantime, more houses disappear from the townscape.
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| DS: |
Right, and although I think there's been a tremendous improvement in the housing stock, internally and externally, I think if you went around the town and counted the number of houses that would be qualified for the original concept of historic structures it might be down to 40 or 50 houses because the fronts of many houses have been enlarged and changed fairly radically. Many to the good, from a point of view of looking at them, but historically, no.
It's like the solid waste program. Believe it or not, that was a well thought out, beautifully organized means of controlling the garbage flow in this town and making recycling a real important issue. And it was not unopposed. People were up in arms about that. There was a strong opposition. Many of the same people who were against the historic district.
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| JG: |
What was in place before that?
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| DS: |
It was all voluntary. We were very early on. Fact is, Mrs. Leuchten -- who was one of the leading advocates of recycling. The Girls Scouts and the Boy Scouts and we used to have a Junior Women's Club. I think those organizations were the original ones.
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| JG: |
How did it work before?
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| DS: |
They had Boy Scouts and volunteers working at the borough garage on certain drop-off days. And we were very early on this. This community has been very early on a lot of these social and environmental issues. I'm proud to say that people who led the fight were mainly Democrats.
I just read in the paper that the state's going to start imposing more controls on phosphate fertilizers going into our streams. This community passed the first fertilizer ordinance in the state of New Jersey. It was introduced by...
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| JG: |
Let the record show you pointed to your chest.
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| DS: |
Yes, it was introduced by me. That was in the 80s. I introduced a motion on this. It didn't get a second, which was unheard of. It was kind of an insult, because usually, just good manners, someone else will second it so you can discuss it, because otherwise you can't discuss the issue. But three years later, I re-introduced it. We found an ordinance from Minnesota. Two young men here by the name of Smith, twins -- Iris Smith's sons. They did all the research, gave it to me. I turned it over to the attorney. This was virgin territory. We became the first town in the state of New Jersey. It is now the most copied ordinance in the state of New Jersey. It is now the basis for the whole waterways rulings in the state. That's the thing I'm proudest of. Every time I read something, I say: "Man, we were there first on that." And it's still not enforced as much as it could be. Until we get the manufacturers in the county and this state to stop selling this stuff. You can grow a nice lawn without having phosphates, in spite of what some people say.
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| JG: |
Is Mountain Lakes still as good at being first as it used to be?
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| DS: |
No.
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| JG: |
Why not?
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| DS: |
Because... I can't judge other people's motives but it seems to me that what I saw is a decline in the fact that so many people don't have a feeling that they can move ahead unless the state moves first or the county does it first. We always look to the big father to answer the questions before we're willing to take a stand.
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| JG: |
Followers, rather than leaders?
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| DS: |
Yes, I think they don't want to step out ahead of things until they are told that they have to do it. I think this is very true, not only in Mountain Lakes, but in communities in general. There's no effort to get out in front, because, well, who knows whether you're right or wrong. It's a philosophical difference.
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| JG: |
In kind of the same vein, I've got two questions for you. One is, what changes in town have you seen for the better, since you moved here, since 1961.
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| DS: |
Well, I think the quality of our water, which was under great threat, has improved greatly over the last 20 years, mainly because of what we used to call the Lakes and Streams Committee. Steve Shaw, the recent former mayor was head of that committee for a number of years, and they did a sensational job. Doing some dredging, doing some cleanup, also finding a new way to control the algae, through the use of alum treatments. It's worked beautifully.
I think the housing stock, although it's gotten to be pretty gargantuan, has also improved. I think the quality of the interiors of our houses, has improved greatly. A lot of these Lakers attracted large families in my day -- eight, ten children. We were not a big family. Five kids was not a huge family. People moved in, and they had a pretty good income. But you know, living in a Laker, how expensive they are to maintain. A lot of them really went downhill. They were lived in hard by kids and families. That's another change I've noticed for the better.
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| JG: |
And changes for the worse?
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| DS: |
I think the streetscape has changed dramatically. This is still a wooded town, but the loss, through natural attrition, but also intentionally cutting down, and not only in the front of houses, but in the back of houses, where we had very small lawns, if any, and lots of trees. That's changing radically. A lot of people don't even see it, because they don't look in the back of people's homes. The streetscape has become more tended, more grassy, less trees. More foreign types of plantings are taking hold, that have no meaning to the past in Mountain Lakes. A California-look, who knows what kind of look.
Just from the point of view of clean air, of driving in off the highways. Just can driving up Intervale Road, you can feel the change in temperature, five, eight, ten degrees.
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| JG: |
And now ,with cars having built-in thermometers, you can see that drop right on your dashboard.
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| DS: |
These are the issues that are so hard to get a population to step up and face, along with the housing -- the historic look of the community and the sensibility of what that environment that was developed. This place was denuded of trees when Hapgood built this place -- but what happened afterwards. You could tell the air is better. The level of noise has increased, as we cut trees down in town, the outside sounds come in here.
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| JG: |
So the lesson is what? Learn from our mistakes?
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| DS: |
People are in a hurry and have a short-term point of view of what's necessary and they don't look ahead, it seems to me, about what we're going to leave our kids and our future generations. One of the campaign slogans we had when Martha Heald and Joe Buyske and I ran, we had these funny signs. One of them was, "We won't emulate Parsippany as our foreign policy." In other words, we don't want to be covered with houses, covered with driveways, we don't want to have parking lots. We want to try to maintain a quality of life that is unique.
When we drove into town that first time, friends of my brother in law and sister lived here in Mountain Lakes and we spent the night with them while we were looking at the town. When we drove into the town and went down the Boulevard, and we liked what we saw. There was a kid mowing the lawn. We rolled the window down and asked him where we could find downtown Mountain Lakes. He looked at us like we were crazy. "You mean Yak's?" I asked, "What's Yak's?" He said, "Oh, that's the grocery store." We found it. It was Yaccarinos, what's now the Market. That's where Dot shopped. Not for big groceries, but it had a great meat market. In those days, the downhill brick building wasn't there.
That was one of the things about our planning board in those days. They were a lot more loosey goosey. They allowed that brick building to get jammed in there. First of all, the architecture is totally out of keeping. Number two, there wasn't an inch of space that wasn't covered up with concrete or macadam. Across the way was a barbershop, where the train guy is now. The police department was there for a short time. The garage was always there. There was a gas pump there. That's where I bought my gas. There was a dry cleaners. Patsy, I can't remember his last name. And the druggist, Richard Reich, built that building, the Patridge Building, was what it was called before.
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| JG: |
That brick building?
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| DS: |
As you face it from the parking area. That was the drug store. It had beautiful windows. During the 70s, the kids were breaking those windows. He wasn't a very popular guy because he'd run them off -- those "long haired, pot smoking" kids of ours. But it was a pretty strong attraction. There was good meat at the market and they delivered. There was Evelyn's hair salon. The railroad had an office where the restaurant is. There was an antique store in there for a while. There have been a number of uses.
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| JG: |
What do you remember about a rec center being there?
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| DS: |
That was very controversial. That was a council project, backing this idea that the kids needed a place to play, and a group of parents got together and started running this rec center, and it got out of hand because the management of it was so uneven, because they were parents. One group of parents, one couple or two couples would run it one night. Then another couple would have it another night. And next week, somebody else. The unevenness of the uniformity of rules took the thing down. Some people were loosey goosey, everything went. Other people were very strict.
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| JG: |
It was more than just ping-pong tables?
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| DS: |
It was a gathering place. The had soft drinks and so forth. That was in the middle seventies when there was a great number of drug and alcohol related problems. The Esplanade became a hangout. The Wall near the Mountain Lakes Club, that's what the kids called it, near the canal, where the bridge is, that was a hangout. That was an interesting, challenging time. We were having terrible trouble with kids. They were really raising hell. They were in defiance of everything. So council members took turns. I did my turn. You used to walk at night, up and down, just have a presence, and try to keep an eye on things and keep it quiet. But finally, that wasn't very effective.
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| JG: |
Would you speak with the kids?
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| DS: |
We didn't have any authority, except to say "Hey fellas, can you keep it down a little bit." And it didn't work. What finally worked, we proposed to the town that we put a light right there. People don't like to do bad things if there's a light shining on them. That's what solved the problem at the Esplanade. We lit the place up and we had a police car sitting down there. The officer never got out of the car. Pretty soon they moved elsewhere. We moved the problem someplace else, really.
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| JG: |
How did some of the world's events resonate in Mountain Lakes?
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| DS: |
During the Vietnam War, this town like most of America, the adult population sat inert and their kids were raising hell at college, raising hell here in town, making childish, in many ways, acts of defiance and so forth about the war. There was a young man who came to me and asked me if I would join with him in forming a march for peace. I said yes.
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| JG: |
He was of college age?
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| DS: |
Yes.
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| JG: |
His name?
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| DS: |
I've still got stuff of his in my house that he left when he moved. Scott Desmond was his name. He had this feeling, we can do something about the war if we quietly and orderly protest. He went to the various ministers in town and could get none of them to join. Finally, the Episcopal minister, I don't remember his name, did agree to walk with us. He and about 75 or 80 people marched and got some newspaper coverage. We met at Memorial Park. There were short talks given. Gerry Rennels, a woman, was in a wheelchair. I think we went from the Boulevard down to the Park, then along Lake Drive before we broke up and went home.
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| JG: |
Were signs carried?
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| DS: |
There were some signs, but it was a very quiet protest. And the minister gave a nice peace-loving talk. But it was so in contrast with the violence that was talking place elsewhere.
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| JG: |
Was that march respectfully met?
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| DS: |
Nobody challenged us, nobody screamed at us. It was not a very popular stand, being against the war.
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| JG: |
That must have been fairly early in the war.
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| DS: |
It was. Some of us then went on our individual ways and went to Washington and talked with Rodney Freylinghausen's father. I did that.
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| JG: |
Any other examples that come to mind?
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| DS: |
I do know this: we passed a resolution later on. The council passed a resolution in favor of nuclear disarmament. And sent it to President Nixon. I introduced it and Dudley Coan, who was a World War II veteran, a bomber pilot over Japan. His wife still lives in town, and his daughter-in-law and son live here. So two World War II veterans here were the leaders. We got a bare majority. Four to three, I think the vote was.
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| JG: |
I suspect you can tell us a bit about Briarcliff School, since you live right across the street.
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| DS: |
It wasn't the high school when we moved to town in 1961. The high school had moved to its current location. Our kids went to all four schools. They went to Wildwood, Lake Drive, which for many years was the fourth and fifth grade. Then we had Briarcliff and then the high school. Briarcliff has always been good neighbors, with rare exception. The kids and the faculty have been good neighbors to the neighborhood. They were considerate of the fact there were neighbors. The school was enhanced dramatically when Jim Bagli became the principal. Jim Bagli was the premier turning point in the history of the middle school in this town. He brought discipline. He brought respect. He brought, I think, a tradition of what all schools ought to be, as described by my son: "He's tough but he's fair." You could walk in there on the days when he was there and the kids would open the door for you. They would call you, "Mister," or "Sir." You had no hats in the school. It was a wonderful feeling. For the kids, too. Some were resentful, but when they left there they were very proud of the fact.
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| JG: |
We just missed him, with our boys.
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| DS: |
I went to a Quaker school my last three years in high school in suburban Philadelphia. I asked our homeroom teacher, Dr. Crouch, one day. "Why do we have to dress up so much?" He said: "Adrian, we have found that there is more respect given to you as a person and more respect given to the faculty and how you behave, if you're dressed properly." You don't see many kids wearing a coat and tie out climbing over fences. It's a conduct thing. And it's self-respect.
One of the most trying moments of my career on the council was when the council allowed the gazebo on Island Beach to be put up. We have an ordinance in this community, and had one for years and years ,that you couldn't build within 25 feet of the lake. Some homeowners broke that ordinance, and the town, for whatever reason, allowed that to happen. But the council knew what it was doing and the vote was five to two to put that thing there in violation of their own ordinance. Sandy Batty and I opposed it. It's outrageous that you have a law and you don't obey it yourself. What kind of message do you send? But it went through and there it sits. Some people think it's attractive. Some think it's an eyesore.
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| JG: |
You're a member of the Top Row Gang. Tell us about how that got started and really, what that means to you guys and to the town of Mountain Lakes.
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| DS: |
It's a very loosely formed happenstance. A group of 10 men and one woman would come to all the lacrosse and football games. We ended up being right below the announcer's booth. Here we were. The average age, in those days, was about 74. It's now over 80. There are about six or seven of us up there now, because some are finding it more and more difficult to climb the steps. We're thinking of calling it the Front Row Gang. And we're also asking the school administration to put a railing up the walkway. We don't get together for any other occasion except sporting events. It's kind of a prideful thing, this old bunch of people are up there cheering our grandkids on. It's kind of unique.
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| JG: |
It's making a statement by sitting up there, en masse, as it were, and by attending all of the games, that you're supporting the teams -- and that athletics matter in this town?
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| DS: |
I can't speak for everybody, but I think most of us feel that it's not only supporting the teams and the kids, it's supporting where they are going afterwards. Every time we talk to these kids, and it's often, we stress the fact, that yes, this is a wonderful experience, but the important thing is going on to higher things -- education, what kind of grades you get and how you achieve things in life, and this is a building block. It isn't just, "Rah, rah, rah for the good old team." I think we take a great affection with the kids, who seem to notice us up there yelling, sometimes too loudly. And we also go to most of the away games. We used to carry a banner to the away games but the banner has gotten cumbersome.
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| JG: |
Banner saying what?
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| DS: |
Top Row Gang. The school gave us that.
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| JG: |
Can anybody sit up there?
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| DS: |
Anybody can, if they're 70 years old. [He laughs.] No, there's no rules. But we kind of hoot and holler about some young guy coming up and ruining the day for us, you know. No rules, no regulations, no organization, really.
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| JG: |
You were just awarded the Janice D. Hunts Lifelong Community Service Award. Your acceptance speech ran all of two words. "Thank You." Here, right now, without the Memorial Day sun beating down on us -- and perhaps that's what you had in mind, saving people from the sun -- please feel free to go on a bit longer about what that award means to you.
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| DS: |
Well, I was very honored. I've been honored with being man of the year, citizen of the year, and all the other awards I've won and been very grateful for receiving recognition for the efforts I've put out here in the community, but the thing that makes me feel most thrilled about it is the people who've been honored in the past. It's a wonderful array of outstanding citizens who won the award over the years. And Janice Hunts, herself, was a fabulous mayor of this community and also a great doer.
The reason I spoke those two words, which is unlike me, was because as a member of the Memorial Day committee, we've been trying to persuade the speakers at all these events to make it brief and to the point, because we're there to honor the deeds of our past veterans, those who gave there lives, and this is the only town event where we have a big enough assembly that these awards have any audience. But we've failed in the past to persuade people to keep their remarks brief. So I told the mayor, and he didn't believe me, that you're going to hear the briefest speech ever given. I wanted my committee and the mayor to know we were going to follow our own rules.
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| JG: |
In other words, here you were, once again, leading by example.
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| DS: |
Well, I hope that was the example.
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| JG: |
You've certain led by example in this town. Thank you for chatting with us today.
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