Episode 205: Long Beach Oral Histories
The Long Island History Project
We continue our tour of Long Island-based oral history collections. This time out, Robert Anen () and I sat down with the Long Beach Historical & Preservation Society. Robert helped digitize their extensive oral history collection. The recordings cover a wide range of memories and experiences from residents of the City by The Sea. You’ll hear about the father of Long Beach, developer, politician, and consummate self-promoter William H. Reynolds. You’ll also hear about the highlights of the city’s Roaring 20s golden age, the political intrigues of a growing city, and the...
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Episode 204: Robert Beattie, Long Island Architect w Richard Beattie
The Long Island History Project
Robert Beattie was many things: an architect, a designer of iconic public buildings on Long Island, and a decorated World War II veteran. But most importantly, he was the father of today’s guest, Richard Beattie. So we’re celebrating Father’s Day by celebrating the life and work of Robert Beattie. As an architect, Beattie’s specialty was mid-century modern architecture. Working with clean lines, natural light, and an appreciation of the surrounding landscape, he designed many iconic buildings in our area. If you live in the town of Islip, you’ll know his MacArthur Airport terminal,...
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Episode 203: Madeleine Bessell‑Koprek and the Paleoecology of Long Island, Australia
The Long Island History Project
There’s a rough stretch of water between Australia and Tasmania called the Bass Strait. Within the strait there’s a group of islands called the Furneaux Group. Within the group lies Long Island, a small, mostly-uninhabited stretch of grass and trees that attracted the attention of Madeleine Bessel-Koprek and her colleagues. We’re traveling far afield on today’s episode, discussing paleoecology with Madeine, a Ph.D. student at Australian National University. Along with Simon Graeme Haberle, Stefania Ondei, Stephen Harris, and David MJS Bowman, she recently published a study unraveling...
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Episode 202: Robert Anen and Manhasset Oral Histories
The Long Island History Project
The voices of the past are all around us, if you know how to listen. And sometimes those voices are trapped on small thin strips of tape wrapped in cheap plastic. That’s where Robert Anen comes in. As project archivist for the Long Island Library Resources Council, he works with historical collections across Nassau and Suffolk counties. Specializing in audio preservation and digitization, he’s rescued a number of collections – copying them to digital media and making them publicly available online. Today we focus on Robert’s work with one of the oldest oral history collections on Long...
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Episode 201: Isle of Ever w Jen Calonita
The Long Island History Project
Isle of Ever is Jen Calonita’s newest middle grade novel, a story grounded in the history of Long Island’s North Fork. On today’s episode, Jen discusses growing up on Long Island and spending many summers at her grandparents’ house in Mattituck. It was here, in between trips to Greenport, that she first heard tell of Captain Kidd’s lost treasure. She tried digging up the local beach, came up empty, but the idea buried itself in Jen’s mind. Now she has worked her experiences into the tale of Benny Benedict, a young girl caught up in a race to solve a puzzle and claim an...
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Episode 200: The 1975 Babylon High School Panthers w Tom McKeown
The Long Island History Project
Tom McKeown lived and breathed basketball throughout junior and senior high school in Babylon. As an eighth grader in 1974-1975, he got to experience the thrill of watching the varsity team win their league and the Suffolk County championships. As fate would have it, this was also the first year that New York State allowed county champions to play each other, setting up a showdown between Babylon’s Panthers and Nassau County’s champs, the South Side Cyclones of Rockville Center. It was an epic season that engaged Tom so deeply that he has written his version of the story as This Is...
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Episode 199: Dr. Angela Fernandez and Pierson v Post
The Long Island History Project
When Jessie Pierson and Lodowick Post argued over a fox in early 19th century Southampton, they probably didn’t think the resulting court case would echo down the ages. Yet here we are 220 years later talking with legal historian Angela Fernandez about the odd, improbable history of Pierson v Post. A professor of law and history at the University of Toronto, Fernandez has delved deep into the case. Her “legal archaeology” uncovered important, presumed-lost information on the early phases of the proceedings. Her 2018 book Pierson v. Post, The Hunt for the Fox: Law and...
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Episode 198: Mark Torres: Long Island and the Legacy of Eugenics
The Long Island History Project
The science of genetics took a wrong turn in the early 20th century and it ran through Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island. Here overlooking a former whaling port, Dr. Charles Benedict Davenport created the Eugenics Record Office and served as director of the Carnegie Institution’s Station for Experimental Evolution. From these posts he promoted and pushed the Eugenics Movement in the US and throughout the world. Historian and attorney Mark Torres has explored the far reaching and sinister influence of Davenport’s activities in his new book Long Island and the Legacy of Eugenics: Station...
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Episode 197: Riverhead Stadium with Fabio Montella
The Long Island History Project
Memorial Day 1949 was an auspicious day in Riverhead as it saw the inaugural game at the brand new Wivchar Stadium on Harrison Ave. The brainchild of Tony Wivchar, a local entrepreneur and owner of an earth-moving company, the venue soon came to be known as Riverhead Stadium. Although it only existed for a few brief years, the stadium was alive with excitement. To help drum up interest, Wivchar formed the Riverhead Falcons baseball team out of local talent to play in exhibition games. Their opponents ranged from Negro League stalwarts such as the Black Yankees to barnstorming attractions like...
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Episode 196: Dutch Language in New York with Kieran O'Keefe
The Long Island History Project
The Dutch held on to their New Netherland colony for some forty years. They lost it to the English twice, at gunpoint in 1664 and by treaty in 1674. But although officially gone, the Dutch were not forgotten. In addition to their cultural legacy, the Dutch language held on stubbornly across the region for a long time. How long? That’s the question Dr. Kieran O’Keefe answers in “When Did New York Stop Speaking Dutch? The Persistence of the Dutch Language in Old New Netherland” (New York History journal, 2024). He tracks the long history of Dutch-language speakers across the...
info_outlineWe continue our tour of Long Island-based oral history collections. This time out, Robert Anen (LILRC Project Archivist) and I sat down with the Long Beach Historical & Preservation Society. Robert helped digitize their extensive oral history collection. The recordings cover a wide range of memories and experiences from residents of the City by The Sea. You’ll hear about the father of Long Beach, developer, politician, and consummate self-promoter William H. Reynolds. You’ll also hear about the highlights of the city’s Roaring 20s golden age, the political intrigues of a growing city, and the transformations brought on by World War II.
In the room with us are Phyllis Ginsberg, Dan Moran, Joanne Belli, Kathi Lismore, and current society president Jeanne Browne. But the real special guests are the people on the tapes, expertly interviewed by Florence Reich First. Florence was a founding member of the society and undertook this oral history project in the early 1980s.
Oral history recordings from the podcast (by order of appearance):
- Florence Reich (w Helen Smith Hart)
- Andrew Carlo
- Foster Vogel
- Daphne Mulligan Schlaich
- Mary Hoff Katris
- William McGovern
- William Schwartz (w Roberta Fiore)
- Amy Rabinowitz Cohen nee Schloss
- Peggy Wood Lieberman
Further Research
- Long Beach Oral History Collection (NY Heritage)
- Long Beach Historical and Preservation Society
- The Lido Club Hotel
- Dreamland Postcards (Coney Island History Project)
- Music
- Intro music: https://homegrownstringband.com/
- Outro music: Capering by Blue Dot Sessions CC BY-NC 4.0