Kendal View January - February 2023

Kendal View

Kendal On Hudson's Bimonthly Journal

FYI

Pat Taylor

As we start a new year of publishing this magazine, we are struck once again by the diversity of what we cover: the interesting people, activities we participate in, past experiences that define us. We begin this issue with the names of early settlers from local surroundings, with data supplied by a local Historical Society and edited by Edith Litt. Muriel Fox (and three residents) then offer praise to the Director of the Wellness Center. And thanks to Norman Sissman, we also focus on four residents who are relatively unsung. Doris Eder describes an interview with Luis Javier, the affable host of the Bistro and FDR. Pat Taylor goes on to describe the sixteen years that Jan Myers served on Kendal’s Trips Committee, with an additional two pages of superb photographs of some of the 36 trips taken in 2022. Next, Lynn Clague tells us how he found his career as a poet, followed by an example of his talent. The issue comes full circle with two articles that look back: one to the elementary school days of Martin Smolin and the other to the attempts of Hubert Herring to be (or not to be) an actor.

The four covers of this issue were selected and processed by Arthur Brady. He took the cover shot on a cold, sunny day in Kingsland Point Park. The inside front cover, a pond in the woods at the Marshlands Conservatory in Rye, is by Richard Schneeman. His terrace was the locus for the photo of ice on the Hudson that Harry Bloomfeld took for the inside back cover. And Arthur Brady caught the back cover’s other-worldly view at the Corning Glass Museum in Corning, NY.

Unless otherwise specified, inside photographs are by Arthur Brady.

KENDAL VIEW STAFF

Editor

Pat Taylor

Managing Editor Llyn Clague

Editorial Staff

Eugene DuBow, Doris Eder, Muriel Fox, Hubert B. Herring, Carolyn Klinger, Edith Litt, Norman Sissman

Photography Editors

Arthur Brady, Caroline Persell, Richard Schneeman

Advertising Director

Peter McCuen

What’s in a Name? History!

Edited by Edith Litt

This piece is based on an article entitled “Phelps Place, A Historical Overview” by Richard J. Gerber and Arthur James Hoe, which appeared in the Fall 1966 edition of The Westchester Historian, the quarterly newsletter of the Westchester County Historical Society. It is used with the permission of the Society.

TAPPAN ZEE

The land on which Phelps Hospital stands, the parcel bounded on the north by Rockwood Hall Park, on the south by Sleepy Hollow Manor, on the east by Route 9 and on the west by the river, has a long and complex history. The land was home to a branch of the Wappinger Confederacy of Native Americans; by the beginning of the fifteenth century A.D., the Wappingers numbered about 5,000. In 1609, Henry Hudson is said to have landed and met with them along this shore, near the widest part of the river. The Dutch settlers who followed Hudson called this stretch of the river Tappan Zee, or sea, for its width. According to legend, the Dutch bought this land from the local Native Americans in 1629.

PHILIPSE

An early Dutch settler, Frederick Philipse, bought a large piece of property, including the Phelps site, in 1672. His ownership was formally recognized by King William and Queen Mary of England, giving him a Royal Charter in 1672. Philipse built sawmills and gristmills and the land became an early industrial site for the production of lumber and grains. He also began the nearby Old Dutch Church. By the end of the 1600s, Philipse was the richest man on the continent.

BEEKMAN

Following the Revolutionary War, the loyalist Philipses lost their property to New York State and this parcel was sold to General Girard Beekman. His family founded North Tarrytown [now known as Sleepy Hollow] nearby.

PHELPS

In the nineteenth century Anson Phelps, a penniless orphan in his early teens, became a successful merchant and established the first regular shipping line out of New York City. Following this success, Phelps began investing in New York real estate, banks, insurance, lumber and other raw materials. His skills and timing were considerable factors, but Phelps’ wealth resulted from the marriage of three of his daughters to auspicious men: Daniel James, William E. Dodge, and James Stokes. Together, Phelps and his sons-in-law founded the Phelps-Dodge Partnership in 1833. The firm prospered, creating great wealth for the family. For a time, Phelps-Dodge was one of the largest firms in the country.

In the New York of the early 1800s, warm weather periodically brought epidemics of smallpox, cholera and yellow fever to the city and families of means, like the Philipses, began sailing upriver, to places like Ossining, to escape the dreaded illnesses. The first Phelps summer home was at 66 Beekman Avenue in North Tarrytown. The family enjoyed their summers so much that, in 1848, Anson Phelps, Jr. and his wife purchased 66 acres of property overlooking the Hudson from the Beekman estate. During the next few years, they supervised laying out roadways and construction of a 22-room Victorian Gothic stone building which they at first called the Manor House [now the James House]. The year 1848 was also the year that the Hudson River Railroad’s bed was cut along the river edge of the property called Phelps Place.

JAMES

After a while, due to a paucity of heirs, the Phelps Place property passed briefly into the hands of the Presbyterian Board, but was repurchased by Anson, Sr.’s great grandson, Arthur Curtiss James. By the start of the twentieth century, James was one of the wealthiest men in the country, but one of its least well-known to the public. His name rarely appeared in the newspapers, his photograph almost never. He donated many millions to charity during his lifetime, but most of it was untraceable because of his strict rule that publicizing his gifts meant immediate cancellation. In fact, according to The New York Times, following World War I, Arthur Curtiss James stood to be the richest man in the country because of his enormous railroad, copper, silver and gold mine holdings.

James and his wife had several other homes, but loved their country retreat at Phelps Place. The property came to include a boat house, a 12-room superintendent’s house, a six-room bungalow, a large garage with two four-room apartments above it, and a tennis court. The Jameses restored the manor house, furnished it with valuable antiques, and renamed it James House.

While no specific clause of James’s will addresses the issue, it is possible that James had spoken to his trustees about donating Phelps Place for the establishment of a new hospital. The Westchester Historian will be used in a future issue as the source for an article on the founding of Phelps Hospital.

James House today, benignly overlooking Kendal on Hudson.

Photo by Richard Schneeman

Kim Carpentier and KoH: A Relationship That Works

Muriel Fox

“I love my job. I love the residents. At night I feel I did something good for someone.” Kim Carpentier, who has been the Resident Care Director for Independent Living residents since July 2021, believes “the biggest thing is to stay safe.” With Kim, we feel not only safe, but also cared for. At the end of this article I’ll quote the stories of three residents whom Kim has helped; but first, the basic information:

Kim oversees our Resident Care Center (RCC), on the terrace level. She makes sure the outside providers who use our offices have whatever they need. She advises residents with medical concerns in Independent Living, and follows through with phone calls if we need hospital care. If we move from a hospital to Clearwater, Kim coordinates this.

An LPN (Licensed Practical Nurse), she serves as an emergency nurse when necessary –mostly in our apartments rather than in the RCC. She supervises a wide variety of services to the Blood Pressure Clinic on the second and third Monday morning of every month. (If we suddenly need to have our blood pressure taken another time, Kim can do it.) Another service is Drug Takeback Day on the first Monday of each month, when the Sleepy Hollow Police Department collects the unused or expired medications for disposal. For a nominal KoH fee, Kim will visit our apartment and help with a home Covid test if we request it.

I learned from Kim that Apex Laboratory, a subsidiary of Phelps Hospital, draws blood every Wednesday morning and submits it to our designated physician. This information led me to cancel a separate appointment in my doctor’s office for blood-drawing before my annual physical. One less trip in the Kendal van.

Kim keeps lists of nearby dentists, dermatologists, audiologists, ENT and primary care practitioners. Are they taking new patients now? No psychotherapists are listed because their availability changes too often; but there are two who can come to the RCC or treat residents in our apartments. She’ll sit down with a resident and give advice regarding our interfacing with doctors.

Kim often meets with people who want to move here, and gathers information so that KoH’s medical director can decide if Kendal is a good fit for them. Once someone becomes a resident, she’ll provide advice. If physical therapy or other assistance might be helpful, Kim suggests contacting one’s doctor.

There’s sometimes a difficult moment when the question arises about a suggested move to Adirondack, Clearwater or Sunnyside. What place is best for an IL resident, with or without

Kim Carpentier: Kendal’s go-to person for medical advice.

Photo by Richard Schneeman

an aide? (The ratio between physical or cognitive problems is about 50-50.) Kim sits down with a resident, their family, Ellen Ottstadt, and pertinent specialists to think this through. “We don’t want anyone to struggle living independently. After all our discussions, they decide what level of care is right for them. Once they do move, people are happy to be in a place that can assist them in their needs.”

Kim was born in Putnam Valley, attended Lakeland High School, took business courses at Westchester Community College, and then worked in a bank. “I hated it. It was not me.” Her grandmother, a nurse, advised: “You should be a nurse. It’s your nature.” She then obtained an LPN license through Northern Westchester Technical School.

Her first nursing job was at Hudson Valley Hospital. She was eager to learn about various fields of medical care and spent over a year as a trauma nurse. Then three years with a home care agency, helping patients who aged in place. Then 17 years split between an assisted living/nursing home in Hooksett, NH, and a CCRC in Nashua.

Although Kim enjoyed this work, she decided to move back to this area to be near her family. Her husband, Michael, took early retirement at his aerospace job to move here with Kim. Married in 2003, the couple have a son and two stepsons.

Kim researched possible jobs in this locality and zeroed in on Kendal on Hudson as a Life Planning Community. There were no openings, but she sent her resume and kept calling. After one year, she learned about an opening here “and did a dance of joy.”

We’re the ones who are dancing because of Kim. Following, verbatim, are comments by three residents who all happened to be at my dinner table recently:

Mary Alice Walker: “Kim is not only compassionate and caring, she is competent and helpful. On one occasion, she consulted with me and then arranged for me to be sent to Phelps ER, even running up to my apartment to retrieve necessary papers. She not only stayed in daily touch afterwards, but kept my daughter informed. Follow-through is so important, particularly with health issues, and Kim does a superb job at that.”

Roberta Poupon: “She cares. Helpful, kind, thoughtful. When I was dizzy, she checked me out and sent me to Phelps. Then she took that extra step and called me the next day. Similarly, when I had Covid, she called me daily. But daily check-ins did not stop with her work week - she called on the weekend and made me feel I was not alone.”

Barbara Rachlin: “I badly injured myself late one afternoon. Unaware of the seriousness of the injury, I refused to go to the ER. Kim stayed with me through her own dinner, treated the wound, bandaged it, then followed day after day, referring me to the wound service at Phelps for ongoing treatment. Throughout, she kept in touch. Kim is warmly caring, professional, and competent...when I felt most medically vulnerable, Kim made me feel safe.”

That says it all!

Some More Unsung Residents

Norman J. Sissman

In the last issue of Kendal View I wrote brief tributes to some residents who, in my opinion, have contributed significantly to the good life at Kendal, but have not received the public notice they deserve. I called them “unsung residents.” With apologies to many others who are equally deserving, but cannot be included now because of space limitations, here are tributes to four more.

The first is Priscilla Holmgren, whose arresting and lovely calligraphy has adorned the public spaces of Kendal since 2006 when she moved here with her late husband, Edwin. It has appeared primarily in the signs that are posted over our periodic art exhibits and in a rotating posting on the northern wall of Main Street (opposite the mailboxes) quoting wise and amusing adages about some of life’s truisms. These first appeared in 2008 at the suggestion of our leading Founder, Gay Berger. Priscilla chooses these sayings from a wide variety of sources, including the internet, and uses a calligraphic style for each that harmonizes with its theme. Priscilla started her calligraphy studies around 1992 and took classes for over twenty years. Her art has added so much to the visual pleasures of our lives.

Another source of visual pleasure in the public areas of Kendal are the lovely, colorful pillows that have been appearing, over the past couple of years, on the sofas and chairs on Main Street and in the Residents Lounge. These are all the needlepoint work of Ed Hanin Ed has not been “unsung” for his many other past contributions to Kendal, including three terms as a resident representative on the KoH Board of Directors, but few are aware of these pillows’ origin. Ed has been doing needlepoint for decades as a relaxing and rewarding hobby. He selects the patterns for these pillows from a variety of readily available material. After completing each needlepoint pattern, he gives it to Marlyn Bottjer, the head of the CAFA Committee, who sends it out for its transformation into a pillow.

My third nomination for designation as an unsung resident merits his inclusion paradoxically because of his work in keeping Kendal singing – not to mention the singular appropriateness of his last name! Bob Singleton has been the leader of the Kendal Chorale since 2017, succeeding Doris Appleby. His duties are multi-fold: recruiting new singers, maintaining its list of members, taking attendance at rehearsals, contacting those who don’t regularly attend, acting as the liaison with the director of the chorale, Nell MacDonald, setting up the electric keyboard used by Nell and arranging the singers’ seats for every Thursday afternoon rehearsal, making and distributing copies of the group’s musical scores when necessary, and arranging to present a flower bouquet to Nell at the end of each twice-a-year choral concert. Also, he contributes his mellifluous baritone voice to the group. In addition, Bob helps to organize the three heavily attended summer singalongs that enliven the musical scene at Kendal.

My final nomination for an unsung resident is Sheila Darnborough, the longtime hardworking coordinator of 970, Kendal’s TV channel. There appears to be no end to the time and effort required by this position. Although the station has a core of committed resident workers, more are needed to help with the many tasks required for the station to fulfill its goals. Among these are recording (with a handheld camera) Kendal events such as the Monday night talks and Sunday concerts, plus capturing our art exhibit. These videorecordings must be transferred to DVDs for playing on Channel 970. Finally, they need to be set up for viewing, and together with the DVDs of the nightly movies be entered into the daily schedule which appears in Spotlight. In addition to these multifarious steps, Sheila confronts the problem of the stability of the equipment used, the physical hardware and software. The system is unchanged from that set up about 16 years ago. It is old and outdated, and Sheila must supervise repairs, and announce the unfortunately necessary suspensions of service that ensue. Hopefully new technologies now available will alleviate at least some of the arduous work required for Channel 970.

To all these unsung residents and others who similarly work to support our fulfilling lives at Kendal, many grateful thanks!

As a Founder, as well as the former editor of Kendal View for many years, Norman is in a unique position to discern the hidden talents of individual residents.

The Very Model of a Maître d’

Doris L. Eder

Luis Javier, Kendal’s Dining and Catering Manager, came to Kendal a year ago in October 2021. Youthful, energetic and highly professional, Luis has an interesting background and impressive credentials. He reports to Fred Coppola, Director of Culinary Services.

Prior to coming to Kendal, Luis spent several years in the golf club industry. Most recently he was the manager in charge of food and beverage service at the Apawamis, a private country club in Rye. Familiar with Sleepy Hollow and Tarrytown, Luis also worked at the Sleepy Hollow Country Club as a food and beverage manager and at the Armonk Golf Club, a more intimate club with about 150 members.

For eight years Luis offered regular catering and special banquets for clients at Tarrytown House, the local conference center. Prior to that, he was service director at the Castle, Tarrytown’s five-star hotel that closed recently. Luis gained especially useful experience for his present job at Brightview in Orangeburg, NY, an assisted living facility where he was in charge of the dining and catering operation.

Residents agree that Luis has mastered the art of making a dining experience enjoyable for them because he is obviously someone who relishes his work. A major element of his job is overseeing the professional development of the dining staffs in both the Bistro and FDR.

Our indefatigable Maître d’ seems to enjoy work and leisure equally. Luis says, “I love working at Kendal and managing dining operations. I particularly enjoy evenings at dinner, when most residents are present.” Although accustomed to working long hours (11 a.m. through 9 p.m. on weekdays, and 10 a.m. through 11 p.m. at weekends), Luis makes a point of maintaining a healthy balance between work and play. During leisure hours, he is an ardent hiker and enthusiastic traveler, who incidentally, just returned from a trip to London and Paris.

Luis came to the United States in his early twenties. One of eight children, he was born in the Dominican Republic, taught himself English and became a certified expert in wine and food through Club Managers of America, headquartered in Virginia. Luis lives with his wife and family in Montrose, NY. His son, a student at Siena College, is interested in cybersecurity, while his daughter is pursuing an after-college career in journalism.

The ever-affable Luis is shown in the FDR with resident Catherine Trapasso (left) and the late Joan Curry.

Jan Myers, Trip Planner Extraordinaire

Pat Taylor

After a pandemic-spurred hiatus in offering trips for residents, Kendal’s Trips Committee gingerly started planning again last year. The program then got up to par in 2022 with a total of 36 trips scheduled throughout the year.

The return to a full schedule of trips was particularly meaningful to Jan Myers because she was thinking of retiring after 16 years on the committee, 12 of them as chair. (See the photo of the party given last September by the members of the Trips Committee to honor Jan for her years of service.)

Jan Myers at her retirement party on September 12, 2022, holding a certificate of appreciation for her work over 16 years.

Shortly after Kendal opened its doors, founder Jane Beers (who also launched Spotlight) began organizing a Trips Committee. When Jan Myers moved into Kendal a few months later, she immediately decided to volunteer for that committee and was invited to attend the first meeting.

Jan’s previous career was the perfect background for leading the Kendal Trips Committee: she was an account executive in a New York public relations firm specializing in travel accounts.

As chair of the Trips Committee, Jan used her expertise to build a program that, at present, offers residents three major trips a month. In addition to overseeing a standing committee of volunteers, Jan also worked closely with the van driver for each trip.

After live Met operas in HD became available at multiplex cinemas, Jan added four operas a season to the schedule. This involved driving to White Plains on a Saturday morning in July to purchase tickets for the new season.

To continue Jan’s work, Lynn Brady has taken over as chair of the Trips Committee and Sheila Darnborough as treasurer. Though always room for more, there is a splendid mix of volunteers: seasoned veterans and energetic newcomers. They work together to take residents from here (Hudson Valley’s numerous local sites) to there (the ever-beckoning museums in New York City).

Kendal Trips in 2022

4. Culinary Inst. of America, Hyde Park, NY

8. Waterfront, Piermont, NY

languages.

One Path to Poetry

Llyn Clague

I can still picture the moment, although it was more than six decades ago. I was lying in bed, probably around one p.m. (yes, p.), after the midday meal on a German farm near Wesel-amRhein. It was supposed to be nap-time, though I was struggling to stay awake, reading German poetry as I tried to improve and expand my German as quickly as possible.

It was early June. The previous month I had finished my junior year in Sweden. I was the first from my college (Antioch, in Ohio) to participate in the Scandinavian Seminars, a Danish-run exchange program. That experience, to put it metaphorically, made a definitive bend in the river of my life. The river might continue in the same direction for a long distance, or it might turn back: but wherever it went, nothing would undo the bend.

Two things during that year had a profound effect on me. One was learning Swedish. I started in August, using, as I remember, a 78-rpm “record” (remember those?) that would produce a phrase and leave a gap for me to say it back. By late September I was on a family stay (also a farm), one of two before my school started in November. I helped bring hay into the barn and accompanied the farmer on many other chores, but my major focus was on learning Swedish. I had taken years of French in middle and high school because there were more pretty girls there than in woodshop, but this was serious. I was a “broken-tongued” foreigner (speaking with an accent); I listened, practiced, memorized intensely. And was rewarded: kind people said how well I spoke long before I did, and through the winter and into the spring, as I became thoroughly fluent and “repaired my tongue” (became almost completely accent-less), I felt real pride in my accomplishment. As a kind of bonus, I enjoyed wide-ranging discussions with my more sophisticated friends about language itself.

The second thing that affected me is a little more complicated to explain. Perhaps more than I consciously realized then, I had felt alienated at home: the misfit in the family, a “wrong-un,” even the cliché-ish “black sheep” in a white family (not so fairytale-like an image, however, in 90 percent Black Washington, D.C. at the time). This strong sense of my lack of belonging, even legitimacy, at home was certainly part of my urge to go abroad. My conflicted childhood then contrasted sharply with the warmth of the families and the school that welcomed and accepted me. The difference was very emotional for me, and at some point (I don’t remember the moment) I had an epiphany: my real role is the alien. I belong as the broken-tongued foreigner. Deeply felt even if perhaps irrational, it gave my “outsider” sense a foundation that would return, later that summer, in poetry.

Llyn’s path to poetry included becoming fluent in two new

So back to the bedroom and the non-nap, with sunshine slipping through the curtains. I had a small paperback of Johann Goethe’s lyric poetry. The nap period was short, and I was still looking up a lot of words in the dictionary, which made even a short story a slog. The lyrics were generally short, the language straightforward, conversational, the images vivid, and the emotions directly expressed. Goethe was in his twenties in the 1770s, and his expressive romanticism antedated the British Romantics – Shelley, Byron, Keats, Wordsworth – by a quarter century. He and other writers (like Mozart and Hadyn in music) were breaking away from the heavy cultural and intellectual dominance of the French Enlightenment to create a fresher German art – throw out the Establishment! I could agree with that, but more to the point, we were both in our early twenties, he and I, not quite 200 years apart. The joys and pains of love seemed timeless. (Liebe, Liebe! Lass mich los! Love, love! Let go of me!)

But it was not just the shared thrill of love lyrics. Because my German was still rudimentary, I read slowly, syllable by syllable, line by line. I lingered over individual words, often repeating them aloud in order to shape them in my mouth, to pronounce them properly. I carefully noted the case- and verb-endings (German is an inflected language). And above all I listened, and I heard the sounds in the poems reverberate within and among the individual lines in a way I had never done in English. In my schooling at home the mantra had been to analyze, identify the key ideas, or more colloquially rip the guts out it. Here I heard the music, the shape, the texture: here I, the alien, the broken-tongued, felt at home in a foreignlanguage poem.

Further beyond the love poems, Goethe’s range of lyrics deeply impressed me. This wasn’t just a narrow slice of emotional and intellectual life: at one moment he would be challenging the gods (Hey, you up there, what do you think you’re doing?), at the next he might be reverent and prayerful (kiss the hems of their robes….) Some poems were full of speed (To horse! to horse!), others deeply contemplative. In one, about a conflicted love affair, he challenges “destiny” itself.

In a nutshell, lyric poetry, starting but not ending with Goethe, was not only a whole new world to me, it was a whole new way of perceiving and responding to the world. It gave me a way to accept and value feelings that were irrational, emotional (not “intellectual”!), deeply personal, and very different from the “expected” standards of “home.” So … I could be a poet! I want to be a poet…. The river of my life, unlike that of some of my peers in Scandinavian Seminars who stayed permanently in Europe, bent back toward the United States, in that at the end of the year I returned to college in Ohio. But it continued, undeflected, to flow in the direction of poetry.

This description – in prose – may help you gain an understanding of my “path to poetry.” The accompanying poem (next page) may help you share some of the feelings I had during my walk along the beginning of that path.

Alien and Intimate

Llyn Clague

Alien before intimate, poetry in my native American for me posed more a barrier to clarity than a focus of intensity, like translucent glass in place of clear panes of prose.

Abroad as a student, immersed in alien speech, in my very foreignness I found my interior identity made manifest: in the warmth of family I was an outsider; among my schoolmates, however intimate the debates, my accent marked me as other.

The written language only with great effort and a dog-eared dictionary gradually became transparent. Plain prose – even a short story –seemed a flood of words opaque as white water, while a poem, though more layered, was, at first, simply shorter.

Slowed by compressed poetic diction, I plodded, word by word, through each lyric, cherishing in time the sweetness of rhyme I had missed at home, feeling rhythms with a precision I had heard only in jazz.

The accumulation of poems, like a ray of light laid open by a prism in a broad arc from red to violet, revealed to me an interior beyond the glass of prose: a world no longer obscured beneath my fierce, gregarious loneliness

a world where alien and intimate meet.

Music Appreciation

Martin Smolin

Those were the days that elementary school consisted of eight grades and was called grammar school; middle school had not yet been invented. PS 241 was our neighborhood school and we kids could trudge over to President Street in the morning, back and forth home for lunch and then, if there were no after-school activities like religious education, back home around 3 p.m. You could think of it as a kind of factory into which the unformed raw product (us) was processed into valuable citizen workers. Classrooms had fixed seats; the teacher’s desk was up front and behind her was a slate blackboard on which you could write with white chalk. If you knew how, you could move the chalk in such a way that made a horrible, piercing sound capable of simulating dental pain. The American flag was near the window and we would salute it each morning while reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

In fifth and sixth grade we had Miss Bailey. Miss Bailey, we knew, lived with her cousin, Miss Mott, and they took trips together. We never for a moment questioned this story until many years later. Miss Bailey followed new educational guidelines for progressive education then under study by the New York City Board of Education. Progressive education involved, so far as we understood, keeping the same teacher two years, being allowed to plan our daily routine, using workbooks for arithmetic instead of textbooks, and working at our own pace. No rote memorization. What we didn’t know was that the other kids in regular classes hated us because we were protected from tedious routines and fights with other students by Miss Bailey, who watched over us like a lioness. Our class was also called “IGOp,” an acronym for “Intellectually Gifted Opportunity.” So we were hated, being regarded as elitist, snobby, privileged kids. Naive me: I didn’t realize this until high school.

There was not supposed to be punishment for IGOp students; no after-school detention, no writing misspelled words 25 times, nothing like that. But Miss Bailey had her special way around that rule which she used to control us: her long fingernails. She would swiftly place a hand on a neck and her nails would sink in as in an iron maiden, while calmly reviewing our transgression. No use struggling.

In the spring, my parents bought me Peppy, the lovely cocker spaniel I had been clamoring for. Trouble was she had ringworm and I caught it. Ringworm is highly contagious, which meant that I had to be out of school for three weeks. Homework was delivered to my door by Hannah, who lived in the same apartment house. One day she brought over a fat manila envelope. It was filled with get-well notes from my classmates. Most of them said how much I was missed or what we were doing in class. However, Jeanette, ever committed to moral clarity, added a postscript of what I suspected was the full truth: “Miss Bailey made us write these.”

Miss Bailey’s control extended beyond the classroom. Social equity meant that no one could be excluded from any activity. Like a party at home. Naturally, since no one had an apartment large enough to accommodate a crowd of 36 excited pre-teens, there were no home parties those two years. That didn’t stop cliques from developing. Five very popular girls dubbed

themselves “The Big Five.” Just as their namesakes cooperated to annihilate Hitler, our Big Five’s raison d’etre was to exclude Grace and to let her suffer. They were as successful at making Grace cry as the other group was in settling with Hitler and Mussolini.

What a shock to move out of the IGOp into seventh grade. It was like being expelled from the Garden of Eden to a place where you went from teacher to uncaring teacher each period and where you weren’t supposed to talk in the halls and where you could be sent to the terrifying principal, Miss Caine, to sit in her office until your mother came to pick you up. Miss Caine: her very name suggested a weapon.

Miss Messa was not-so-secretly mocked by her students. She seemed to wear the same black dress every day and, unfortunately, had severe dandruff which covered her shoulders like snow. Bruce’s father owned a drug store, and she made a deal with him to supply her with discounted medications, allowing him to get away with murder in the classroom. Why else was he permitted to make salacious remarks and not get sent to Miss Caine? Yet he was kind to her in his way, gently brushing dandruff off her shoulders while smirking.

These were also the days when we brought rulers, protractors and straight pens to school. During an arithmetic lesson, Miss Messa perched on the edge of my desk where I had accidentally left the protractor, point side up. Well, maybe it wasn’t completely an accident, but it was almost accidental. Miss Messa sat right on it and it stuck well into her tush. Everyone in my row saw it and gasped. Miss Messa didn’t seem to feel pain, or more likely, she was wearing a foundation garment. Soon notes began to be passed around the room and almost everyone needed to throw paper into the wastebasket. This was an unforgettable event. Miss Messa rose, the protractor still stuck in her and then it dropped out.

It was Miss Kennedy whom no one would cross. Not even think of it. She was a buxom matron who taught eighth-grade math. Pacing stiffly back and forth across the front of the room, she taught us about acute and isosceles triangles. Diagrams illustrating the Pythagorean theorem were chalked in immaculate script across the blackboard. You learned it the first time or faced a withering stare from Miss Kennedy. She lived in a doorman building down the street from me and Alice. Once Miss Kennedy was absent because of an illness. The substitute teacher collected our homework papers and asked Alice to deliver them to Miss Kennedy’s apartment. She approached the meeting with the same anticipation she might have experienced if asked to feed a crocodile. But Alice survived undamaged; she said Miss Kennedy was very sweet. Really?

Miss Cross’s mnemonics in seventh grade music appreciation class have been imprinted so deeply I can never be rid of them. She had a collection of scratchy 78-rpm records which she introduced with the intention of getting us barbarians to recognize important musical works. The beginning of a selection was played, then the mnemonic given to us to memorize. “This is the sym-phon-e-e-e…. that Schubert wrote…. but never fi-i-i-inished.” Know that and you could identify the musical selection and its composer. I don’t recall if there were any Russian composers; the Cold War was beginning. Later there was a test. Of course.

A Born Actor? Well, No.

Hubert B. Herring

“My lord, he doth deny to come.”

With those words, Richard III’s fate was sealed. The ally he’d counted on had let him down. So my words — for yours truly was indeed the messenger who delivered that fateful news — clearly represented the play’s turning point. Without me, it all falls apart.

Aside from carrying a spear or two, It was my sole appearance in that production, more than half a century ago.

I was never cut out to be an actor, though I did make various attempts over the years. Freshman year of college, I got the part of the Gentleman Caller in “The Glass Menagerie,” presumably because I looked the part of the clean-cut, all-American boy. (I had a bit more hair then.) I suppose I did all right, but I doubt if I could be heard beyond the third row. That was the highlight of my acting career. (At a recent college reunion, I enjoyed reconnecting with the woman who’d played the mother in that production.)

Again, comparisons with my father are inevitable. HIs booming voice could fill a lecture hall — no need for a microphone. He urged me once to take voice lessons to make my voice project better, but I never did.

When I landed in Manhattan after dropping out of college, my closest connection — my lifeline, really — was my cousin Marcia, a dozen years older, in the midst of a stellar acting career. No doubt because I was in awe of her, I studied acting briefly at the HB Studio.

One monologue I remember doing was the story of the dog from Albee’s “Zoo Story” (which has wonderful lines like “a dog I know” and “Sometimes it’s necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly”). I had the misguided delusion that I’d done it well, but as the teacher (the Russian actress and dancer Katharine Sergava) pointed out afterward, I had raced through it so breathlessly that it was barely intelligible.

My fear of performing may have started when I was eight. I was away at boarding school (yes, that was too young; long, messy story), in a group called the Tigers, and a notice went up on the bulletin board that “All Tigers except Hubert” should report for choir. I suppose whoever put it up had a good reason for doing this, but it surely did my self-confidence no good.

And then there was the time years later when I was putting our five-year-old daughter, Emily, to bed. My wife, a singer, often sang her a lullaby, but she wasn’t there, so I tried doing it. I got about three notes out before Emily stopped me and said: “Let Mommy sing.”

Oh well.

Dentistry, as with other health services, is rapidly changing. Technology is constantly improving, allowing us to deliver quality care in less time and with less stress. Most importantly though, dentistry is still an art as well as a science. As a health service, the patient care is provided not only by the doctor, but by the entire office staff. Dentistry as a health service means properly placed restorations and courteously answered phones. Rapidly changing technology will not change this philosophy of service.

Kevin Jong, DMD & Peter Zegarelli, DDS

87 North Broadway • Tarrytown, NY 10591 • 914-631-1800

Website: www.drzegarelli.com • Email: info@drzegarelli.com

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Owner: Jean Mayer, EA

jeanmayertax@gmail.com

The Zegarelli dental office has been located in Tarrytown since 1982. We have been serving KoH residents since the Kendal opening day in 2005.

Enrico Hair Care, Inc.

Enrico Hair Care, Inc.

Tuesday

Yolanda is available for pedicure by appointment

MondaysEnrico cuts and styles and Tatiana consults on color

Wednesday

Kim does hair color/cut and styling

Wednesdays

Hairstyling by Kim

Friday

Wednesdays through FridaysMaria does manicures

Maria does manicure and waxing

Sandra does hair color/cut and styling

Thursday and FridaysHairstyling by Toni

Saturday

Fridays -

Enrico does hair color/cut and styling

Christina does pedicures, manicures and hair.

Call for appointments 523-6382 or 922-1057

Call for appointments 914-523-6382 or 914-922-1057

Your partner in health and wellness

Vitality at Phelps Hospital offers a variety of free programs and services to help you stay active and engaged as you age. We provide educational healthrelated classes, events, support programs, and expert care to enhance your well-being. We invite you to enjoy our activities and social gatherings to keep you connected to your health and wellness, while having fun with your peers.

For more information and any questions, please email vitality@northwell.edu. To see all of our upcoming free events, please visit the events page on the Phelps website at: phelps.northwell.edu/events