RHS Class of 1977 Alumni Band

This idea was sent to me by Jim Velordi of the band Gypsies on Parole. It was seconded by Joanne Hunter. We have a lot of talented people and Jim thinks we need to add a Keyboardist and Bass player to the Alumni band he is envisioning. Jeff Robey and Chris Duflocq are squarely in Jim's sights.

 Let's this be a call to all musicians and singers in the Class of 1977. Let us know if you are interested.
Contact via this blog or our FaceBook page.

RHS Class of 1977 35th Reunion

We are in the planning stages as of today. Check out our Facebook page for possible dates and venues. We will gather people's views and then make a decision in a week or two.

RHS Class of 1977 Reunion Web Site

RHS Class of 1977 on FaceBook

Graydon Pool Early Birds

I've added a link to The Preserve Graydon Coalition to the sidebar under Ridgewood and Hohokus links. Here is an excerpt from their latest newsletter. Details for signing up to the newsletter can be found on their web site.

Be an Early Bird

Discounted prices (Ridgewood residents only) for Graydon badges will end after Saturday, May 21. Why not buy your badge now and pay less? Here's how:
Online, 24/7, through CommunityPass: http://ridgewoodnj.net/communitypass
          OR
In person THIS SATURDAY, May 14, and NEXT SATURDAY, May 21, 10 am to noon, badge office on the Graydon grounds
          OR
Age 62 and up: THIS THURSDAY, May 12, 9:30 am-12:30 pm, during Highlights in Leisure Time (HILT) meeting, Community Center, Village Hall, 131 N. Maple Ave., Ridgewood. Cash, check, Visa, and MasterCard accepted. Ridgewood seniors pay $15 (starting May 22: $20)
      
Full-price pool badges will be sold at the Graydon badge office starting June 4 during pool hours and through CommunityPass any time all summer.

More details: http://ridgewoodnj.net/graydon

Memories of 1974

Written by Guest Blogger Damian “Lou” Vidal RHS Class of 1978.

Memories are funny. Some like the birth of my children are vivid and almost tactile in form as the
images materialize in my head while others like my father’s funeral appear in a haze of emotion. Maybe it’s the content of our memories that makes the difference, maybe it’s the emotion, and maybe it’s both. Sometimes music or smells can pull you into a time warp of images that come rushing back like a flood bursting a dam.

Just a few Sundays ago my wife was cooking pancakes and my young seven year old son got up from bed and said to her “Mmm that smells good Mom” and as I smelled the same wonderful odor I remembered a similar day in my youth when I said a similar thing to my mother, the moment brought a smile to my face, memories are funny that way.

More and more as I get older it seems that the memories that hold their meaning to me are those that remind me of family and of friends. Even though it may be about something I was doing it always falls into the content of my memory because of those that were around me. It appears that what we are doing isn’t as important as who we were doing it with or for. I remember the first time I played touch football at Mount Carmel because of Bill DeMayo asking me if I wanted to play. I remember my first snowman because my older sister was telling me how it should be done. I remember the first time I dove off the high dive at Graydon Pool because of Joe Schroeder’s incessant ribbing that I wouldn’t. All those memories bring back a feeling of joy and happiness that are engraved in my essence. It is a time of innocence that I often think about and sometimes miss.

Funny how job promotions or bonuses or making a great deal of money don’t create any everlasting flashbacks in me, we seem to place such value on the material things in our lives yet it appears that what really counts are the relationships, and the emotions we attach to them. It seems that what matters most are those moments with people that retrospectively ripple back like waves in time crossing the pond of our lives.

 The other day I was going through some old photo albums and found a picture of one of those moments in time. It is 1974 and I am in ninth grade and I am doing one of those things that as young boys we loved about school, going to gym and playing for the love of it. There is no championship, no trophy, and no scholarships on the line, just the bragging rights for that afternoon and the feeling that you were the greatest athlete ever if you won. I have no idea where these boys are today, I hope and pray all are well, but they will forever exist in my memory as the teammates and opponents in a do or die game of flag football on a sunny fall day in the field across from GW JR. HIGH.

From right to left:

In the wonderfully stylish 70’s print shirt, Sam Ward, The massive Jim Foody getting ready to break
some bones, The diminutive Mike Travers who had a heart as big as the Titanic, great soccer player! The cool and collected Chip Conklin. The always smiling, I know you can’t see him, Chris Holmes, and me, an average kid with average talent who always gave it 101%, Damian “Lou” Vidal.

Thoughts and Memories of Graydon Pool

My memories of Graydon Pool are happy ones, anchored in the 1960s and 70s, of learning how to swim, water fights, 10 cent Good Humor Ice Cream, and of a group of stay-at-home Moms who would collectively watch us from morning until mid-afternoon.

I have always believed that the Village has done a fine job acting as Steward of the land which was willed to the Village and we know as Graydon Pool. Though times change and so has my opinion of the job the Village is currently doing.

The metrics I use to judge the Village are now quite different then the ones I used as a youth. As a child it was simple to say that if the pool was open, the lifeguards led by Richard Flectner were keeping order, and the Good Humor truck showed up that all was well. You would expect such judgments from a youth.

Today I offer 3 standard measures to assess the performance of the Village, and I offer them to everyone when judging the success or failure of Graydon Pool under its current administrative leaders.

1. Does Graydon make any money for the Village? No, according to reports it costs the Village $100,000 a year to maintain 365 Days a year.
2. Is the Graydon Pool membership on the rise or in a decline? All reports say it is in a decline and that members can now sponsor members from other towns in order to try and make up the difference.
3. Can Graydon be used for any functions during the other seasons of the year? In the spring and fall the muck and mire prevents any use of the pool grounds. In the winter at one time we ice skated on the pool, but I'm not sure if that's allowed anymore.

Now that you can see I am coming down hard on our current leaders you might ask what suggestion do I have to make in order to improve the situation.

I know of no law that says the Village must be the one to provide the money for operational support of Graydon Pool. The Village does it and with mixed results. If you follow this reasoning then why not consider offering to lease the Pool to a private professional organization on a renewable 10 year lease with strict covenants set forth by the Village.  

In return for the rights to run the pool the private operator would pay a mutually agreed to rent and would be asked to sponsor at least one town initiative like fund raising for the Library, or planting flowers in Van Neste Square Park, or supplying a boys and girls baseball team with equipment and uniforms. These are all details which would be negotiated with the winner of a transparent bidding process.

As we all know private companies advertise and under a plan like this we would see a corporate logo on things like pool signage and badges. The private operator likely would consider a refreshment stand with logos on their napkins and cups. They might even open a merchandise stand to sell t-shirts, towels, and other pool related items. Other ideas they might try could include giveaways of merchandise with sponsors names plastered on things like sand shovels and buckets.

Now the touchstone by which the advertising would be judged could be carefully spelled out in advance. My preference would be to keep it as low key as the names on all the baseball uniforms worn by boys and girls in the Ridgewood Baseball Association. Or maybe something along the lines of the Coca-Cola logo on the High School Football Scoreboard. Anything more garish than these suggestions would be crossing the line in my opinion.

There will no doubt be a legal challenge to any proposal which tries to change the intent of the original will that Graydon be a park. Though I don't believe that relieving the town of its self-imposed obligation to provide operational support would compromise the park in any way. What's more its goal would be to create a financially sound operation. Graydon Pool would remain the same beautifully designed, tranquil setting that it has always been. As well as remaining a huge storage area for flood waters. The big difference would be that professionals would be running the show.

Thoughts on Ridgewood Library Funding

As a lifetime lover of libraries I read with piqued interest in The Ridgewood Patch the recap of last nights Village Council meeting. This is an excerpt pertaining to the Ridgewood Public Library:

"Friends and trustees of the Ridgewood Public Library also took the floor to again express public support for the institution and the council said it was willing to give $35,000 of Director Nancy Greene's request of just over $75,000, which she has said if not granted will lead to closures over the summer."

It made me wonder why an institution which is transformational as well as informational is always having to go hat in hand to these meetings and seemingly never receives the full amount they ask for to keep the doors open.

Libraries not only provide information but they provide a space where people can dream and aspire to better themselves and the community around them. It is my fervent hope that the Village might see that given the chance to transform their residents they might make better citizens, and then possibly be capable of paying more taxes.

The problem here just might be that the voting public is not seeing the connection between how they perceive the library and the support they give the library. If they saw it as an incubator of new ideas and new ways of doing things, which could result in higher tax receipts, then they might not be so reluctant to fully fund the operations of the library. It's not as if there is a scandalous amount of waste going on or that Librarians are grossly overpaid.  This has never been the issue, yet the underfunding continues and it makes me wonder what people are thinking.

Thoughts About Valley Hospital Expansion

As someone who used to live in Ridgewood (over 30 years ago) I do know something of the layout of Valley Hospital and can understand how after repeated expansions over these last 30 years since I have been gone, some people might be saying enough is enough.

To my way of thinking there are 4 options to consider:

1. Allow further expansion on the current site. I haven't seen the plans and will only say that the area which Valley occupies is looking fully developed to my untrained eye.
2. Disallow further expansion on the current site. The common wisdom as I understand it is that hospitals need to be big to establish their reputations, to attract the best professionals to work within them, and to provide the most modern care to their patients. Putting an end expansion might go in the face of this common wisdom. Only time would tell.
3. Close Valley Hospital. This is ridiculous but I have seen hospitals closed in my neighborhood in Forest Hills because they were not big enough and had no room to expand. I wouldn't wish this on Ridgewood for anything.
4. Build a Valley Hospital Annex on another site. According to reports this is what is currently going on in the background of this discussion on expansion. Valley Hospital according to North Jersey.com:

"is in the process of acquiring the Community Blood Services building in Paramus, where it plans to provide treatment and cardiac rehab as well as conduct research, hospital officials confirmed."

If you know this site as I do then you might see the possibilities for the building of an annex. It would require tearing down an old shopping mall and some zoning variances to build a true hospital, though it would give Valley Hospital all the room it needed. The biggest issue the hospital would then face is who would initially have to work in the new facility. At the moment they are moving some rehabilitation and research down to the Community Blood Services building. If and when further expansion commenced there would certainly be plenty of internal fighting at Valley Hospital as to who has to move. This is fairly common in all lines of business when an expansion is proposed. The inevitable result is some people won't feel like they are in the loop when they have to work at the Annex and will find the commute to be inconvenient, especially in a snow or rain storm.

It almost looks to me that the people who favor expansion are throwing in the towel by this acquisition of the Community Blood Services building in Paramus and know that they can't win a fight to expand at the current location.

New Track at BF

For all of you who follow Track and Field or who once participated while in the Ridgewood School System, there is great news to share about the new track at BF Junior High School. According to Tom Thurston, who was our Track Captain in 1977 along with Andy Drapkin, this is "probably the nicest HS track and field facility in northern NJ."

To take a look click  here

You will be taken to Jacob Brown's web site. Yes, he is still a coach at RHS and is looking pretty good by all accounts and pictures. It must be the exercise and healthy living which he teaches.

When you see a track as fast as the one now at BF, it makes old time runners like me and Tom wonder how much faster we might have run if we hadn't been running on cinders and a 300 something yard track. It's pretty comical to consider what we had to compete on in the 1970s and earlier. This photo of Larry Coyle shows the kind of track we ran on, though I'm not sure if this was taken in Ridgewood.

More Baseball Fields

As a rapid Baseball fan and someone who played in seemingly thousands of games (pickup and organized) as a youth growing up in Ridgewood in the 1960s and 70s, it would seem to be logical for me to support the proposal to develop the Village's Shedler property near Route 17 for ball fields and walking paths.

Though in light of constrained budgets, decreasing levels of services, and the expectation of further tax increases I can only agree with the mayor. According to the Ridgewood Patch:

"Mayor Killion says village services should be restored, infrastructure improved before considering development of fields, which he says were never promised."

Schedler, a 7-acre property off Route 17 the Village purchased with bonds totaling $2 million with the inclusion of a recent grant, is earmarked to become a passive park.  Though even a passive park requires its grass to be regularly cut, its baseball diamond raked, its trash cans to be emptied, and its environs patrolled by the police. This all costs money as anyone will tell you.

My greatest for concern for my old home town is that unless new sources of tax and general revenue income can be developed, this latest field might very well end up like the ball fields at Willard School I played on as a youth: filled with weeds, trash, and  clay infields which couldn't absorb even a normal rain fall.

I only hope the Village Council considers some new ideas for increasing the Village coffers. Whether it is Cell Phone Towers, Advertising on Village property, or programs to decrease costs like the one developed by RHS Students for Environmental Action Club which has saved taxpayers thousands of dollars by regularly turning off classroom lights at RHS on Friday afternoons.

Moms and Baseball

As I am reminded by the author of the Watching The Game blog, Judy Van Sickle Johnson, it's not only fathers and sons who share memories of playing or watching baseball together.  My Mom easily saw just about every baseball game I ever played, including Summer Recreation Softball. If she ever missed one of my games it would have been because she was attending one of my brother's games instead.

My Mom still likes baseball and even watches the Little League World Series broadcast live from Williamsport, Pennsylvania each summer on ESPN. Now that is a fan!

The only live games she sees now are of my nephew in Los Angeles. He did not disappointment this past month when she was visiting LA on her 80th birthday. My nephew hit 2 home runs and pitched a complete game victory for his team. She couldn't have been happier if a time machine had transported her back to Ridgewood in the late 1960s and she had seen one of her own sons in action.

Turning Off The Lights

When I read in the Ridgewood Patch about how the RHS Students for Environmental Action Club was saving the taxpayers thousands of dollars, I had one of those, "Why didn't we do this when I was young?" moments. Their idea is a simple one, but takes perseverance and good record keeping. Every Friday afternoon as soon as school is over they split up in teams and turn out all the lights in all the classrooms.

According to Victoria Pan, a junior at Ridgewood High School and the co-president of Students for Environmental Action (SEA), an RHS club,

"Turn Off the Lights is a project in which our club turns off all the classroom lights at the end of the week. Every Friday after school, we basically “raid” the school, turning off all the light switches in the classrooms.

We measure our progress by keeping track of all the lights in our school and using charts to monitor their on/off status. At the end of each raid, I compile the results from the students. We continuously examine the monthly electricity bills every few months or so to check for reductions in energy costs. I’ve been consistently running this project every week for more than a year, and so far, it has saved the school thousands of dollars in electricity costs!"

What a brilliant idea! (pun intended).

The Ridgewood Guild

"The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens." Alexis de Tocqueville

With the words of Tocqueville in mind, it was good to hear about the new, non-profit organization which was formed in Ridgewood.  The Ridgewood Guild " encourages smaller and more aesthetic projects, says Scott Lief, president of the Ridgewood Chamber of Commerce, such as planting flowers to adorn the empty tree wells in the business district and auditioning volunteer musicians to play acoustic repertoires at eight locations on the east and west sides of the village on Fridays through August.. This past April 27th was the first ever Ridgewood Film Festival held at Warner Theater."

From their website:

The Ridgewood Guild is an exciting new organization dedicated to making Ridgewood a more enjoyable place to shop, dine and visit. Our board is made up of a group of high-energy, hard working individuals who plan to make a difference. Because we have no rent, overhead, or salaries to pay, our annual dues are minimal. This gives us the opportunity to give back to the community via a carefully planned out series of events, fundraisers and marketing strategies.

The Guild's membership includes retailers, restaurateurs, non-profits, professionals and residents who have an interest in seeing our village thrive. We are always looking for ideas and suggestions, so don't hesitate to contact us. We hope you will join us!

201-493-9911 • ridgewoodguild@aol.com


Future Events

Spring Film Festival
Wednesday, April 27th and Thursday, April 28th
Ridgewood Clearview Cinema
Check our Film Festival page for entry information. More details coming soon....

Music in The Night
Our Downtown music series begins Friday, May 6th and runs every Friday night through July 29th.

Mom's the Word
Saturday, May 7th

Dads & Grads
Saturday, June 18th

Movies in The Park
Wednesday, July 6th and Wednesday, July 20th

Autumn in Ridgewood House Tour
Thursday, October 13th
(This is shaping up to be a fabulous event. More information coming soon....)