Retro Birthday Boy, Fair Haven Mom

It’s somebody’s birthday.

That person is Doug Newman, who was raised in Fair Haven and runs the Fair Haven Facebook page.

Doug decided it would be a good idea to gather folks together in social media and keep connections forged in the Rumson-Fair Haven area going.

Well, he has done it. The page, which has 2,625 members, or, as he calls them collectively, the “fam.”

Conversations are spirited and there’s never any bad blood coursing through. If it seeps in, now and then (and it’s pretty rare), he stops a family feud bleed-out with an eloquent tourniquet.

So, in honor of the Fair Haven Facebook page’s administrator, the Retro Pic of the Day takes a look back at him in first grade in, ahem, 1967-68 at Willow Street School (now Sickles) — one place where his love of keeping the “fam” together was likely rooted with the start of many “fam” friendships and, of course, the bonding experience of proudly sporting a bow tie and toothless ear-to-ear grin.

Oh, those school days were early and memorable ones in Fair Haven. And, his class was the first to not go walking on that rope to the Youth Center for Kindergarten.

But, I’m sure he also remembers crossing at Knollwood to Mrs. Breckenridge’s iconic “CROOOOOOOSSS!”

She was the mom of none other than Fair Haven Police Chief Darryl Breckenridge. And, speaking of moms, there’s another Fair Haven family mom in this shot.

Yes, as a double-dose of all things Fair Haven family and the coming of the major longstanding area tradition that is the Fair Haven Firemen’s Fair, note that the teacher is Mrs. Bennett, mom of none other than lifetime Fair Haven Fire Department member (as was his family) Ray Bennett.

Thank you, Doug, for all your efforts in keeping the family together! And, thank you to the Bennett family for your lifetimes of service to the family!

Do you know which is the birthday boy?

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