Former longtime Fair Havenite, Gretchen S. Coleman, more recently of Little Silver, passed away peacefully on Oct. 27 with her family by her side. She was 83.
Continue reading In Memoriam: Former Longtime Fair Havenite, Gretchen Coleman, 83Tag Archives: Fair Haven
Retro Fair Haven Classroom Halloween Classic
It’s cool to be a good ghoul in school, right?
Wait. Is that a lobster raising its claw to answer the teacher? Why, yes, it is. The teacher is unfazed. But the lesson? Well, it seems that this day in a Fair Haven 1980s classroom is all about costumes and little to nothing about reading, writing and ‘rithmetic.
Continue reading Retro Fair Haven Classroom Halloween ClassicHelping the Anderson Family Get by with Help from RFH Friends
Buff Anderson was a popular longtime Rumsonite and Rumson-Fair Haven Regional High School (RFH) 1984 graduate who was known for his zest for life and love of family and friends.
Continue reading Helping the Anderson Family Get by with Help from RFH FriendsScene Around: Coffee & Fall Fest Time
It was all about falling for the fall season with some sips, pets and socializing. The coffee was on and company came to celebrate the fall with festivities at Coffee Corral in Red Bank this past sunny Saturday.
Turns out that the Corral’s Fair Havenite owners, Courtlyn (Crosson) and Erich Reulbach, had the timing just right to offer up some free fall fun, food and feting before the rain came, cancelling lots of other fall and Halloween fetes on Sunday.
And the sun shone bright on the chicks and goats and sheep and folks scurrying to socialize and soak it all up. We’re told a sunny good time was had by all — even the animals.
Cheers to fall and coffee!
Take a look at the photos above, courtesy of R-FH Retro friend Magdalena Aders, for a glimpse into the day. (Click on one to enlarge and scroll. Enjoy!).
Scene Around: Rom-Com Filming Action in Fair Haven
It’s not every day that a movie cast and crew come to film in Fair Haven. Just today.
All was set up and rolling to film portions of the romantic comedy (Rom-Com) Which Brings Me to You at the Columbus Club on Fair Haven Road. Scenes for the film have been shot in other towns in the area — Rumson, Red Bank, Highlands and Keansburg.
According to IMBd, it’s about “two romantic burnouts (who) meet at a wedding and almost hook up in the coatroom before putting the brakes on. They agree to exchange candid confessions about their pasts on the off chance that this might be the real thing.”
Starring Genevieve Angelson, Lucy Hale and Nat Wolff and directed by Peter Hutchings, Fair Haven Mayor Josh Halpern caught the above scenes and posted them on social media, saying …
And that’s what was scene around in the Rumson-Fair Haven area today.
Thanks to the mayor for the photos.
Retirement Celebration Set for Fair Haven Fisk Chapel’s Rev. Thomas Johnson
The people of the historic Fair Haven Fisk Chapel A.M.E. Church have announced the coming retirement of their longtime pastor, Rev. Thomas P. Johnson and have extended a retirement celebration invite to the parish’s extended family in Fair Haven and beyond.
Continue reading Retirement Celebration Set for Fair Haven Fisk Chapel’s Rev. Thomas JohnsonIn Memoriam: RFH 2013 Grad, Casey Taylor, 27
“We are crushed by this loss but we remember and celebrate the wonder of Casey and how extraordinarily blessed we are to have been gifted with him. We will remember and celebrate his resilience, grace and kindness. His empathy, warmth and compassion. His bravery, sensitivity, loyalty and humility. His zero tolerance for bullshit. We will remember with a smile how much Casey enjoyed a good laugh and how, with his witty, dry and deadpan sense of humor, we laughed along with him.” ~ loved ones of Casey Taylor
Cherished son, brother, nephew, cousin and friend, Rumson-Fair Haven Regional High School (RFH) 2013 graduate, Casey Taylor died on Oct. 9, five days before his 28th birthday.
Continue reading In Memoriam: RFH 2013 Grad, Casey Taylor, 27RFH ’78’s David Memmott: Picture of a Childhood in a Classmate Gone
“What’s that? An iPhone 1?” he quipped as I tried to capture a moment between him and his lifetime friend at a reunion committee party with my sad little smashed-screen phone. Click. “Shut up, Dave! Jerk!” I, a 58-year-old woman child, sniped back, with a 10-year-old kid giggle and arm punch.
Then there was the knowing laughter and the look that was only understood among those like us who had had a lifetime of it. The deep all-knowing complex simplicity of a childhood shared in one little world of a small town by the river.
Continue reading RFH ’78’s David Memmott: Picture of a Childhood in a Classmate GoneOld News: Stokes Law, Order & Grub
This reprise was originally published on June 9, 2022 in honor of the usual end of May to early June Stokes trip. History has taken a turn and those sixth graders, still going to Stokes, are now going at the end of September. Here’s to looking back on the Stokes experience and how it was written about by former longtime Fair Havenite, Stokes parent and Red Bank Register editor, Art Kamin. Indulge in our experience of the Stokes past when it was a relatively new tradition …
When it comes to Fair Haven kids tripping to Stokes State Forest in the sixth grade, old news is always good news and mess hall time means bug juice and Sloppy Joes. And in 1974, it also meant the long arm of the Fair Haven law was cooking up the grub and keeping the kids in line … up.
Yes, back all those decades ago, one of the Stokes helpers was Louis DeVito, eventual police chief, but then lieutenant on the force. We know Bill Lang was in the kitchen cooking up some mischief and goulash, too. Stokes even made the paper back then. That’s because the editor of The Daily Register was Fair Havenite Art Kamin. His daughter, Brooke, was on that trip. So was he. Back then, such things were still newsworthy — the real sort of community journalism brand.
Besides, he thought Stokes was quite the height of hands-on outdoor educational experiences, so he wrote what he knew in a column about it in 1974 when he was there with Brooke’s class. And he knew way back then that Stokes would always be talked about. He was right.
Kamin had also tripped to Stokes with his son, Blair, in 1969. For the article he did in ’74, though, Fair Havenites John (Jack) and Steve Croft took the photos. Yes, Fair Haven had its own little family of journalists. It still does. Ahem. And, this one is still talking about it.
We’ll get back to Kamin’s own Stokes parent experience at some point, like his misadventure doing the compass thing with the Pathfinder class and getting a gaggle of goofy sixth graders lost. That tidbit somehow didn’t make the column. Everyone did hear about it, though, from the lost kids, who just thought it was a great adventure — even though they were late for dinner.
Hey, Kamin had a way with words, not direction for sure. There was also a time when he drove a group of Girl Scouts to Camp Sacajawea and didn’t make it there until after nightfall. A bunch of giddy girls waiting thought that group had gotten abducted by aliens. They made up fireside stories about it to go with their before-lanterns-out S’mores. Then the leaders remembered Kamin was driving. And, hey, to be fair, let’s not forget that there were no GPS gadgets back then — just compasses, maps and bifocals.
If he were still alive, he’d be emailing me with an editorial note, for sure, probably about something innocuous like “Pathfinder wasn’t the actual name of the class, Elaine.” He knew the truth and may try to argue some of my semantics or proper names, but couldn’t deny a factual report from the most reliable of sources — a bunch of very frank sixth graders.
But we digress … back to those kids being late for dinner with a full plate of angst, giggles and anticipation. There was a long arm of the law in the kitchen, order outside of the mess hall — with the raising of the hands of the gathered to shut their yaps, stand at attention and get in line — and some popular grub being served up inside.
That grub, or a favorite of the kids’ anyway, was good ol’ Sloppy Joes — giant vats of it. Do kids these days even know what that is? It’s a mess of hamburger, some sort of tomato sauce and seasonings slopped onto a soft bun. No one really knows who Joe was, but the thing was very sloppy. To accompany the Joes, there was what we called bug juice. That would be Kool Aid — the green dye number 5 kind. And it was laced with what our parents thought was the healthy alternative of cancer-causing saccharine. Who remembers that? Oh, we clamored for the bad-for-you bug juice and the green tongue it gave us. Slurp.
Hey, this was the era of the frozen Swanson TV dinner being a very cool luxury. So, yes, Sloppy Joes were gourmet. There are faint memories of some fruit being served. Maybe. The Hamburger Helper variety of food and goulash were mostly what stood out, though. With Bill Lang commandeering the ’70s foodie menu, though, we know there was also some spaghetti and meatballs at some point. And the kids clamored for all it, putting Joe first on the popularity list, of course.
From the looks of the Stokes mess hall doings of more recent years, though, it seems as though meals have gone a healthier route. But, who knows, in another 50 years, the mess may be a neat pile of proper nutrition pills — at the Mars Stokes.
Still, there will probably be a Fair Haven on Mars for the Mars Stokes experience in another 50 years from now. After all, this kind of community experience is the kind that binds and transcends time and even galaxies. What became the Stokes tradition began in 1967. That was, indeed, a at least a couple of lifetimes ago — 55 years, to be exact.
As Kamin said, “Stokes in this municipality only means Stokes Forest in northern New Jersey.” Still true. “And Stokes Forest, to seven years of sixth graders, means much more than what has become a nationally recognized environmental project.”
Much more, indeed. For instance, the greatest of lessons learned from the Stokes experience, as described by Kamin, are “developed” rather than immediate. “Time has a way of making the Stokes experience more meaningful,” he said. Right again. They’re still talking about it, writing about it.
Why more meaningful with time? Well, it all goes back to the community family ideal. And ideal is what it was and is in Fair Haven. “After all, Stokes is a community effort and the 130 sixth graders who take part in it sense this early,” Kamin said. Yes, they do. And, for generations, it gives them something to talk about, to write about, to emulate.
Speaking of emulation … I will, with full humor, interject my own editorial note to Kamin that he couldn’t argue — and certainly can’t email about. He said that all the kids were 12. Not all, Art, including your son, Blair, who had turned 12 that summer of ’69. The copy editor missed that one. Some of those sixth graders had summer birthdays. I know. I share that summer birthday and some kid birthdays with Blair and the Kamins. Bobbing for apples comes to mind. Hmmmm. Just had to slip that note in. But, back to the community thing — as if it ever really veered.
This Fair Haven kid was a sixth grader at Stokes in 1972, and, again, in 1978 as an RFH camp counselor, dubbed CAT. We haven’t made it to the Stokes on Mars yet, but the “more meaningful” notion is ever evolving and expanding, starting with the mess hall mindset and bringing it all neatly back to community with a word spill. While most may have never gulped bug juice again, it will never be plain ol’ Kool Aid again, either.
And I’d bet just about every Fair Haven kid who ate in the Stokes mess hall has a hankering for Sloppy Joes or goulash to ease homesick pangs. And when the long arm of the law reaches out, some will remember the ladle at the end of the arm serving up the slop in the ’70s.
Now, raise your hand if you want to get back into that mess hall to gobble up a plate of community as it should be. I have a hankering. That would be Stokes Mars 2072 for me. Aha! Still ’72. See? They say that we come back to what our soul loves. See you at the Stokes Mars mess hall, kids. My hand is raised.
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Retro Fair Haven Tigers Cheer!
A reprise of a cheery Retro Pic of the Day, originally posted in September of 2016, in honor of the spirit of football for the pint-and-a-half sized of the Rumson-Fair Haven area …
Can we have a retro cheer for the football season of a pandemic kind ahead?
Continue reading Retro Fair Haven Tigers Cheer!Retro RFH Reunion Hoopla
Well, the time has come for yet another RFH class to have its 40th reunion. That would be the RFH Class of ’82.
The RFH Class of ’78 is headed toward its 45th. The 40th is a biggie. But there’s always that first, too. The 10th reunion.
For the Class of ’78, that was in 1988. So, to the Class of ’82 from the Class of ’78, I think I speak for all of us reunion professionals when I say “Cheers to reuniting!”
We’ll let you know on Monday what antics transpired at the ’82 reunion. In the meantime, take another look back at the RFH Class of ’78’s first at the Molly Pitcher Inn in August of ’88.
This table was up and away with a little purple balloon, it appears. These reuniting folks are still friends!
Retro Leaving Fall to the Neighborhood Kids
Leave it to the 60s playtime experts — literally. Don’t try this at home. It’s pretty likely that parents this era are looking at this retro fall Fair Haven scene in horror.
Continue reading Retro Leaving Fall to the Neighborhood Kids
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