As people go to the polls to vote in Rumson and Fair Haven today, there are some facts about the boroughs’ governing bodies and their function and history that may have eluded many.
Continue reading Rumson and Fair Haven Elections 2023: What You Need to KnowTag Archives: Fair Haven
Focus: Halloween Haunts of the R-FH Area
Front lawn hauntings of the Halloween kind have long been a decorating tradition in the Rumson-Fair Haven area.
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Retro Gaggle of ’80s Kindergarten Ghouls
It’s elementary — the school and the Halloween spirit.
In this case, back in 1982, it was actually a Fair Haven kindergarten Halloween fest at Sportsman’s Field, across from Knollwood School.
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Reflection: Retro Halloween Parading
The following opinion piece on Halloween through the generations in Fair Haven was originally published in 2015. It is reprised annually …
Before the parade passes by, this kid from Fair Haven has some parading memories on which to reflect. Remember this scene?
It’s a longstanding tradition — the Fair Haven Halloween Parade.
I remember it well — from my first parade trek back in the late 1960s to the ’70s, 80s, 90s and now.
It all started at age 7 with a wish to be Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. I’ve noticed a few in more recent years and the green-eyed jealousy monster of a near senior has reared its head. But I digress … That little dress-up fantasy of the 60s of mine was foiled when my mother couldn’t get the gingham outfit together, my pigtails were not so poised for the silver screen look and my sister refused to crawl down Hance Road as Toto.
I guess it was bad enough that from the age of 3, she was forced by this pint-sized dominatrix 5-year-old Dorothy to crawl on a makeshift Funk and Wagnall’s encyclopedia Yellow Brick Road to Oz in the living room. The neighbors never quite got over it, either.
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Retro Fair Haven School Halloween Sit-Out
Nothing like capturing the mood of the Halloween season with a snapshot back in time of little costumed goblins all in a row — on the Sickles School stoop in Fair Haven.
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Retro Joyous Fall for the Leaf Pile
Sometimes a kid just has to take the plunge and fall for it!
Plunging into a big pile of leaves was always a simple fall pleasure for kids. Untethered to phones and TVs, Fair Haven kids of the 1960s resorted to the great outdoors in a small town. Sometimes they took it to the streets with marathon games of dodgeball, one taking the traffic alert commander position with a “CAR!!” shout now and then and a clear-out of the ball court. Nevermore. There might be a helicopter parent police alert if kids did that nowadays. Ahem.
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Retro Cool CAT Stokes Campers
Photo/David Struve
Well, the iconic Stokes trip happened last week; and, by all accounts it was a trip soaked with fun … and rain.
The tradition has been altered over the years. Most recently, the trip’s time of year changed. It now happens in the fall when it used to happen in late spring. It also now takes seventh-, not sixth-graders, tripping in the woods for a week of hands-on outdoor education. And there are no RFH senior counselors called CATs along for the trips of more recent, well, decades.
Nonetheless, the longtime tradition is and always has been rife with tales of the trip.
This featured snapshot back into the woods in 1978 at Stokes focuses on a few RFH counselor guys (and a sixth grader) who seem to have happened upon some sort of sight or adventure. Lost boys? Perhaps.
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Retro Fair Haven Picture Day Class Action
We’re talking class action; and, it’s not about a lawsuit — more like suiting up for a class picture.
That’s what they did back in the early 1970s. Well, at least one in this shot suited up in the literal sense. Figuratively speaking, though, this Sickles School sixth grade shot of Gary Verwilt’s class encapsulates that picture day mindset of the past.
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Retro Locals’ Summer Beach Babies
Ahoy! Ship Ahoy, to locals beaching it, that is.
Yes, it’s locals’ summertime. Yet, the locals’ summer spots have always been a place of respite from the out-of-towner beach crowd in the Rumson-Fair Haven area. They call them beach clubs.
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In Memoriam: Former Fair Havenite, Frank Wrublewski, 102
Former Fair Haven resident, Frank John Wrublewski, more recently of Palm City, FL, passed away after a stroke on Tuesday, Sept. 5, at home with his children. He was 102.
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Retro School Daze: The Rope Lady
A reprise in honor of those folks who used to be in charge of keeping the kids safe on their walk to school. Remember when everyone walked to school?
It was a time when kids had to walk the … rope.
The first day of school, last week, was commemorated with a look back to that first day in 1965 in Fair Haven.
It was the very first day of school — for kindergarteners. It was also a finale year. That class was the last of all that walked on a rope to the Youth Center (now Fair Haven Community Center downstairs and the police station upstairs).
While classmates were remembered, the identity of the official lady tugging that rope was not.
So, as an ode to that woman, who was eventually remembered as Mary McDaniel, the Retro Pic of the Day is another look, from the archives of the Red Bank Register, of that kindergarten class walk, headed by Mc Daniel.
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In Memoriam: Longtime Fair Havenite, Colleen Winters, 73
Longtime Fair Havenite, Colleen Patricia Winters passed away on Sept. 5 at Jersey Shore University Medical Center following a brief illness. She was 73.
Continue reading In Memoriam: Longtime Fair Havenite, Colleen Winters, 73
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