Continue reading Fair Haven Students’ Visit with a Famous Author
After a week peppered with foul weather, forecasters are seeing the light — sunlight — peering through and making way for some weekend activity in the Rumson-Fair Haven area.
Continue reading The R-FH Area Weekend: Egg Hunting & Street Fair
Continue reading Knollwood Students Get a Glimpse into the Life of an Author
Well, after more soggy, rainy days, the sun made an appearance in the Rumson-Fair Haven area and beckoned people back to the Navesink riverfront.
At the Fair Haven Dock, the scene was one of solitary sun worshipping and a little riverfront romping. Contentment. Comfort on the homefront.
As the forecast tells, the sun will just do a bit of peering on Monday. Then we’ll be hit with hazardous rainy conditions by Tuesday. So, enjoy and get your river romping in.
According to the National Weather Service, there will be rain after 11 p.m. on Monday and showers with a possible thunderstorm and a flood watch on Tuesday. Though, the temperature will hit the mid-60s. The sun comes back on Wednesday.
Happy Monday!
— Elaine Van Develde
Friends, family and neighbors will gather on Saturday morning to say goodbye and pay tribute to longtime Fair Havenite Mrs. Lucille Suggs.
It wasn’t all that long ago when Mrs. Suggs hit her 100th birthday.
So, the Retro Pic of the Day, offers a glimpse back to that milestone day in August of 2016.
Godspeed, Mrs. Suggs! Your memory keeps many a Fair Havenite smiling!
It wasn’t all that long ago when Lucille Suggs was still living in the Fair Haven neighborhood that she loved.
Tucked away contentedly in her modest home, neighbors, friends, family were known to stop by for a visit. Then there were the police officers who had grown up knowing her as a loving, welcoming presence in the borough who would pop in to make sure that she was safe and cared for during a storm, bout of bad weather, or “just because.”
Mrs. Suggs not too long ago, after more than half a century there, left the Fair Haven home and community she loved in her 90s to be closer to her son and cared for in a nursing home where he lives in Cincinnati, Ohio.
She hit 100 in August of 2016 with a big smile on her face, surrounded by loved ones and missed dearly by Fair Havenites who had grown so accustomed to her warm grin, embracing, graceful manner and soulful sense of humor.
Lucille Brooks Suggs passed away on March 23. And she is coming home to Fair Haven tomorrow, Saturday, to be bid farewell at her church, Fisk Chapel AME Church, 38 Fisk St., with a viewing beginning at 9a.m. and funeral services to follow at 11. Interment will be at the Shoreland Memorial Gardens, Hazlet.
Her son, Dennis, posted the following tribute to his mother the day after her death …
“Last night at 11:30, the inimitable Lucille Brooks Suggs decided enough was enough and peacefully took her one woman show ‘to loftier climes.’
“After 100 years and 6 months of being a constant protector, inspiration, non-stop joke machine (I could never figure out where she learned all those, let alone remembered them) as well as an endless source of real POSITIVITY (You should have seen the aides guard her like she was the Queen of England as she declined this week at twin towers), I believe it’s safe to say she felt her time here was well spent, but alas, it was time to go.
“She will be well-remembered and sorely missed. I know if you asked her what to think she wouldn’t want mourning or solemnity, she’d want you to laugh(alot), love people, do kind things and live to the fullest.
“We will be bringing her home next weekend so that she can rest in final peace next to her partner of nearly 50 years, so they can get back to playing pinochle, something I’m guessing is already taking place. Enjoy the day, your friends and loved ones. Cheers!!!”
Click here for Mrs. Suggs’ obituary.
RIP, Mrs. Suggs. You, a forever Fair Haven friend and neighbor to many, will always be remembered as an embodiment of what this small town is all about.
And the middle school musicians played on … in the Fair Haven School District’s annual Chamber Music Recital at Knollwood School recently.
Continue reading Rewind: A Look Back at Knollwood’s Chamber Music Recital
The following February criminal incidents and arrests were reported by Fair Haven police. An arrest does not constitute a conviction.
“Times have changed,” as the lyrics to Cole Porter’s Anything Goes go …
Yes they have. And they haven’t.
The shows are still going on, but they’re quite different types of productions. The students at Fair Haven’s Knollwood School have staged Disney’s Beauty and the Beast Jr. The show went on in the beginning of the month.
And, way back in 1974, the school’s second ever musical was staged with the middle schoolers. You guessed it. It was Anything Goes.
Yes, times have changed, and mostly because these days they actually have junior versions of otherwise adult-like shows that aren’t really all that adult.
In fact, in those days, nothing was thought of doing a pretty darn adult musical that starred a, ahem, “lady of the evening” turned evangelist, a gangster and his maul, a stowaway, an heiress and a kooky English gentleman all aboard a ship and involved in madcap farce and love triangles.
Who knew? Well, the 1974 cast of Knollwood’s version of Anything Goes certainly didn’t.
A “tale as old as time” came to Fair Haven’s Knollwood School’s stage when 40 young middle school students performed a production of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast Jr. a few weeks ago.
Continue reading A Look Back at Knollwood’s ‘Beauty and the Beast Jr.’
With the recent death and impending memorial of former longtime Fair Havenite and River Rats purser, Warner White, thoughts turn back to some good old days of being a kid rat, so to speak, and hanging out down by the river.
It’s a rite of passage in the Rumson-Fair Haven area that kid life be rife with river-oriented activities.
River Rats was the king of that sort of thing — especially in the summertime. The little riverfront nook at the foot of Battin Road in Fair Haven was that special place where kids and boating-bonded buddies learned how to sail and navigate riverfront life with the sand between their toes and perpetual smiles on their faces. It was a unique little sailors’ club. Still is.
River Rats has been a Fair Haven institution since 1955.
It all started like this: “In October 1955 shortly after he moved from New York, Captain Walter Isbrandtsen wrote to a friend: ‘I have purchased a house in a small community on the New Jersey coast where I am gradually becoming active … in an organization known as Dads Incorporated … whose activities include a newly established program designed to take full advantage of a neighboring river …'”
Captain Isbrandtsen organized the family-oriented sailing group and became the first Skipper of River Rats, as it is written in the River Rats’ biographical history.
So, the Retro Pic(s) of the Day takes us back to the U.S.A. bicentennial year of 1976 and a bunch of young River Rats.
This crew is comprised mostly of RFH classmates who gathered by the boat launch at the end of Battin Road in Fair Haven to offer a glimpse of their day as a reminder of what growing up by the river is all about.
Sail on! RIP, Warner White …
— Elaine Van Develde
Spring has sprung — sort of.
Well, the sun was shining brightly on the first day of spring, anyway. And while last week’s lingering patches of snow remained in spots throughout the Rumson-Fair Haven area, buds were popping up from underneath them.
The scene on the banks of the Navesink River at the foot of Battin Road in Fair Haven was still, mild and calming — signals of springing into a warmer sunset took hold.
It was a stark, black-and-white kind of scenario. Take a look. (Oh, and don’t forget to click to enlarge …)
Happy spring; and good night.
— Elaine Van Develde
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