The following is an edited press release from the Fair Haven School District:
Even a cranky Grinch would have been smiling at the Fair Haven School District’s birthday celebration for beloved author Theodor Seuss Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss.
The extravaganza at Sickles School kicked off on March 2 – Suess’ birthday and Read Across America Day — with what was dubbed a Birthday Celebration assembly.
Continue reading Looking Back at Fair Haven Schools’ Celebration of Dr. Seuss
With the news of the untimely death on Monday of 23-year-old Fair Haven Police Special Officer Class II Robert Henne, the community continues to mourn.
Police Chief Darryl Breckenridge issued the following statement on Tuesday:
The Fair Haven Police Department deeply regrets to announce the untimely death of Class II Officer Robert Henne.
Officer Henne served the Borough since 2011. He was a graduate of the 39th Basic Course for Class II Special Law Enforcement Officers of Monmouth County.
Officer Henne was a squad leader while attending the Monmouth County Police Academy and he graduated in the top of his class.
Officer Henne received a life saving award from both the Borough of Fair Haven and the 200 club. He also had received letters of commendation while serving the Borough.
Officer Henne was 23 years old. He served our community with great pride and dedication, both as a Class II Officer and a volunteer firefighter.
The loss of Officer Henne is a tragedy to his family, the residents of Fair Haven, and to the entire Law Enforcement community.
Officer Henne will be deeply missed by all who knew him.
Wake will be held at the Church of Nativity (340 Hance R.d Fair Haven) on Friday, March 27, 2015 from 4 to 8 p.m.
Police service will be held 6:30 p.m.
Funeral will be held at the Church of Nativity on Saturday March 28th at 10 a.m. in Fair Haven.
What else can we say? A longtime — very longtime — Fair Havenite turned 96 on Sunday!
So, what else could we do but make Evelyn Murphy our Retro Pic of the Day (and slideshow).
No, Evelyn no longer lives in Fair Haven, but her spirit, and those of many like her, just seems to live on. And we’re grateful.
It doesn’t ever seem quite right to this day to go to the Acme and not see the flaming red-haired beauty rounding a corner and always ready to chat.
This lady is mom to seven children, all of whom graduated from RFH. Thanks for your contribution to Fair Haven life, Mrs. Murphy!
To life, l’chaim, special lady! Here’s to covering your 100th!
Thanks to the Murphy family for the photos from Facebook!
Happy Monday, Rumson-Fair Haven area friends and fans!
OK, so spring has not exactly sprung as we would have liked quite yet, but it looks like there’s hope of some sort, soggy as it may be, for a rise in temps as the week progresses. Please!
In the meantime, it’s a chilly start to the week today.
There are Borough Council meetings in both Rumson and Fair Haven this week. Fair Haven’s meeting is Monday night at 7 p.m. at Borough Hall. Click here for the agenda. Rumson’s meeting is Tuesday night at 7:30 p.m. at Borough Hall. Click here for that agenda.
Taking a look back at last week, here are some tidbits from the notebook the likes of which your editor is going to start sharing on a weekly basis:
“Fair Haven has lost one of it’s pillars,” Fair Havenite Chris Brenner said on the borough’s Facebook page when the March 14 death of Jeanetter Crowell was announced.
Remembered as a top-notch seamstress, designer, gracious lady, friend, neighbor, wife and mom, comments flooded the page in remembrance of the 60-year Fair Haven resident who will be honored at a 10 a.m. Saturday viewing at Child’s Funeral Home in Red Bank followed by a noon service at the Fisk Chapel A.M.E. Church, 38 Fisk St., Fair Haven.
“She was the first friendly face to welcome us to Fair Haven many years ago, and I can’t imagine our neighborhood without her,” said Jeanetter Crowell’s neighbor Kevin Ryan in a memorial post of his own. “When I started working as the NJ child advocate, she came to my swearing-in, gave me a big hug and whispered in my ear, ‘stay close to Jesus.’ I’d like to think that’s her walk now, and one so richly deserved. Rest in peace sweet lady — we will miss you.”
And there were many more posts recounting her kindness and gentle, welcoming nature.
“Another piece of Fair Haven history gone,” John Olexa Sr. said. “RIP.”
“… So loved her, she was always so sweet when she came in to pay her taxes, borough tax collector Dale A Connor said. “She will missed.”
“She always opened her home to me whenever I came to town,” Nerphrita Norris said. “Had many good conversations with her. She was a part of my village.”
“Another passing of a good soul,” Carolynn Bruce Sickerman said.
Jeanetter Crowell was born on April 9, 1924 in Sumter, SC. The child of Reverend Jake Glisson and Lila Samuels Glisson, she graduated from St. Michael’s High School and attended Morris College in South Carolina.
Retired from Standard Awning Company, she “worked tirelessly on behalf of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union,” her obituary said.
Always seen around town ready to lend a hand wherever she could, Jeanetter is remembered as an avid volunteer in the church as a Sunday school teacher and as a pastor’s steward for the Steward board of Asbury Park’s Allen Chapel and Fisk A.M.E. Church Chapel.
In the community, she was involved in the PTA, Eastern Star, Democratic Party and was founder of the Ventures Club, a group that offered mentor and scholarship programs.
Once married to Powell Robinson, she was the mother of deceased Rumson-Fair Haven Regional High School teacher Powell D. Robinson III, known as Dewey Robinson. She is survived by her daughter Rochelle Robinson Hendricks, according to her obituary on legacy.com.
Other than her son, Jeanetter was also predeceased by: her parents; her brothers, Abe, Luther, Jake, Jessie, Cliff, Joseph, Frank, James and Thomas; husbands, Powell Robinson and Curtis Crowell.
Besides her daughter, she is survived by: her sister, Leola Martin; daughter-in-law, Erika Robinson; grandchildren, Gioia and Matt Hermann, Talia and Sean Coles, Samson Hearn, Nygia Hearn, and Kiana Robinson; great-grandchildren, Alexandra and Josephine Hermann, Landon and Ronan Coles; special sister-in-law, Evelyn Cruz, and a host of nieces, nephews, and friends.
Jeanetter Crowell will be laid to rest at Monmouth Memorial Park, Tinton Falls.
By Elaine Van Develde
To know Fair Haven Mayor Ben Lucarelli is to know that he is an avid bicyclist and troubadour for safe bike and pedestrian travels. It’s also to know that the cycling he loves has taken two of his friends, people he cared for and admired, in the past two years, and walks across the street took two other members of the community before them.
So, the issue of bicycle and pedestrian safety on the streets where he lives hits home in more ways than one for Mayor Lucarelli.
Councilman Jerome Koch succumbed to injuries he sustained in a tragic accident with a motor vehicle while riding his bicycle last year. And triathlete Cole Porter died in 2013 after a mishap in the Tour de Fair Haven race when he collided with a race officiator on a closed borough-wide course.
Besides Lucarelli’s friends falling victim to fatal bike accidents, in the early 2000s a man was killed when hit by a car crossing River Road. A woman was killed in 2009 crossing the same main street in the same area of the 1.6-square-mile borough.
So, when the mayor was offered the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (USDOT) Mayor’s Challenge for Safer People, Safer Streets, he eagerly accepted and headed to a summit “to identify and remove barriers to improving non-motorized safety” last week in Washington D.C..
The mayor is passionate about the idea of safely integrating pedestrian and bicycle traffic with motor vehicles. For him, that passion emanates from those focal home-base tragedies to encompass a community, even worldwide spectrum.
“We have people utilizing the roads right now and bad things are happening,” Lucarelli said on Wednesday. “It’s been very difficult (trying to come to terms with Porter and Koch’s deaths). To a certain extent, the effort I am putting forth with everything I’ve got is to honor both Cole and Jerome.”
While the mayor pointed out that there was a distinct difference in the cyclist tragedies — Porter’s being on a closed, motor vehicle traffic-free course — the legacies of the two are a persistent source of motivation. He was in the race Porter was in, yards away; and he had passed Koch on the road not long before before his accident.
“Jerome was just a regular guy — a father, a grandfather — out riding his bike around,” Lucarelli said. “It was an accident, an extremely tragic one that hit me hard. Unfortunately, it was also an example of how society is not yet acclimated to the integration of bikes in the flow of motor vehicle traffic — a growing, natural trend that’s becoming more and more necessary.”
For Lucarelli, it’s all about the general populace growing in accordance with a simple measure that keeps pace with ever-changing demographics, community revitalization, a healthier environment and pure economics.
And, for him, the mission begins at home, where his heart is.
Now after attending the Safer People, Safer Streets summit, Lucarelli says he’s even better prepared to be an ambassador for pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly streets his own town and promoting the innovation in the surrounding area. And he is equipped with what he sees as a trove of information he’s anxious to share.
“While in American society the motor vehicle is the predominant mode of transportation, almost to a debilitating degree, there is now a greater demand to use roads for bicyclists and pedestrians, so that demand needs to be facilitated,” Lucarelli said. “Society’s changing in this direction and I think it’s for the better for everyone. We have to learn to use the roads in a more bicycle- and pedestrian-friendly way. Suburbia needs to wake up and find these facilities.”
The mayor explained that statistics show that as the population increases, the demands on the infrastructure become more strained.
For instance, according to U.S. DOT estimates, the country’s population is slated to increase 25 percent in the next 30 years, or by about 80 million people, up from roughly 319 million.
In 2013, according to U.S. DOT statistics, there were about 4,300 vehicle-pedestrian accidents that resulted in death. The same year, there were 471 fatal vehicle-bicycle accidents.
Both the federal and state DOTs recognize that the shift becomes a more natural one with the statistic change and encourages nationwide involvement to the extent that, Lucarelli said, many of the grants available will be given more liberally to the municipalities that embrace the concept.
“It makes sense. There’s not enough money, or room, to widen roads to accommodate the coinciding increase in vehicular traffic,” he said. “So, we need to rely more on a combination of mass transit, pedestrian and bike traffic so that vehicular traffic is reduced. When bicycle and pedestrian lanes are added to roads, and people acclimate to knowing they are there, it’s for the better.”
In Europe, Lucarelli noted, the acclimation has been historically consistent. Europeans are less reliant on cars as a chief mode of transportation and more on bikes, so the roads are naturally more bike- and pedestrian-friendly.
And it’s cheap to make the change, he said. It involves, in most cases, a bucket, or few, of paint. As part of the state DOT Complete Streets initiative, bike lanes are painted onto the existing main roadways with what’s dubbed sharrows, on-road signage to signal narrowing.
It’s also much more difficult to get a license to operate a motorized vehicle, including motorcycles, he noted. The licenses are graduated with the power of the vehicle. For instance, he said, it would take six years to get a license for a 100 horsepower motorcycle in France, whereas in the United States it’s more a matter of months, if that.
And in Europe, where cyclists outnumber drivers, there are no helmet laws, just by virtue of the fact that drivers are naturally more aware, Lucarelli said.
“Here, in the United States, you need a vehicle to survive,” he said. “So, the standards are different.”
And the U.S. DOT is busy fulfilling what officials there have said is a salient need to bring bicycle- and pedestrian-friendly travel to the states.
For the immediate area, including Sea Bright, Rumson, Fair Haven and Red Bank, the mayor said he’d like to see a marked main roadway paths for cyclists in stretches from one bordering town the other.
The roads are county roads, so that must come with county road improvements. Fair Haven has been implementing its own Streetscape program for the past several years. The NJ DOT Complete Streets end of it he said he hopes to see come to fruition by 2016.
And he’s been adamant about pushing it.
“The change is happening, the DOT is backing it and we’re going with it,” Lucarelli said.
By Elaine Van Develde
As was true-to-form for Chum Chandler, people are scratching their heads … itching to know where time went and why it must inevitably take someone like him away.
Mourned in a celebration of his life on Saturday, Chum Chandler, an iconic, lifelong Fair Havenite and 64-year fireman, was remembered as tall order of head-scratching, suspender-donning, side-splitting tough wrapped in a tender life embrace.
He called people by the wrong names just to mess with them. He loved to sneak in some sweets. His tell-it-like-it-is sayings spared no one. He was lovingly stingy with his show of emotion. He adorned his family and friends with a lot of anecdotal stories and strength. His eyes twinkled with mischief. He had no pretense.
He was, yes, a Fair Haven character — a big chunk of community foundation.
His family and friends told his story on Saturday at the Fair Haven firehouse — a place where Chum spent many years. But everyone knew him already.
They knew that guy. They knew his story. That’s because he was the kind of stuff Fair Haven is made of — a World War II U.S. Navy veteran, husband, father, brother, friend, neighbor, volunteer and just an unassuming, hard-working man trying to do the right thing, enjoy life to the fullest and pay it forward.
And, by all accounts, he did just that.
“It’s not what you take with you when you leave this world, it’s what you leave behind when you go,” his memorial card read. “You left behind more than you could ever imagine …”
The family and friends of Chum still tried to account for it all, but what he left behind was more than they could possibly summon in a day’s worth of remembrance. Still, they made it through with enough Chum snippets and sound bites to celebrate him.
They talked about his ornery humor. It made them laugh between the tears. There was nothing blurred about their vision of Chum, though.
Daughter Lizzie scratched her head in imitation of her dad and his infernal noggin itch as, inevitably, some nugget of humor, wisdom or “one-of-a-kind” advice would drop out of his mouth like a candy in a Pez dispenser.
Carol, forever teased for talking too much, grappled to find the right words — words that she wished would prompt a familiar “Go pound salt!” from dad above.
He had lived with her for the past four years, she said. Fetching him some tea, feeding him something that his stomach wanted and just looking in on him to see if he was comfortably resting at bedtime was what she had grown accustomed to doing — “caring and worrying about you every day, even though you were independent,” like a parent.
The roles had reversed. And, she said, the nurturing became treasured time.
Grandson Michael (Chandler) West was grateful for having had a grandfather like Chum, with a special brand of gusto that caused him to insist that his girlfriend Dana’s name was Donna, because, when corrected, “Dana, Donna … same thing,” was the only answer he got. Until Dana turned the tables on him.
And, Michael said, Pop-Pop turned out to be one of the funniest people Dana ever met.
“Turn that s**t down!” he imitated, remembering Pop-Pop knocking on his brother Chandler’s wall when the video games started to sound like bad, newfangled rock music to him.
Ever so lively, Michael said he wasn’t used to seeing his grandfather so calm.
Before he died, he was sleeping. It was quiet and dark. Michael just wanted to spend some time with his grandfather, “even if you weren’t awake.
“But what did I see? As I turned around the corner and entered the dark room with the lights turned off, I see something I haven’t seen for a few weeks now. I see this white flash moving back and forth. It’s none other than you scratching that ‘damn itch’ on your damn head that you ‘almost damn near got’ for the past five or six years!”
He got it. His family got it. His friends got it. The community got it. There’s no more head-scratching for Warren “Chum” Chandler.
The 89-year-old father to seven, grandfather to 15 and great-grandpa to three, with one one the way, was laid to rest on Monday at B.G. William Doyle Veterans Cemetery, Arneytown, N.J.
But those he left behind will keep itching to fulfill a legacy like his.
RIP, Warren “Chum” Chandler. We’re scratching.
Today and tomorrow are the days Fair Havenites are spending saying goodbye to lifetime resident Chum Chandler, who was also a 65-year member of the Fair Haven Volunteer Fire Company.
So, we felt it only fitting to honor Chum and his wife Bette, who predeceased him in 1996, in today’s Retro Pic of the Day.
The two were married on Sept. 25, 1955, daughter Carol Chandler-West said in a Facebook post.
“I was blessed with two special parents, and for giving me a wonderful life,” she said. “God Bless!!!”
RIP, Chum and Bette Chandler.
By Elaine Van Develde
Before long, Fair Haven’s Church Street will no longer be true to its namesake.
The borough’s Planning Board unanimously approved a three-home subdivision — of one 3,000- and two 2,000-square-feet, roof-porched homes with garages and decks — on the .54-acre parcel of land at the corner of River Road and Church Street, which long into the borough’s history has housed the Episcopal Church of the Holy Communion.
The subdivision takes up “890-square-feet less than what (currently) exists,” said Elizabeth Waterbury, the planner who testified for the applicant, Rumson-based Kolarsick Builders Inc., at Wednesday night’s Planning Board meeting. “We’re staying within FAR (floor-area ratio) we’re staying within maximum habitable (space) … looking to create a conforming subdivision.”
Continue reading Subdivision Deemed Good Fit for Longtime Fair Haven Church Property
By Elaine Van Develde
It’s official. Fair Haven is down to one gas station in town.
As locals have long speculated what will replace the nearly three-year shuttered former Fair Haven Sunoco at the corner of River Road and Cedar Avenue, equipment has been digging into the tarred lot, fenced-in lot and officials have only confirmed that it will not be re-purposed as another gas station.
In fact, they said at Monday night’s Borough Council meeting, all the excavation by EV Banta Co., of East Orange, is about the “decommission of the (gas) tanks” on the site. That’s all.
No plans for anything to be built at the site have yet been submitted to the Planning Board.
Yet, because of the permits acquired for the decommissioning, it is clear to officials that “there is no intention to keep it as a gas station,” Fair Haven Administrator Theresa Casagrande said.
Zoned for business use, no one offered any more information about what may be unofficially planned by a lessee or new owner. For a couple of years a “For Lease” sign was hung on one of the building’s bays.
The site long housed a gas station under management at different intervals. In its last life, it was Rich’s Ultra Sunoco. Rich’s could no longer afford the lease, Mayor Ben Lucarelli had said. Before that, it was Duckworth’s Sunoco. And that list of gas stations on the plat of land goes back a long time.
The only remaining gas station in the 1.4-square-mile borough will now be the Valero a few blocks away on River Road, formerly Ray Miller’s Exxon and Esso at one point.
Years back, there were yet another three, besides Valero and Sunoco, gas stations in town: another on the opposite corner from Sunoco, at Cedar and Hance roads; one sat on the corner of Gillespie Avenue and River Road, where a veterinarian’s office now sits; another was on the corner of Fair Haven and River roads, where Balderose Fine Foods now sits; and yet another was where the Foreign Cars of Monmouth is anchored.
Between Rumson and Fair Haven, dating back a couple of decades, there were 12 gas stations — six in Rumson and six in Fair Haven.
By Elaine Van Develde
If all goes according to plan, in about a year, the Fair Haven Fire Department will have a new $500,000 piece of equipment to be the first of trucks to respond to the scene of a blaze — a Pierce pumper.
The pumper will replace a 1981 pumper that “is still running hard,” Mayor Ben Lucarelli said, but is not completely OSHA compliant, or up-to-date.
State safety statue requires that, since 1991, all firemen ride inside the cab of the truck and have a safe, enclosed place of refuge in which to retreat on the scene to escape, for example, toxic chemicals emitted from a fire. Fair Haven complies, but there’s just not as much room in the 1981 truck or efficiency.
The new Pierce pumper can seat eight in its cab. The days of hanging off the back or side of the truck while rolling onto the scene are long gone, Lucarelli said.
No decision has been made on which of the remaining three working apparatus, if at all, will be retired, donated, sold or kept.
And, the decision is not one that needs to be made any time soon, if at all, Fair Haven Council President Jonathan Peters said at Monday night’s Borough Council meeting when introducing the bond ordinance authorizing the funding of the new truck. “The cost to keep them is actually minimal,” Peters said. “And we certainly don’t want to buy another truck sooner than later.”
While some may criticize Fair Haven for “spending another half a million dollars, they need to realize that the last (quad) truck bought replaced the 1954 American LaFrance (quad) truck, and this (pumper) is replacing one bought in the 1980s,” Lucarelli said. “It’s cyclical; and it just makes sense.”
The last truck that was purchased, to replace the now retired 1954 American LaFrance quad, was a 2008 quad — a truck that brings four essentials, ladders, hoses, pumps and water tanks to the scene of a fire for firefighters.
Then there is a 1975 Mack quad that was refurbished in 1990; and the 1981 Pierce pumper that will be replaced or augmented by the new pumper truck.
While the pumper is the first on the scene of a fire, the quad ladder trucks, as opposed to aerial trucks used in some fire companies, get the hook and ladder equipment up and working, Lucarelli explained.
“It’s just a matter of different firefighting culture,” he said. “While some towns have the big aerials that go over the top of a fire, cut a hole (in the roof) water is blasted in, Fair Haven goes in the front door (and on the roof when they need to), inside and fight the fire.”
Administrator Theresa Casagrande commended former Fair Haven Fire Department Chief Derek DeBree for his help in keeping officials well-informed on the particulars of the purchase.
The ordinance to release the funds is scheduled for public hearing and adoption at the next council meeting. The first step, upon approval, will be to release a $24,000 deposit.
By Elaine Van Develde
It was good for the soul. A comforting scent of collard greens, pigs’ feet, chicken and fish filled the air. And there was a hearty helping of Fair Haven families rooted in the borough since the 19th century connecting.
It was Saturday afternoon’s Fisk AME Chapel Soul Food Dinner at the church in Fair Haven.
“We sold out!” one of the organizers cheered. “Seventy dinners!”
That was only a couple of hours after they opened the doors. They were proud and the food was not the only reason why.
The Fisk AME Chapel congregation has been steeped in Fair Haven history since 1858. Named after Civil War hero General Clinton B. Fisk, a “devout Methodist” and champion of civil rights, the first Fisk Chapel in Fair Haven was where Bicentennial Hall now stands.
Before that, the congregation had a church on River Road near what is now the Shrewsbury Yacht Club — then dubbed the Bethel AME Church (congregation).
Fisk, a Union officer, ran President Lincoln’s Freedman’s Bureau when the Civil War ended. He championed equal rights laws for African-Americans and education focusing on special courses about those rights. He ended up living in Rumson.
“Soon after the Civil War and his arrival in Rumson, New Jersey, General Clinton B. Fisk became very interested in the local Black community at Fair Haven village,” a narrative on Facebook compiled by Stacy Harris (a descendent of the well-known Rileys and Browns) said. “Many of his servants were Blacks, and Fisk apparently won the admiration and respect of these employees.”
After a fire destroyed the original Bethel church in 1875 and those in the black community, many of whom were some of Fair Haven’s founding fathers, were forced to make their way to Red Bank to worship, Fisk made sure a chapel was built to quell the difficulty of commuting.
Right before the church was built, he was also instrumental in having what was a school for black children on Fisk Street. It was known for many years as the Youth Center. After the end of segregation, Youth Center was used for kindergarten.
Kids were walked there to school on a rope. But, that’s a whole other story.
Fisk Street Chapel’s Rev. Thomas Johnson was very proud on Saturday, as were all the participating congregants and guests who made the Soul Food Dinner a Success.
Take a look at the photos in the above gallery for a glimpse into the event. Recognize anyone? It’s a pretty sure bet you do, if you’ve lived in the area for any length of time.
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