August reunion held in Minnesota - mostly class of 1963

click on photo to enlarge

L to R: Ladies: Lynn Smith Dos Santos ('65), Michelle Fromm-Lewis ('63), June Johnson ('63), Barbara Reh Kemnitz ('65), Sandy Pearl-Lavey, Ellen Sandok, Jan Porter. Guys: Neal Kemnitz, Bob Porter ('63), Chuck Lewis, Larry Dos Santos ('64), Tim Lavey ('63), Len Sandok ('63).

Michelle wrote:

"A fantastic time was had by everyone who attended. Len and Ellen Sandok planned lots of activities and sightseeing. They are A-1 terrific hosts."

Last year, Michelle hosted a reunion in her home state, New Mexico. The class of 1960 has had three minis in recent years, one in Los Angeles and two in Las Vegas. There was also a small gathering a year ago in Key West, mostly class of 1960.

Memories of the famous Peter Pan Bake Shop in Levittown

Click on photo to enlarge

Peter Pan was among the shops in this early 1950s photo. Mays is under construction.

WHAT DO YOU REMEMBER MOST ABOUT THE PAN PAN BAKE SHOP IN LEVITTOWN'S MAYS SHOPPING CENTER?

Practically every day I post a question about early Levittown in Facebook. Here are most of the replies to the above question.

Wendy Max Dunford: Oh my gosh, where to begin?? Yes, their bread was wonderful -- warm, crusty onion rye -- yum! They also had the best brownies I've ever had in my life. Never found any to compare. Also loved their chocolate babka and their assorted cookies and chocolate eclairs. My dad loved their Napoleons

Laurence Bory: My father insisted on getting their fresh rye bread. My mom would walk there and I lived to watch the slicing machine.

Frank Barning: The machine that cut their crusty, great smelling bread fascinated me.

Arnie Galeota: I loved standing on line just to take in the aroma for as long as I could. I gained weight just smelling the fresh baked bread and pastries. In those days I ballooned up to 130 pounds!

Allen Cheifetz: My Mom would go there every afternoon to get six rolls without seeds, for our dinner!

Pat Stanley Share: Cream puffs with REAL cream.

Toni Crescenzo Gelfer: I seem to remember a 7 layer cake which no one makes now..and wasn't there the famous string on the boxes?

Joan Bartel Signorelli: I remember the 7 layer cake. Every Sunday after church we picked one up. Yummy!

Leslie Sands Bell: The crumb buns. Sundays at our house were always bacon, eggs, rolls and danish and crumb buns from Peter Pan.

Toni Crescenzo Gelfer: My Dad always brought home crumb buns and rolls, every Sunday..but, we got ours from the bakery near Grand Union on Newbridge Road...I miss crumb buns.

Wendy Max Dunford: I miss the cookies. I'd get a pound of assorted just about every Sunday. They were $2.25 for a whole pound of them...and sooo good.

Toni Crescenzo Gelfer: I'm drinking coffee and want a crumb bun.

Gary DeCastillia: I had to ride my bike every Sunday morning to pick up a dozen buns and a dozen rolls

Lou Zinzer: My mother worked there 3 yearrs loved it because workers were allowed to take home the leftovers including layer cake.

Kathy Stahlman Zinn: How very rare it was for us to go there! - Mom was into Betty Crocker, and saving money,

Michelle Fromm-Lewis: My dad wouldn't eat dinner unless he had a hard roll from Peter Pan. Soft inside, crumbly hard outside crust. My parakeet, Pudgie, loved to walk on the table and eat those crumbs. Talking about crumbs, their crumb cake wonderful.

Leon Gussow: The napoleon pastries and the chocolate eclairs! Just thinking about them I gained 2 lb.

Roberta Landry Bremmer: Getting hard rolls and bagels after going to church on Sundays.

Doug Dittko: The health department shut them down twice.

Michelle Fromm-Lewis: Truthfully, being shut down by the health dept twice in as long as they've been there is a great record.

Dale Worness: Apple turnovers every Sunday and a cake for my 12th birthday.

Emily Estow Carroll: Great thrill for me driving the car doing errands especially getting the rye bread from Peter Pan. I seem to remember going to a bakery on Newbridge Road, too. And relatives visiting from the Bronx bringing stuff from Butterflake Bakery.

Jim Cain: Chocolate eclairs.

Frank Barning: Once again I have posed a question relating to food and more responses are posted than usual. Is there a message here about us? By the way, this is something like the 100th question I have posted over the past three months. Thanks for participating.

Five more photos of Division Avenue High School graduates

Larry Bory in June calling for another pint at a pub in Oxford, England. He is a 1960 graduate.

Frank Barning and the late Johnny Podres in 1980. Podres is well know to Brooklyn Dodgers fans. He was the winning pitcher in the seventh game of the 1955 World Series. \

Warren Zaretsky, class of 1960, supports his world travels by asking for donations. This is not a recent photo, but he still wears the shirt while hustling tourists in third-world nations.

Jim Anton is still a snazzy dresser after all these years. He is class of 1961.

Click on photos to enlarge

Scott Cornell, class of 1960. He reports: "Here are my wife Eileen and I are aboard the Royal Yacht Britannia, which is permanently berthed at the port of Edinburgh, Scotland. I celebrated my 70th birthday by attending the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo."

More recent photos of early DAHS graduates

A new shot of Peg Shanahan, class of 1960.
Click on photos to enlarge

The class of 1963's Leon Gussow in Driggs, Idaho on the 2012 Tour de Wyoming.

Dennis Champney, class of 1966, in London.

World traveler Annajoy Herman Romdalvik, class of 1960, in London.

Scott Cornell, class of 1960.

Part 2 - Levittown's Mays shopping center was a focal point for our community way back when

That's Marilyn curtseying at a dance in front of Mays in 1959.

Mays under construction in the early 1950s. The Peter Pan Bakery, Times Square Stores and Pergament can be seen.

Click on photos to enlarge

By MARILYN MONSRUD FRESE

I got my first job at Mays in my junior year (1962). I believe the pay was less than a dollar an hour. This little shopping center was my whole shopping world. Everything we could possible want you could find somewhere in this little strip of stores. And Henshaw's Furniture a block east of here.

Once in a while my mom would take me to Hempstead and the A&S there. It was like going to NYC to shop. As I got a little older, we would take the bus to Hempstead. We felt like world travelers. I bought all my records at Mays and Time Square Stores (see photo).

Life was so simple then. If we couldn't find it here, we didn't need it!

HUMOR . . . GROANERS

An invisible man marries an invisible woman. The kids were nothing to look at either.

Deja Moo: The feeling that you've heard this bull before.

Energizer Bunny arrested - charged with battery.

A pessimist's blood type is always b-negative.

Practice safe eating - always use condiments.

A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean your mother.

Shotgun wedding: A case of wife or death.

I used to work in a blanket factory, but it folded.

Marriage is the mourning after the knot before.

A hangover is the wrath of grapes.

Corduroy pillows are making headlines.

Is a book on voyeurism a peeping tome?

Sea captains don't like crew cuts.

Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?

A successful diet is the triumph of mind over platter.

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

A gossip is someone with a great sense of rumor.

Without geometry, life is pointless.

When you dream in color, it's a pigment of your imagination.

Reading while sunbathing makes you well-red.

A man's home is his castle, in a manor of speaking.

Dijon vu - the same mustard as before.

When two egotists meet, it's an I for an I.

A bicycle can't stand on its own because it is two-tired.

Part 1 - Levittown's Mays shopping center was a focal point for our community way back when

Click on photos to enlarge

By FRANK BARNING

Early Levittown did not have a real downtown. It was pure suburban sprawl and as great as Levitt and Sons' planning had been, one item that was omitted was a shopping area such as were found at the time in previously developed communities such as Hempstead and even nearby Hicksville.

We pioneers made the shopping center anchored by the Mays department store our downtown. Some of us lived nearby and had an easy walk, while others were not so fortunate. For many, distance was compensated for by heading to "the stores" after school at Division Avenue junior and senior high schools. The shopping center was 10 minutes at most from school. The kids who attended Levittown Memorial High School were less fortunate.

The variety of stores was impressive, at least to us, and I rarely heard complaints. The merchants in the 1950s, for example, were fairly tolerant when it come to allowing us to hang around. There wasn't much of a police or security presence. Ours was not a particularly threatening crowd.

Among the things remembered by some of my Facebook friends about our shopping center was buying scout uniforms at Lobel's and later JC Penney, the lunch counter at Woolworth's, shoes at Thom McAn, Whalen's drug store, first jobs, buying 45 records and a bakery that in some memories has never been topped . . . Peter Pan.

I have asked frequent blog contributor Toni Crescenzo Gelfer, class of 1968, to provide her memories.

By TONI CRESCENZO GELFER

The shopping center on Hempstead Turnpike that included Mays has left many indelible marks in my memory. These thoughts can be pulled from every stage of my life, from being a very young child until when I first became a mother. My earliest recollections are the sweetest.

My mother never learned to drive and was an avid walker till her mid 80's. Although she and I did take the bus to the stores in Hicksville and Hempstead, the strolls through Levittown to arrive at that strip of stores on Hempstead Turnpike was an adventure for a four year old.

With my older siblings in school, I had my mom all to myself. At the stores we'd peruse an amazing array of items, resting here and there, if I tired. There was always a stop to eat and regroup with bags in hand. Going home I'd usually end up with a small toy from Woolworth's and a large lollipop. Sometimes it would start to rain or mom would get an extraordinary sale on bananas and we'd have to take a taxi cab.

These were the best of times, the cavernous back seat, parcels crinkling and little me perched on a small round disc like seat which magically appeared out of the floor. And always there was mom talking and smiling all the way home. This was heaven.

YOU KNOW YOU'RE A REDNECK WHEN . . .

1. You take your dog for a walk and you both use the same tree.

2. You can entertain yourself for more than 15 minutes with a fly swatter.

3. Your boat has not left the driveway in 15 years.

4. You burn your yard rather than mow it.

6. The Salvation Army declines your furniture.

7. You offer to give someone the shirt off your back and they don't want it.

8. You have the local taxidermist on speed dial.

9. You come back from the dump with more than you took.

10. You keep a can of Raid on the kitchen table.

11. Your wife can climb a tree faster than your cat.

12. Your grandmother has 'ammo' on her Christmas list.

13. You keep flea and tick soap in the shower.

14. You've been involved in a custody fight over a hunting dog.

15. You go to the stock car races and don't need a program.

16. You know how many bales of hay your car will hold.

17. You have a rag for a gas cap.

18. Your house doesn't have curtains, but your truck does.

19. You wonder how service stations keep their rest-rooms so clean..

20. You can spit without opening your mouth.

21. You consider your license plate personalized because your father made it.

22. Your lifetime goal is to own a fireworks stand.

23. You have a complete set of salad bowls that all say 'Cool Whip' on the side.

24. The biggest city you've ever been to is Wal-Mart.

25. Your working TV sits on top of your non-working TV.

26. You've used your ironing board as a buffet table.

27. A tornado hits your neighborhood and does $100K worth of improvements.

28. You've used a toilet brush to scratch your back.

29. You missed your 5th grade graduation because you were on jury duty.

30. You think fast food is hitting a deer at 65.

Here are more photos of early Division Avenue High School alumni

No wonder this man is smiling. Charles DiGiovanni, class of 1967, at Red Rock Casino where he recently won $1,788 on a slot machine. Charles lives 10 minutes from the casino in the Summerlin area of Las Vegas. His sister Maria is class of 1960.

Click on photos to enlarge

Carol Binninger Mondello (1964) recently caught these monsters off Montauk.

A recent photo of Janet Hellings DeCastillia, class of 1960.

Forty-two years ago today (August 2, 1970) was the wedding of these 1968 graduates, Toni Crescenzo and Howard Gelfer. They live in San Antonio, Texas.

The bride and her dad. The ceremonies were held in the Crescenzo backyard on Kingfisher Road.