June 7
General Membership Meetings

June 27
Executive Board Meeting
*Brentwood Library

*Meeting Dates
Events Schedule

ROBS SCHOLARSHIPS
POSTED 6/1/19
   Once again ROBS has presented scholarships to four graduating Brentwood High School seniors who will be pursuing a career in education. Fern Sasso presented the awards at the Brentwood HS Awards Assembly on Thursday evening, May 23rd. Kyara Gonzalez was awarded the $1,000 Jack Zuckerman scholarship and Kaila Young received the $1,000 Dorothy Zuckerman scholarship. Iris Canessa was presented with the Lilian Kelly $750 Scholarship, and Ariana Vargas was awarded the $500 Sheila Sustrin scholarship. We congratulate and wish them success.

(Left to Right) Kaila Young, Kayara Gonzalez, Iris Canessa, Ariana Vargas

SAD SHARING
POSTED 6-3-19
     Jessie Nizewitz, 33, the daughter of Mark and Barbara Nizewitz, passed away on Thursday, May 30th. There was no funeral but the family is sitting shiva at the Nizewitz’s home, 16 Country Drive, Plainview, Monday and Tuesday from 1 - 8. Please pass this along to our Brentwood family so they can show their support.

POSTED 6/6/19
     Johanna Caleca (formerly Fogliano), was a Brentwood High School English teacher until she resigned to complete Law School and become an Assistant Suffolk County District Attorney. In the 1970’s she was an original member of the Maslow Toffler School staff at South Elementary when the MT Alternative school was opened. She is currently in private practice as a prominent Defense Attorney in the Town of East Hampton. and has simultaneously been expressing her creative side by exhibiting work with other artists in this latest upcoming exhibition, "Summer Kickoff"

http://www.johannacaleca.com/about

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Why did we do it?
     What was our purpose in taking on such an open ended “History Project”; for which we evolved a script of questions and got answers from over 150 subjects for two decades?
     We couldn’t answer the question in 1994 when people would ask “What are you going to do with the interviews?” All we could say was that for educational purposes we had to document our record now or lose the chance to preserve so many poignant accounts, funny stories and touching tales told by exemplary educators. We knew these dedicated public servants might shortly, for reasons yet unknown, be leaving Brentwood for good.
     So, we decided to let time sort out the details. We began scheduling appointments. We asked questions and listened saving for generations the essence of what it meant to have been an educator or employed, in this large public school system during the second half of the 20th century. Brentwood remains an exemplar to all others; a diverse microcosm of America reflecting 124 districts on Long Island while simultaneously resembling thousands across the U.S. We’ve accomplished something here to be proud of. Whether we were interviewed or not, ours is a claim of service that few professionals in the State of New York or elsewhere have positioned themselves to share in the way we have.
     INITIALLY the practice of sitting with a subject for an hour and giving them a hundred percent focused attention seemed somewhat daunting to a number of friends and colleagues. So much so in fact that many declined our repeated invitations to speak with us as they left careers or retired from full employment. Despite all assurances that we were not about investigative journalism or invading privacy, they deferred. Now, twenty years after we began, some are saying they may be ready. “Better late than never” we say. However, to all among you who were willing to share not only your classroom experiences and personal stories, but precious memories from your lives along with your fondest hopes for the future, we say “Thanks”. Thanks for allowing us to continue the process by paying it forward as we share these interviews with the Brentwood community and countless professionals and researchers near and far. Through an acceptance of ROBS offer of collaboration with Archivist Dr. Geri Solomon and The Long Island Studies Institute at Hofstra University our History Project lives on in academia as well as in the collection of the Brentwood Public Library, thanks to Director, Thomas A. Tarantowicz.
   You can enjoy unlimited visits to www.robsny.org where you can watch and listen to segments from featured Interviews in the ROBS History Project Section on our Announcements Page each month. Return here to listen and learn again and again.

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THIS MONTH'S FEATURED HISTORY PROJECT
INTERVIEW:
Grace Fishenfeld
H.S. Art Teacher
Interviewed 8/26/2009

    Her mother’s maiden name was Lepofski and Grace’s maiden name was Goldberg. Her father’s original name had been Zenzelski before it was changed to Goldberg on the boat coming over from Russia. The agent asked her grandfather his name. He answered “Chaim Zenzelski.” “Is that with a D or a Z”? the agent asked. His response was “I don’t know”, having no idea what those letters were. The agent said “okay, from now on your name will be Goldberg”.
    There were 13 children and they were all Goldbergs. To this day no one in the family uses Zenzelski. Her grandfather had come from Russia and learned immediately to speak and write English. He moved to upstate New York where he got a real estate brokers stamp, Hyman Goldberg Real Estate. He bought a farm and opened a place called the Swan Lake Inn, which became the Swan Lake Hotel where he proudly walked around with a white linen suit, white patent leather shoes, a white panama hat, and a gold watch in his pocket while his wife cooked in the kitchen and the 13 children did the plumbing, painting, drove the carriage to the railroad station. They picked up guests and provided all the labor for paying guests.
    All this while her grandma was a “scholf”, a slave, while her husband was “the king”. He treated his children as workers. He lost his fortune digging a swimming pool for guests at the Swan Lake Hotel. He had money and engineering problems but failed to find water to fill the gorgeous pool. He became a visitor after his wife, Genesha, died. He would visit each child and each child would give him a meal and two dollars and he went back to his rented single room in Manhattan. Grandpa Chaim (Hyman) fell from a very high place.    Grace’s mother had two very loving parents who lived downstairs from her parents. Her maternal grandmother came to this country six years after her grandfather arrived. Grace’s grandmother, Rifka, taught herself to make clothes. It took her six years to save enough to come to the US, because Grace’s grandfather had been unsuccessful in finding a job or a way to support Rifka and their six year old son, Sammy. That six year old became Grace’s uncle Sam. Grandma Rifka came over with money she’d earned from making and selling clothes to people. She came by way of steerage carrying a little bag of Kosher food. Rifka refused to eat any food from the ship. Uncle Sam who was only six years old then, was very hungry and managed to get some food from a compassionate seaman. Grace’s grandmother told Uncle Sam she couldn’t eat it and he replied, “Mama, Mama, don’t worry, if it’s good it’s Kosher” and that was the way he lived the rest of his life. He was pragmatic. He knew in order to survive, he had to adapt. Grace’s Uncle Sam eventually went to Medical School. He also found a good neighborhood, East New York, Brooklyn, where he was delivering meat while working for a butcher. He found Flatbush on his bike. He spied Erasmus High School through the schoolyard. He said “that’s a good school, I want to go to that school.” So he lied about where he lived, and no one questioned him. He rode his bike from another neighborhood and pushed himself to succeed which he did. He graduated from Flatbush Erasmus Hall High School and went on to College. He married as he neared the end of Medical School and dropped out to open a Pharmacy in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, where he successfully raised a wonderful family,
    Grace had a sister Edith, who is six and a half years older than she. She learned an awful lot watching her sister interact with her mother. She learned to be more private than her sister who was completely dominated by the good wishes of her mother, Jean, who gave Edith piano lessons and elocution lessons. Grace learned a lot from her. She could go downstairs where her grandmother and grandfather lived and enjoy their stories. She learned to say, “Thank you Mom”, and then do what she wanted to do. Her mother, Jean, had only one brother, Sam. Her father, Joseph, came from a large Goldberg family with twelve brothers and sisters. Uncle Sam Lipofsky became Americanized right away. He played golf. His daughters wore orders and rode horseback in Prospect Park, his son Marvin, became a doctor and completed what Sam hadn’t been able to.
    Grace had many teachers that profoundly influenced her. She also had the Biltmore Movie Theatre, where her mother took her about three times a week to see all those glamorous cinemas. Grace’s first language was English but with an English accent. She spoke Yiddish, American English and English with a British accent because that’s what the actresses spoke in all those movies Grace saw. She thought that was the correct or preferred way to articulate the spoken word. Later, she learned to speak American when she played in the school yard.
   Grace must have been a gifted little artist because she clearly remembers being chosen by the Principal of her school to select the art work that was hung in the corridors. She must have been advanced for her age because she and her sister and her father had been drawing together for the better part of her life.  
   Grace remembers having had many teachers who had a profound influence on her. One was Ella Jackson. She was her High School Art Teacher and the person who told Grace and her friends that they had to go into Manhattan at least two days each month to walk around and observe how people acted and dressed. The teacher included going to the Museum of Modern Art. She wanted her students to be in the world of knowledge and to raise their perspectives from the mundane to a more worldly view. She also took examples of Grace’s work and mailed it to The National Academy in Washington DC. She taught Grace about wood cut work prints, and framed her work and sent it out to enter competitions. She was chosen to be accepted into some very fine competitions when she was very young and still in high school. Because of Ella Jackson, Grace became a serious artist. Grace was also a singer and was taking voice lessons. Her mother dragged her to all those programs. One was the Horn and Hardart’s Children’s Hour. Their catch phrase was “Less Work for Mother”. It was there she sang and got nauseous on the train and hated it, but her mother loved it because she was then an entertainer. Grace’s mom always meant well but it really clashed with Grace’s feelings. Grace always loved doing art work because she didn’t have to perform in public.
    Her favorite classes in school were her Art classes, English Literature and History. She was terrible in Math. She counted on her fingers
    Her grandmother, Rifka, would allow the children to hang their stockings up at Christmas time. Not by the fireplace, though they had a fake fireplace The stockings were hung in the kitchen where the dishtowels were hung to dry. Grandma crept up the steps and put money (Hanukah gelt) in their Christmas stockings.
    Given the opportunity now to live in both Great Neck and Florida we asked if Grace preferred any one of the four seasons she had lived with all her life. She expressed her love for not one but all of them. She also confessed to loving the aroma of baked apples with cinnamon which filled the entire house especially when guests were expected. She loved to bake apples with cinnamon. It made everything smell so lovely!
   We asked Grace to name all the schools she had attended during her life. She attended PS 72 across the street from a Reformed Dutch Church. There were wonderful teachers who made them do a Victory Garden during the second World War in a little patch of land near New Lots Avenue in Brooklyn. It was one of the oldest Elementary Schools in Brooklyn. When that building was torn down Grace was in Fourth Grade. Grace transferred to PS 182 on Wyonna Street. It took her a while to really love that school because PS 72 was quite a remarkable place. They told students all about the early Dutch settlers in New Lots and across the street from PS 72 was the old Schenk (Dutch) preserved cottage. There were cobblestones in the street and thoughts of the early settlers in New York were with her when she went to that school. The streets still had cobblestones in her neighborhood but she moved to a more modern building PS 182, where she stayed until 6th Grade and she went to Junior High School 149 on Sutter Avenue in Brooklyn where Danny Kay graduated. She wanted to major in Art so she traveled to Prospect Heights High School across the street from Brooklyn Museum and took classes at the Botanical Garden. It was within walking distance. She had a marvelous all girls high school experience and that was okay because she had a boyfriend Bernie from the age of sixteen, to whom she is still married.
    She was born in Jewish Hospital in 1932 in what she believed was Crown Heights. She had really good high school teachers that carried her all the way through College to Brentwood High School. She wanted to do for other kids what was done for her. Her teachers prepared her to know where to apply for scholarships.
    Grace’s father, Joseph, was a house painter – he was sick so her mother went to work as a sewing machine operator in the neighborhood. Neither parent had time to tell her what applications to fill out. Her teachers did that. Her teachers told her something about the School Art League which was an association of Businessmen from Brooklyn who supported talented art students. She won a four year scholarship to Parsons School of Design where she went when she graduated from high school. She stayed for a year but never liked the way they were training the students so she left. She lost her scholarship and the administration made her bring her parents up to their office because she was giving up such a marvelous advantage. Now she says she was a foolish child. She thought her High School training was more advanced than what she got at Parsons. Her high school had already had live nude models in her classes at Prospect Heights. She felt they were slowing her down so she left her scholarship.