{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/j38kd1r17z/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Abbatiello, Richard, 2004 July 15"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/013/original/yale-blue.png?1678220072","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Preferred Citation"]},"value":{"en":["Abbatiello, Richard, 2004 July 15. Oral Histories Documenting New Haven, Connecticut (RU 1055). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.\n\n https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/12/resources/2867."]}},{"label":{"en":["Source Metadata URI"]},"value":{"en":["https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/12/archival_objects/1002495"]}},{"label":{"en":["Publisher"]},"value":{"en":["Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library."]}},{"label":{"en":["Rights Statement"]},"value":{"en":["The materials are open for research.\n\nOriginal audiovisual materials, as well as preservation and duplicating masters, may not be played. Researchers must consult use copies, or if none exist must pay for a use copy, which is retained by the repository. Researchers wishing to obtain an additional copy for their personal use should consult Copying Services information on the Manuscripts and Archives web site."]}},{"label":{"en":["Identifier"]},"value":{"en":["mssa.ru.1055 (EAD ID)","RU 1055 (Call Number)","ru_1055_2008-A-001_Abbatiello,Richard(London)_Track01.mp3 (Digital Object ID)","ru_1055_2008-a-001_Abbatiello_Richard.mp3 (Digital Object ID)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["2004 July 15 (Creation)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Description"]},"value":{"en":["Richard Abbatiello recalls how urban renewal affected his life as a child growing up in New Haven. He was born on Chestnut Street in the East Street neighborhood, living above his father's machine shop, which his father started after leaving the A.C. Gilbert factory. Urban renewal forced the business to move to North Haven, and the family to move to Fair Haven Heights. Abbatiello discusses how the move affected him and the differences between the two neighborhoods, and reflects on his friend groups, working as a teenager in the family business, ethnic diversity, the roll of the Farnham Neighborhood House, and the merits of urban renewal. He also talks about his childhood admiration for Yale athletes like Johnny Lee and Albie Booth, and how that shaped his perception of the University. \n\nInterviewer: London, Douglas \n\nLength (min): 57 (Scope and Content Note)","https://preservica.library.yale.edu/explorer/explorer.html#prop:4\u0026amp;d212298b-539f-4711-8f7f-aa8f96e1ffbf (Other Finding Aid Note)","As a preservation measure, original materials may not be used. Digital access copies must be provided for use. Contact Manuscripts and Archives at beinecke.library@yale.edu to request access (Accessrestrict)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Format"]},"value":{"en":["computer files (wav)","duration_HH_MM_SS_mmm","audio/mpeg"]}},{"label":{"en":["Preservica Representation Type"]},"value":{"en":["Access-2"]}},{"label":{"en":["Preservica Uri"]},"value":{"en":["/structural-objects/3c6b08ef-cbcb-4f24-aca9-d73a300d408c"]}}],"summary":{"en":["Richard Abbatiello recalls how urban renewal affected his life as a child growing up in New Haven. He was born on Chestnut Street in the East Street neighborhood, living above his father's machine shop, which his father started after leaving the A.C. Gilbert factory. Urban renewal forced the business to move to North Haven, and the family to move to Fair Haven Heights. Abbatiello discusses how the move affected him and the differences between the two neighborhoods, and reflects on his friend groups, working as a teenager in the family business, ethnic diversity, the roll of the Farnham Neighborhood House, and the merits of urban renewal. He also talks about his childhood admiration for Yale athletes like Johnny Lee and Albie Booth, and how that shaped his perception of the University. \n\nInterviewer: London, Douglas \n\nLength (min): 57","https://preservica.library.yale.edu/explorer/explorer.html#prop:4\u0026amp;d212298b-539f-4711-8f7f-aa8f96e1ffbf","As a preservation measure, original materials may not be used. Digital access copies must be provided for use. Contact Manuscripts and Archives at beinecke.library@yale.edu to request access"]},"requiredStatement":{"label":{"en":["Attribution"]},"value":{"en":["The materials are open for research.\n\nOriginal audiovisual materials, as well as preservation and duplicating masters, may not be played. Researchers must consult use copies, or if none exist must pay for a use copy, which is retained by the repository. Researchers wishing to obtain an additional copy for their personal use should consult Copying Services information on the Manuscripts and Archives web site."]}},"provider":[{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["Manuscripts and Archives Yale University Library"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["Manuscripts and Archives Yale University Library"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/013/original/yale-blue.png?1678220072","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/public/images/audio-default.png","type":"Image","format":"image/png"}],"items":[{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 2 - open-uri20200615-6634-zkx1qn.mpga"]},"duration":3441.1102,"width":640,"height":40,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/public/images/audio-default.png","type":"Image","format":"image/png"}],"items":[{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-yalemssa.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/092/514/original/open-uri20200615-6634-zkx1qn.mpga?1592237400","type":"Audio","format":"audio/mpeg","duration":3441.1102,"width":640,"height":40},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["ru_1055_2008-A-001_Abbatiello_Richard_transcript_aligned [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So, tell me about your childhood. ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=14.53,16.47"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/2","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"RA:  Oh, my childhood.  [laughs]  It was an interesting, exciting childhood.  I was born on East Street, at 549 East Street, and I went to New Haven schools in the area of East Street. At that time Edward Street School, which is now Clifford Beers, and then around 1955, I believe it was—I’m not quite sure of the date—I was told that we were moving.  “Well, where are we moving to?  Why are we moving?”  And what we did, we moved up to Fair Haven Heights, up on Summit Street, and the reason we moved, and if you go into the neighborhood now on East Street, you will see the space that’s there that at one time was a three-family house, which we lived on the first floor.  And the house since, when we had to move because the house was demolished to make way for I-91.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=16.49,73.05"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/3","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So with a lot of trepidation, we moved, and our neighborhood we moved out of was an Italian neighborhood.  My grandparents had come from Italy and my parents were born here, and I, myself and my two brothers, Joe and Donald, were also born here.  So—and the neighborhood was pretty mixed.  We had quite a few Italians, but we also had quite a few Polish people, and it was a—my childhood was absolutely wonderful there.  I remember all the block parties, all the aunts and the uncles, and you’ve all heard before how people didn’t lock their doors.  Well, that’s very true.  Nobody locked their door.  The doors were always open, it was that type of thing.  We all walked to school and we just played real well.  ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=75.81,121.72"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/4","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And right across the street from us, I was very fortunate, to have the Farnham Neighborhood House.  It was a social service agency in New Haven, which is the oldest one in New Haven.  It’s like an old settlement house.  Farnham Neighborhood House also had to move from that neighborhood and they’ve moved over to Fillmore Street in Fair Haven, where they currently are.  So it was—in my eyes looking back, it was a pretty big blow to the neighborhood to lose an organization like the Farnham Neighborhood House for the East Street, Jocelyn Square area. ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=121.72,155.56"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/5","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So anyway, my childhood.  Then I went on and I moved up to Fair Haven Heights and I thought I needed a visa to get up there.  I thought I was going out in the country some place.  Actually, the road was a dirt road when we got there, and there was a water tank up on the hill.  [chuckles]  So it was kind of interesting, and I went—it was about sixth grade, I guess.  I went for one year at Benjamin Jepson School, which is still there on Quinnipiac Avenue.  Then from there, I was fortunate, I went over to the Fair Haven Junior High School, which is on Grand Avenue, which now they call Fair Haven Middle School.  We walked to school.  No bus picked us up.  [chuckles]  And we walked.  It was a good mile, and I can remember walking to school with books, a gym bag and a saxophone in the other hand, and you went along.  And that’s how you got to school and you cross the Grand Avenue Bridge in the wind and the rain.  Mom had given me a hat to wear that had earmuffs on it.  Of course, soon as I got away from the house where she couldn’t see me, the hat went in my pocket, and heaven forbid anybody saw with a hat with earmuffs.  But I got to tell you, “Thank you, mom,” because when I got to the Grand Avenue Bridge, I would look around and there would be nobody looking, I’d put the hat on, cover my ears and run like hell across the bridge.  [laughs]  ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=156.23,240.59"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/6","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"DL: How old were you when you moved from East Street over to Fair Haven Heights? ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=240.61,245.65"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/7","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"RA: Yeah, I guess if I was in sixth grade, I must have been maybe twelve years old. ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=245.67,251.2"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/8","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"DL: Okay. ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=251.21,251.26"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/9","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"RA: Something like that.  Yeah.  So then there I went to Fair Haven Junior High School, which was really a good school. We had kids from all over this part of New Haven would come there, so you made a lot of friends and it was really good.  Played sports and participated in the band and the student council.  You know, that type of thing.  ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=251.28,274.68"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/10","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"But from there I went over to Wilbur Cross, which at that time was located up on Tower Parkway across the street from the Payne Whitney Gymnasium and Wilbur Cross was on one side of the street and Hillhouse High School was on the other side of the street and it was attached to Boardman Trade, which is now called Eli Whitney.  So we went there for one year, or two years—I’m not quite sure.  I don’t remember, and then we went over to the new school, which is on Mitchell Drive, Wilbur Cross High School.  I graduated from Wilbur Cross in 1959.  I played sports.  I was fortunate enough—played football and did pretty good.  Played some other sports, was on the student council, participated when, I could, in volunteerism.  Stayed close to the Farnham Neighborhood House, worked there during the summers as a counselor and that type of thing. ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=275.38,337.55"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/11","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"DL: So, anyway, we can break it down.  So, first, we can talk about your memories of the neighborhood around East Street.  You were talking about it was Italian, but also some Polish people. ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=339.31,352.77"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/12","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"RA: Sure. ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=353.65,353.7"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/13","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"DL: Do you remember enjoying that neighborhood?  What was your sense of that neighborhood? ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=353.72,357.9"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/14","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"RA: Well, my neighborhood where I was born, on East Street?  ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=357.91,359.83"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/15","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"DL: Uh-hmm. ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=359.85,359.95"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/16","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"RA: Oh, well that—I still have wonderful memories, because, you know, I was young so I didn’t know that maybe dad and mom were working twelve hours a day.  You know, we didn’t know these things.  I remember it as being people being very, very caring for each other.  And always going on picnics.  We would go to Wharton Brook [?], as a whole group would go or we would go to Jocelyn Square down the street, the whole block would go.  You know, that type of thing.  So my memories of East Street in New Haven at that time in that young part of my life are just wonderful.  ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=359.97,398.97"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/17","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"I could even remember as much as Mrs. Carrano taking myself and Frankie—we would walk down to the corner of Bishop and State and—let me give my age away—we walked down to Bishop and State and we would take the trolley to downtown New Haven and then we would transfer and get on the trolley to Lighthouse and we would go to Lighthouse.  Of course, Frankie and I didn’t want to pay, so when the trolley stopped, we would jump out the back window, like I’m sure a lot of people have done.  So that was a—and I remember that and I still know Frankie and his sister and his family.  ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=399.19,436.21"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/18","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"I still have friends that are close friends of mine from the neighborhood that I grew up in.  One fellow in particular, George Waldron.  I mention his name because George—many of the people that I grew up with, it’s interesting how professionally a lot of us didn’t think in those terms then.  Our parents were working.  College was something, I don’t know, we didn’t even talk about.  We didn’t even know what a college was, tell you the truth, but many of the guys and girls have gone on and done very well.  And I mention George Waldron, he’s a workman’s comp commissioner, very involved in the Irish community in New Haven here. There’s just a whole bunch of other guys and girls that have remained my friends, and when I moved from there to Fair Haven Heights, I was fortunate because I’d already established a big base of friends on East Street and Hamilton Street area, State Street, Wallace Street.  Now, I went to Fair Haven Heights.  Now I had the people from, the kids from Fair Haven Heights became my friends. ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=437.81,499.5"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/19","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And I used to—we used to take the bus, when we were in seventh and eighth grade, from Fair Haven Heights.  We used to take the bus to the corner of Grand and East Street, and then we used to walk from there to the Farnham Neighborhood House and play basketball.  You know, so—and the kids mingled in the neighborhood and all that.  ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=499.51,518.37"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/20","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Also, from Fair Haven Heights neighborhood, it was different than where I came from because things like—it was new to me.  I actually had a sandwich on white bread, Wonder Bread.  I never had Wonder Bread.  I didn’t know what it was.  [laughs]  And I had a sandwich on that, and I met other people that I didn’t realize, “Oh, my goodness.  What’s that in the dish?”  I didn’t recognize it.  You know, that type of thing.  ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=518.85,545.59"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/21","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"But I got to tell you, mom’s house in Fair Haven Heights was the focal point.  Everybody came to mom to enjoy the house.  Let me just—if you don’t mind my backing up, as I remember all these things, it’s absolutely wonderful.  I remember when I was on East Street, an interesting story about my mom and dad and how people worked with character and ethics.  Dad had worked at A.C. Gilbert for ten to twelve years and he always wanted to have his own business.  So what does he do?  Pop is a machinist, you know, so he’s going to open a butcher shop.  So dad opens a butcher shop on East Street, where the Marrakech is now on East Street near State Street.  And dad opens a butcher shop in there and I’m old enough to remember all this and understand all this, so of course, six months later he closes the butcher shop and we’re out on the street, literally.  So what does dad do?  In fact, the butcher shop became Wozniak’s, which was a great Polish market, which still exists on Grand Avenue nowadays.  So dad borrowed six hundred dollars from my grandma, my mother’s mother, and he and another guy bought a machine, a grinding machine back then for manufacturing, and they put it in a garage, and they started doing work trying to go around for people and get work.  And that’s what my dad did.  And then they got two machines, and before you knew it, he had grown the business and we were still in—I still remember in on East Street, and he had himself a little place some place on Chestnut Street, which of course nothing is there anymore because they tore down all those big buildings that were there, all those jobs that were there.  And I’ll get to what happened to my family with that. ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=546.31,665.49"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/22","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So dad—and I can remember, you know, dad and mom working hard.  There were three of us.  We had a four room place.  We had myself and my two brothers, we all slept in one room.  Of course, nowadays everybody needs their own room, their own TV, their own computer.  It’s amazing.  But I slept in the same bed with my brother Joe and my brother, Don, he was the oldest guy so he had his own bed.  You know, he was the king, and near the window, too, and I’m sure he had the best spot in the closet.  We only had one.  ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=666.08,693.35"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/23","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So, dad, you know, was out trying to hustle and work, and I could imagine—God only knows how many hours he was working a day, but I can remember visitors would come to the house, and who they were.  There were other men from Yonkers, New York and from Brooklyn who were in the field.  Dad was a manufacturer doing grinding work, but the ultimate parts went to the electronics industry and the electronics industry in this country started in New York and Chicago, and dad was doing work for some of these guys in New York, Yonkers, and those places in Brooklyn.  They would come to New Haven and go over the design or, you know, whatever they had to do with the machines.  Of course, now you can’t just say goodnight to them and send them home, but pop didn’t have any money to take them out for dinner.  So what do you do?  And this wonderful.  I wish I had pictures of this, but I don’t.  No one took them.  Mom would make this unbelievable Italian dinner on East Street in the kitchen and these men, maybe three or four men, my mom, my dad—of course, we ate first because there wasn’t enough room to sit around, everybody eat at one time.  We ate first and we were sent off to the living room or the bedroom.  The men would stay at the table with my mom and dad and they would eat.  They would have macaroni.  They would have all the meats and mom would make all that stuff for them, and they’d drink wine.  It was amazing, and I got to tell you, eventually I went into business, my father’s business, and when I used to go and see these same men who at this time had gone on to be pretty successful, their own companies, that type of thing.  When they saw me—maybe I was by that time, when I got to be around thirty years old—did they want to talk business?  No.  No, they said, “Richard, we can talk business to you on the telephone.  We can talk for a minute.  We want to talk about your mom and dad.  We want to talk about East Street eating dinner at your mother’s house and what wonderful parents they were and how warm it was for us,” these same guys who didn’t really know, but we were all the same.  Everybody looking for warmth and understanding, and this is what they talked about when I visited them, and it was—to me, that was the most memorable part of living on East Street in my business life and the friends that I met from that point, from mom and dad.  So I think to me that’s quite an emotional thing.  [laughs]","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=694.91,851.26"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/24","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"DL: Did anything like that continue after you moved into Fair Haven Heights? ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=851.28,857.35"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/25","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"RA: Yeah, in Fair Haven Heights, it’s amazing.  Dad built his business on personal relationships and I think a lot of businesses in those days were built on that.  By this time, dad had moved from Chestnut Street.  I’ll never forget—talk about traumatic because we had to move out of the house and we had to move his little business that he had on Chestnut Street and the notice, I believe was, “You have thirty days to move.”  Listen, those big factories were there.  Some people might remember the factory next to us where they had the big garment fire and the people died.  I can remember that.  But dad was in the basement there at that time, maybe with about twenty employees.  Twenty employees from New Haven.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=858.83,902.58"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/26","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So now what does he do?  He has no place to go.  So—I know what he did.  Eventually I found out as I got older.  I mean, he borrowed and he mortgaged everything and he built a little building in North Haven and they moved out to North Haven, in the Mount Louise area, and fortunately, the people that worked for day, followed him.  These were ex A.C. Gilbert people.  By then A.C. Gilbert was going down out of business, and dad knew a lot of these people and they came to dad.   My dad’s name was Joseph, and they came to him and he gave them jobs.  They were reliable.  They knew each other.  So I would say dad’s business, about ninety percent of the people that worked there were former A.C. Gilbert employees.  ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=904.79,951.77"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/27","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Then we went to North Haven with the business, so from what happened in New Haven to our family, redevelopment was we not only had to move our home, but we also had to move the business.  And the uncertainties that were involved and now that I look back on these things and I don’t think it was available then, people now have more foresight, where you don’t just move somebody and a business, too.  All that tax base and all those jobs, it was awful.  And not give them some place else to move to or help them to move to another part of the city.  The city doesn’t want to lose taxes.  They don’t want to lose jobs.  Socially it’s not good.  Economically it’s not good, but I don’t think back then that was a consideration.  It was just go.  You’ve got so many days to go, and I think other people probably have said and you could read how many companies left New Haven at that time.  Mossberg was one I could think about. They left when we did.  I think if you went to North Haven and East Haven, you would see well over half the companies in those towns were started in New Haven, but left because of what happened, what they call ‘redevelopment’ in quotes.  I think that was a big affect on a lot of people. ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=952.68,1031.07"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/28","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"DL: So just to elaborate.  After, I guess it was the city that put up the sign and said, “You have thirty days,” did they do anything, you know, to help anyone move? ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=1033.02,1042.16"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/29","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"RA: As far as I know and what I’ve read, no.  They didn’t do anything like that, and not only it affected our life on East Street, but you talk about a neighborhood and family, across the street from us diagonally lived my grandmother and grandfather and some of my aunts and uncles, and unfortunately, their house had to go away, too.  So that house came down and they moved over to Mechanic Street.  We were fortunate that they didn’t move too far, but it was a very disruptive thing in the neighborhood, no doubt about it.  Romanex, the Polish candy shop, he had to move.  Back then people have talked to you about Rossler’s and other places, if you knew them.  Farnham House had to move, like I said, you know.  So it was pretty disruptive, as a youth.  Even as a youth, but I can only imagine what my parents went through and the adults went through.  Of course, you know, we didn’t know that.  We were protected from some of that.  ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=1042.18,1105.79"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/30","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"DL: So do you think your parents were happy living on East Street in that neighborhood? ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=1107.52,1112.29"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/31","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"RA: I think, you know, it’s a good question and I think people are still asking themselves that question.  For me it’s nostalgia.  I played with my buddies.  We went down the park.  We played kick the can and we played hide and go seek.  I remember making tomatoes in the back yard.  They’d give us a stick and we had stuff the tomatoes down the soda bottles that the ladies were making.  So for me it was fun.  You know, cut the eggplant.  I didn’t cut.  I could sort them out.  God forbid I got near a knife.  You know, I’d get hit in the back of the head.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=1112.29,1147.26"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/32","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So I think for me I have that feeling about it.  Now, for mom and dad, would they have preferred to stay there?  I think so, if they had a better way there, but it was like the American Dream.  I mean, don’t forget, we lived in three-family houses, which were fine.  They were clean.  There was no doubt about that.  They were absolutely wonderful, but they were small. You had tiny closet space.  Nobody I—not on our side of the street had a garage.  The other side of the street, some of the people had a garage.  We had a little teeny backyard. So I think mom and dad were trying to make a better life for their children and for themselves, too, and this was the way of doing it, moving where we went to Fair Haven.  Fair Haven Heights, at that time.  We moved to ranch style house and we actually had two bathrooms in the house.  You know, that type of thing. ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=1148.17,1201.97"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/33","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So was it good?  You know, and it’s funny because nowadays people are coming back to the city more, which is a wonderful thing, but they’re coming back with a little more wealth in their pockets.  They’re not coming back for the same reasons that people might have years ago, that people left.  It’s almost like they’re reversed. A lot of people have made pretty good on the outside.  Now they’re coming back.  This is the opportunity.  This is the new way in the metropolitan area, and back then the other way was “Phew, let me get out in the burbs.  Get my little house, a little driveway, my car,” and how could you—you know, people wanted to do better.  ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=1202.32,1239.83"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/34","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"DL: So you talked a little bit before about the friends that you had, once you moved to Fair Haven.  ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=1241.92,1249.37"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/35","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"RA: Right. ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=1249.39,1249.45"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/36","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"DL: Are there any specific stories you remember, having two groups of friends, combing them?  Something like that. ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=1249.72,1257.63"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/37","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"RA: Yeah.  That’s an interesting question.  Yeah, my friends from Fair Haven Heights and my friends from East Street area and all, we would play against each other in basketball.  You know, we’d come down and the skins and the shirts. We didn’t have—nobody had a lot of shirts, believe me.  You didn’t have anybody sponsoring you, so we had the skins and the shirts, and we would play basketball together.  Whether if we played at the Farnham House or if we played at a park, we played on Jocelyn Square, and if it was cold out and winter, you’d shovel the basketball court.  I mean, nobody came and cleaned it for you.  You came with your shovel and shoveled the basketball court and you played basketball and you had a ball. \t","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=1257.65,1302.69"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/38","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Yeah, we mingled and it was really good because when I got to high school, it was the same guys.  We were all at the same high school and they knew each other somewhat, some of them, and it made much more for cohesiveness type of situation.  It’s funny, also, the guys from Fair Haven Heights, there’s about six of us that are really close still, five or six of us, and we just got together only this part fourth of July.  We had a picnic together, and we do still see each other, two, three, four times a year, I mean.  ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=1303.59,1340.66"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/39","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So the bond is there and one of the things I mentioned just—I know it’s not the same thing, but just as it comes to mind again, when we lived in Fair Haven, I don’t know if I mentioned, we used to take the bus from Fair Haven Heights down to Broadway, the Payne Whitney Gymnasium and we worked there at—work.  I call it work, because we wanted to get into the gym and we’d do anything to see athletes.  This was a very interesting thing for me as a youth, what developed later on my life.  We would work as rope guards at the basketball games.  We would hold the rope during halftime and before the game, so people wouldn’t go on the basketball court, and people would say to us, “What do you mean?  Not that many people go to Yale games.”  I said, “Oh, no, no, no.  You don’t understand.”  I said, “Robinson played for Yale then.  They had Johnny Lee.”  This is a team that went onto the NCAA’s.  Let me tell, you the place was packed.  It was wonderful and we didn’t want t miss a game.  We didn’t miss a game.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=1340.67,1408.95"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/40","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"We did the basketball and then when they had the swimming meets, we did the swimming meets. They used to pack the place at Yale for swimming.  They had what they called the swimming carnivals.  You had the great divers from all over the world used to come in and dive and we were just little kids.  We were in eighth grade, seventh grade.  There we were, watching all this stuff, and so we loved it.  We’d take the bus down in the snow and that.  ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=1408.96,1429.87"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/41","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So Johnny Lee was an All American, a great.  And we’d go down the ball and we’d say, “Gimme the ball, Robinson.  Gimme the ball.  Johnny Lee shooting from the corner.  Two points.  Yay!  Wonderful!” All that.  So it was great. ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=1431.11,1443.26"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/42","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Maybe four or five years ago, I’m not quite sure of the exact—I was so fortunate to—a friend of mine that is at Yale Athletic Department said, “Come on, we’re going to go over the Payne Whitney Gym because they’re dedicating the amphitheater and they’re calling it the Lee Amphitheater.”  Is that correct?  Yeah, they were.  I said, “Lee?”  He said, “Yeah, Johnny Lee.”  I said, “Johnny Lee?”  I says, “No.”  He said, “Yeah.”  I said, “Oh, we’re going.”  We were at the hockey game.  We left the hockey game.  We went over there to see Johnny Lee.  [phone rings]","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=1444.8,1480.55"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/43","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"DL: Do you want to get it?  You can get it, if you want, I can pause it. ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=1480.57,1483.69"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/44","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"[end of Track 2]","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=1483.71,1483.85"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/45","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"RA: So we went over to the Payne Whitney Gymnasium and there’s all these people are there, and there’s Johnny Lee.  I tell you, my heart was pounding.  It was like, “Oh, my God, Johnny Lee.”  Of course, he’s not that much older than me, but back then, you know, there was quite a difference.  It’s different.  So I introduced myself to Johnny Lee and we started talking, and we talked for about a half hour and it was one of the most wonderful memories I have because what did we talk about?  I called him Mr. Lee.  He says, “No, call me Johnny.”  I said, “I’ve got to call you Mr. Lee.  You were always”—so we talked.  I said, “You don’t understand.”  I said, “I don’t think back then the athletes at Yale realized the impact that they had on the youth of New Haven.  I don’t think it was publicized.  I don’t think you guys went out into the schools like athletes do nowadays into the public, but I gotta tell you, the athletes at Yale really had a big affect on a lot of our lives as children, because I gotta tell.  Because when you went to the park, who did you want to be?  You wanted to be Johnny Lee.  You wanted to be Robinson.”  He says, “No, you didn’t even know our names.” I said, “Oh, yes, we did.  Let me tell you, every time we played, if you were Johnny Lee, you were the star of the game,” and I got to tell you, Mr. Lee, he had tears in his eyes, as we talked.  He said, “I never realized, Dick, that people, youth were like that.”  I says, “Oh, yeah, very much so,” and it was the same thing with the football when McGill and Locke played and those guys and all that. ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=1483.87,1591.22"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/46","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"It was the same type of thing.  We worked at Yale Bowl.  Work.  I say, we were rope guards.  They had sixty-five thousand people at a game.  Just to get into the game, you’d do anything, and we did, and we’d take the bus there. ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=1591.24,1602.93"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/47","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So that memory of Yale and New Haven and my youth go all the way back, and I tell you, I think for you, and Mr. Lee has since passed away, unfortunately, but that was quite a moment for me.  ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=1603.41,1620.52"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/48","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"DL: Growing up was your connection with Yale mostly through athletics? ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=1620.53,1624.48"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/49","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"RA: Yes, through athletics.  That was the connection.  You know, we were young and our high school was across the street from the Yale area.  We didn’t really mingle and we didn’t really, from what I can recall, it wasn’t like today where Yale’s so involved in the community and in the children of New Haven.  It was different, but as far as going to their games, we did anything for years just to go to any athletic game at Yale University. ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=1624.49,1657.13"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/50","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"I’ll never forget another great thing for me.  When I was in Fair Haven Junior High School, I was in seventh grade, I think, and I was on the student council.  The word was Alby Booth is coming to Fair Haven.  “Alby Booth?  What do you mean Alby Booth?”  Alby Booth by that time had graduated already, but his daughter was a teacher at Fair Haven at one time.  So I had the honor of meeting Alby Booth at the door of Fair Haven Junior High School and escorting him around the school.  So there’s another great memory for me.  It’s all coming to me, as you—and you realize how much Yale actually did have an affect on my life.  Informally, but yet here’s Johnny Lee and Alby Booth and so it was wonderful.  Yeah.  Yeah. ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=1657.69,1712.63"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/51","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"DL: So you were just talking a little bit about Fair Haven, or actually about the East Street neighborhood. Were a lot of the people that you were friends with at the time in the same situation?  Did they move, also?  How many people? ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=1715.96,1732.01"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/52","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"RA: Yeah.  How many people exactly, I don’t know because I was young and I don’t know, but yes.  A lot of people had to move because I could tell by what’s not there anymore.  [chuckles]  And what happened.  And so they moved for reasons like that and then when the construction came in, you know, people didn’t want to be, you know, living underneath the highway or next door with all this construction and trucks type of thing.  I also think—as a matter of fact, I know that when a was little child on East Street, across the street was Mayor DeStefano’s family lived on East Street, which was—and I didn’t know because I was too young.  I know now.  ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=1732.03,1775.97"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/53","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So, yeah, people had to move, but a lot of people moved, I believe was part of this idea of moving out of the city.  I think they moved to East Haven. They moved to North Haven were the two big towns that people went to.  Yeah, so it did affect the neighborhood because it was like the catalyst that made people, “Oh, the neighborhood’s going to heck.  So and so’s moving.  It’s dirty now.”  It was that type of thing.  I think there was a lot of that going on.  I think even when the Farnham House went, you know, they saw a real anchor in the neighborhood go.  A place for their children to go after school.  A place for their children to go at night.  Where were they going to go after that?  The closest place was the boy’s club, which was a pretty good walk from where we lived.  ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=1778.4,1831.1"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/54","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So I think all those things came together to, you know, people said, “Oh, maybe it’s time for me to move.”  They wiped out Hamilton Street next to East Street, behind there.  All those stores went.  Rossler’s went. A  lot of people just left.  Bettina’s and, you know, places like that I remember.  Yeah, so I think it had an affect back then, too. ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=1831.77,1859.76"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/55","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"DL: Do you remember much else about the businesses that were around there before and then afterwards? ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=1860.98,1865.12"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/56","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"RA: Well, as a matter of fact, my grandma and grandpa owned a little grocery store, and that’s how they made a living for all their lives and brought up ten children.   And mom and dad—not mom, but—not dad, mom, mom and the kids, they lived in the back of the grocery store.  I remember the beads hanging between the door and grandma, you know, you go there and she had the lentil beans and the kidney beans in the bins.  Not in sanitized ceramic wrap, and you stick your hand in there and then you try to run like hell so you could rob the beans and shoot them for your pea shooter, and then there’s my grandma running down the street after you.  So, it was that—you know, that type of thing.  I remember that. Yeah, so their business went. Fortunately, by that time they were older and their children were older, so they economically didn’t feel it as bad as they might have.  So we were very fortunate that way.  But, yeah, people did have to move, because, you know, like I say, the highway came in and it wasn’t a pleasant thing.  Unfortunately, it came right through the neighborhood.  I mean, just right through there and then it followed behind is in all that the River Street area, all that got wiped out, too.  So that was it, yeah. ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=1865.12,1948.88"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/57","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"DL: And how do you think that compares to what the businesses were like in Fair Haven Heights and the character of that neighborhood, once you moved in? ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=1948.91,1957.67"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/58","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"RA: Yeah.  I think in Fair Haven, of course, up at the Heights we didn’t have any businesses.  It was residential.  That was a big thing, a new word ‘residential.’  So it was residential, but you walked five blocks away, four blocks, then you start running into the little places again.  You had, you know, the luncheonettes and the hardware store and the Pequot Theater and Charlie Firestone, Perkins.  Places like that you had.  So they were all family owned places, which was wonderful.  It was the same thing in the East Street area.  It was all family—everything was family owned or individual proprietor.  I mean, you know, and everybody knew everybody’s name and “How you doing?”  You know, that type of thing.  ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=1957.68,2008.56"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/59","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So as far as manufacturing businesses go, I think there weren’t that many businesses in the Fair Haven area at that time.  They were more in the area of the New Haven Clock Company, in that area down there.  That whole area of Chapel Street, Chestnut Street, East Street and when they took those buildings down for redevelopment—not even for the highway, but what they called redevelopment—there were tons of companies in those.  That’s how it was then.  You know, at one time there might have been one big company, but then the subdivided the buildings.  And they knocked them down.  You know, we always talk about that, my wife and I.  I know we always—because we walk into town all the town.  From where I live now, we’re in town every day, literally, and we go by the parking lot where Shartenberg’s used to be.  Now it’s a parking lot, and this type of thing.  ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=2009.04,2065.78"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/60","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"[end of Track 3]","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=2066.61,2066.74"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/61","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"DL: So if somebody comes by and you’re going to show them the old neighborhood, where do you take them? ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=2066.76,2075.24"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/62","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"RA: Well, it’s another interesting question because I feel very fortunate that I experienced New Haven as a child and lived here and have grown up at this stage because my neighbors, many of my neighbors come—in this apartment complex, come from other parts of the world. Not just the country, but other parts of the world, and that gives you a little side bit.  What we usually do on Thanksgiving Day, my wife and I in our apartment, we have Thanksgiving in our apartment and it’s nothing to have twenty-two, twenty-four people here.  I’ll never forget, a few years ago, we had people from seven different countries, which was phenomenal.  I’ll never forget, we got a phone call in the morning from dear friends. They were from Iran and they said, “What are we supposed to bring?  What’s this holiday?”  So that’s that kind of thing. ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=2075.25,2129.43"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/63","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So what I have tried to do with my neighbors here is they’re always asking me about New Haven because they know I’m involved in the school system.  I lived in New Haven, you know, most of my life.  I was brought up here.  They say, “Well, what’s it like?  What was it like?  What’s it like now?” and we talk a lot about it.  What I do very often, I say, “Okay, pile into the car,” and we get in the car and we drive around, and I show them where I was born.  Where my grandparents were.  Where the store was, and then I show where the Farnham House was and where it is now, and then I take them to other neighborhoods.  So for me—and they get a real sense of community that way, and I love doing it.  I chatter their ear, but they don’t mind listening because they want to hear about it.  ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=2129.89,2181.68"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/64","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"DL: Okay.  And just to clarify so we have it on the record, right now we’re—the apartment now is on Linden Street. ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=2181.7,2188.21"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/65","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"RA: Linden Street, one half block from Whitney Avenue and it’s an apartment complex year. ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=2188.44,2194.12"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/66","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"DL: Great.  So do you think you’re identified—which neighborhood do you identify the most with from your childhood? ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=2194.29,2203.98"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/67","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"RA: I think—I identify with two neighborhoods, really.  I was fortunate.  I was fortunate to a certain age to live on East Street, in the Beech Street, State Street and Hamilton Street area.  Then I moved down to Fair Haven Heights area.  As a child, if you want to say my childhood neighborhood, I do go back to East Street.  That’s what I feel.  I still feel, even though I was young, I feel the connections.  I relive every day.  I mean, I could play kick the can and the old ladies hollering at you for, you know, stealing the peaches off their trees, and you know, this type of thing.  And I remember the safety, the warmth.  That’s a big part of it that you remember.  ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=2207.81,2255.23"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/68","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"DL: If we can switch gear a little reflective. ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=2257.03,2261.31"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/69","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"RA: Sure. ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=2261.68,2261.9"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/70","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"[end of Track 4]","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=2262.12,2262.25"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/71","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"DL: I know you weren’t old enough at the time, but do you think—or maybe your parents voted for Dick Lee?  Would you have voted for Dick Lee, do you think? ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=2262.27,2270.54"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/72","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"RA: Oh, I’m pretty sure my parents voted for Dick Lee.  And would I have voted for Dick Lee?  Sure.  I mean, at the time—everything is in perspective.  Hindsight is wonderful.  We’d all be billionaires in the stock market and there’d be social justice and a lot of other things in this world, but that’s hindsight.  So I think that it was a new vision.  It was something.  People needed something.  You know, the war had been over for awhile.  Then you had the Korean War, and they needed something to grab onto.  So now we’re going to do something new.  New usually means better.  Not necessarily, but I think in the minds that’s what happens, and I think that’s what really—yeah, sure, they would have voted for him.  I believe so, and probably myself, too.  I mean, geez, I’m going to make a better neighborhood.  I’m going to make a better life.  I’m going to give opportunity.  Yeah.  [phone rings]  May as well.  ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=2270.68,2328.06"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/73","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"[end of Track 5]","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=2328.08,2329.79"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/74","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"RA: You can shut it off, if you want.  I don’t know what—that’s my youth.  Like I say, going to Jocelyn Square, going to Wrights Field and Blake Field, at that time.  We used to go down there, walk from East Street and every Friday night they had what they called block dances.  They had these huge dances in what we called an ice skating rink.  It was cement really.  They used to freeze it over in the winter, but in the summer and spring—[phone rings]","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=2329.81,2357.23"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/75","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"[end of Track 6]","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=2357.23,2357.33"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/76","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"DL: So we were talking about Dick Lee and sort of vision for the city.  Looking at urban renewal, however you may define it, do you think it was good for the city? ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=2357.35,2370.32"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/77","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"RA: Well—well, like I said, I think now that we’ve had years to think about, no, would have done things differently absolutely, but here again, you’re looking at it with hindsight.  I think some of the things that could have been differently was from an economic point of view, offering alternative places for these businesses that you moved out.  I think that was a very sad thing to happen to New Haven because you lost a big tax base, and also you lost an opportunity for people that lived in this city to work in this city, without—if they didn’t have an automobile.  And you had new people coming into New Haven and new migration and they didn’t have money.  They didn’t have money to buy cars and to go out into the suburbs and work, so they came into the city and there were no jobs.  Me, as an old factory guy, I think it was a crime because in the factories you had, you know, the board companies, the manufacturers you had here was an opportunity to go to work.  You could have gone to work in one of these companies, work on the docks.  You could have worked on the floor, but you had the opportunity to better yourself.  You know, there was training going on.  You had a job.  A job leads to stability.  It leads to your family, you help support family and I think to me that was one of the big crimes that happened with redevelopment with jobs type of thing. ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=2370.33,2474.73"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/78","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"In fact, just the other day in the paper there was a nice article—not nice in the sense, but it brought out this point about some of the homeless and some of these people, under-employed people because they don’t have jobs.  You have jobs, but they don’t pay.  They don’t pay benefits.  They don’t pay enough money to make a living, and I think you could have extended the manufacturers for many, many more years, because a lot of these manufacturing companies are still in business.  It’s not like manufacturing has, you know, completely gone overseas, folks.  I mean—and it’s a shame.  If they had place—no, I don’t think anybody wanted to move.  Why would you want to move?  You had your workforce here.  You had all your vendors here.  You knew each other.  You had schools that your board and trade, that was training people, you know, in that type of field.  So I think that point was really bad. ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=2475.23,2524.8"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/79","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And I think, obviously, you take like the neighborhood I came from, East Street, it just broke up the neighborhood.  The highway came through and that was it, and then people scattered, and it was a shame.  I think it caused a lot of problems that way, and you had, you know, you’ve heard ‘White Flight,” and it happened and it was a shame.  Whereas if you had, I think nowadays I like what I see what’s going on, you know, in the city with the Mayor and other people.  You know, they have some foresight.  You know, the business—they want businesses to stay.  They’re encouraging them.  The housing, they encourage housing, affordable housing.  But they’ve had the benefit to learn from history and so the legacy of urban renewal, pretty good history lesson.  So it’s tough to argue with.  It’s tough to argue with. ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=2525.22,2577.49"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/80","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Did you need turnpikes and highways?  Yeah, you did.  You did.  You had to move goods.  You had to move people.  You know, it’s kind of—it’s tough.  It’s a tough decision.  We’re in a different era now than we were then and now with the benefit, you know, past mistakes and things that did work.  ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=2577.68,2594.61"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/81","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"DL: How did you get your start in manufacturing?  ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=2595.29,2600.95"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/82","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"RA: Well, I told you about my dad.  You know, he started off and work, work, work.  I had gone to school.  I’d gone to Wilbur Cross and I went to Southern Connecticut for a couple years, and then I transferred up to the University of New Hampshire, and I graduated from there with a degree in business and finance.  I came home and I worked around for a year or two here and there and really didn’t know what I wanted to do, type of thing, and tried different things.  Spent a little time in the service, in the Army Reserves, and then I went into business with my dad.  I asked him if it was all right if I came to work there.  I had worked there one or two summers, when I wasn’t working at Camp Farnham. ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=2601.68,2647.26"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/83","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So I went to work there and that in itself was an interesting case, where I went to work thinking I knew everything.  I showed up at work with a pair of pants and a nice shirt and a pair of shoes on, and I showed up at eight o’clock in the morning and my dad’s there and he says, “Where are you going?”  I said, “I’m going to work.”  He said, “Let me tell you something.”  He said, “First off, work starts here at seven thirty.”  He says, “Secondly, you don’t dress like that for work.”  [phone rings]  He said, “Thirdly,” he said, “you’re what they call the ‘boss’s son,’ which means you get here an hour earlier than anybody else.  You set the example.  You don’t come in afterwards.”  He says, “So what you do is, you go home,” and I did.  “You go home and you put a pair on jeans on.  You put a lousy shirt on that you don’t care what happens to, and a pair of sneakers, and when you come back, you go around the side of the building, and there’s a door there with a sign that says ‘Employees’ Entrance.’  You come in that door and you go see your uncle in shipping and ask him if he has a job for you.”  Well, three years later, I got out of the factory.  I learned every job in that factory.  I learned every machine.  I did every dirty job that you could possibly think of, but the greatest thing I learned is people.  It was wonderful.  My dad, he always taught me, you treat everybody like you want to be treated, and that was his way of teaching you this and it was wonderful.  I built up a great relationship with the people and I stayed in the business all my life, until I retired.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=2648.06,2748.88"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/84","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"But I think the greatest thing for me was being with the people and learning, you know, with people and everybody’s plight.  We’re in it together.  We all got to get up in the morning and go to work, and so they were great lessons and I went to, I can’t tell you, how many christenings and birthday parties and marriages I went to, and bar mitzvahs and all the different foods I ate and the galumpkees.  So, no, it was wonderful.  I had a great career in the manufacturing business. ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=2749.73,2776.5"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/85","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"DL: What happened to your business now, since you retired? ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=2777.57,2780.2"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/86","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"RA: Yeah, what happened was I—we had sold our business. Times were changing.  Technology was moving very, very rapidly. As a manufacturer, you know, you could make certain parts and before you know it, they could be also designed out because you’re not making an end product.  You don’t have control on that, and some of that did happen to us.  Then we started losing business at that time to the Japanese.  Then the Taiwanese, as I said, were in the electronics end of things.  ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=2780.22,2812.76"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/87","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So we saw—we said it was maybe time to pack it in a little bit, and so we sold to a company because we had set up an Irish factory.  We had a factory in Ireland, small division and we had a small division in Hong Kong at that time, which I was fortunate enough to be able to go to Ireland and Hong Kong, the states.  So it was that type of thing.  So then we sold it and I decided—I worked there for a little while, but I left.  I decided I didn’t want to do this anymore, so I left the manufacturing business.  Basically, I’ve been retired since then.  I’ve done a little consulting work, but I’ve really devoted my time to New Haven and things that I always wanted to do.  I’m very active with the youth group at Farnham Neighborhood House.  I’ve been on the board of directors.  I was president for six years.  You know, it’s a great program we have down there with about two hundred and thirty kids after school program.  We’re open seven days a week.  ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=2813.54,2877.94"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/88","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"I served on different boards in New Haven and committees.  I’m currently serving my seventh year on the Board of Education, which I thoroughly enjoy, and it’s the youth.  I just do enjoy the children of New Haven.  And that’s what happened to me. ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=2878.94,2897.04"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/89","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"DL: Okay.  You also mentioned before a few of the people that you’re still in touch with.  Is there anyone from either of the neighborhoods that you grew up in, besides those people, that you still keep in touch with? ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=2898.49,2908.58"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/90","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"RA: Well, there’s Larry Kofora.  Larry from Fair Haven.  He does glass work.  There’s Johnny Sotano.  He’s a computer engineer.  Jackie Brant does zoning in Trumbull.  George Walls is a commissioner.  There’s a bunch of other guys, and the guys that I grew up from East Street area, a few of them became accountants.  Louis Capucci.  There was another fellow named Vinnie Natrudo.  Ralph Proto’s a roofer.  ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=2908.59,2938.81"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/91","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"You asked me this question, what comes to mind to me, which I think is also wonderful—I’m so proud of these guys—is that none of us came from what you call a lot of money.  We came from families, working families.  Hard working families with a lot of values because you could see, though, the success of these people as family people, and economically, but just as good people. They went on to do well.  I’m always proud of that, and when I look through my high school yearbook and I look at the people, and you know, who’s gone on to be doctors, and somebody’s gone on to be a priest or an accountant, lawyers.  When you think back what we were like in junior high school and high school, and we thought we were never going to get out of any of those schools, let alone go on and do anything good.  [laughs]  So, yeah, it’s a thrill, and I credit it a lot to neighborhood.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=2940.15,3002.09"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/92","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"I really do, a lot of the values that we learned in our neighborhoods, and that ties in with redevelopment.  That’s why redevelopment, you learn from history that that part of what they tried then didn’t work and maybe now it will work.  You’ve got the Monterey Housing.  I mean, so you’re keeping the neighborhood together.  It’s wonderful. It’s really wonderful, and now you’re going to be doing Fair Haven along Mill River and Chapel Street area.  You want to keep the neighborhood viable.  People like to be connected. ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=3002.55,3032.06"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/93","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"DL: Those people that you mentioned, do you keep in touch with them one-to-one or do you sort of stay together as a unit? ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=3032.06,3037.2"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/94","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"RA: Oh, no.  We—well, there’s one group of guys that we’ve know, Al Spidaro, who’s got a wonderful accounting business now, and Nicky DeFelice.  These guys, bunch of guys. Al Cazanno, and my brother Joe, who—oh, my brother, Joe.  I’ll tell you about him a little bit because I’ve got to brag about him.  He’s the president of Boys and Girls Village board of directors.  He’s on the Orange Board of Education.  He’s a New Haven kid who hung around the streets, but graduated college from Northwestern University, where he was an All Big Ten football player.  So, you never know what’s going to come out of New Haven neighborhoods. ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=3037.2,3077.21"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/95","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And there’s a whole bunch of guys like that.  So what do we do, all these other guys we know?  We have a club.  We got together—you know how you kind of lose contact with people and you don’t want to do that?  So about thirty-four—thirty-four years ago, about six of us got together for dinner around Christmas and we said, “Well, this is really nice.  Well, have you heard from so and so?  Do you know where so and so is?  Do you know where Ralph Prodo is?  Do you know where Neil Avalone is?”  “Yeah.”  “Well, why don’t you call somebody up and get together next week?”  Well, over the time, the same bunch of guys—there was eighteen of us.  Now, unfortunately, there’s only fifteen.  People have passed away.  We’ve gotten together the last Thursday of every month for thirty-four years. The name of our club is the Squingili International.  We have a lot of fun.  We do a lot of joking, but I must tell you, over the years we have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity.  We don’t advertise it.  We’re very low key.  We have sent many girls to—I say girls because it was Sacred Heart Academy in Hamden.  Some of our men had children there at that time.  They were younger, and the grandchildren.  We’ve sent scholarships. We’ve funded girls all through their high school careers there.  ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=3078.48,3155.79"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/96","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And like the Farnham House, again, we sponsor basketball.  We sponsor kids to go to camp and anybody could come to a meeting and say, “Look, I know this family.”  You don’t give names.  Not necessary, but “Who’s having a tough time.”  They need—somebody needs a wheelchair or somebody needs a hearing aid.  Somebody needs a little help, and by the end of the meeting, it’s there.  It’s just those types of guys that come from New Haven, basically all from New Haven, that are giving back in their way, and they’re great guys.  Bill Ivani.  You know, people like that. ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=3156.6,3192.24"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/97","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"DL: And do you attribute that to the neighborhood you grew up in? ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=3192.26,3194.54"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/98","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"RA: I certainly—Yeah, I do.  I very much attribute that to the neighborhood because the neighborhood taught you to help each other and to look out for each other, and to build these relationships that you don’t build, unless you live in a neighborhood because your working.  You get in the car and you go home.  You go in your car and you open your garage door with the automatic door opener and you go in.  You close it and you go in your house.  Then you go in your backyard and you barbeque.  Well, how are you going to meet anybody?  How are you going to have any interaction with anybody? ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=3194.56,3226.56"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/99","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"But neighborhoods now are like that.  You come home and you look for a parking space is the first thing you do.  And then you come back out at night.  You eat, or you come back outside and people are sitting around the stoop and they’re talking and they’re, “Hi, how was your day?  How are you doing?  How’s your cousin doing?  How’s Jimmy doing in school?”  You learn about each other and you learn to understand each other and you learn people’s problems and you talk about it and it’s a way that needs to be continued.  Otherwise, you’re just separated. ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=3227.16,3257.54"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/100","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"You know, I take it a step further because you gave me the opportunity and I’m going to do it.  I think some of the problems in international relationships, this isolation is spilled over, unfortunately.  We ran to the suburbs, and that’s isolationism from the city and we’ve done the same thing internationally.  It’s not good, because if you don’t live with people of different colors and different backgrounds, how do you know people?  How do you know?  ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=3257.54,3286.52"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/101","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"I think one of the nicest things, and my wife Theresa Copetta.  It was fourth of July. We went to the fireworks in New Haven and the fireworks were fine, but what we felt, though, inside, why did we feel—we felt so warm.  To our right there was a—I don’t know where they were from, but they were Moslem, you know, and they were there.  They were on our right.  We had Latinos.  We had African Americans.  You had Italians, Irish, all within ten feet of each other.  Was a problem?  There was no problem.  Everybody was worried about watching the children have fun.  We were together, that’s how you—and it’s the same thing with a neighborhood and it’s the same that urban could do, could destroy a neighborhood.  Not just the neighborhood, but it could continue on, if you look at it that way.  It continues right on into a bigger international picture. ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=3286.72,3346.9"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/102","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So I think that is not a good thing and I think neighborhoods are fine. Like I’ve mentioned, we love living where we live because there’s people from all over the world live here.  It’s the only way you’re going to know people.  You can’t read them about in a book or you can’t look at it from a distance.  You’ve got to be involved.  ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=3347.5,3364.43"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/103","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"DL: Good.  Is there anything else you want to add to the end? ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=3364.9,3368.96"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/104","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"RA: No, I think—add to the end?  Just, personally, as a New Haven guy that grew up here, I’ll talk about Yale University, if you don’t mind, for sixty seconds. ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=3369.32,3384.16"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/105","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"DL: Yup. ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=3384.49,3384.66"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/106","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"RA: Yale University at one time was the other guy.  You know, oh, boy, wow.  You don’t even go on the lawn.  You can’t go in the buildings, and all that kind of thing.  But I must tell you, I just love when I see Yale in the community or doing—Yale is helping the community and the community’s helping Yale.  It’s a two-way street.  Just this interview here, this young man, Doug.  Here he is talking to somebody from New Haven.  He cares about New Haven.  He wants to know about New Haven.  He’s trying to make a difference.  So that in itself, without a lot of words, to me says an awful lot the caliber of young men and women that we’re getting at Yale University, and as a New Haven person, I really thanked him for that and I respect him. ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=3384.64,3428.5"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/107","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"DL: Thank you.  This is Doug London for the New Haven Oral History Project, July 15th, 2004, with Richard Abbatiello. ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=3428.52,3439.47"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/108","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"End of Interview","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=3439.47,3439.58"}]},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["English [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/81936/annotation/109","type":"Annotation","motivation":"subtitling","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/file_transcripts/associated_files/000/081/936/original/ru_1055_2008-A-001_Abbatiello_Richard_transcript_aligned.vtt?1753716744","format":"text/vtt","language":"en"},"target":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/file_transcripts/associated_files/000/081/936/original/ru_1055_2008-A-001_Abbatiello_Richard_transcript_aligned.vtt?1753716744"}]},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/19301","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Legacy Transcript [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514/transcript/19301/annotation/110","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Interview with Richard Abbatiello for the New Haven Oral History Project, by Doug London, July 15, 2004. NHOHP 036.\r\n\r\nLONDON:  Today is July 15th, 2004.  We’re here in the home of Mr. Richard Abbatiello, for the New Haven Oral History Project, to talk about urban renewal.  \r\n\r\n[end of Track 1]\r\n\r\n\t\tSo, tell me about your childhood. \r\nABATIELLO:  Oh, my childhood.  [laughs]  It was an interesting, exciting childhood.  I was born on East Street, at 549 East Street, and I went to New Haven schools in the area of East Street. At that time Edward Street School, which is now Clifford Beers, and then around 1955, I believe it was—I’m not quite sure of the date—I was told that we were moving.  “Well, where are we moving to?  Why are we moving?”  And what we did, we moved up to Fair Haven Heights, up on Summit Street, and the reason we moved, and if you go into the neighborhood now on East Street, you will see the space that’s there that at one time was a three-family house, which we lived on the first floor.  And the house since, when we had to move because the house was demolished to make way for I-91.\r\n\t\tSo with a lot of trepidation, we moved, and our neighborhood we moved out of was an Italian neighborhood.  My grandparents had come from Italy and my parents were born here, and I, myself and my two brothers, Joe and Donald, were also born here.  So—and the neighborhood was pretty mixed.  We had quite a few Italians, but we also had quite a few Polish people, and it was a—my childhood was absolutely wonderful there.  I remember all the block parties, all the aunts and the uncles, and you’ve all heard before how people didn’t lock their doors.  Well, that’s very true.  Nobody locked their door.  The doors were always open, it was that type of thing.  We all walked to school and we just played real well.  \r\n\t\tAnd right across the street from us, I was very fortunate, to have the Farnham Neighborhood House.  It was a social service agency in New Haven, which is the oldest one in New Haven.  It’s like an old settlement house.  Farnham Neighborhood House also had to move from that neighborhood and they’ve moved over to Fillmore Street in Fair Haven, where they currently are.  So it was—in my eyes looking back, it was a pretty big blow to the neighborhood to lose an organization like the Farnham Neighborhood House for the East Street, Jocelyn Square area. \r\n\t\tSo anyway, my childhood.  Then I went on and I moved up to Fair Haven Heights and I thought I needed a visa to get up there.  I thought I was going out in the country some place.  Actually, the road was a dirt road when we got there, and there was a water tank up on the hill.  [chuckles]  So it was kind of interesting, and I went—it was about sixth grade, I guess.  I went for one year at Benjamin Jepson School, which is still there on Quinnipiac Avenue.  Then from there, I was fortunate, I went over to the Fair Haven Junior High School, which is on Grand Avenue, which now they call Fair Haven Middle School.  We walked to school.  No bus picked us up.  [chuckles]  And we walked.  It was a good mile, and I can remember walking to school with books, a gym bag and a saxophone in the other hand, and you went along.  And that’s how you got to school and you cross the Grand Avenue Bridge in the wind and the rain.  Mom had given me a hat to wear that had earmuffs on it.  Of course, soon as I got away from the house where she couldn’t see me, the hat went in my pocket, and heaven forbid anybody saw with a hat with earmuffs.  But I got to tell you, “Thank you, mom,” because when I got to the Grand Avenue Bridge, I would look around and there would be nobody looking, I’d put the hat on, cover my ears and run like hell across the bridge.  [laughs]  \r\nDL:\tHow old were you when you moved from East Street over to Fair Haven Heights? \r\nRA:\tYeah, I guess if I was in sixth grade, I must have been maybe twelve years old. \r\nDL:\tOkay. \r\nRA:\tSomething like that.  Yeah.  So then there I went to Fair Haven Junior High School, which was really a good school. We had kids from all over this part of New Haven would come there, so you made a lot of friends and it was really good.  Played sports and participated in the band and the student council.  You know, that type of thing.  \r\n\t\tBut from there I went over to Wilbur Cross, which at that time was located up on Tower Parkway across the street from the Payne Whitney Gymnasium and Wilbur Cross was on one side of the street and Hillhouse High School was on the other side of the street and it was attached to Boardman Trade, which is now called Eli Whitney.  So we went there for one year, or two years—I’m not quite sure.  I don’t remember, and then we went over to the new school, which is on Mitchell Drive, Wilbur Cross High School.  I graduated from Wilbur Cross in 1959.  I played sports.  I was fortunate enough—played football and did pretty good.  Played some other sports, was on the student council, participated when, I could, in volunteerism.  Stayed close to the Farnham Neighborhood House, worked there during the summers as a counselor and that type of thing. \r\nDL:\tSo, anyway, we can break it down.  So, first, we can talk about your memories of the neighborhood around East Street.  You were talking about it was Italian, but also some Polish people. \r\nRA:\tSure. \r\nDL:\tDo you remember enjoying that neighborhood?  What was your sense of that neighborhood? \r\nRA:\tWell, my neighborhood where I was born, on East Street?  \r\nDL:\tUh-hmm. \r\nRA:\tOh, well that—I still have wonderful memories, because, you know, I was young so I didn’t know that maybe dad and mom were working twelve hours a day.  You know, we didn’t know these things.  I remember it as being people being very, very caring for each other.  And always going on picnics.  We would go to Wharton Brook [?], as a whole group would go or we would go to Jocelyn Square down the street, the whole block would go.  You know, that type of thing.  So my memories of East Street in New Haven at that time in that young part of my life are just wonderful.  \r\n\t\tI could even remember as much as Mrs. Carrano taking myself and Frankie—we would walk down to the corner of Bishop and State and—let me give my age away—we walked down to Bishop and State and we would take the trolley to downtown New Haven and then we would transfer and get on the trolley to Lighthouse and we would go to Lighthouse.  Of course, Frankie and I didn’t want to pay, so when the trolley stopped, we would jump out the back window, like I’m sure a lot of people have done.  So that was a—and I remember that and I still know Frankie and his sister and his family.  \r\n\t\tI still have friends that are close friends of mine from the neighborhood that I grew up in.  One fellow in particular, George Waldron.  I mention his name because George—many of the people that I grew up with, it’s interesting how professionally a lot of us didn’t think in those terms then.  Our parents were working.  College was something, I don’t know, we didn’t even talk about.  We didn’t even know what a college was, tell you the truth, but many of the guys and girls have gone on and done very well.  And I mention George Waldron, he’s a workman’s comp commissioner, very involved in the Irish community in New Haven here. There’s just a whole bunch of other guys and girls that have remained my friends, and when I moved from there to Fair Haven Heights, I was fortunate because I’d already established a big base of friends on East Street and Hamilton Street area, State Street, Wallace Street.  Now, I went to Fair Haven Heights.  Now I had the people from, the kids from Fair Haven Heights became my friends. \r\n\t\tAnd I used to—we used to take the bus, when we were in seventh and eighth grade, from Fair Haven Heights.  We used to take the bus to the corner of Grand and East Street, and then we used to walk from there to the Farnham Neighborhood House and play basketball.  You know, so—and the kids mingled in the neighborhood and all that.  \r\n\t\tAlso, from Fair Haven Heights neighborhood, it was different than where I came from because things like—it was new to me.  I actually had a sandwich on white bread, Wonder Bread.  I never had Wonder Bread.  I didn’t know what it was.  [laughs]  And I had a sandwich on that, and I met other people that I didn’t realize, “Oh, my goodness.  What’s that in the dish?”  I didn’t recognize it.  You know, that type of thing.  \r\n\t\tBut I got to tell you, mom’s house in Fair Haven Heights was the focal point.  Everybody came to mom to enjoy the house.  Let me just—if you don’t mind my backing up, as I remember all these things, it’s absolutely wonderful.  I remember when I was on East Street, an interesting story about my mom and dad and how people worked with character and ethics.  Dad had worked at A.C. Gilbert for ten to twelve years and he always wanted to have his own business.  So what does he do?  Pop is a machinist, you know, so he’s going to open a butcher shop.  So dad opens a butcher shop on East Street, where the Marrakech is now on East Street near State Street.  And dad opens a butcher shop in there and I’m old enough to remember all this and understand all this, so of course, six months later he closes the butcher shop and we’re out on the street, literally.  So what does dad do?  In fact, the butcher shop became Wozniak’s, which was a great Polish market, which still exists on Grand Avenue nowadays.  So dad borrowed six hundred dollars from my grandma, my mother’s mother, and he and another guy bought a machine, a grinding machine back then for manufacturing, and they put it in a garage, and they started doing work trying to go around for people and get work.  And that’s what my dad did.  And then they got two machines, and before you knew it, he had grown the business and we were still in—I still remember in on East Street, and he had himself a little place some place on Chestnut Street, which of course nothing is there anymore because they tore down all those big buildings that were there, all those jobs that were there.  And I’ll get to what happened to my family with that. \r\n\t\tSo dad—and I can remember, you know, dad and mom working hard.  There were three of us.  We had a four room place.  We had myself and my two brothers, we all slept in one room.  Of course, nowadays everybody needs their own room, their own TV, their own computer.  It’s amazing.  But I slept in the same bed with my brother Joe and my brother, Don, he was the oldest guy so he had his own bed.  You know, he was the king, and near the window, too, and I’m sure he had the best spot in the closet.  We only had one.  \r\n\t\tSo, dad, you know, was out trying to hustle and work, and I could imagine—God only knows how many hours he was working a day, but I can remember visitors would come to the house, and who they were.  There were other men from Yonkers, New York and from Brooklyn who were in the field.  Dad was a manufacturer doing grinding work, but the ultimate parts went to the electronics industry and the electronics industry in this country started in New York and Chicago, and dad was doing work for some of these guys in New York, Yonkers, and those places in Brooklyn.  They would come to New Haven and go over the design or, you know, whatever they had to do with the machines.  Of course, now you can’t just say goodnight to them and send them home, but pop didn’t have any money to take them out for dinner.  So what do you do?  And this wonderful.  I wish I had pictures of this, but I don’t.  No one took them.  Mom would make this unbelievable Italian dinner on East Street in the kitchen and these men, maybe three or four men, my mom, my dad—of course, we ate first because there wasn’t enough room to sit around, everybody eat at one time.  We ate first and we were sent off to the living room or the bedroom.  The men would stay at the table with my mom and dad and they would eat.  They would have macaroni.  They would have all the meats and mom would make all that stuff for them, and they’d drink wine.  It was amazing, and I got to tell you, eventually I went into business, my father’s business, and when I used to go and see these same men who at this time had gone on to be pretty successful, their own companies, that type of thing.  When they saw me—maybe I was by that time, when I got to be around thirty years old—did they want to talk business?  No.  No, they said, “Richard, we can talk business to you on the telephone.  We can talk for a minute.  We want to talk about your mom and dad.  We want to talk about East Street eating dinner at your mother’s house and what wonderful parents they were and how warm it was for us,” these same guys who didn’t really know, but we were all the same.  Everybody looking for warmth and understanding, and this is what they talked about when I visited them, and it was—to me, that was the most memorable part of living on East Street in my business life and the friends that I met from that point, from mom and dad.  So I think to me that’s quite an emotional thing.  [laughs]\r\nDL:\tDid anything like that continue after you moved into Fair Haven Heights? \r\nRA:\tYeah, in Fair Haven Heights, it’s amazing.  Dad built his business on personal relationships and I think a lot of businesses in those days were built on that.  By this time, dad had moved from Chestnut Street.  I’ll never forget—talk about traumatic because we had to move out of the house and we had to move his little business that he had on Chestnut Street and the notice, I believe was, “You have thirty days to move.”  Listen, those big factories were there.  Some people might remember the factory next to us where they had the big garment fire and the people died.  I can remember that.  But dad was in the basement there at that time, maybe with about twenty employees.  Twenty employees from New Haven.\r\n\t\tSo now what does he do?  He has no place to go.  So—I know what he did.  Eventually I found out as I got older.  I mean, he borrowed and he mortgaged everything and he built a little building in North Haven and they moved out to North Haven, in the Mount Louise area, and fortunately, the people that worked for day, followed him.  These were ex A.C. Gilbert people.  By then A.C. Gilbert was going down out of business, and dad knew a lot of these people and they came to dad.   My dad’s name was Joseph, and they came to him and he gave them jobs.  They were reliable.  They knew each other.  So I would say dad’s business, about ninety percent of the people that worked there were former A.C. Gilbert employees.  \r\n\t\tThen we went to North Haven with the business, so from what happened in New Haven to our family, redevelopment was we not only had to move our home, but we also had to move the business.  And the uncertainties that were involved and now that I look back on these things and I don’t think it was available then, people now have more foresight, where you don’t just move somebody and a business, too.  All that tax base and all those jobs, it was awful.  And not give them some place else to move to or help them to move to another part of the city.  The city doesn’t want to lose taxes.  They don’t want to lose jobs.  Socially it’s not good.  Economically it’s not good, but I don’t think back then that was a consideration.  It was just go.  You’ve got so many days to go, and I think other people probably have said and you could read how many companies left New Haven at that time.  Mossberg was one I could think about. They left when we did.  I think if you went to North Haven and East Haven, you would see well over half the companies in those towns were started in New Haven, but left because of what happened, what they call ‘redevelopment’ in quotes.  I think that was a big affect on a lot of people. \r\nDL:\tSo just to elaborate.  After, I guess it was the city that put up the sign and said, “You have thirty days,” did they do anything, you know, to help anyone move? \r\nRA:\tAs far as I know and what I’ve read, no.  They didn’t do anything like that, and not only it affected our life on East Street, but you talk about a neighborhood and family, across the street from us diagonally lived my grandmother and grandfather and some of my aunts and uncles, and unfortunately, their house had to go away, too.  So that house came down and they moved over to Mechanic Street.  We were fortunate that they didn’t move too far, but it was a very disruptive thing in the neighborhood, no doubt about it.  Romanex, the Polish candy shop, he had to move.  Back then people have talked to you about Rossler’s and other places, if you knew them.  Farnham House had to move, like I said, you know.  So it was pretty disruptive, as a youth.  Even as a youth, but I can only imagine what my parents went through and the adults went through.  Of course, you know, we didn’t know that.  We were protected from some of that.  \r\nDL:\tSo do you think your parents were happy living on East Street in that neighborhood? \r\nRA:\tI think, you know, it’s a good question and I think people are still asking themselves that question.  For me it’s nostalgia.  I played with my buddies.  We went down the park.  We played kick the can and we played hide and go seek.  I remember making tomatoes in the back yard.  They’d give us a stick and we had stuff the tomatoes down the soda bottles that the ladies were making.  So for me it was fun.  You know, cut the eggplant.  I didn’t cut.  I could sort them out.  God forbid I got near a knife.  You know, I’d get hit in the back of the head.\r\n\t\tSo I think for me I have that feeling about it.  Now, for mom and dad, would they have preferred to stay there?  I think so, if they had a better way there, but it was like the American Dream.  I mean, don’t forget, we lived in three-family houses, which were fine.  They were clean.  There was no doubt about that.  They were absolutely wonderful, but they were small. You had tiny closet space.  Nobody I—not on our side of the street had a garage.  The other side of the street, some of the people had a garage.  We had a little teeny backyard. So I think mom and dad were trying to make a better life for their children and for themselves, too, and this was the way of doing it, moving where we went to Fair Haven.  Fair Haven Heights, at that time.  We moved to ranch style house and we actually had two bathrooms in the house.  You know, that type of thing. \r\n\t\tSo was it good?  You know, and it’s funny because nowadays people are coming back to the city more, which is a wonderful thing, but they’re coming back with a little more wealth in their pockets.  They’re not coming back for the same reasons that people might have years ago, that people left.  It’s almost like they’re reversed. A lot of people have made pretty good on the outside.  Now they’re coming back.  This is the opportunity.  This is the new way in the metropolitan area, and back then the other way was “Phew, let me get out in the burbs.  Get my little house, a little driveway, my car,” and how could you—you know, people wanted to do better.  \r\nDL:\tSo you talked a little bit before about the friends that you had, once you moved to Fair Haven.  \r\nRA:\tRight. \r\nDL:\tAre there any specific stories you remember, having two groups of friends, combing them?  Something like that. \r\nRA:\tYeah.  That’s an interesting question.  Yeah, my friends from Fair Haven Heights and my friends from East Street area and all, we would play against each other in basketball.  You know, we’d come down and the skins and the shirts. We didn’t have—nobody had a lot of shirts, believe me.  You didn’t have anybody sponsoring you, so we had the skins and the shirts, and we would play basketball together.  Whether if we played at the Farnham House or if we played at a park, we played on Jocelyn Square, and if it was cold out and winter, you’d shovel the basketball court.  I mean, nobody came and cleaned it for you.  You came with your shovel and shoveled the basketball court and you played basketball and you had a ball. \t\r\n\t\tYeah, we mingled and it was really good because when I got to high school, it was the same guys.  We were all at the same high school and they knew each other somewhat, some of them, and it made much more for cohesiveness type of situation.  It’s funny, also, the guys from Fair Haven Heights, there’s about six of us that are really close still, five or six of us, and we just got together only this part fourth of July.  We had a picnic together, and we do still see each other, two, three, four times a year, I mean.  \r\n\t\tSo the bond is there and one of the things I mentioned just—I know it’s not the same thing, but just as it comes to mind again, when we lived in Fair Haven, I don’t know if I mentioned, we used to take the bus from Fair Haven Heights down to Broadway, the Payne Whitney Gymnasium and we worked there at—work.  I call it work, because we wanted to get into the gym and we’d do anything to see athletes.  This was a very interesting thing for me as a youth, what developed later on my life.  We would work as rope guards at the basketball games.  We would hold the rope during halftime and before the game, so people wouldn’t go on the basketball court, and people would say to us, “What do you mean?  Not that many people go to Yale games.”  I said, “Oh, no, no, no.  You don’t understand.”  I said, “Robinson played for Yale then.  They had Johnny Lee.”  This is a team that went onto the NCAA’s.  Let me tell, you the place was packed.  It was wonderful and we didn’t want t miss a game.  We didn’t miss a game.\r\n\t\tWe did the basketball and then when they had the swimming meets, we did the swimming meets. They used to pack the place at Yale for swimming.  They had what they called the swimming carnivals.  You had the great divers from all over the world used to come in and dive and we were just little kids.  We were in eighth grade, seventh grade.  There we were, watching all this stuff, and so we loved it.  We’d take the bus down in the snow and that.  \r\n\t\tSo Johnny Lee was an All American, a great.  And we’d go down the ball and we’d say, “Gimme the ball, Robinson.  Gimme the ball.  Johnny Lee shooting from the corner.  Two points.  Yay!  Wonderful!” All that.  So it was great. \r\n\t\tMaybe four or five years ago, I’m not quite sure of the exact—I was so fortunate to—a friend of mine that is at Yale Athletic Department said, “Come on, we’re going to go over the Payne Whitney Gym because they’re dedicating the amphitheater and they’re calling it the Lee Amphitheater.”  Is that correct?  Yeah, they were.  I said, “Lee?”  He said, “Yeah, Johnny Lee.”  I said, “Johnny Lee?”  I says, “No.”  He said, “Yeah.”  I said, “Oh, we’re going.”  We were at the hockey game.  We left the hockey game.  We went over there to see Johnny Lee.  [phone rings]\r\nDL:\tDo you want to get it?  You can get it, if you want, I can pause it. \r\n\r\n\t[end of Track 2]\r\n\r\nRA:\tSo we went over to the Payne Whitney Gymnasium and there’s all these people are there, and there’s Johnny Lee.  I tell you, my heart was pounding.  It was like, “Oh, my God, Johnny Lee.”  Of course, he’s not that much older than me, but back then, you know, there was quite a difference.  It’s different.  So I introduced myself to Johnny Lee and we started talking, and we talked for about a half hour and it was one of the most wonderful memories I have because what did we talk about?  I called him Mr. Lee.  He says, “No, call me Johnny.”  I said, “I’ve got to call you Mr. Lee.  You were always”—so we talked.  I said, “You don’t understand.”  I said, “I don’t think back then the athletes at Yale realized the impact that they had on the youth of New Haven.  I don’t think it was publicized.  I don’t think you guys went out into the schools like athletes do nowadays into the public, but I gotta tell you, the athletes at Yale really had a big affect on a lot of our lives as children, because I gotta tell.  Because when you went to the park, who did you want to be?  You wanted to be Johnny Lee.  You wanted to be Robinson.”  He says, “No, you didn’t even know our names.” I said, “Oh, yes, we did.  Let me tell you, every time we played, if you were Johnny Lee, you were the star of the game,” and I got to tell you, Mr. Lee, he had tears in his eyes, as we talked.  He said, “I never realized, Dick, that people, youth were like that.”  I says, “Oh, yeah, very much so,” and it was the same thing with the football when McGill and Locke played and those guys and all that. \r\n\t\tIt was the same type of thing.  We worked at Yale Bowl.  Work.  I say, we were rope guards.  They had sixty-five thousand people at a game.  Just to get into the game, you’d do anything, and we did, and we’d take the bus there. \r\n\t\tSo that memory of Yale and New Haven and my youth go all the way back, and I tell you, I think for you, and Mr. Lee has since passed away, unfortunately, but that was quite a moment for me.  \r\nDL:\tGrowing up was your connection with Yale mostly through athletics? \r\nRA:\tYes, through athletics.  That was the connection.  You know, we were young and our high school was across the street from the Yale area.  We didn’t really mingle and we didn’t really, from what I can recall, it wasn’t like today where Yale’s so involved in the community and in the children of New Haven.  It was different, but as far as going to their games, we did anything for years just to go to any athletic game at Yale University. \r\n\t\tI’ll never forget another great thing for me.  When I was in Fair Haven Junior High School, I was in seventh grade, I think, and I was on the student council.  The word was Alby Booth is coming to Fair Haven.  “Alby Booth?  What do you mean Alby Booth?”  Alby Booth by that time had graduated already, but his daughter was a teacher at Fair Haven at one time.  So I had the honor of meeting Alby Booth at the door of Fair Haven Junior High School and escorting him around the school.  So there’s another great memory for me.  It’s all coming to me, as you—and you realize how much Yale actually did have an affect on my life.  Informally, but yet here’s Johnny Lee and Alby Booth and so it was wonderful.  Yeah.  Yeah. \r\nDL:\tSo you were just talking a little bit about Fair Haven, or actually about the East Street neighborhood. Were a lot of the people that you were friends with at the time in the same situation?  Did they move, also?  How many people? \r\nRA:\tYeah.  How many people exactly, I don’t know because I was young and I don’t know, but yes.  A lot of people had to move because I could tell by what’s not there anymore.  [chuckles]  And what happened.  And so they moved for reasons like that and then when the construction came in, you know, people didn’t want to be, you know, living underneath the highway or next door with all this construction and trucks type of thing.  I also think—as a matter of fact, I know that when a was little child on East Street, across the street was Mayor DeStefano’s family lived on East Street, which was—and I didn’t know because I was too young.  I know now.  \r\n\t\tSo, yeah, people had to move, but a lot of people moved, I believe was part of this idea of moving out of the city.  I think they moved to East Haven. They moved to North Haven were the two big towns that people went to.  Yeah, so it did affect the neighborhood because it was like the catalyst that made people, “Oh, the neighborhood’s going to heck.  So and so’s moving.  It’s dirty now.”  It was that type of thing.  I think there was a lot of that going on.  I think even when the Farnham House went, you know, they saw a real anchor in the neighborhood go.  A place for their children to go after school.  A place for their children to go at night.  Where were they going to go after that?  The closest place was the boy’s club, which was a pretty good walk from where we lived.  \r\n\t\tSo I think all those things came together to, you know, people said, “Oh, maybe it’s time for me to move.”  They wiped out Hamilton Street next to East Street, behind there.  All those stores went.  Rossler’s went. A  lot of people just left.  Bettina’s and, you know, places like that I remember.  Yeah, so I think it had an affect back then, too. \r\nDL:\tDo you remember much else about the businesses that were around there before and then afterwards? \r\nRA:\tWell, as a matter of fact, my grandma and grandpa owned a little grocery store, and that’s how they made a living for all their lives and brought up ten children.   And mom and dad—not mom, but—not dad, mom, mom and the kids, they lived in the back of the grocery store.  I remember the beads hanging between the door and grandma, you know, you go there and she had the lentil beans and the kidney beans in the bins.  Not in sanitized ceramic wrap, and you stick your hand in there and then you try to run like hell so you could rob the beans and shoot them for your pea shooter, and then there’s my grandma running down the street after you.  So, it was that—you know, that type of thing.  I remember that. Yeah, so their business went. Fortunately, by that time they were older and their children were older, so they economically didn’t feel it as bad as they might have.  So we were very fortunate that way.  But, yeah, people did have to move, because, you know, like I say, the highway came in and it wasn’t a pleasant thing.  Unfortunately, it came right through the neighborhood.  I mean, just right through there and then it followed behind is in all that the River Street area, all that got wiped out, too.  So that was it, yeah. \r\nDL:\tAnd how do you think that compares to what the businesses were like in Fair Haven Heights and the character of that neighborhood, once you moved in? \r\nRA:\tYeah.  I think in Fair Haven, of course, up at the Heights we didn’t have any businesses.  It was residential.  That was a big thing, a new word ‘residential.’  So it was residential, but you walked five blocks away, four blocks, then you start running into the little places again.  You had, you know, the luncheonettes and the hardware store and the Pequot Theater and Charlie Firestone, Perkins.  Places like that you had.  So they were all family owned places, which was wonderful.  It was the same thing in the East Street area.  It was all family—everything was family owned or individual proprietor.  I mean, you know, and everybody knew everybody’s name and “How you doing?”  You know, that type of thing.  \r\n\t\tSo as far as manufacturing businesses go, I think there weren’t that many businesses in the Fair Haven area at that time.  They were more in the area of the New Haven Clock Company, in that area down there.  That whole area of Chapel Street, Chestnut Street, East Street and when they took those buildings down for redevelopment—not even for the highway, but what they called redevelopment—there were tons of companies in those.  That’s how it was then.  You know, at one time there might have been one big company, but then the subdivided the buildings.  And they knocked them down.  You know, we always talk about that, my wife and I.  I know we always—because we walk into town all the town.  From where I live now, we’re in town every day, literally, and we go by the parking lot where Shartenberg’s used to be.  Now it’s a parking lot, and this type of thing.  \r\n\t[end of Track 3]\r\nDL:\tSo if somebody comes by and you’re going to show them the old neighborhood, where do you take them? \r\nRA:\tWell, it’s another interesting question because I feel very fortunate that I experienced New Haven as a child and lived here and have grown up at this stage because my neighbors, many of my neighbors come—in this apartment complex, come from other parts of the world. Not just the country, but other parts of the world, and that gives you a little side bit.  What we usually do on Thanksgiving Day, my wife and I in our apartment, we have Thanksgiving in our apartment and it’s nothing to have twenty-two, twenty-four people here.  I’ll never forget, a few years ago, we had people from seven different countries, which was phenomenal.  I’ll never forget, we got a phone call in the morning from dear friends. They were from Iran and they said, “What are we supposed to bring?  What’s this holiday?”  So that’s that kind of thing. \r\n\t\tSo what I have tried to do with my neighbors here is they’re always asking me about New Haven because they know I’m involved in the school system.  I lived in New Haven, you know, most of my life.  I was brought up here.  They say, “Well, what’s it like?  What was it like?  What’s it like now?” and we talk a lot about it.  What I do very often, I say, “Okay, pile into the car,” and we get in the car and we drive around, and I show them where I was born.  Where my grandparents were.  Where the store was, and then I show where the Farnham House was and where it is now, and then I take them to other neighborhoods.  So for me—and they get a real sense of community that way, and I love doing it.  I chatter their ear, but they don’t mind listening because they want to hear about it.  \r\nDL:\tOkay.  And just to clarify so we have it on the record, right now we’re—the apartment now is on Linden Street. \r\nRA:\tLinden Street, one half block from Whitney Avenue and it’s an apartment complex year. \r\nDL:\tGreat.  So do you think you’re identified—which neighborhood do you identify the most with from your childhood? \r\nRA:\tI think—I identify with two neighborhoods, really.  I was fortunate.  I was fortunate to a certain age to live on East Street, in the Beech Street, State Street and Hamilton Street area.  Then I moved down to Fair Haven Heights area.  As a child, if you want to say my childhood neighborhood, I do go back to East Street.  That’s what I feel.  I still feel, even though I was young, I feel the connections.  I relive every day.  I mean, I could play kick the can and the old ladies hollering at you for, you know, stealing the peaches off their trees, and you know, this type of thing.  And I remember the safety, the warmth.  That’s a big part of it that you remember.  \r\nDL:\tIf we can switch gear a little reflective. \r\nRA:\tSure. \r\n\t[end of Track 4]\r\nDL:\tI know you weren’t old enough at the time, but do you think—or maybe your parents voted for Dick Lee?  Would you have voted for Dick Lee, do you think? \r\nRA:\tOh, I’m pretty sure my parents voted for Dick Lee.  And would I have voted for Dick Lee?  Sure.  I mean, at the time—everything is in perspective.  Hindsight is wonderful.  We’d all be billionaires in the stock market and there’d be social justice and a lot of other things in this world, but that’s hindsight.  So I think that it was a new vision.  It was something.  People needed something.  You know, the war had been over for awhile.  Then you had the Korean War, and they needed something to grab onto.  So now we’re going to do something new.  New usually means better.  Not necessarily, but I think in the minds that’s what happens, and I think that’s what really—yeah, sure, they would have voted for him.  I believe so, and probably myself, too.  I mean, geez, I’m going to make a better neighborhood.  I’m going to make a better life.  I’m going to give opportunity.  Yeah.  [phone rings]  May as well.  \r\n\t[end of Track 5]\r\nRA:\tYou can shut it off, if you want.  I don’t know what—that’s my youth.  Like I say, going to Jocelyn Square, going to Wrights Field and Blake Field, at that time.  We used to go down there, walk from East Street and every Friday night they had what they called block dances.  They had these huge dances in what we called an ice skating rink.  It was cement really.  They used to freeze it over in the winter, but in the summer and spring—[phone rings]\r\n\t[end of Track 6]\r\nDL:\tSo we were talking about Dick Lee and sort of vision for the city.  Looking at urban renewal, however you may define it, do you think it was good for the city? \r\nRA:\tWell—well, like I said, I think now that we’ve had years to think about, no, would have done things differently absolutely, but here again, you’re looking at it with hindsight.  I think some of the things that could have been differently was from an economic point of view, offering alternative places for these businesses that you moved out.  I think that was a very sad thing to happen to New Haven because you lost a big tax base, and also you lost an opportunity for people that lived in this city to work in this city, without—if they didn’t have an automobile.  And you had new people coming into New Haven and new migration and they didn’t have money.  They didn’t have money to buy cars and to go out into the suburbs and work, so they came into the city and there were no jobs.  Me, as an old factory guy, I think it was a crime because in the factories you had, you know, the board companies, the manufacturers you had here was an opportunity to go to work.  You could have gone to work in one of these companies, work on the docks.  You could have worked on the floor, but you had the opportunity to better yourself.  You know, there was training going on.  You had a job.  A job leads to stability.  It leads to your family, you help support family and I think to me that was one of the big crimes that happened with redevelopment with jobs type of thing. \r\n\t\tIn fact, just the other day in the paper there was a nice article—not nice in the sense, but it brought out this point about some of the homeless and some of these people, under-employed people because they don’t have jobs.  You have jobs, but they don’t pay.  They don’t pay benefits.  They don’t pay enough money to make a living, and I think you could have extended the manufacturers for many, many more years, because a lot of these manufacturing companies are still in business.  It’s not like manufacturing has, you know, completely gone overseas, folks.  I mean—and it’s a shame.  If they had place—no, I don’t think anybody wanted to move.  Why would you want to move?  You had your workforce here.  You had all your vendors here.  You knew each other.  You had schools that your board and trade, that was training people, you know, in that type of field.  So I think that point was really bad. \r\n\t\tAnd I think, obviously, you take like the neighborhood I came from, East Street, it just broke up the neighborhood.  The highway came through and that was it, and then people scattered, and it was a shame.  I think it caused a lot of problems that way, and you had, you know, you’ve heard ‘White Flight,” and it happened and it was a shame.  Whereas if you had, I think nowadays I like what I see what’s going on, you know, in the city with the Mayor and other people.  You know, they have some foresight.  You know, the business—they want businesses to stay.  They’re encouraging them.  The housing, they encourage housing, affordable housing.  But they’ve had the benefit to learn from history and so the legacy of urban renewal, pretty good history lesson.  So it’s tough to argue with.  It’s tough to argue with. \r\n\t\tDid you need turnpikes and highways?  Yeah, you did.  You did.  You had to move goods.  You had to move people.  You know, it’s kind of—it’s tough.  It’s a tough decision.  We’re in a different era now than we were then and now with the benefit, you know, past mistakes and things that did work.  \r\nDL:\tHow did you get your start in manufacturing?  \r\nRA:\tWell, I told you about my dad.  You know, he started off and work, work, work.  I had gone to school.  I’d gone to Wilbur Cross and I went to Southern Connecticut for a couple years, and then I transferred up to the University of New Hampshire, and I graduated from there with a degree in business and finance.  I came home and I worked around for a year or two here and there and really didn’t know what I wanted to do, type of thing, and tried different things.  Spent a little time in the service, in the Army Reserves, and then I went into business with my dad.  I asked him if it was all right if I came to work there.  I had worked there one or two summers, when I wasn’t working at Camp Farnham. \r\n\t\tSo I went to work there and that in itself was an interesting case, where I went to work thinking I knew everything.  I showed up at work with a pair of pants and a nice shirt and a pair of shoes on, and I showed up at eight o’clock in the morning and my dad’s there and he says, “Where are you going?”  I said, “I’m going to work.”  He said, “Let me tell you something.”  He said, “First off, work starts here at seven thirty.”  He says, “Secondly, you don’t dress like that for work.”  [phone rings]  He said, “Thirdly,” he said, “you’re what they call the ‘boss’s son,’ which means you get here an hour earlier than anybody else.  You set the example.  You don’t come in afterwards.”  He says, “So what you do is, you go home,” and I did.  “You go home and you put a pair on jeans on.  You put a lousy shirt on that you don’t care what happens to, and a pair of sneakers, and when you come back, you go around the side of the building, and there’s a door there with a sign that says ‘Employees’ Entrance.’  You come in that door and you go see your uncle in shipping and ask him if he has a job for you.”  Well, three years later, I got out of the factory.  I learned every job in that factory.  I learned every machine.  I did every dirty job that you could possibly think of, but the greatest thing I learned is people.  It was wonderful.  My dad, he always taught me, you treat everybody like you want to be treated, and that was his way of teaching you this and it was wonderful.  I built up a great relationship with the people and I stayed in the business all my life, until I retired.\r\n\t\tBut I think the greatest thing for me was being with the people and learning, you know, with people and everybody’s plight.  We’re in it together.  We all got to get up in the morning and go to work, and so they were great lessons and I went to, I can’t tell you, how many christenings and birthday parties and marriages I went to, and bar mitzvahs and all the different foods I ate and the galumpkees.  So, no, it was wonderful.  I had a great career in the manufacturing business. \r\nDL:\tWhat happened to your business now, since you retired? \r\nRA:\tYeah, what happened was I—we had sold our business. Times were changing.  Technology was moving very, very rapidly. As a manufacturer, you know, you could make certain parts and before you know it, they could be also designed out because you’re not making an end product.  You don’t have control on that, and some of that did happen to us.  Then we started losing business at that time to the Japanese.  Then the Taiwanese, as I said, were in the electronics end of things.  \r\n\t\tSo we saw—we said it was maybe time to pack it in a little bit, and so we sold to a company because we had set up an Irish factory.  We had a factory in Ireland, small division and we had a small division in Hong Kong at that time, which I was fortunate enough to be able to go to Ireland and Hong Kong, the states.  So it was that type of thing.  So then we sold it and I decided—I worked there for a little while, but I left.  I decided I didn’t want to do this anymore, so I left the manufacturing business.  Basically, I’ve been retired since then.  I’ve done a little consulting work, but I’ve really devoted my time to New Haven and things that I always wanted to do.  I’m very active with the youth group at Farnham Neighborhood House.  I’ve been on the board of directors.  I was president for six years.  You know, it’s a great program we have down there with about two hundred and thirty kids after school program.  We’re open seven days a week.  \r\n\t\tI served on different boards in New Haven and committees.  I’m currently serving my seventh year on the Board of Education, which I thoroughly enjoy, and it’s the youth.  I just do enjoy the children of New Haven.  And that’s what happened to me. \r\nDL:\tOkay.  You also mentioned before a few of the people that you’re still in touch with.  Is there anyone from either of the neighborhoods that you grew up in, besides those people, that you still keep in touch with?  \r\nRA:\tWell, there’s Larry Kofora.  Larry from Fair Haven.  He does glass work.  There’s Johnny Sotano.  He’s a computer engineer.  Jackie Brant does zoning in Trumbull.  George Walls is a commissioner.  There’s a bunch of other guys, and the guys that I grew up from East Street area, a few of them became accountants.  Louis Capucci.  There was another fellow named Vinnie Natrudo.  Ralph Proto’s a roofer.  \r\n\t\tYou asked me this question, what comes to mind to me, which I think is also wonderful—I’m so proud of these guys—is that none of us came from what you call a lot of money.  We came from families, working families.  Hard working families with a lot of values because you could see, though, the success of these people as family people, and economically, but just as good people. They went on to do well.  I’m always proud of that, and when I look through my high school yearbook and I look at the people, and you know, who’s gone on to be doctors, and somebody’s gone on to be a priest or an accountant, lawyers.  When you think back what we were like in junior high school and high school, and we thought we were never going to get out of any of those schools, let alone go on and do anything good.  [laughs]  So, yeah, it’s a thrill, and I credit it a lot to neighborhood.\r\n\t\tI really do, a lot of the values that we learned in our neighborhoods, and that ties in with redevelopment.  That’s why redevelopment, you learn from history that that part of what they tried then didn’t work and maybe now it will work.  You’ve got the Monterey Housing.  I mean, so you’re keeping the neighborhood together.  It’s wonderful. It’s really wonderful, and now you’re going to be doing Fair Haven along Mill River and Chapel Street area.  You want to keep the neighborhood viable.  People like to be connected. \r\nDL:\tThose people that you mentioned, do you keep in touch with them one-to-one or do you sort of stay together as a unit? \r\nRA:\tOh, no.  We—well, there’s one group of guys that we’ve know, Al Spidaro, who’s got a wonderful accounting business now, and Nicky DeFelice.  These guys, bunch of guys. Al Cazanno, and my brother Joe, who—oh, my brother, Joe.  I’ll tell you about him a little bit because I’ve got to brag about him.  He’s the president of Boys and Girls Village board of directors.  He’s on the Orange Board of Education.  He’s a New Haven kid who hung around the streets, but graduated college from Northwestern University, where he was an All Big Ten football player.  So, you never know what’s going to come out of New Haven neighborhoods. \r\n\t\tAnd there’s a whole bunch of guys like that.  So what do we do, all these other guys we know?  We have a club.  We got together—you know how you kind of lose contact with people and you don’t want to do that?  So about thirty-four—thirty-four years ago, about six of us got together for dinner around Christmas and we said, “Well, this is really nice.  Well, have you heard from so and so?  Do you know where so and so is?  Do you know where Ralph Prodo is?  Do you know where Neil Avalone is?”  “Yeah.”  “Well, why don’t you call somebody up and get together next week?”  Well, over the time, the same bunch of guys—there was eighteen of us.  Now, unfortunately, there’s only fifteen.  People have passed away.  We’ve gotten together the last Thursday of every month for thirty-four years. The name of our club is the Squingili International.  We have a lot of fun.  We do a lot of joking, but I must tell you, over the years we have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity.  We don’t advertise it.  We’re very low key.  We have sent many girls to—I say girls because it was Sacred Heart Academy in Hamden.  Some of our men had children there at that time.  They were younger, and the grandchildren.  We’ve sent scholarships. We’ve funded girls all through their high school careers there.  \r\n\t\tAnd like the Farnham House, again, we sponsor basketball.  We sponsor kids to go to camp and anybody could come to a meeting and say, “Look, I know this family.”  You don’t give names.  Not necessary, but “Who’s having a tough time.”  They need—somebody needs a wheelchair or somebody needs a hearing aid.  Somebody needs a little help, and by the end of the meeting, it’s there.  It’s just those types of guys that come from New Haven, basically all from New Haven, that are giving back in their way, and they’re great guys.  Bill Ivani.  You know, people like that. \r\nDL:\tAnd do you attribute that to the neighborhood you grew up in? \r\nRA:\tI certainly—Yeah, I do.  I very much attribute that to the neighborhood because the neighborhood taught you to help each other and to look out for each other, and to build these relationships that you don’t build, unless you live in a neighborhood because your working.  You get in the car and you go home.  You go in your car and you open your garage door with the automatic door opener and you go in.  You close it and you go in your house.  Then you go in your backyard and you barbeque.  Well, how are you going to meet anybody?  How are you going to have any interaction with anybody? \r\n\t\tBut neighborhoods now are like that.  You come home and you look for a parking space is the first thing you do.  And then you come back out at night.  You eat, or you come back outside and people are sitting around the stoop and they’re talking and they’re, “Hi, how was your day?  How are you doing?  How’s your cousin doing?  How’s Jimmy doing in school?”  You learn about each other and you learn to understand each other and you learn people’s problems and you talk about it and it’s a way that needs to be continued.  Otherwise, you’re just separated. \r\n\t\tYou know, I take it a step further because you gave me the opportunity and I’m going to do it.  I think some of the problems in international relationships, this isolation is spilled over, unfortunately.  We ran to the suburbs, and that’s isolationism from the city and we’ve done the same thing internationally.  It’s not good, because if you don’t live with people of different colors and different backgrounds, how do you know people?  How do you know?  \r\n\t\tI think one of the nicest things, and my wife Theresa Copetta.  It was fourth of July. We went to the fireworks in New Haven and the fireworks were fine, but what we felt, though, inside, why did we feel—we felt so warm.  To our right there was a—I don’t know where they were from, but they were Moslem, you know, and they were there.  They were on our right.  We had Latinos.  We had African Americans.  You had Italians, Irish, all within ten feet of each other.  Was a problem?  There was no problem.  Everybody was worried about watching the children have fun.  We were together, that’s how you—and it’s the same thing with a neighborhood and it’s the same that urban could do, could destroy a neighborhood.  Not just the neighborhood, but it could continue on, if you look at it that way.  It continues right on into a bigger international picture. \r\n\t\tSo I think that is not a good thing and I think neighborhoods are fine. Like I’ve mentioned, we love living where we live because there’s people from all over the world live here.  It’s the only way you’re going to know people.  You can’t read them about in a book or you can’t look at it from a distance.  You’ve got to be involved.  \r\nDL:\tGood.  Is there anything else you want to add to the end? \r\nRA:\tNo, I think—add to the end?  Just, personally, as a New Haven guy that grew up here, I’ll talk about Yale University, if you don’t mind, for sixty seconds. \r\nDL:\tYup. \r\nRA:\tYale University at one time was the other guy.  You know, oh, boy, wow.  You don’t even go on the lawn.  You can’t go in the buildings, and all that kind of thing.  But I must tell you, I just love when I see Yale in the community or doing—Yale is helping the community and the community’s helping Yale.  It’s a two-way street.  Just this interview here, this young man, Doug.  Here he is talking to somebody from New Haven.  He cares about New Haven.  He wants to know about New Haven.  He’s trying to make a difference.  So that in itself, without a lot of words, to me says an awful lot the caliber of young men and women that we’re getting at Yale University, and as a New Haven person, I really thanked him for that and I respect him. \r\nDL:\tThank you.  This is Doug London for the New Haven Oral History Project, July 15th, 2004, with Richard Abbatiello. \r\nEnd of Interview\r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/92514#t=0.0,3441.1102"}]}]},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/238517","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 2 of 2 - open-uri20240326-2906522-54v8ar.mpga"]},"duration":13.2702,"width":640,"height":40,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/public/images/audio-default.png","type":"Image","format":"image/png"}],"items":[{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/238517/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/238517/content/2/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-yalemssa.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/238/517/original/open-uri20240326-2906522-54v8ar.mpga?1711449113","type":"Audio","format":"audio/mpeg","duration":13.2702,"width":640,"height":40},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/988/collection_resources/26085/file/238517","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[]}]}