February 25, 2005/Adar I 16 5765, Volume 57, No. 26
Back to the BronxJCC event reunites former Bronxites
STEPHANIE N. HENSCHEL
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 Arlene and Hank Bregman moved to the Valley more than a year ago from the Bronx and attended the "Back to the Bronx Reunion" at the Valley of the Sun Jewish Community Center. Both Bregmans attended Monroe High School - five years apart - but didn't meet until they were set up on a blind date in 1960. Photo by Stephanie N. Henschel |
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About 280 people attended the "Back to the Bronx Reunion" to hear Dr. Martin Jackson, co-author of "The Bronx - Lost Found and Remembered" (Back in the Bronx, $29.95 hardcover), discuss the "Golden Age" of the New York borough - and to sip on some tasty egg creams.
It was Lila Baltman, chairwoman of the event, who came up with the idea. She called Jackson - who just happens to be her uncle - to see if he would be interested in participating in such an event.
Jackson was excited to participate in the reunion - and to visit Phoenix for the first time.
"Everyone said, 'Take your swimsuit,'" he says with a chuckle.
He did bring his suit, but had little need for it - it rained during most of his trip.
Bad weather aside, Jackson says he knew turnout would be good - he just wasn't prepared for how good. Both Baltman and Jackson were shocked at the turnout.
"I knew people would show up for this," Jackson says. "But this is incredible."
Baltman believes the turnout was due to the devotion Bronxites have to their hometown.
"All these people were born in the Bronx," she says. "When you're from the Bronx, it's like you're part of a special club."
Baltman herself is not from the borough, and expressed her disappointment that she could not join the club, so to speak.
"I've always felt a little sad that I wasn't part of this Bronx club, because you all share a special bond," she explained to the crowd.
But all eyes were on Jackson as he stepped up to the podium.
"It's really nice to see so many Bronxites at one time ... Especially in Phoenix," he says.
As he began his presentation, which included slides of notable locations in the Bronx, he asked the crowd one question: "What is it about the Bronx that attracts us so much?
"Do people from Akron Ohio, feel the same way about their hometown?" he asked.
Jackson acknowledged that there is one city whose residents - and even former residents - share a similar feeling as the Bronxites: Brooklyn.
"I'm not going to talk about them," he says with a chuckle. "They can have their own reunion." (A Brooklyn reunion is in the works at the JCC for next year.)
The connection to the Bronx is deep, Jackson says. He told a story about how, after finishing his book, he and his co-author, Steve Samtur, went on a "mini-book tour." The tour took them to a Barnes & Noble in New Jersey.
But that night, the weather started to turn ugly - nothing but rain, wind, and more rain.
Jackson's wife, who is not from the Bronx - "Nice lady, but not from the Bronx," Jackson says - was astonished that he was going to attend the event anyway, believing that no one would turn up.
"They'll come," he told her.
Sure enough, when Jackson pulled up to the bookstore, about 100 people had lined up to meet the former Bronxite.
"People from the Bronx are a little crazy when it comes to that sort of thing," he says.
Yet, Jackson wondered aloud, what is the link that brings all Bronxites together?
It was at that moment when someone from the crowd yelled, "Poverty!" Boisterous laughter ensued.
It's true, however, that Bronxites were - and perhaps always will be - bound by poverty, violence, crime, racism and ethnic tension, Jackson explained.
"We all remember that the Bronx was not always the golden land we have in our memory," he says. "We tend to forget that and remember the beautiful parts."
And there are a lot of beautiful parts, he continued: candy stores, stickball games, the Bronx Zoo and so on.
Jackson presented some of those beautiful parts in a slide presentation. Pictures of the Bronx filled the room, from Starlight Park's carnival-style rides, c. 1920, and the bear dens at the Bronx Zoo, to the Grand Concourse and Co-Op City - that particular slide caused several in the audience to "boo."
"It was nice in a way," Jackson says. "On the other hand, it was so big, it emptied out parts of the Bronx."
After Jackson's slide presentation, he and his sister, Joan Grube - Baltman's mother - held a trivia contest. Five door prizes were available to the winners.
"And if you don't get called, don't worry," Jackson told the audience. "They're not that great."
According to Baltman, Jackson and Grube spent many hours over the weekend in the food court at Paradise Valley Mall creating the questions and reminiscing.
Once the trivia questions had all been answered, and prizes given out, the audience was grouped by the high school they attended. Former students of Bronx Science, Roosevelt, Taft, and many more, congregated in their respective corners. Some even brought yearbooks to share.
Arlene and Hank Bregman, married for more than 45 years and residents of the Valley for the past year-and-a-half, both attended Monroe High School - though five years apart.
In fact, the couple never met before they were set up on a blind date in 1960.
The Bregmans lived near Park Chester for 35 years, and both worked for Bronx schools. He was a teacher at P.S. 178, then later an assistant principal at I.S. 181. She worked as a school secretary at P.S. 112.
Sipping on their egg creams, the Bregmans were enthusiastic about the event.
"This is a great reunion," she says. "But my brother still makes a better egg cream."
And it didn't stop with the egg creams.
The JCC also held a one-hour presentation after the reunion, featuring "A View From the Stoop," a documentary-style video on the Bronx. The film included narrations by some of the boroughs more famous residents, like Garry Marshall, Joe Franklin, Robert Klein and more.
Overall, it seemed that the event was successful in bringing together former Bronxites.
"A lot of them exchanged phone numbers and made plans to meet on their own," says Baltman. "Everyone left with big smiles on their faces."
Some even asked Baltman if the JCC would hold the event every year.
Suzanne Swift, JCC adult programs director, says she is not sure if the Bronx event will become an annual thing.
"There's other places we want to hit," she says. Besides the Brooklyn event next year, people have requested there be similar events showcasing Chicago, Detroit, and other East Coast cities.
"I hope people would use this as a stepping stone to get together and do this on their own," Swift says.
Joan Edelman, a board member of the East Coast Social Group, hopes the event will occur again next year. She says her group is looking to maybe have a similar event.
"Some people were really kibitzing me and asking me, 'Why don't we have a Brooklyn Day?'" she says.
At the group's board meeting this week, Edelman says she is going to bring up the possibility of having Queens Day, Brooklyn Day and other events associated with the New York boroughs.
Though Edelman only lived in the Bronx for 10 years of her childhood, she still associates herself with the Bronx.
"Those are my beginning roots," she says.
"There's just something about (the Bronx) that was so neat," she continues. "There was a real close community feeling."
Burton Milrod attended the event with his wife Rosalind. She is a former Bronxite. He was born in the Bronx, but spent most of his life in Brooklyn. He has even volunteered to help organize the JCC's Brooklyn event next year.
"That was some program," Milrod says of the reunion. "It was really great."
Milrod was also surprised at how many people attended - "Somebody told me there were 280 people there," he says.
"I would never have believed they would get 280 people," his wife says.
For her, the reunion brought back a lot of memories. When everyone was broken up into groups by high school, she was surprised to see so many from her own school, Walton High School.
"I didn't expect to see a turnout for the high school I went to," she says. "It was an all-girls school."
Milrod says she met a few people who looked familiar, but she didn't remember them from her school days. However, she got acquainted with them anyway.
"I'm sure that I probably made some friends," she says. She expects that many of them will be invited to her home to watch a few of the Bronx videos she bought at the event.
"It was very uplifting," she adds.
Overall, the event seemed to garner great response.
"We're all reeling from it," Swift says. "It went beyond our expectations."
Whatever the bond with the Bronx may be, one thing is for sure: To the Bronxites, there's no place like home.
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