Lindenhurst, Our Hometown

This project began as an assignment to my fifth-grade class at Daniel Street School. I asked students to share what they loved about growing up in Lindenhurst. As I began talking about this project with friends and relatives I was overwhelmed by the love people have for the town and how much they treasured their memories of growing up here. I wanted to give them the opportunity to share these childhood memories with my students and so I invited people to email me their memories so I could compile them in a book for generations to come. I have discovered, as have my students, much of what we love about this town has not changed over the decades. Children today have many things in common with their grandparents and great-grandparents, they might be playing at the same park or enjoying the wonderful treats from a favorite bakery.
I invite you to stroll Lindenhurst with us as we celebrate the marking of its centennial celebration.

Laura Colosa

I love living in Lindenhurst! I love going to the parades on Wellwood Avenue to celebrate different holidays or big events. I like going to the parades because I get to see my friends from school and friends from around town. I also love going to the Wednesday on Wellwood events. It's really fun to shop at the small booths with my friends. I also love to get delicious bagels from the Wellwood Bagel Deli. They are the best bagels I have ever had. I can't believe Lindenhurst is turning 100 and I'm going to be able to be part of the celebration. I love living and growing up in Lindenhurst!
-Hadley Caparco Age 10

This picture was taken at the Lindenhurst Memorial Day Parade.

This is Wellwood Bagels, (the best deli ever.)

This is one of the Wednesday on Wellwood events.

Lindenhurst is an easy village to love! Growing up in this community was a magical place to spend your childhood! As children, we knew all our neighbors and always felt a strong sense of belonging. Our schools provided us with an outstanding education, and our community provided us with wonderful places to play and explore. The Lindenhurst Library was a welcoming place to meet friends and borrow books that allowed us to go on adventures. Walking down Wellwood Avenue as a child was a trip to tickle the senses, the smell of bread from Patsy's Bakery, or pizza from one of the many pizzerias would leave your mouth watering!
One thing that always makes me beam with Lindy Pride is how this community has consistently come out to support one another. In the late '70s, a snowstorm blanketed our area and I still remember how everyone came out to help family, friends, and neighbors during the bid "dig out", this sense of community was still evident after Super Storm Sandy in 2012.

I am so thankful that I grew up in Lindenhurst!
Laura Colosa Class of 1985

I was born and raised in the Village of Lindenhurst. I attended Daniel Street School. The most memorable year was 4th grade. You could say I had the best 4th-grade teacher, and her name was Mrs. Colosa. I stayed in Lindenhurst for all of my academic years and graduated from Lindenhurst High School in 2002.
I have lived in the same house my whole life. I am raising my own family in the same house and they also attended Daniel Street School. Some of my children were lucky enough to have Mrs. Colosa as well!
To me, the Village of Lindenhurst means “community”. The town has grown so much in the 39 years that I have been living here. The community is coming together more and more each year. Last year was the first-ever St. Patrick’s Day Parade. To be at the parade, and see the excitement of the adults and children was exciting. It's a great time to be a part of the community, we call the Village of Lindenhurst.

Tina Jo Fagan Dowling Class of 2002

When I was a little girl, I lived in the Bronx in New York City. My grandfather lived in Lindenhurst and when we would go there to visit him we referred to it as visiting “Grandpa in the country”. It looked very different then from the way it looks now.
I remember riding in the back seat of my father’s car with my brother while my mother sat in the front passenger seat. I’d look out the window as my dad drove along the parkway. After leaving ”the city”, we no longer saw any tall buildings. We saw trees. Lots and lots of trees. And when we finally arrived at my grandfather’s house, there were very few houses in the area. There was lots of land - empty land where houses would later be built. But at that time, it was still “the country” to me.
My grandfather had an old wooden swing in his yard. It consisted of two benches facing each other. Each bench had a wooden back and there was a wooden platform between them that held the benches together as they moved in unison. It had a frame that held it up and we could stand on the platform and swing. We often swung so high that my grandfather would come outside and tell us not to swing so high because we might break the swing. We never did thank goodness. But we were used to playing on the swings we had at the city parks and we could swing so high on them that we thought we’d reach the sky. We never did that either.
My grandfather had an old hand pump in the yard, too. It was attached to a well under the ground and we would pump the handle so long and hard that our arms would ache. But finally, ice-cold water would start pouring out of its spout. It was the coldest and most delicious water I had ever tasted.
Eventually, my family moved to Lindenhurst. By then, an entire development of houses had been built and things were beginning to look different. It wasn’t like a city but it no longer looked like the country and I still loved it.
When I became an adult, my husband and I bought a home of our own in Lindenhurst. We raised our 5 daughters there and together we all made new memories.
Lindenhurst will always have a very special place in my heart.

- Marie Albano Altenburg

I moved to Lindenhurst as a child in the late 1950s. My family and I lived on N. Clinton Avenue very close to Fellers Pond. I had many fond memories as a child growing up there. I remember walking into “town” as a young child and going to Windisch‘s for ice cream soda or going into Udell’s to buy my favorite monster models. I remember going into Benkert's, the butcher, on Saturdays with my mom, and the butcher would give us a slice of bologna. I can still remember the smell of the meats as I walked into the butcher shop.
In the winter, we would ice skate regularly after school on Fellers Pond. So much fun. I couldn’t wait to get home from school. My greatest memory came in 1969 when I played Joe Hardy in Damn Yankees in Miss Pribonics 6th grade class at Daniel Street. I still remember my lines from over 50 years ago!

Michael Rea

The following pages are memories submitted by Marie ( Knapp) Schneider

Well at 54 years of age and living in another state, NC, you remember a lot of great things about your childhood. Growing up in Lindenhurst was a quieter and really simpler fun time, and I never really realized how much I missed it.  We knew the shop owners and local people, it was like having additional family members, and neighbors help each other.  As an older person I can say I was lucky to have experienced Lindenhurst like this;
We would walk to school with friends because of the many sidewalks that lead to town and our schools. They were easy, accessible, and safe. The town was filled with family-friendly places to go, Fireman’s park to see the swans and ducks, with handball courts and tennis too. In “town” we had the library, not quite as fancy as you have it now, but filled with books and helping people. It was a thrill to get your actual library “card”.  We had a store named Udells for our trading cards and novelties a kid might collect something that was popular at that time. Windisch’s Luncheonette where my mom would take me for the best-grilled cheese and chocolate malts for great grades on my report card. It had the old-fashioned soda machines at the counter and just a really cool vibe you would see in movies now, but to me was the norm.  We had Friendly’s ice cream and Carvel ice cream in case you had to argue with your best friend whose ice cream was better, a bazillion pizza places and food too, and some of the best bakeries on the island, well at least in my opinion but I think it’s because you could get something different at the Black Forest German bakery, Italian ices at Patsys or a smiley face/black and white cookie at Modern Bakery.

Not far from my home in my neighborhood, I had some of the best friends that we all hung out almost daily. We all went to the same schools, so you grew up and experience the same things together. I still have the same best friend from elementary school to this day.  We would all go out after school and homework was done, playing baseball or something until our parents would call us for dinner, then right back out again for maybe a game of manhunt, kickball or baseball until the street lights came on. It didn’t matter the weather either, you hoped for snow storms and deep snow to build forts and sled. We didn’t have the internet or cell phones, we created fun, and you were hardly ever bored. By my home, we had a small strip mall with a pizza, deli, and candy store with bins upon bins of candy. We would go for our lunch special pizza and 25-cent candies after. We knew the owners of both the pizza and candy store and they always asked how our day was and what was new. They knew our parents as well.
The schools, well they were great to us, we didn’t mind going, teachers were like an extension of your family, you liked and respected them. I knew my crossing guards by name, even bus drivers as I got older. I had Home Economics where we got to actually cook and sew. Your middle school had a small planetarium where my interest in space grew. Your High School has a pool that was part of the Gym (sorry P.E.) let’s not forget actual gymnastics equipment…we had different types of Shop to learn to fix cars and work with wood. We had (or still have) Orchestra, you had the option to learn to play those beautiful string instruments.  Our science teachers did experiments and made it a lot of fun. We learned so much about the world and actual history in Social Studies. Language arts was called English and we read famous and timeless novels and poems and you can bet we wrote ( yeah, no computers here kids) English papers by hand ( called book reports) about what we read, sometimes pages upon pages.
When I grew up and moved to another town on Long Island before moving to NC,  I still remember having my daughter be born and how that new town I was in was nothing like Lindenhurst. There weren’t kids playing in the streets and no “town” with all that cool stuff my kids and family would enjoy, it was so busy and not as friendly. I was afraid to even think about her growing up to go explore without us. I missed Lindenhurst.

Marie ( Knapp) Schneider