Heehee Cover art photo provided by Rangus Moiboi on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/@rangusmoiboi
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Stories and interviews with people passionate about Long Island history.
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Episode 193: Associated Public Historians of New York State conference
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The Association of Public Historians of New York State held their annual conference at Danford’s in Port Jefferson this year, gathering public historians from all corners of the state to discuss resources, projects, and to provide a great opportunity for people to talk history. The Long Island History Project was there to hold a workshop, “How to B…
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Episode 192: Broadway to Jones Beach w Richard Arnold Beattie
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Robert Moses had a vision for Jones Beach in the 1920s that included a theater to bring high quality entertainment to the people. That theater on Zachs Bay went through a number of iterations but reached its height from 1954-1977 when it was under the direction of Guy Lombardo. Along with his brothers Carmen and Lebert, the Canadian-born band leade…
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Episode 191: The 1914 Freeport Murder Mystery w Woody Register
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An obscure bit of early 20th century technology embroiled Dr. Woody Register in a murder mystery. Register, a professor of history at the University of the South (Sewanee), became intrigued by the detective dictograph and followed its trail to the 1914 murder of Louise Bailey in Freeport. Mrs. Bailey was shot in the Merrick Road office of Dr. Edwar…
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Episode 190: Ralph Bunn, Long Island's Jackie Robinson w Fabio Montella
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Librarian and baseball historian Fabio Montella returns to the podcast to bring us the story of Ralph “Sammy” Bunn. Bunn was a Setauket native who excelled at baseball all his life. A star athlete in high school in the 1930s, he went on to play for decades on a number of teams and leagues in the makeshift world of community baseball in Suffolk Coun…
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Greig Stewart “Chubby” Jackson was a swinging sensation in his day. A child of vaudevillians, he was raised in an enclave of actors, musicians, and performers in Freeport, Long Island against the backdrop of Prohibition and a burgeoning club scene. Exposed to music at an early age, he jumped from high school to playing bass in swing bands in New Yo…
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Episode 188: Benjamin Tallmadge with Richard Welch
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The Long Island-born, Yale-educated Benjamin Tallmadge seized his moment to shine in the American Revolution. Whether fighting the British on horseback with the 2nd Continental Dragoons or uncovering their secrets through his agents in the Culper Spy Ring, Tallmadge kept up a hectic pace. You can also throw in maritime battles on the Long Island So…
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Episode 187: The Howard School with Dr. Tammy C. Owens
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Dr. Tammy C. Owens of Skidmore College joins us to discuss her 2019 article "Fugitive Literati: Black Girls' Writing as a Tool of Kinship and Power at the Howard School." Having discovered a treasure trove of letters written in the early 1900s by girls at the Howard Orphanage and Industrial School, Owens was off on a journey to learn more. The rese…
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Episode 186: In Levittown's Shadow with Tim Keogh
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While Long Island developed a reputation for affluence throughout the 20th Century, there has always been a parallel history of the everyday workers and servants who toiled in the shadow of that reputation. The economic boom of the war years and the subsequent population boom in the 1950s did not change that. Tim Keogh, assistant professor of histo…
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Episode 185: Loyalists on Long Island with Brendon Burns
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No one sheds a tear for the British Loyalists of Long Island, those inhabitants who remained loyal to the crown during the American Revolution. But genealogist Brendon Burns has spent a tremendous amount of effort tracking them down through libraries and archives across the world. The result is his 5-volume series The Loyal and Doubtful: Index to t…
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Episode 184: Long Island's Most Endangered Historic Places with Tara Cubie
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Every other year, Preservation Long Island compiles a list of historic places on Long Island that are endangered. Each list is a mix of structures from different periods of time, each with its own history and own preservation challenges yet all worthy of preserving for future generations. On today's episode, Preservation Long Island's Preservation …
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Episode 183: Long Island Kansas with Carrie Cox
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There is a Long Island just below the Kansas border with Nebraska, between the Elk and Prairie Dog Creeks. It's apparently the creeks that gave the area its name. When swollen with rain, they cut off the land in between until it appeared to be an island rising from the surrounding plains. Long Island is also the home town of Carrie Cox and on today…
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Episode 182: Rockin History with Cindy Schwartz
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Cindy Schwartz grew up on Long Island and followed her love of history into a long career as a social studies teacher at the Wheatley School in Old Westbury. She has since turned to a new type of classroom - reaching a wider audience through radio and podcasting at WCWP, Long Island University. Her podcast Civics is Dead explored the lack of focus …
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Episode 181: Our Hamptons with Irwin Levy and Esperanza Leon
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Your idea of the Hamptons on the East End of Long Island may include images of supersized mansions and extravagant parties but there is an older, richer Hamptons history beneath and beyond that glitzy surface. Irwin Levy and Esperanza León bring that history to life in their podcast, Our Hamptons. Their Hamptons is a decidedly personal place, roote…
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Episode 180: Larry Samuel and Making Long Island
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Larry Samuel is an author and historian whose latest book looks at the development of Long Island throughout the 20th Century. It was a time of land speculation and rapid growth as real estate developers and their syndicates turned the fields and farms of Nassau and Suffolk Counties into residential neighborhoods. We discuss the role of Robert Mose…
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Episode 179: Edward Lieberman's Historic Tours
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Yes, Edward Lieberman is a former assistant district attorney and mayor of Seacliff but just as importantly, he is a long-time listener of the Long Island History Project. So when he reached out to talk about his own forays into Long Island history, we were all ears. On today's episode you'll hear about his work conducting historic bus tours around…
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Episode 178: The Arthur Murray Girls Baseball Team w Fabio Montella
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In 1949 the nine women of the Arthur Murray Girls baseball team took the field against the all-male squad from the Patchogue Athletics. By that year, the Murrays had been together as a semi-pro outfit for some time. Formed out of the sandlots and playgrounds of Queens, they grew under the tutelage of New York Times sportswriter Mike Strauss to beco…
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Episode 177: Richard Welch and The Gold Coast Elite in World War One
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The Gold Coast along Long Island's north shore is most often celebrated as a showcase for the rich and famous in the early 20th Century. A decidedly different aspect of that reputation comes into view when you consider the years leading up to America's entry into World War I. The Morgan Bank, headed by J.P. Morgan, Jr. with his estate in Glen Cove,…
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Episode 176: How the Bayport Blue Point Phantoms Got Their Name
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Today we team up with Stephanie Eberhard-Holgerson's journalism class at Bayport Blue Point (BBP) High School to try to solve a mystery. At the suggestion of BBP's librarian Pam Gustafson, the class has spent the last year looking into the school's mascot, The Phantoms. The takeaway is that the straightforward question "where did the name come from…
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Epiosde 175: Remember Liss with Claire Bellerjeau
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We're returning to Revolutionary War era Long Island on this episode. And while the Culper Spy Ring does play a part, we are turning the focus to a woman whose story and connections to the Ring were ignored and misrepresented across time until reconstructed by Claire Bellerjeau. Her book with Tiffany Yecke Brooks, Espionage and Enslavement in the R…
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Episode 174: Al Smith with Dr. Robert Slayton
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Al Smith was many things during his political career: reform champion after the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, four-time governor of New York State, the first Catholic presidential candidate. But he was always a New York City boy at heart. On this episode we talk with another New York City native, Dr. Robert A. Slayton. His book, Empire Statesman: The R…
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Episode 173: Long Island Mill North Carolina
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From time to time on the podcast we like to explore the histories of other Long Islands, those far from New York. Today we focus on the story of Long Island Mill and the Long Island Mill Village in North Carolina. We have a number of guests to help us tell the story. Jennifer Marquardt, site manager of Murray’s Mill in Catawba County, has researche…
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Episode 172: The Lexington Steamship with Bill Bleyer
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On a frigid night in January 1840, the luxury steamboat Lexington burned and sank in the middle of the Long Island Sound with over 140 people on board. What followed were harrowing tales of survival, tragic deaths, and a media sensation that dominated the headlines for months. Historian and journalist Bill Bleyer compiled all of the details in his …
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Episode 171: Grumman Test Pilot Bruce Tuttle
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Jet fighters once roamed the skies above Long Island. Grumman, the aviation powerhouse behind such planes as the Hellcat and the Avenger, turned its attention to jets by the end of World War II. And to test those jets, they turned to men like Bruce Tuttle. Tuttle dreamed of flying from an early age. From his family's farm on the north shore he witn…
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Episode 170: The Culper Spy Ring with Bill Bleyer
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Today we welcome back former Newsday reporter Bill Bleyer. Bill is an author and historian with a number of Long Island-related history books to his credit and today we dive into his work on the Culper Spy Ring. Published in 2021, George Washington's Long Island Spy Ring: A History and Tour Guide is an analysis of the Culper Spy Ring. In it, Bleyer…
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Episode 169: Bellport Restoration with Victor Principe
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A tree-lined street running gently down to a flat blue bay, flanked by over two hundred years worth of American architecture. Bellport in all its glory, from its founding by the Bell brothers through its growth as a waterfront resort destination and the ensuing years as a sleepy, forgotten village. But there came a time when the old place needed sa…
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Episode 168: Bayport History with Rob Walch of Libsyn
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Bayport and its immediate vicinity in Islip on the south shore of Long Island have some deep ties to history. There's the Bayport Aerodrome with its vintage airplanes, the Meadowcroft estate of John Ellis Roosevelt, and the roadside sphinx of the Anchorage Inn from the early 1900s. But what would all this mean to a teenager in the early 1980s? Toda…
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Episode 167: Raymond Buckland in Brentwood
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If you lived in Brentwood in the late 1960s and 70s, you may have encountered a charming, transplanted Englishman named Raymond Buckland. You many not have realized it at the time, but Buckland was in the process of establishing Wicca as a religion in America. A private practitioner at first, introduced to Wicca by Gerald Gardner, Buckland was soon…
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Episode 166: The Aftermath of the Hurricane of 1938 with Jonathan Bergman
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Much has been written about September 21, 1938, the day that a massive hurricane hit Long Island. For Jonathan C. Bergman, the more interesting story began the day after. His extensive research focused on the cleanup and disaster relief efforts orchestrated by a shifting network of Red Cross officials, New Deal workers, Suffolk County agencies, chu…
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Episode 165: The Ferguson Brothers with Christopher Verga
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Two Black men were shot and killed by a police officer in Freeport on a cold winter morning in 1946. Another was wounded. All three were brothers, two were World War II veterans dressed in their military uniforms. The ensuing outcry and investigations would spread far beyond the south shore of Long Island and bring the story of racial tensions on L…
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Episode 164: Revisiting Robert Moses with Kara Schlichting and Katie Uva
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Robert Moses is the man most New Yorkers love to hate. This is in no small part due to his own hubris and the impact he had on the people living in the path of his massive construction projects. Add to that Robert Caro's hard hitting 1974 biography The Power Broker and you've got a reputation that is hard to live down. Kara Schlichting and Katie Uv…
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Episode 163: Drowned Meadow Cottage Museum with Mark Sternberg
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Today we dive back into a discussion of the Culper Spy Ring, turning our attention to the area of Port Jefferson or, more appropriately, it's original incarnation of Drowned Meadow. The village of Port Jefferson is opening the Drowned Meadow Cottage Museum inside the 18th century home of Culper ring member Phillips Roe. Mark Sternberg, the museum's…
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Episode 162: Gilgo Beach and Bottles with Mike Cavanaugh
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Long Island's barrier beaches are fascinating places. Stretched along the south shore of the island, they persist through much of Long Island history as wild natural landscapes constantly shifting and remolded by the Atlantic Ocean. And despite the storms and shipwrecks and isolation, people have persisted in thinking "I want to live there." On tod…
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Episode 161: Betsy Gulotta and the Hempstead Plains
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The Hempstead Plains were once a defining feature of Long Island. Covering some 40,000 acres, the Plains stretched from the Queens border in the west to the Suffolk border in the east, creating a sea of waist-high grass in the middle of what is now Nassau County. Remnants of the Plains still remain, most notably in a 17-acre segment on the campus o…
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Episode 160 William Sidney Mount: Long Island People of Color on Canvas
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We continue our exploration of Long Islands other than our own. This episode takes us inland from the East Coast to the banks of the Whitewater River in western Ohio. Sharon Pope Lutz tells us the story of Long Island Beach and how the Pope family turned their property from idyllic piece of farmland to a 1920s roadside attraction featuring swimming…
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Episode 158: Horrific Homicides by Thomas Stark
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Thomas M. Stark served as a judge in Suffolk County and New York State starting in the early 1960s. During his career he presided over a number of important cases but the one that loomed largest was the murder of the DeFeo family at their home in Amityville by their son Ronald in 1974. Stark’s daughter Ellen remembers hearing about the case over di…
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Episode 157: Square Dancing with the Durlachers
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Glenn Durlacher looks back over his family’s legacy of square dance calling on Long Island with deserved pride. His grandfather Ed pioneered square dancing in the New York City area starting in the 1930s. At the urging of his friends in the Top Hands band, Ed made a name for himself calling dances and traveling to promote the use of his records and…
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They were women and they fought for the right to vote. Beyond that, every person documented in the Online Biographical Dictionary of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the United States has a different story to tell. Dr. Thomas Dublin and a crowdsourced team of volunteers have worked diligently to collect those stories. The Dictionary, a free online re…
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Episode 155: Marguerite Kearns, her Family, and the Suffrage Movement
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In 2020 we marked the centennial of woman suffrage and the passing of the 19th amendment. Although the intervening 102 years can make that struggle feel like the distant past, the story of the many people who fought and marched and pushed for the right to vote is very much alive. Marguerite Kearns keeps one such story before our eyes in her book An…
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Episode 154: Brad Kolodny and the Jews of Long Island
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Brad Kolodny returns to the podcast to update us on what he's been doing during the intervening thirty episodes. Turns out he's got a new book and a new historical society. The Jews of Long Island (SUNY Press) is out now and in it, Brad documents the personal and communal stories of Jews on Long Island from the l8th through the early 20th centuries…
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Episode 153: Cold War Long Island with Karl Grossman and Christopher Verga
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Journalist Karl Grossman and historian Christopher Verga have teamed up for the new book Cold War Long Island, out now from the History Press. In it, they detail the productive and tumultuous post-World War II years on Long Island. With an influx of returning GIs and an increase of military spending to counteract the growing strength of the Soviet …
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Lucinda Hemmick and the Southold Indian Museum
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We continue our focus on the Southold Indian Museum by talking with their current president, Lucinda Hemmick. A science research teacher from Longwood High School, Lucinda found her way to the museum through the research interests of her students. What followed was a ten-year exploration of Clovis arrow points, steatite pots, and the use of science…
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Jay Levenson and the Southold Indian Museum
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Welcome to part 1 of a 2-part episode focusing on the Southold Indian Museum. Today we speak with Jay Levenson, incoming executive director of the museum. Jay discusses his Native American heritage, how he moved to Long Island and discovered the museum, and his time learning about its resources. He also talks about the history of Native Americans o…
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Episode 150: Connie Currie and Joe Sikorski and the story of Telefunken
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Welcome to our 150th episode! Connie Currie is back to bring us the story of the Telefunken site in West Sayville and how she and a dedicated band of radio enthusiasts tried to save it back in the mid-90s, how they failed, and how out of the ashes the Long Island Radio & Television Historical Society (LIRTVHS) was formed. You'll also hear from film…
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Episode 149: Karen Rea and the Long Island (Maine) Historical Society
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Some may be shocked to find that there are many Long Islands out there, each with its own fascinating history. We've taken up the challenge of finding those who are passionate about their own Long Island and bringing them here. We're starting in Casco Bay, Maine, speaking with Karen Rea, president of the Long Island Historical Society. Rea has fami…
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Episode 148: Amanda Fairbanks and the Lost Boys of Montauk
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In her first book, The Lost Boys of Montauk, journalist Amanda Fairbanks documents the story of the Wind Blown and the four men who lost their lives aboard it in 1984. Piecing the story together over years of interviews and research, she unraveled a history of close-knit communities, from the working class east end to the wealthy upper east side. S…
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Episode 147: Frank Romeo and a Personal History of PTSD
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Frank Romeo graduated from Bay Shore High School and enlisted in the US Army during the height of the Vietnam War. Despite fighting in the Tet Offensive and participating in secret missions in Cambodia, he maintains that his problems really started when he returned home. Christopher Verga joins us again as we sit down with Frank Romeo to talk about…
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Episode 146: The Life of Philip Merkle with Bruce Seger
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If you were a corrupt or incompetent official in 19th century New York City, Philip Merkle was your worst nightmare: an idealistic German immigrant with subpoena power. As city coroner from 1881-1885, he investigated murders, suicides, and gruesome accidents, seeking to right every wrong and improve every aspect of the system he encountered. He was…
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We finish out your special three-part series on Long Island's Vietnam veterans by looking at a second battle they faced in the years after the war: the effects of Agent Orange. By the late 1970s the effects of this chemical defoliant were becoming known and veterans began to mobilize. In Stamford, Connecticut former helicopter door gunner Paul Reut…
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Episode 144: Joe Giannini and the Vietnam War
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We continue our conversation with Long Island historian Christopher Verga, discussing his oral history interviews with Vietnam veterans from Long Island. Today we feature excerpts from Chris's interview with Joe Giannini. Joe was born in Brooklyn, moved to Massapequa and graduated from Hofstra University in 1966. Drafted soon after, he enlisted in …
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