I came upon this site after taking my oldest daughter, a senior at Fordham University, on a tour of the old neighborhood, probably the fourth or fifth time I have been back since leaving in 1970. It looks better than it did a decade ago. Typing in "Roseville" on Google brought me here, and I'm glad it did.
I have sent John a copy of my photo of the "other" graduating class of 1957, and he should have it up soon. I named as many people as I could remember, but if I have misspelled your name or forgot you or mixed you up with someone else, please forgive.
After leaving St. Rose I went to Our Lady of the Valley HS, graduated in 1961, then went to Seton Hall Univerisity and graduated in 1965. I was in ROTC at Seton Hall and that earned me an army commission as a second lieutenant and a trip to Vietnam, where I was a convoy escort commander and mortar platoon leader in the First Infantry Division for a year, from August 1966 -August 1967.
Returning stateside I went to grad school at Seton Hall, where I eventually earned an MA in history and taught at Essex Catholic HS in 1968-69 and 69-70. I got married in 1970, moved "down the shore" to Wall Township and taught at St. Thomas/Bishop Ahr HS in Edison before going to work for the state of New Jersey. I also began a (very) minor league writing career, with about 300 articles and six books (none even remotely best sellers) to my credit, mostly dealing with the Civil War. I retired early from the state last July as manager of the Department of Labor's Central Investigation Office and became a full time writer.
My wife Pat is an English teacher and we have three children, Kate, the senior at Fordham, Meg, a sophomore at Douglas and John, a freshman at Rutgers college.
I am glad to see that St. Rose School is still a going concern. Although whacked around by the nuns more than once in my time there, I came out with a pretty good fundamental education. <G>
Funny what a small world this really is. I graduated St. Rose in 68 so I don't remember you and I also went to OLV and graduated in 72. You taught my husband, Bill, at Essex Catholic in a history type class (government maybe). My 3 children have either gone or are going to BGA. My son Kevin and his girlfriend Jen know your daughter Meg I believe. Kevin is a sophmore at Stevens Tech in Hoboken. My older son, Bill, graduated BGA in 1998 and is at Rutgers. My daughter is a sophmore at BGA now.
Meg is a sophomore at Douglass and doing very well. In 1968 I was just out of the army and living at 196 Roseville Avenue with my parents. Got married in August 1970 and then left, never to return.
After my post I heard from Danny Moore, who graduated St. Rose in 1958 and lives down here by me. Needless to say we knew and remembered each other, as well as a lot of the same characters (and they were certainly that) from the old neighborhood.
Hi Joe,
Danny Moore told me (via e-mail)he has had some contact with you and that you gave him an update on Johnny Sause. Johnny was a good friend of mine as a kid. He lived at the corner of Roseville and 6th. I lived around the corner at 105 No. 9th Street until I was twelve. I think you were part of the 9th Street gang at times. Dan told me that John is teaching in Florida now. Do you have his address? I would love to get in touch with him.
Also, I noted that you have done some writing on the Civil War - a subject I have an interest in. I recently completed the Shaara trilogy and was at Gettysburg this past Monday. Gettysburg and Antiedam are about an hour's drive from where I live in Maryland. What subjects are your books on? Are they published? Let me know, I'm always interested in something new.
Yes, I remember you as well. I had lunch with Danny yesterday, and we had some good laughs about some of the wackos we both knew in the old neighborhood.
Last I saw Johnny Sause was in the late 1960s, when I was teaching history at Essex Catholic HS and he was teaching at Roselle Catholic. He was going to grad school, and I think he got his doctorate and last I heard -- 1970 or so, was teaching at a college in Florida. I haven't heard from him since, but will try to dig him up, so to speak. I spent a 27 year state career in investigations, so I might have some success with that.
I lived on 9th street, #58, if I recall, when I was a little kid -- it was in a row of two family houses just up from the apartment house on the corner that we called "Foster's" after the owner, and across from Strollo's dry cleaners and "Cafe 59." Wasserman's drug store was on the corner of 9th and 6th Avenue. Later in grammar school we moved to 123 North 11th, between 6th and Park Avenues and then to, If I recall 88 (?) North 11th, between 6th and 7th Avenues and across the street from those crazy cat ladies. I remember when their place went on fire and cooked all the cats and they made the front page of the "Newark News" the next day. Sophomore year of HS I moved to 196 Roseville Avenue, where I lived in the apartment next to Johnny Sause
I've been to Antietam and Gettysburg many times, beginning the summer after I graduated from St. Rose in 1957. I have six books in print from two publishers, a small one, Longstreet House (longstreethouse.com) in Hightstown, NJ and a medium sized one Da Capo Press in NYC (which bought out my other publisher, Combined Books). Most of my Longstreet House work is on NJ units, including "Three Rousing Cheers," a history of the 15th New Jersey Infantry, "Remember You Are Jerseymen," a history of all the NJ units, and "Forgotten Warriors, the, if I may say so, definitive book on black New Jerseyans in the Civil War.
Other topics include the history of the Irish Brigade and "Civil War Firearms." If you type in my name as a web search or a search on Amazon or B&N.com or go to civilwarguns.com, you will see more details.
To continue the Civil War theme, Roseville was the site of one of the largest Civil War troop rendezvous sites in the state, Camp Frelinghuysen, active between 1862 and 1865. The camp was bordered by the Morris Canal (current Newark subway tracks), Roseville Avenue, Orange Street and Bloomfield Avenue. The front gate was on Roseville Avenue.
Camp Frelinghuysen was the site of some rather unflattering New Jersey casualties. At least one soldier fell drunk into the canal and drowned, and, in late 1863, when the 33rd New Jersey Infantry regiment (recently profiled in "New Jersey Heritage" magazine) was assembling, several deserters from the outfit were shot by guards while attempting to escape by climbing over a fence on Roseville Avenue.
A bronze memorial tablet to Camp Frelinghuysen was erected by the students of Barringer HS before World War I on a boulder in Branch Brook Park, but it was stolen some time back. It was replaced this year, but the reproduction tablet still retains a couple of factual errors perpetuated from the first memorial.
Fascinating bit of info! I never realized the Roseville area had any connection with the Civil War (or anything else historic). Despite having lived in Roseville for over twenty years, I don't think I ever heard of Camp Frelinghuysen. I'll e-mail you directly on some other Civil War items.
Don't feel bad, I didn't know about Camp Frelinghuysen myself until I began to do the research for my Seton Hall MA thesis on recruiting in New Jersey during the Civil War. I also never recall seeing the memorial to the camp in Branch Brook Park, even though I went there a lot and was interested in military history. Our ignorance was the product of New Jersey's determination not to study its own history.
Another neighborhood Civil War note: Barringer HS is home to a flag the students of "Newark High School" presented to the First New Jersey militia in 1861. The veterans returned the flag some forty years later. I seem to recall it hanging in the front hall of the school when I went there to take my SATs in 1961. At any rate, it ended up, in recent years, slowly deteriorating in the weight room. The New Jersey Civil War Heritage Commission, of which I am a trustee, recently signed an agreement with the Newark school system to restore the flag for proper display. It is now at a conservation laboratory.
Mr. Bilby.....if my memory is correct, I believe I was in one of your classes at Essex. It may have been some sort of History (??) back around 68. Is that possible ?
