Dear
Friends,
Good morning. Did you know that
Frenchtown, New Jersey originally had a different name? My friend Dr. Harry
Light recently set me straight. “In the mid 1800’s, it was called Sunnyside,”
Harry began. “A man with a French name, Prevost, built a mill. The farmers
called it the Frenchman’s town…hence Frenchtown.”
I talked with Harry about growing up
along the banks of the Delaware during the 1940’s. His father, Bertram Light
was the Superintendent of the Frenchtown School for 25 years. Today this area
of Hunterdon County is growing like Topsy but in those days, the population was
only 1,400.
After his Superintendent days,
Harry’s father served as mayor of Frenchtown. There’s a park named after him.
Harry’s mother taught Latin and Greek at Quakertown High School.
Harry was the president and was
second in his class of 59. During his Ursinus College summers, he played
baseball for the Riegel Paper semi pro team in the East Penn and Tri County
Leagues. He remembers playing against John Smoll of Quakertown and the Limeport
Milkmen.
“Night baseball was very new,” he
said. “Once we used a car which served as the generator for the lights. We were
playing the “House of David,” a black traveling team like the Harlem Globe
Trotters,” he laughed.
And speaking about cars, he
remembered borrowing his father’s car to run an errand to a Presbyterian camp,
upstream from Treasure Island on the Delaware, near Erwina. “I think the
pastor’s name was Dunbar,” Harry added. “Because the river was low, we figured
we could fjord the river. But the rocks were round and slimy…we couldn’t get
any traction. When we opened the door, the river poured in so we had to open
the opposite door to let the water out.” Fortunately, the pastor’s campers came
to the rescue and pushed us to safety. “My father couldn’t understand why the
car was not running well,” Harry smiled.
Hunting and fishing were only steps
from his home in Frenchtown. Those sports remain close to Harry’s heart to this
day.
He showed a photograph of nine
brothers and sisters taken in the late 1880’s. One of them was Harry E. Grim,
Harry’s maternal grandfather. All taught in different Bucks County schools.
Each had graduated from Kutztown Normal School [now Kutztown University]. Three
remained teachers, two became physicians, two attorneys, and one a college
professor in chemistry. Can you imagine a family sending nine children to
college?
“Kids were thirsty to get an
education,” Harry said. “In my class, 84 percent of us graduated. I don’t know
whether today’s students will be strivers like our grandfather’s generation…but
I hope so.”
Harry became a surgeon via,
Jefferson and Penn. “I practiced 40 years after medical school and retired at
65. I had 40 years of compassion…and then I ran out,” he chuckled.
“Nancy [his wife] has a computer
room but I don’t know anything about computers,” Harry concluded. “In my
retirement years I wanted to learn to type and speak Spanish…but I flunked both
of them.”
Ah, those were the days in
Frenchtown.
Sincerely,
Charles Meredith