Everybody enjoys a “rag to riches“ story especially if it involves a local boy or girl. Think about John Riccardo. John was the son of hard-working Italian immigrant parents. His father had a shoe store on John Street in addition to working long hours in a local bicycle factory. John rose to become president and chairman of the board of Chrysler Corporation.
While driving down Flint Avenue in my hometown of Little Falls the other day, I happened to look to my right and for no apparent reason, my mind flashed back to the 1950’s. I recalled in vivid detail searching for diamonds on a rocky hillside behind the Ave with my buddy Rog Kopp.
“These are the times that try men’s souls.” So begins Thomas Paine’s December 23, 1776 epic treatise “The Sunshine Patriot,” written at perhaps the darkest point of the American Revolution, George Washington’s half-starving, dis-spirited troops were in their Valley Forge winter quarters.
With all the buzz about COVID-19 vaccines, it brought back memories of vaccines administered when I was in Vietnam in 1971-72. I was not a Medic but an intelligence officer stationed in a remote place named An Loc. Not far from the Cambodian border, 70 miles north of Saigon, straddling Route 13 (Thunder Road), I was one of 32 Americans in MACV advisor team 47, next to 2,000 ARVN (Army of the Republic of Viet Nam).
To anyone who walked the halls of Little Falls High School in the 1960’s, 70’s, 80’s and even into the 1990’s Hector Allen was a familiar and respected figure.
Hector taught “Social Studies” – New York State, United States and World History – at LFHS for 34 years.
Little Falls, New York enjoys a singular reputation in American agricultural history as the most important interior market for cheese during the great boom in dairy exports that began in the Civil War and peaked in ca. 1881.