Nostalgia

Nostalgia – “A wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one’s life, to one’s home or homeland, or to one’s family and friends.” Roughly translated from Greek it means “a longing to return home.”

At some time in our lives, we all become somewhat nostalgic.

We relive our past. We think about all the good times and shuffle the bad times to the back of our minds. Nostalgia becomes a personal emotional experience. In times of stress, nostalgia can provide a retreat, a respite, a way to feel less alone. Recent scientific studies have also shown that nostalgia can reduce chronic pain perception. Once we get to be elderly, we look back and recognize that the world, in general, is significantly different than what it was during our youthful days.

It seems that technology expands exponentially. There are so many things in everyday life we take for granted because we have always had them for most, if not all, of our lives. Technical gadgets and things like automobiles, airplanes, Amazon deliveries, TV sets, radios, microwave ovens, the Internet, cell phones, and laptop computers. And then there are more mundane things such as paved streets, electric lights, a potable water supply, a sewage disposal system, shopping malls, large full-service grocery stores, and superhighways. But all these things we enjoy, and need were not always around.

I think back to 1954, my senior year in high school with great clarity. It was a great and wonderful time to be a teenager! Then I think of the people in Little Falls who at that time were my age now – 88 years old. They had been born in 1866, just after the Civil War, and graduated from the Union School and Academy in Little Falls as the Class of 1884. They were in grade school at the time of Custer’s Last Stand on June 25, 1876! As young kids, they probably couldn’t envision electric lights, telephones or cars or airplanes much less TVs, all things that were common in their elder years.

I wish I had talked to those old-timers more often about their lives growing up in Little Falls and the changes they saw and endured. I didn’t.  I think it is very important we all, whenever possible, especially younger people, interview our parents and grandparents more often. Talk to them about family history, and personal and national or world-wide events that framed their lives. We will be richer for this. And elders, be sure to talk to your children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren, giving them a sense of personal history. If possible, write it down.

But how do we chart technical and cultural changes that happened over the years in Little Falls? What were a series of “firsts” – the first time something happened here? We do have the comprehensive Cooney Files at the Little Falls Historical Society Museum with thousands of pages of newspaper clippings which give us an insight into the everyday history of our fair city for nearly 200 years. I reviewed all these files to develop 231 pages of “This Day in Little Falls History” which is chronicled daily on our historical society website littlefallshistoricalsociety.org. and the Little Falls High School alumni website.

What follows is an overview – a stroll down memory lane of the events that happened in Little Falls, the nation and world, over all those years. Look at it from the perspective of what was happening when you were born, your childhood days, adulthood, and family building, and finally, if you are old enough, your elder years.

And finally, the seniors in the Class of 2024 at Little Falls High School will be eighty-eight years old in 2094, almost at the beginning of the 22nd century. For his acclaimed book “Physics of the Future,” Dr. Micho Kaku interviewed physicists from around the world, including Nobel Laureates, to see how science will shape human destiny and our daily lives by the year 2100. Things we can only dream about today, or not even imagine, will be commonplace and taken for granted. Even today, we live in a world where distance and time are being rapidly shattered by instant live television, cell phones & the Internet, Facebook, Twitter, by supersonic jet aircraft, and by other new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence. Rocket rides to the fringes of space are commonplace. We have even altered the trajectory of asteroids. Plans are in the works and people are training for new visits to the Moon and even Mars. The Webb Space Telescope was recently launched into space with the ability to look back to events in the universe that occurred nearly at the time of the “Big Bang” around 13.7 billion years ago. The Europa Clipper just was launched on a multi-year 1.8 billion mile voyage to Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons. It will arrive in the 2030s! On board is a dime-sized Tantalum microchip containing 2.4 million names with each letter 1/1000 the diameter of a human hair. Among the names are mine, my family members and the Little Falls NY Historical Society.

The world of 2094 will certainly be more advanced technically and scientifically, but will it be, on a grand scale, a better place to live? Will poverty be eliminated, will we reverse the rise in sea levels threatening coastal cities and Pacific islands, will we lessen the adverse effects that Greenhouse gases and global warming have on our climate, will the weekly news continue to chronicle the sadness of mass shootings, will the number of democracies throughout the world continue to fall and the number of autocracies continue to rise, what will be the state of religion, will racial discrimination, nativism, and xenophobia continue to plague us, will we learn to live together in peace?   As in the past, technology cannot and will not solve many of these problems.  People’s attitude and behavior can.

Land Memory – “You feel your best on the land you and your family have grown up on, and in time you make it your own.

And no matter what happens to you or the land, you still feel best there.

Standing on it.  Being there.”​​

Author – Lisa Scottoline

A Walk through History

1865 April 26​ A train carrying President Abraham Lincoln’s remains stopped briefly in Little Falls on its way to Springfield, Illinois.

1868​ Members of the Class of 1886 were born.

1869 May 10​ The final spike was driven at Promontory Summit, Utah marking the completion of the 1911 mile-long Transcontinental Railroad.

1875 January 15 ​5,653,118 pounds of cheese was shipped by rail from Little Falls in 1874.

1876 March 7​ Alexander Graham Bell patented a device (telephone) for transmitting speech by telegraphy.

1876 June 25​ Colonel George Armstrong Custer and all the men in his 7thCavalry Regiment were killed at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

1878 June 1​ The first person to have a telephone in Little Falls was Frank Bramer whose home (current library) was connected to his office in the Warrior Mower plant.

1886​ The senior class of the Little Falls Union School and Academy graduated.

1891 February 21​ In what was purported to be one of the first basketball games, Herkimer defeated Little Falls 18 – 7.

1892 February 1 The first electric lights in Little Falls, 83 in total, were turned on at 7:46 PM, and “illumed the streets of the village.”

1893 November 15 ​The first hospital in Herkimer County opened, with 4 rooms for patients, in a renovated home at 14 North Ann Street.

1895 October 17 ​There is a growing sentiment in this city that the principal streets, at least, ought to be paved, particularly Main Street.

1901 July 1​ The first local person to own a car was John G. Thomas who acquired a Locomobile which ran on kerosene.

1901 December 12 Marconi transmitted the first transatlantic wireless radio signal.

1902 August 9​ The first automobile accident occurred in Little Falls.

1903 April 29 ​A gala celebration greeted the first of the electric inter-urbans (trolleys) to reach Little Falls from Utica and Rome.

1903 December 17​ The Wright Brothers invented, built, and flew the first fixed wing, motor driven aircraft at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

1910 June 15​ The first fatal automobile accident to occur in Little Falls took place near the corner of East Main Street and Waverly Place.

1913 January 13​ The YMCA, a magnificent gift to the community from David H. Burrell, was  opened to the public. It cost over $100,000.

1917 April 6​ Nearly three years after World War I began, the US entered the war which ended with the Armistice on November 11, 1918.

1920 March 9​ Loomis, David, and Elizabeth Burrell gave the Nathaniel Benton house on Garden Street and $12,000 to the people of Little Falls for a WCA.

1923 October 22​ The handsome new Gateway Theatre (Rialto) on Ann Street opened to capacity audiences with a Laurel comedy, “The Green Goddess.”

1923 December 10​ Foreign–born persons in Little Falls – 879 Poles, 605 Italians, 541 Bohemians, 279 Slovaks, 205 Germans, and 108 Ukrainians.

1927  May 20-21​ Charles Lindbergh (Little Falls, MN) makes the first non-stop solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean from New York to Paris.

1929 March 1 ​“Talkies” make a hit as large crowds witness the initial Vitaphone productions at the Rialto with the movie “Alias Jimmy Valentine.”

1929 August ​The “Great Depression”, the longest, deepest economic downturn in US history, begins and lasts to the end of World War II in 1945.

1930 March 28​ 3,500 fans from Little Falls travelled to Syracuse to see the Wilber Crisp coached LFHS team defeat Cohoes 25 -9 for the NYS title.

1933 April 29 ​The last passengers were carried on the Little Falls & Dolgeville Railroad, a dream of the Gay Nineties passing into history.

1933 June 30​ The last trolley leaves Little Falls, without honor and unsung, to make the final interurban run between the city and up-valley towns.

1936​ Members of the Class of 1954 were born.

1939 April 30​ Prototypes of TV were made in 1927, but the first sales to the public were made at the 1939  World’s Fair in New York City.

1940 April 19​ The Lake Shore Limited speeding to make up lost time, crashed on the Gulf Curve in Little Falls killing 31 and injuring over 100 others.

1941 December 7 ​WW II Era – With the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, the United States enters World War II.

1943 January 17​ Ninety-five year old Martin Burney of Little Falls, Herkimer County’s last veteran of the Civil War, died today.

1945 August 14​ Japan unconditionally surrendered ending World War II .

1950 January 1​ Rumors that Little Falls has more Bars & Grills per capita in New York State seem to be true as the city counted 41 such places.

1950 October 2​ Seeing the need to go cashless, the first credit card was invented and named “Diners Club.”

1952 June 1​ The H.P. Snyder Company is “cranking out” Hopalong Cassidy bicycles to fill the huge demand of youngsters across the nation.

1952 June 22​ Radio Station WLFH went on the air today at 1230 on the dial.

1954 June 28 ​The Little Falls High School Class of 1954 graduated

1955 August 5​ The Salk Anti-Polio Vaccine will soon be available for all local third and fourth graders. Lower grades have already been immunized.

1955 Dec.1​ Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama.

1959 April 9​ The Allegro Shoe Corporation of Little Falls moved up to eighth place in the entire nation with 4,229,454 pairs of shoes produced.

1961 August 8​ The opening of the new swimming pool near the Monroe Street field was a big splash as about 400 swimmers were on hand.

1962 April 28​ The last passenger train to stop in Little Falls left the city today.  Passengers, Mr. & Mrs. Austin Chase boarded for Schenectady

1967 Oct. 16​ Medical breakthroughs included the first heart transplant and the first coronary bypass surgery.

1969 July 12​ Little Falls alderman approved plans for the East–West Arterial thru Little Falls over the objection of 552 residents affected. In 2 years, 277 dwelling units were razed, and 34 businesses werescheduled for relocation – however, many just went out of business.

1969 July 20​ Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the moon as part of the Apollo 11 mission. “That’s one small step for man, one giant step for mankind.”

1970 May 24​ In a letter read at Sunday masses at St. Mary’s Church, it was made known that the high school department will be closed at the end of the current school year.

1976 January 10​ Arson was suspected in the late Saturday evening fire that destroyed the Little Falls High School which was built in 1969.

1977 September 1​ The personal computer (PC), intended for interactive individual use, was coming on the market. Commodore was a leader.

1980 September 8 ​Sherman’s Amusement Park at Caroga Lake, a frequent destination for Little Falls youths and teens, closed permanently.

1982 July 2​ The Theodore S. Wind Bridge, over the river, connecting the East-West Arterial to the New York State Thruway exit, built at a cost of $13,665,209 was opened.

1987 August 14 ​The inaugural Little Falls Canal Celebration started today.

1990 April 19​ The Hubble Space Telescope was launched in a low space orbit to peek into deep space.

1994 February 9​ The Board of Education came to a historic decision – to reconstruct Benton Hall Academy rather than build a new grade school on the outskirts of the city.

2004​ Members of the Class of 2022 were born.

2020 March 12​Herkimer County’s first confirmed case  of Covid-19 was announced. The county’s first death was recorded two weeks later.

2022 May 17​The United States recorded its one millionth death from Covid-19, and has thus far has had 82,727,079 cases. In just two years, Herkimer County has had 14,909 cases and 194 deaths.

Louis Baum is a member of the Little Falls Historical Society.