Growing up in Coney Island and being elected to Leon Friend's Art Squad at Lincoln High School
Born in Coney Island in 1942, Tina Mednicoff Smokler grew up on Nass Walk, a narrow street which was demolished in the 1960s to make way for the Trump Village apartment complex. Her maternal grandmother ran a rooming house on West 35th Street that...
Content type: Oral History Item
Memories of growing up in the newly opened Luna Park Houses in the 1960s and 1970s
Kathy Fenyves and her family were original tenants of Luna Park Houses' Building 5 with an apartment that looked out on the amusement park. She lived there from 1961, when she was a toddler, until she was 23, and her parents continued to live there...
Content type: Oral History Item
Mother of professional boxing star Nikita Ababiy
Olga Martynchuk is the mother of 22-year-old American professional boxing star, Nikita Ababiy, whose nickname is White Chocolate. She talks about raising a boxing champion whose pro record is an amazing 10-0, with 6 KO's. Nikita attended PS 100, IS...
Content type: Oral History Item
Memories of growing up on Brighton First Court and a summer job renting beach chairs in Coney Island
Bill Zeidenberg grew up in the 1950s and 1960s at 212 Brighton First Court, just east of Ocean Parkway, the dividing line of Coney Island and Brighton Beach. He shares vivid memories of his summer job working for the M. & C. Chair Operating...
Content type: Oral History Item
Memories of growing up in the 1940s and '50s in a tight-knit Jewish community in Coney Island
Susan Meyer (a.k.a Dalbir Khalsa) grew up on Sea Breeze Avenue across from Seaside Park, in what she describes as a tight-knit Jewish community of East European origins. She recalls going to Washington Baths and Steeplechase Park every summer with...
Content type: Oral History Item
Girlhood memories of growing up on West 5th Street in Coney Island before being displaced by Warbasse
Sisters Gladys Sandman and Lucille daCosta, née Salvia, share girlhood memories of growing up on Coney Island's West 5th Street in the 1950s and the beginning of the '60s. Their grandparents were homeowners on West 5th and their mother and father ...
Content type: Oral History Item
Lived next door to Luna Park
Rose Patton, nee Schwartz, lived in Coney Island in 1938 in a house her mother and aunt inherited from their father. Rose's family of four and her aunt's family of three shared the house for about a year before moving back to Brighton...
Content type: Oral History Item