Gertrude Berg, aka Molly Goldberg

“Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg,” a documentary about radio and television pioneer Gertrude Berg, will be screened Sunday, July 12 at 1 p.m. at the Historical Society of the Town of Middletown (HSM), 778 Cemetery Rd., Margaretville.

Admission is $5.

The famed comedienne got her start in show business in Fleischmanns and is buried in Bnai Israel cemetery there. Gertrude Berg memorabilia from the collection of the Greater Fleischmanns Museum of Memories will be on display at the HSM screening.

Born Tillie Edelstein in Harlem in 1898, the woman who became known to millions of radio listeners as Molly Goldberg first entertained guests at her parents’ hotel, a mansion once owned by the Fleischmanns family. Whenever it rained and the guests got restless, Tillie became a ‘gypsy’ and read palms, or organized playlets with parts for everyone. It was also at the hotel that she met her future husband, Lewis Berg.

Stories gleaned from family, guests and hotel staff found their way into the scripts she ultimately wrote for “The Goldbergs,” an original radio show she created and starred in for 17 years. Debuting just a week after the stock market crash in 1929, the program was a favorite of listeners who found the tales of this quirky and funny family a comforting escape during the difficult Depression years. The show was second only to “Amos and Andy” as the longest running radio show ever.

Gertrude Berg carried the characters into the brave new world of television with The Goldbergs. TV’s very first sitcom in 1949. Berg wrote the scripts for The Goldbergs, in which she also played the leading character. CBS’s number one show combined comedy and social commentary and featured Jewish characters, including the endearing matriarch Molly Goldberg who regularly kibitzed with neighbors across airshafts in the Bronx (“Yoo hoo, Mrs. Goldberg”).

The Margaretville Fire Department and the Historical Society of the Town of Middletown (HSM) have presented Cedric Taylor with the 2015 George Hendricks Jr. Memorial Scholarship.

Cedric, homeschooled by his parents, Ken and Amy Taylor of Bull Run Road, Margaretville, graduated this year and is headed to Bob Jones University in South Carolina to study biochemistry.

The scholarship is given annually to a graduating Margaretville senior who exemplifies community service and shows an interest in local history, both of which defined the late George Hendricks, Jr., former fire chief, HSM trustee and passionate historian. 

A talented violinist, Cedric has performed with a youth orchestra and a string ensemble, has appeared in several Open Eye Theater productions, and served as a tour guide in the last two HSM Living History Cemetery Tours. He coached Catskill Mountain Youth Soccer, volunteered at Fairview Public Library and participated in other community activities.

“The Fire Department is pleased that community service is obviously important to Cedric, and we’re happy to recognize his efforts in this way,” said MFD President Don Bramley.

For his winning scholarship application, Cedric researched the history of his family’s house, constructed by his great-grandfather, George Fairbairn in 1950. George, wife Ruth, and children Georgia, Fred and Martha were forced to leave their Dunraven home when it was taken for the Pepacton Reservoir. They purchased 137 acres from Willard Sanford on Upper Bull Run Road, and George built a lake, a cabin, and finally a house where Cedric and his family now live.

Jane VanBenschoten Dowie

The Fourth Annual Living History Cemetery Tour, sponsored by the Historical Society of the Town of Middletown (HSM), will take place Saturday, June 20 at the New Kingston Valley Cemetery, Thomson Hollow Rd., New Kingston.

Rain date is June 21. Reservations ($15) are required. Call 586-4736 by June 17 to reserve a specific tour time. Those 15 and under get in free.

The popular event combines history, theater and an authentic taste of Catskill Mountain culture by bringing to life eight men and women who share their stories and hard-won wisdom with tour goers.

Ezra Henderson

Costumed guides will conduct seven tours – one leaves every 20 minutes starting at 4 p.m. — throughout the cemetery to meet these interesting folks from the past. Directors are Joyce St. George and Frank Canavan.

Performers this year include two newcomers to the living history “stage” – Bill Birns of Fleischmanns and John Lehmann of Redkill. Returning players include Roy Moses, Anne Hersh, Fred Margulies, Amy Taylor, Harriet Grossman and John Bernhardt.

Docents are Barbara Atkin, Tina Greene, Cedric Taylor and Fred Travis.

Eight men and women, their voices silenced long ago, will return to tell their stories at the Fourth Annual Living History Cemetery Tour Saturday, June 20 at the New Kingston Valley Cemetery, Thomson Hollow Rd., New Kingston.

Rain date is June 21. Reservations are required by June 18. Group tours begin every 20 minutes starting at 4 p.m.

Tickets will be available beginning this weekend for the popular event, sponsored by the Historical Society of the Town of Middletown (HSM). Those attending HSM’s first program of the season, “Objects and Memory” on May 30 at 3:30 p.m. at 778 Cemetery Rd., Margaretville will have the first opportunity to sign up for a tour time at a discounted rate — $12.

After May 30, reservations can be made by phone only and will cost $15: 845-586-4736. (Well behaved children under 15 are free.)

The tour combines history, theater and an authentic taste of Catskill Mountain culture. Groups will be guided through the cemetery to meet interesting folks from the past, portrayed by local residents. Previous tours have been held at Margaretville, Clovesville and Sanford Cemeteries.

A multi-media presentation exploring the way ordinary objects are transformed into irreplaceable carriers of experience, aspiration, and identity will be offered Saturday, May 30 at 3:30 p.m. at the Historical Society of the Town of Middletown, 778 Cemetery Rd., Margaretville.

This free program by filmmaker and historian Jonathan Fein is made possible by a grant from the NYS Council for the Humanities and the NYS Legislature.

Historical objects excite the imagination as they illustrate the past, demonstrating that we are living through history this very day. Shortly after the events of September 11, 2001, Fein saw that historians and curators were working as history was unfolding, and he started filming their thoughts and actions. Fein will share excerpts from and material captured in the making of his award-winning documentary, Objects and Memory, and the book he is currently writing about it.

This program is part of Headwaters History Days, two weekends of exhibits, programs, open houses and activities spotlighting local history from Andes to Olive. www.headwatershistorydays.org

The program is sure to stimulate questions about contemporary history, material culture, heirlooms and memory and help attendees approach the question, ‘How do we preserve the past and speak to the future?,’ and to see their world with deeper perspective.
Jonathan Fein has long been interested in the interrelationships of the tangible and the intangible. As a sculptor (University of Pennsylvania MFA ’78), his work has evolved from the manipulation of physical material to sculpting in time: filmmaking.

Headwaters History Days, two full weekends of events, exhibits, open houses and activities celebrating the history, culture, folklife and landscape of the Central Catskills, will be held May 30 and 31, and again June 6 and 7.

Visitors are invited to explore 16 historic sites across two counties, through the East Branch and Esopus Watersheds from Andes to Olive.

Museums, landmark structures and historic sites will be open to the public at no charge for one or both days. Docents will be on hand to explain the significance of their sites, and lead walking tours and leisurely rambles. Two lectures will provide food for thought. 

Three former stations on the Ulster & Delaware Railroad will be open. The Delaware & Ulster Rail Road will offer regular excursions from its Arkville station base, to the historic Roxbury Depot Museum where the operations of the former “Up & Down” are depicted in photos and models. In Phoenicia, the Empire State Railway Museum will welcome visitors to ‘Phoenicia Junction’ where hundreds of thousands of tourists passed through on their way to hotels and boarding houses deeper into the mountains.

Visitors will learn about the Anti-Rent War of the 1840s at the venerable Hunting Tavern Museum of the Andes Society for History and Culture. At the Olive Free Library in West Shokan, they will learn of the displacement of whole communities when the Esopus was dammed to create the Ashokan Reservoir.

Two distinctive “District #10” schools will be open to visitors – one built of stone during the Civil-War in Dunraven, the other an elaborate two-story affair, constructed in 1925 in Pine Hill, that now serves as Shandaken’s Town Museum.

Climb the stairs of the Roxbury Methodist Church tower to hear (and see) a venerable clock chime the hour. Visit the exquisite church, railroad station and public park built by the Goulds of Roxbury, explained in walking tours May 31 and June 6 at 10 a.m.

Watch a complex network of belts and pulleys power a sawmill in a 150-year-old barn in Kelly Corners and then tour other buildings on the active Hubbell Homestead farm. Tour the oldest structure on the HHD circuit, the 1828 Walter Stratton stone house in Roxbury’s Meeker Hollow, and learn how it evolved over almost two centuries.

The Pakatakan Farmers Market will welcome visitors to the iconic Kelly Brothers Round Barn in Kelly Corners. Get acquainted with naturalist John Burroughs at his Roxbury retreat, Woodchuck Lodge, then enjoy a leisurely guided walk to explore and observe nature as he did on June 6 at 1 p.m.

Find out about Fleischmanns’ hotel heyday, and the family that gave the village its name at the Greater Fleischmanns Museum of Memories and then experience a walking tour of Main Street May 31 at 11 a.m.