By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Visitation Place in Red Hook, Brooklyn, was co-named Nancy Kearse Gooding Way on December 10, 2023. Red Hook in the 1970s was going through tough times. Longshoremen strikes idled many, and industries that depended on shipping then laid off...
Joe Ruggiero, aka “Joey Chips” since he always showed up at a party with a bag of chips, was a WWII vet who was still driving in 2016 at the time of this interview. He passed in early 2024. He was the embodiment of the Greatest...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Ralph Packer is a Martha's Vineyard old-timer who coyly won't reveal his age because he doesn't want to retire! Interviewed while taking a break on the Vineyard Haven pier of his Packer Fuel company, Ralph offers a historical perspective on...
Hear Tom Teague's reflections on being a Tugboat Captain. These interviews of Captain Tom Teague and Mate Mike Dunn were done on the tugboat JANICE ANN REINAUER in Erie Basin Bargeport by Carolina Salguero c. 2000. Tom Teague: Push,...
Gerard Rokosz is a man deeply in love with his former job as the last dry dock manager at Todd Shipyard. At the time of this 2005 interview, he was working for a marina and nostalgic about the shipyard: "seeing my old office collapsing makes me...
When interviewed at a vigorous 82 years of age, Hank Dam laughs hard remembering the WWII slogan of Todd Shipyard “the difficult we do every day, the impossible takes a little longer.” Hank is clearly proud of the ingenuity and hard work of his...
John Gladsky is the definition of a colorful old salt. He is a marine salvor and the principal of Gladsky Marine and has an old-time Long Island accent. His oral history expresses nostalgia for the Todd Shipyard and criticism of public policy that...
Michael Gallagher, last General Manager of New York Shipyard, successor to Todd Shipyard, interviewed two weeks before selling the site to IKEA, talks about the shipyard, its history and final days. Gallagher represents the 5th generation of his...
Interviewed in 2013 at age 19, Rasheed Johnson, a resident of NYCHA’s Red Hook houses, talks about how the neighborhood has changed in the past 8 years since he got here. Development has eliminated all his “hang out spots” except for Valentino...
Richard Gambino, a retired professor, grew up in Red Hook in the 1950s. Interviewed by oral historian Shannon Geis in 2013, he recalls it as a close-knit Italian immigrant commumity. He talks of the customs and traditons of the...
