1975

After years of controversy, the 108th Street Forest Hills Project opened its doors in June.

Shea Stadium, which was already booked solid with its regular tenants, the New York Mets and the New York Jets, was also the home of the New York Yankees during the prior and coming season, while Yankee Stadium underwent a complete renovation. Mayor Abe Beame announced in January that Shea would also be the home for the New York Giants in the fall because that team would also be displaced during its Bronx ballpark’s massive renovations....

The Tribune reported in January that the city had agreed to give the go-ahead to begin construction in March on the Flushing bus terminal....Robert Moses, New York’s master builder, wrote a full-page exclusive column for the Tribune on his concerns about the upcoming celebrations of the nation’s bicentennial in 1976… The five-year-old dispute between residents of Bayside Hills and the religious followers of Veronica Leuken of Bayside erupted in March into a street confrontation between the two groups and the police, after the arrest of a prominent area community leader, William Caulfield....

Former Queens District Attorney Thomas J. Mackell was cleared of all charges for which he had been found guilty the year before. The State Appellate Division, in reversing the convictions of Mackell and his two aides, said that the indictments against the three were “wholly unsupported by the evidence.”...

Five hundred angry civic leaders jammed into the Queens Playhouse at Flushing Meadows in a protest rally opposing the possible use of JFK Airport for take-offs and landings of the supersonic Concorde jetliner – also known as the SST...The Tribune published a four-page special report on the controversy surrounding the so-called “Veronica Vigils” in Bayside Hills. Violence broke out during a huge vigil when local residents staged a block party along the same malls that the worshippers were using. The Diocese of Brooklyn denounced the vigils as “the product of a fertile imagination” and the Queens DA was asked to investigate the situation....

With the three sides in the Veronica Vigils controversy still at loggerheads, the Tribune was enlisted as a go-between for the residents of Bayside Hills, the followers of Veronica Leuken and the police to resolve the situation. A compromise was proposed, whereby the vigils would be moved to a quiet location in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, where followers would be permitted to worship. By the end of May, Leuken said she had received “instructions” to move the vigils to the former site of the Vatican Pavilion in the park. For the first time in months, a peaceful vigil was held and the streets of Bayside Hills were quiet again....

The 108th Street Forest Hills project, which had caused so much news and furor during the past two years, quietly opened its doors in late June. The first occupants moved into the project adjacent to the Long Island Expressway without pomp or ceremony....

Rockaway Boulevard was turned into a grisly scene of charred bodies, twisted wreckage and makeshift morgues after an Eastern Airlines Boeing 727 jetliner carrying 115 passengers and a crew of eight crashed and burned in an attempted landing at JFK during an electrical storm. Fourteen survived what was at the time the worst single plane disaster in the New York area, and was only one short of the toll of the worst single-plane crash in U.S. aviation history....

The battle of Willow Lake brewed up again in September when it was learned that the Sam LeFrak high-rise project over the IND rail yards in Kew Gardens might not be a dead issue, as community leaders had been led to believe. The MTA was quietly working to sell the air rights to LeFrak. City Councilman Morton Povman vowed to stop the plan...Thousands rallied in the streets of Fresh Meadows to urge the police department to keep the 107th Precinct from being eliminated....

At the end of October, the Flushing bus terminal was again killed by the city....The huge stained glass roof which covered the New York State Pavilion at Flushing Meadows was demolished by the city because it posed a safety hazard. Local park groups said the destruction of the roof damaged the terrazzo map of New York State on the pavilion’s floor and that the structure faced further destruction.

Bob Citelli

An assistant editor of the Queens Tribune in its early years, Bob moved to California, where he held a number of senior posts in Silicon Valley before starting @Sales & Marketing, providing help to start-up high-tech companies.

My great fortune was to work as an Associate Editor at The Tribune with Gary Ackerman, Jed Moskowitz, Jeff Tarlo and David Oats, and I met wonderful lifelong friends there as well. Gary was great about giving young people in the community a helping hand, and I fit the bill. I wanted to be a reporter. I was still in college, my family needed money, and I needed work. Gary hired me.

At the Trib, I learned the power a quality community publication can yield when the 107th Precinct in Fresh Meadows was spared closing at the height of the fiscal crisis in the mid-1970s. As Managing Editor, David showed me how to track down a good story. First he had me call NYPD headquarters and ask: “What will happen to the officers of the 107th?” The answer: “They’ll all be reassigned and no one will lose their job.” Then he had me contact Helmsley Spears, owners of the precinct house in Fresh Meadows, and ask: “What will happen to the lease the City has with you for the 107th?” The answer: “Just because the City wants to close the precinct, that doesn’t mean they’re no longer liable for the term of the lease.” We ran with the story on Page One: “No savings to be had with 107th closing as cops will be reassigned, City will continue to pay rent.” At a rally that week to save the precinct, community leaders handed out fliers with reprints of our story. The rest of the mainstream media picked up the scent and went hard after the budget cutters making any local residents who were not already fully aware of it, know that this closing was useless and unnecessary. The 107th was saved.

I also benefited from Tribune press coverage when I served as President of the Student Association at Queens College. The Tribune and Gary Ackerman were strong advocates of the CUNY and firm believers in the then vision of providing a free, quality higher education to any graduate of a NYC high school. And while we could not stop the train wreck of imposed tuition at Queens and elsewhere, coverage of our lobbying efforts did get a few fence-sitting state legislators to come over to our side and helped slow it down.

As a parent now faced with the prospect of sending my oldest daughter to college this September, I can only wish that this nation of ours wakes up and recommits itself to the once-visionary charter of CUNY of providing free access to higher education to anyone qualified and willing to pursue it.

Congratulations to the current staff and Mike Schenkler for keeping the proud tradition of a great community paper alive all these years. May the next 35 be even better!