Margarethe Laurenzi: | I’m Margarethe Laurenzi. It’s October 27, 2010. I’m in the home of Douglas McWilliams, at 95 Boulevard. He goes by Doug. We’re here to talk today a little bit about his life and growing up here in Mountain Lakes and the contributions that he and his family and everybody else he knows has made to this town. So Doug, why don’t you start by telling me about growing up here and when you first came to Mountain Lakes. | ![Borough of Mountain Lakes » Doug McWilliams (1) Borough of Mountain Lakes » Doug McWilliams (1)](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==) |
Doug McWilliams: | My name is Gordon Douglas by the way. But I’ve never used Gordon. My mother never wanted me to be a junior. That, of course, has been complicated for the rest of my life, particularly in this post-9-11 world, where everything has to be in your legal first name. But I do go by Doug. I was born here in 1952, the year before they opened the hospitals on the either end of town. I was born down at All Souls down in Morristown. My parents chose to live here. I think they followed my father’s brother, Roger, who moved into town just before they did. I also had an Uncle Jack who was my father’s cousin. He was actually John McWilliams, who among other things in the past was a police commissioner. So we had quite a presence in town. My uncle in Denville, Uncle Al, had at least his oldest daughter attend Mountain Lakes High School, when it used to be over at Briarcliff, I believe. So there’s always been a lot of McWilliamses around. As a matter of fact, with all the different iterations of marriages, I’m not even sure who I’m related to, so I’m very careful who I am talking to and what I say, because I might be related. |
| I think that one way or another our extended family has put more kids through Mountain Lakes High School than any other family that has come to town. Somebody may prove me wrong but I’ll say that at this moment that is the case. I think we’ve put 17, 18 kids through the system so far, with some still in it.In any event, my parents got married and were determined to build a house up on Crestview, so 47 Crestview is the house they built for themselves in 1949. I haven’t been back to that house since I was three years old. I keep meaning to knock on the door. I’ve only been here for 58 years. You’d think I’d have found the time to do it, but I haven’t. We moved over to Ball Road, which is the house I consider I grew up in. We moved there in 1955. And moved out in 1963 and though I only lived there eight years, I fondly remember that as the house I grew up in. |
ML: | What number on Ball Road? |
DM: | Number 30. At that time there wasn’t a house behind us. We owned down to Morris Avenue. Our backyard was the de facto neighborhood baseball field. We actually had a baseball diamond just worn in the grass. The baseball diamond was used by neighbors whether we were home or not. It didn’t matter. Of course, back in those days, things weren’t as litigious as they are today. Although there was an incident, the first time I heard the word lawsuit — and I won’t use names — there’s no reason to use names — One of the neighbors was re-doing tiles and they took out these old copper metal tiles in the bathroom and had it out in the trash heap in the yard and when our family was away for the day, the kids were playing in our yard and they thought these tiles really flew great in the air. |
ML: | Oh, no… |
DM: | Well, one of these tiles came down and a neighborhood kid lost an eye. And again, that was the first time I ever heard the word lawsuit. I don’t know the outcome of the legal stuff but we were still all friends. 30 Ball Road property backs up very close to The Market. It was Yaccarino’s at that time. So growing up, pretty much all the food we ate came from The Market. They had a butcher shop in the back. They had dry goods. They had vegetables. So really, until my early teen years, I had never been to a supermarket. I didn’t know what one was. So everything came from the Market. |
ML: | Did you go and pick things up? Or did they deliver them? |
DM: | I think we picked them up. I don’t think they delivered. I think my mother just went down and got whatever, or she sent us down to get milk, or whatever there was. One of my favorite memories was that after school we would go to The Market, go to the counter and you’d give the lady 50 cents and you’d pick out a hard roll then go back to the butcher shop and he would make you a cold cut sandwich of some kind, and that was always a nice afternoon snack after school. There was a sweet shop down there at the time, too. The whole Market area was quite different. The building where the Lionel Train place is (now) downstairs, I don’t know if there was anything down there but a basem*nt down back in those days, but the building up top used to house — and I can’t remember the exact order of it — there was Richie’s Drug Store. There was the Sweet Shop. I’m not sure if that was in the drug store or not, but it was basically a little dinette with a diner counter. There was the barbershop and there was Patsy the tailor. Now Patsy the Tailor, Richie and The Sweet Shop got together and pooled their resources and built the red brick building you see there today that’s across the parking lot. As you face that building from the parking lot, on the right hand side was the Sweet Shop. It remained there for probably 30 years. On the left hand side, the set back there was Patsy the Tailor, and the whole center section was Richie’s Drug Store. |
ML: | So in other words, they built the building and moved from the old building that now has the Lionel Train Station, to this larger, nicer building? |
DM: | And then after that, Mountain Lakes Realty moved into one of the slots. There was an eyeglasses doctor. I believe the office is still there. I’m not sure what other changes took place after that. Of course, they rented out the upstairs of the new building for extra income to offset what they were doing. Richie’s Drug store was really a precursor to a modern drug store. He sold everything. He had model airplanes. He had gifts and knick-knacks and odds and ends, and cards. All the stuff you expect to get at a drug store today. But back then I think drug stores were mostly just drug stores, so he was kind of ahead of the curve. I think over time he started to do medical equipment supplying, and I’m not sure, but I believe his company eventually morphed into a rather large medical supply company that’s a big player, nearby here. |
ML: | Like the one in Denville? |
DM: | No, much bigger than that. I think it became Medco. |
ML: | Wow. Do you remember who Richie was? What was his family name? |
DM: | All I remember was it was Richie’s Drug Store or Richie’s Pharmacy (I may not have the spelling right). That might have been his last name. I’m not sure. But he used to live down in Yorke Village.But over time, as you can see, things have changed a lot. Yaccarino’s was still The Market when all that took place and then sometime in the ’70s, or more likely the ’80s, it morphed into — it actually was a pizza place for a while; it was terrible, but it had pinball machines and stuff and kids used to hang out there and I think it became a problem — I’m not sure. But I lived here, kindergarten through 9th grade and then chose to go to Blair Academy to finish up high school. And for me that was actually a wonderful experience and I’m glad I did that. I’m not sure how to exactly phrase this and stay out of trouble talking about this subject, but back in those days, the town was made up of Protestants and a few Catholics. A very different makeup from what we have today. So growing up here I’d never met anybody who was Jewish for instance. I didn’t know what it meant, what it was. So the opportunity to go to Blair Academy really opened up my world to whole different cultures and stuff that I wasn’t getting here. That was probably the weakest part of Mountain Lakes back in those days. |
ML: | That it was so hom*ogenous. |
DM: | One of the fun parts of that is much later, back in the 90s, I made some friends here in town — he was an Exxon executive — He and his family were from Sweden and Finland and we were invited to a Christmas party at their house and there were people from France, Great Britain, Australia, Japan, India, people from all over the world, and they all lived in Mountain Lakes. So for me, it was almost like an epiphany. It was like a whole new world. Still not quite as diverse as what some of us had hoped it would be, but a far cry from what it was 40 years ago. That was what I consider a positive change. |
ML: | So Blair Academy. Would you come home weekends? |
DM: | I’d come home some weekends, but I became very independent. I couldn’t quite deal with the concept of having enough clothes that you didn’t have half your clothes for two weeks while it was off at the cleaners, so I just did my own laundry. I started hauling my laundry downtown and became very independent that way. That carried over when I went to college. I didn’t have quite that independent shock that a lot of kids get when they come out of a public school and come straight to college for the first time. So that probably helped me a little bit, although that’s debatable. I was never a very good student.And during that period, it was 1969. I went to Woodstock with a friend of mine from here. It was something our parents weren’t thrilled about but I’m glad they didn’t stand in the way. |
ML: | Who did you go with? |
DM: | A kid name Robbie Hughes. He doesn’t live in town anymore. He lives down in Florida, but his brother-in-law drove the VW bus. We actually went in a VW bus.It was a really wonderful time. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I have a ponytail right now. That has to do with a movie part I’m doing. I’m doing some small movie stuff. Things that will probably never even come out, but nonetheless, that is what this is about. But this is about what my hair looked like back then. |
ML: | Lengthwise. |
DM: | Yeah, lengthwise. The color was a little bit darker then. [Laughs.] That’s for sure. But getting back to growing up here, just trying to think of some of the experiences. |
ML: | Well, go back a little bit to your elementary school. |
DM: | I started at Wildwood. Back then it was just the core, center part of the building, a little square building. Actually I was quite surprised when I moved back to town and we were putting our son in school, I guess it was around 1990, we walked into the school…he was going into the 3rd grade, but I walked into the kindergarten and was stunned to see they had the same chairs, the same building blocks, the same toys we had when I was in kindergarten 40 years earlier. It was just amazing to me. Or 30 years earlier, I guess, at that point.It was just the core, center part of the building and it had kindergarten, first and second grade. And then we went to Lake Drive. That was fun. I encountered my first male teacher ever, Mr. Elia. Frank Elia, who later became the principal at Briarcliff. That school had 3rd and 4th grade, only. And, we were members of the Mountain Lakes Club at that time, and a cousin of mine, myself, and a few others would regularly have lunch at the Mountain Lakes Club Tuesday through Friday, because the Club was closed on Monday. |
ML: | Instead of at school? |
DM: | For two years. Cheeseburger, French fries, and co*ke — everyday for two years. It was great. |
ML: | Until you got caught? |
DM: | No. No. Our parents were allowing us. We were on a charge account. They had a little dining room up in the kitchen. Usually 10 kids that would do this… |
ML: | How cute. |
DM: | And so we used to have lunch at the Club four days a week. Actually…I’m skipping all over the place, but it reminded me that when I was a little kid living on Ball Road, I was probably about six years old, my parents went out one day and I had wanted to go to the beach, and whatever sitter we had, she wasn’t down for that, so I just took myself there. And of course she didn’t know where I was and they called the police, and there I was at the Mountain Lakes Club, playing on the beach. I remember somebody coming over and explaining to me that you could get arrested by the police and they could put you in a police car and they could take you to jail. He scared the you know what out of me. It was kind of an exciting moment.I remember one time when I was a kid, we used to have a family friend that would take us down to the shore. He name was John Marinovich, really quite a character. He used to take us out deep sea fishing, and I remember catching a shark that was probably two-and-a-half felt long, something like that. Maybe three feet long. I brought it home, put it in the freezer and then one day decided to take it out and went down the Club and off to the side of the beach — now the Club didn’t used to have a pool, just the beach, with the docks for swimming and stuff. And I put the shark in the water off to the side somewhere and waited for somebody to find it. That was kind of exciting: “Shark! Shark!” |
ML: | So you were a little bit of a rabble-rouser, were you? |
DM: | Well, I think that’s the nature of being a kid in Mountain Lakes. The lakes…I seem to remember paddling around or sailing around and seeing large carp in the lake. I haven’t seen one of them for years. They’re long gone. I don’t know why they were there. I assume that people used to flush their toilets and it often went directly into the lake and they must have gotten there that way. I don’t know. I remember being scared once dangling my feet in the water and this head — this turtle head must have been three inches across — pops out next to my feet. |
ML: | A snapping turtle? |
DM: | Yeah. And to this day I have a hard time dangling my feet in the water, anywhere. But particularly in Mountain Lake. I know we have snapping turtles but they seem to be benign. I’ve never heard of anyone getting bitten by one, so hope for the best on that one.So then after Lake Drive it was time to go to Briarcliff. Eighth grade used to bounce back and forth, depending upon student population, between the high school and Briarcliff. So I actually did fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth at Briarcliff. So I got to spend quite a bit of time there and then did just the one year at the high school. And then off to Blair from there. When I was in the eighth grade, I believe that Mr. Wilkins started, or possibly Mr. Bagley or both, I’m not sure if that’s the right year, but it’s close. But it was also the year that Mr. Morgan started. He was always one of my favorite teachers. He taught science, among other things. |
ML: | What was his first name? Do you remember? |
DM: | No I don’t. He would have been better at this than me. When my son was in eighth grade, I went to back to school night, sat in the classroom, and he did his little thing. Then I went over to say hello to him and told him “I’m John’s dad, I’m Doug.” He said: “Oh, I remember you. You went to Blair Academy.” I was like, how did he know that? I was really amazed. The sweet thing about that particular situation was, that was also his last year teaching. So he taught me his first year and he taught my son his last year, so I thought that was kind of cool. |
ML: | That is really amazing. |
DM: | I don’t think anybody had a hard time with him, I think everybody fondly remembers him, so as you ask around you should check on that. I’m trying to think of some of the other things. Briarcliff — fifth grade, I was in Mrs. Dolan’s class. I have no idea what her first name is. First names weren’t something…I don’t know why I knew Frank Elia’s first name. |
ML: | Well, probably because he became a principal. So at that time, you guys weren’t moving around from class to class? You’d be in fifth grade with Mrs. Dolan and that was that? |
DM: | No, you had a core homeroom, and she would teach one or two subjects and then you’d go to a different room for math. I have a great math teacher story. |
ML: | So you did move around? |
DM: | They did move us around. It seems to me the class sizes in those days were something around 20 to 24, so when I hear them talking about having more than 14 and that’s a real problem, I go: okay. I think families in general had a lot more kids then, so I think even though we had fewer homes in town we had a much larger school population, back then. |
ML: | I think it probably has a little to do with the nature of how they do class now. It’s not so much sitting in the single line in the classroom. Not as much hands on. |
DM: | But it was in Mrs. Dolan’s class that we got word that President Kennedy got shot. That’s where I was that day. |
ML: | Did you stay in school or did you all go home? |
DM: | We stayed in school. I think it was a Friday, as I recall, and it was just before Thanksgiving, and our family was actually going to Florida the next day. It was a rainy day, I think and I had to go down to the Market to get my hair cut, a buzz cut back in those days. I wanted to stay up to watch PT 109 on TV, and I had a fuss with my parents about that because they wanted to get us to get to bed for the flight the next day. Of course, my thinking was, I’m going to sleep anyway. I can stay up late. But at any rate, that’s where I was when Kennedy got shot. |
ML: | You were in fifth grade. What did you think? Did you look up to him as a role model? What did you think of him as the President? |
DM: | My parents, though they were very Republican, really had a lot of respect for his and his family’s level of commitment to public service, and of course, perfect or otherwise, they really admired what he had accomplished in a short time. And regardless of whether you cared for the man or not, it was a tragic thing for a family and country to have to endure. And, of course, we weren’t done yet, but that’s another story.One of my favorite fifth grade stories actually extends into the 1990s. That had to do with — I had a teacher named Mrs. Parker. Dolores Parker, who turned out to be a really sweet, wonderful woman, but she had a very different way of dealing with kids, than she did with adults I am guessing. Most of us were kind of in fear of her. She never smiled. She was very strict. She didn’t take any baloney. And that was my basic memory of her. I had Miss Evans in sixth and eighth grade; Miss Evans was fantastic. She was a wonderful, very creative teacher. I don’t know what ever happened to her. But anyway, Mrs. Parker—flash forward to 1995. I’ve been on the fire department at this point for about a year, and we were having one of these big storms where the rain was coming down and the power was out, basem*nts were flooding and I’m running around assessing whether we can help people or not. Essentially, I was doing triage — go look at the house and see if there was something we could do to help them, or not. So I get a call to go to a house on Hanover Road. Went and knocked on the door, and there was Mrs. Parker. Here I am at the tender age of 43, and all I can say is, “Mrs. P-P-P-Parker? I was beside myself. It scared the living daylights out of me. She was having a flooding problem and we helped her out. And since then we’ve become friends and she’s really a sweet woman. But not the memory I had in fifth grade. Funny how those things work out. |
ML: | It is. Tell me your math story. |
DM: | That was basically it. She was the math teacher. Actually Mrs. Dolan later became related to me by marriage. I’ve mentioned I have a lot of family in town. We’ve been married to almost every family at one time or another or so it seems. |
ML: | We’re going to have to do the tree a little bit, because you didn’t mention your brothers or sister. |
DM: | I have three sisters. The oldest one was in the class of ’63. |
ML: | What’s her name? |
DM: | Jenny. She currently lives in town. Jenny Ellison now. Then I was class of ’71, and my sister Lisa is in Austin, Texas. She was class of ’73. And then I have a younger sister, Megan, who still goes by McWilliams. So does Lisa. And Megan was the class of, Jeeze, I don’t even know. She was class of ’81, ’82, something like that. |
ML: | You guys were spread out over quite a while. |
DM: | My mother had been previously married, so that was part of the 18-year spread from start to finish. |
ML: | And no brothers? |
DM: | No brothers. I have lots of cousins. Lots of first cousins in town that I’m sure everybody knows |
ML: | And what was your father’s name? |
DM: | My father’s name was Gordon. And my mother’s name was Mary Jane. |
ML: | And what was her maiden name? |
DM: | Maxson. |
ML: | And was she from this area? |
DM: | Well, she was born in Pocatello, Idaho. But when my parents met, my father was living in Denville. They had just moved. Williams Forge was a steel manufacturing company that made internal aircraft engine parts, so during the war (WWII) they needed to step up production. The factory was in Jersey City and in 1942 they moved it out to Denville to a former lumber mill. He had three brothers. I think he was the only unmarried one at the time. So when he met my mother they were living in what is now The Order of the Green Shillelagh in West Orange. That was their house. She was living there with her parents. Her father was an inventor. A very colorful person. That’s a whole big story for another time. He did a lot of military inventions and things. [pointing to a family photograph] This is my grandfather and my grandmother and my mother. |
ML: | That’s the Maxson family? |
DM: | Yes. My mother is the older woman here. Her brother and her younger sister. Her younger sister — out of all of them, her younger sister is the only one who’s still around. There is a lot of family history with attending the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. I actually had a cousin who went there. She was the second class of women who graduated, in ’82, but after she graduated, she was in a training crash that summer and got killed. |
ML: | Oh, that’s terrible. |
DM: | Down in Corpus Christie. Very sad story. |
ML: | Boy, your mother looks a lot like her own mother. |
DM: | Well, she developed quite well and actually became a model. |
ML: | Your mother? |
DM: | She was the Ponds girl during World War II. She also had a very high IQ. I’m not sure how high it was, but I was told it was in the high numbers. |
ML: | Did she go to college? |
DM: | She did some college, but she never really worked. She did modeling and then went straight into building a family. I remember late nights, back in the 80s, we would sit up until like two in the morning, just chatting about whatever. And she would on occasion say, “If I knew then what I know now, I love you all and everything…” She was on a track to go to Hollywood and be a Marilyn Monroe type actress. And she said, “If I had known then what I know now, I’d have gone to Hollywood. Sorry, guys, I love you, but…” She was very involved in the Mountain Lakes theater guild that eventually became The Barn Theatre. I think she was involved when they were still at the ML Club, and then they bought a barn that was out on Route 46 where the new Blackthorn Pub is now. It was an old red barn and they set up a theater in there and then in the early 70s, they moved to where they are in Montville now. But that grew out of Mountain Lakes. It was originally the Mountain Lakes Theatre Guild. She was in a lot of productions when I was a kid. I never saw her in a production other than a reading at the new Barn Theatre, but I saw her in a lot of things. As a matter of fact there is a painting over there of my mother from the set of Laura. The only thing she didn’t like about the painting (I actually took it out of the garbage. She threw it out at one point and it was torn and I had it restored.) was that her neck was not that long. But other than that it was a pretty good representation of what she looked like at that time. She had the lead. It was painted by a local artist and friend, Dot Harnish, whose family used to own — you know where the wall is across from The Market it? They had that whole knoll, there’s like two acres up there. That was the Harnish house.The Harnishes used to live there and she was an art teacher, I believe, in Montville. I’m not sure when or for how long. But she was always a very artistic woman and had been involved in lots of projects with family and friends. I think she just passed away last year. Maybe two years ago. She was quite a character. Our property on Ball Road and then right across the street on Morris Avenue was her house. Actually, the first time I remember meeting her, some friends and I — I don’t know if you remember air rifles, used to be these rifles you could co*ck and blow some air at somebody, well you could also stick them in the dirt and blow balls of dirt at people. We had a wall at the end of the service driveway at the back of the house. We’d sit behind the wall and as cars would come, we’d shoot these balls of dirt at the cars. Well, one of the cars was hers. And she came to the house and I got in all kinds of trouble. That’s the first time I ever remember meeting her. She was a very sweet lady. Actually, I sold her house for her a couple of years ago. She moved over to St. Francis. One of the reasons we didn’t stay at Ball Road, and I’m not sure I want to name names… |
ML: | You know, part of telling the history is to name names so we know who and what, so I realize I wanted you to tell me the Richies story, because, you know, life happens, stories happen, people are involved, and being able to piece together the story of what happened. |
DM: | I really don’t want to go there but I can tell you my best friends were the following: the Diesel kids sort of behind us, Al Chisolm near the Market, the Bankers to one side of us and on the other side of us were the Harrisons. You’ve heard of the Harrisons? |
ML: | Yeah, you mean Ruth and Bill Harrison? |
DM: | Yeah, they used to live in a big house next to us at 30 Ball Road. They used to have a tennis court. The tennis court was replaced by a house years later. It was really quite a house. It had an apartment over the garage. |
ML: | I’m trying to think where 30 Ball Road is. |
DM: | If you come up Elm and you make a left, the very first house has a huge Japanese maple in the front yard |
ML: | Mary Vaughan’s old house? |
DM: | Maybe. We sold it to the Schultzes. It was a yellow house and then the house to the right of that was a very large home with an apartment over the garage, and the gray house that’s next to that is more or less where they used to have their tennis court. |
ML: | That gray house is a modern house now, right? |
DM: | People fondly remember the Harrisons and their little Village house, but at one time they lived in that rather large, really incredible house as well. So I got to know their kids pretty well. Winnie was in my class, the daughter.So the general combination of kids. |
ML: | You had David Diesel, Mike Diesel (aka Robert), Bud Banker, Al Chisolm, Winnie Harrison… |
DM: | And myself. Got in lots of trouble. |
ML: | Winnie Harrison got in lots of trouble? |
DM: | I think she was more along for the ride. I don’t think she caused much trouble. But it was a pretty tough core group of kids, so at one point my mother said, “Enough is enough. Then we moved to the whole other side of town, which really did a pretty effective job of disconnecting me for some of that. So we moved to 203 Laurel Hill. We lived there for 31 years. The house had been built in 1958 by the Zorlas family (of Paul’s Diner) from which my parents bought it. We sold the house to a family who were excited because it was their dream house. A year later they got transferred and moved away and sold it to the Schell family. The Schells had made an offer the day after these other people did on our house. They really wanted it and they lost it because they waited too long. As a matter of fact, I remember Mrs. Schell called me up one day and said, “Can you give me the measurements of the pool and how deep the steps are?” I said, “Why don’t you just put on your bathing suit and come take a swim.” They really wanted the house and when they did finally get it, in the intervening year, he became blind and he needed constant care at that point so I don’t think he got much out of it sadly. |
ML: | Mr. Schell and Mrs. Schell. And they had lived in town for a long time before that? |
DM: | Oh, yeah, they lived in the house where the Joyces live now up on Lookout & Crestview. At that time it was about half the house it is today. It didn’t have a pool but it had a huge yard. It took them years to find a house they were comfortable moving to. Their property, I understand that Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. lived there for a short while. I heard this story when my mother-in-law moved up here. She rented an apartment down on Elco*ck in what I call the Onorati compound. The Onoratis owned a bunch of properties around and they had this one place where they had like three houses together and she rented an apartment there. |
ML: | I’m blanking on where Elco*ck is. |
DM: | Right by the liquor store. It’s in Boonton Township. She was renting an apartment there and one day one of the elder Onoratis came and gave her a bunch of really beautiful roses. |
ML: | You mean Jack Onorati and his family? The paving company people? |
DM: | There are several different Onorati families. I’m not sure which family this was, but it was one of the ones who lived in the apartments in this little Onorati compound — the little white houses with the green trim. I think there are four or five apartments. So they gave her these beautiful roses and told her these roses were called Mary Pickford roses and they were developed by/and/or/for Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks when they lived in the house on hill where the Joyce family lives now. I guess the Onoratis used to interact with them and do work with them on the house so the roses developed and I guess still continue to grow there. I’ve since heard conflicting stories about what’s the reality, but that’s what I was told. My understanding is they only lived there for about a year. ( I since have learned a bit more. I think the Onorati family owned it as a rental property at time.) |
ML: | So when would that have been? |
DM: | Would have been probably in the 19-teens, I guess. Maybe 1920s. Actually, Armand Onorati used to live in Denville. He rented a house from my uncle, who owned a rather large property on Diamond Spring Road. He lived in the house out in front next to the barn with the horses and his daughter Bunny, who lives in a little house behind the Brackin place, married my cousin Jeffrey McWilliams. I don’t think the marriage lasted long, but it produced one kid.This kind of comes around to when my sister Megan got married, she got married to John Rouseau who is the brother of Scott Rouseau, who used to be a cop here. It turns out that they are part of the Brackin clan. And the Brackins are related to the Dolans. |
ML: | Mrs. Dolan the teacher? |
DM: | Yes, so when my mother was throwing a party before the wedding…Mrs. Dolan was also one of those teachers who was much nicer, but she drew a little bit of fear from kids. Now it turns out she’s in my mother’s house and we were going to be related, which I thought was kind of strange. I guess that has nothing to do with the Onoratis, except they were very close to the Brackins and Bunny, who lives there, of course, is related to my cousins and so I’m related to the Onorati clan as well. So it just goes on and on and never stops. |
ML: | We are going to need way more than one hour. |
DM: | It’s all interesting but not very important. |
ML: | Well, you know it’s how people make community and how they get interconnected to each other. |
DM: | There have been a lot of fun things growing up here. I remember back in the very early sixties, I think before the time of the Beatles, there was a guy who lived in town by the name of Buzz Clifford. He put out a hit single called Baby Sitting Boogie and that was kind of fun. It was of one of those one hit wonder kind of things. He was around for a long time. Apparently he lives in California and is still in the business as a producer of some sort. He was my older sister’s age so he would have been a graduate of the early sixties from Mountain Lakes. That was one of our little claims to fame. |
ML: | Buzz Clifford. Never heard of him. |
DM: | Most people haven’t. But if you’re ever anywhere and the Golden Gupp (Gupper Gasgoyne, the DJ) is playing, ask him to play Baby Sitting Boogie. He always has it with him and he’ll always play it for you. I think Mountain Lakes has always had people in it that are over achievers, but a lot of them you don’t really hear much about. I think that’s kind of interesting. I don’t think people come to Mountain Lakes to show off. If they want to show off they go to Bernardsville or Bedminster or someplace like that, I suppose. And Mountain Lakes is a little quieter. |
ML: | So we were doing your school trajectory and you were sort of meandering through and you guys used to get in a lot of trouble, so I imagine that you got to 8th grade and then did you spend a year at the high school? |
DM: | I did. I spent 9th grade at the high school. |
ML: | What was the high school like back then? |
DM: | Well, it was smaller. We didn’t have the auditorium yet. Matter of fact, it was amazing to imagine in this day and age that there used to be a stage in what is now the lunchroom. The wall opposite where the kitchen is there used to be a stage there and they used to have all kinds of productions. You’d go to lunch, and in the afternoon you’d come back and they’d have a program, all the tables and chairs would be gone and now there’d be auditorium chairs set up. Those poor janitors, man they worked. So that room got a lot more use then than it does now.We did have fun at one point — it was probably after I was out of Mountain Lakes High School and I was probably a sophom*ore or junior. Might have been my senior year, when we had a little min-Woodstock, actually had bands playing overnight on a Saturday night into Sunday. They had a deal where you checked in — and once you checked in you couldn’t leave and come back. You could leave but you couldn’t come back. It was kind of like a lock-down thing to keep some control and keep some things out. They had a bunch of bands there, including a band who were still around, a big national band that had never been one of my favorites, a band called Blackfoot played that night. It was kind of interesting. I’m sure there was at least a local band that played that included kids from Mountain Lakes that included Peter Nagle. He was the drummer. I don’t know what the name of the band was. Can’t remember who else was in it. I think one of the Rosler boys, maybe. I can’t remember who else. Peter can fill that one in. That was sort of a different event for Mountain Lakes High School. |
ML: | So back then was there the strong emphasis there is today on sports? What was the sports/artistic balance? |
DM: | I think there was a much stronger emphasis on sports but we were dealing with the late sixties, early seventies. There were other influences swirling about that kind of conflicted with that. GAA (Girls Athletic Association) was huge. They used to have the Blue and Orange shows and it was all consuming for a matter of a couple of months. I guess for a lot of people it was absolutely wonderful. I guess for a lot of people it was absolutely horrible. I think a lot of people felt the Blue and Orange fell apart and disappeared because they could never come up with a theme than anybody actually wanted to do. How many times can you do Princess and the Pea and Wizard of Oz? But nonetheless that was a huge thing and very cool. But with all the influences of the late sixties and seventies and Vietnam War and everything else, protests were a big thing in those days. In fact, at one point, people kept asking me, Who did it? Who did it? But a police car in Mountain Lakes was firebombed and burned. I believe that was at a time when the police department was housed in the red building where the dentist’s office is now at the Market, but I’m not 100 percent sure. At that point I was at Blair Academy and I wasn’t around a whole lot so I wasn’t as well connected. And no, I did not do it! |
ML: | No Facebook. |
DM: | Certainly no Facebook then. I remember that a lot of people I knew were resentful of our hom*ogeneous life here and how we longed to be part of the broader world. So we were frustrated by that I suppose. So there were those kind of pent up things going on. I remember at one point they actually had some kind of a big protest that was coming out of New York. They were all going to come out by train and protest the way we did business here, a racially motivated protest of some sort. The threat was taken seriously enough that they actually called out the National Guard. Channel 7 News was in town. Very good friends of ours — you’ve heard the name Peter Haas–well his sister was very close to our family. Jean Sharpe was her name and her husband at that time was the secretary of defense for the state, but they came to visit us and he had state plates on his car and he put it in our garage so people wouldn’t know who he was or where he was. But he came to town for that event. Turned out to be a nothing event. Nothing happened as far as I can tell, so it was kind of a washout, but they were prepared for anything goes: the revolution coming out from the big city to the little borough of Mountain Lakes. So those were kind of heady times, as you can imagine.About that time, my sister was a senior in high school. My sister Lisa, she was two years behind me and they had instituted a practice, this thing called the Miss Mountain Lakes Ugly Pageant. It was sort of the antithesis of a beauty pageant, a sort of an anti-homecoming sort of thing. Again, that partly goes to the emphasis on sports but also other things swirling around. So they had people with old beat up convertibles that would take these girls around dressed in various strange ways and my sister hooked up with somebody, I can’t remember who he was. Old newspaper articles will tell, but I just can’t remember the name. And they had put together a little show…in this day and age we’d probably call it a performance piece. They were dressed up as hippies. They really didn’t have to do much dressing up. They were dressed up as real revolutionary hippies and we were playing against — it was a football game halftime and we were playing against…I can’t remember the town (I think it was Wallington), but they had Polish maps on the back of their jackets, it was in spite of that a very rah, rah America kind of thing. And this performance piece had the two of them — the guy and my sister Lisa — they got out of the car as it came around the track ran out to the middle of the field and they unfurled the peace flag, which was a red and white striped flag with a peace symbol. At a quick glance, of course, it looked somewhat like an American flag. They doused it with gasoline, stuck it in the ground. They flag was probably four by six, something like that, maybe a little bigger. They stuck it in the ground and lit it on fire. The stands, particularly the visiting stands, emptied onto the field and a riot took place. It was total bedlam. |
ML: | So you must have been in college at the time? |
DM: | Well, no, I think I was still at Blair and was back visiting for the game. I think my sister was a sophom*ore that year. I’d never hit anybody ever. I’ve always lived a very non-violent life and even I ran out on the field, because one of the spectators from the other side had pushed my sister down in the dirt and I decided, okay, that’s enough and I, too, ran out on the field. But by the time we all got there, the police had done a pretty good job of knocking it all down. So, needless to say, they were in trouble. It made the papers. I remember that. And my mother was very upset about how the town and the court actually handled it. What they did was, they brought them in. Of course, it was a tongue in cheek, joke kind of thing and they did not burn an American flag, but the perception was that they did and that was all that really mattered. So when they went to court they were found guilty of something — public disturbance or whatever it might have been and they were sentenced to going to…I don’t know whether it was three months worth of or whatever it was, but they had to go to council meetings and sit and witness what it took to run a town. I get a particular charge out of that since I’m now on town council and I can see how that could be considered punishment. |
ML: | Could kill a teenager. |
DM: | But my mother was beside herself. She was so upset that they would have sentenced them to anything. She just thought that was wrong. |
ML: | How did you dad feel about it? |
DM: | He didn’t really say much about it that I recall. He was very quiet. He was one of the quiet ones, which I am as well. He would not say anything until it built up so much and he couldn’t stand it anymore and then he’d explode. So you really never knew where you stood until… |
ML: | It was too late. |
DM: | I remember when we were old enough to get on a bus and go to New York on our own with our friends. I remember having a fight with my dad because he said we had to put on a jacket and tie. I go, “Excuse me?” He says, “You’re going to go to New York, you’ve got to get dressed.” I said, “No way. I’m not putting on a jacket and tie and getting on a bus and going down to Washington Square Park and hanging out.” I remember having this big fight with him, and when he picked his battles he would stick to it. I remember winning ultimately. I think my mother intervened and said, “He’s not wearing a jacket & tie into New York. That’s crazy.”But it’s funny, even as little kids, everybody wore jackets and ties on airplanes. Now, people go in leisure suits or shorty shorts. That’s really gross. Back in those days, Newark Airport was a cool place. |
ML: | Because you could watch the planes come and go. |
DM: | That, and the building itself was a work of art. The building still exists, but it is used as a freight terminal or something. But it had these beautiful stained glass windows and it had these displays that would turn and change. It was just an amazing and fascinating place. I remember following in Smithsonian how they had to work to save the building. |
ML: | So after you went to Blair Academy, then what? |
DM: | Then, I was not a very motivated student. |
ML: | I’m getting that. |
DM: | I didn’t even apply to college until the summer after I graduated from high school. In those days they used to have programs where you could apply and it was like a clearinghouse for colleges that would have empty rooms or empty slots and they could fill them in with these last minute applications. So I qualified for one of those and ended up at Ithaca College, only because I kind of had to go to college. Like I said, I really wasn’t motivated. When I arrived, that September’s issue of Playboy had come out and listed Ithaca College as one of the top ten party schools in the country, so that worked for me.I managed to muddle through for two years as a C-student, more or less passing things, but it just wasn’t working, so I did eventually drop out and worked in restaurants and things and ended up managing a bar up in Cornell, which I thought was pretty good for a 21-year-old kid. But then I decided that I really needed to get more going and I came back here, went to County College and got good grades for one semester and then moved down to Arlington, Virginia and went to Northern Virginia Community College, where I actually started getting straight As and was invited to join the national honor fraternity, which I thought was just amazing. And I was taking statistics and accounting and all that really fun stuff. And I had planned on continuing that and going on to George Mason University. I wanted to go to law school and become a lawyer. But then Mountain Lakes intervened. I had a friend I grew up with, Bill Callery. One of the Callery daughters, Mary Beth Green, I believe, lives down in York Village. I think they had five or six daughters and Bill. Poor Bill. I had three sisters, so I had kind of the same thing. But anyway, he was living down in the D.C. area at the time. We actually got a house together with a bunch of friends and he came to me with this idea of opening a deli. He said a friend of his who owned a deli that he had worked in at some point and said that if we put up the money he would give us 49 percent of the deli and he’d help us get started. That’s all well and good but, I said, if we’re putting up all the money, why are we only owning 49 percent? So as we talked about it further it became clear we could do better on our own. So he talked me into joining him. So I finished my two-year degree at Northern Virginia, was going to take a year off, start this deli — really a sandwich shop — and then sell my share to him and go back to school. Well, by the end of the year it was like a divorce, we weren’t even speaking. We couldn’t even be in the same room together. It just wasn’t working, so I ended up having to buy him out and I continued to do that for 10 more years. |
ML: | Oh my gosh. What town were you in? |
DM: | Well I was living in Virginia but the deli was in Washington, DC across from the FBI building. And so that kept me down there for 11 years doing that. At one point, Robby Hughes, who I mentioned earlier, came and lived with us and worked there as well. I had a Mountain Lakes connection, a big swimmer, I believe, Mark Babiak. His family was from town and he was an FBI agent. He was a chemist with them and eventually finished his career working with the anti-terrorism unit I think. So he was a Mountain Lakes connection down there as well. I’d see him come in regularly. He worked across the street.So I worked 11 years doing that. I opened two other ones; they weren’t as successful. Then it got to the point where they were tearing down the entire block. At that point my father wanted me to come back up and join the family company, to be there to kind of take care of our interests in it, because we owned a significant share of the company at the time. Other families owned the rest of it. So I divested myself of all my interests there and moved back here in 1988. Actually had a house in Boonton at that time. |
ML: | By then you were married and had children? |
DM: | No, not yet. I was a late bloomer. I was 37 when I got married. |
ML: | Your son? |
DM: | My son was from my wife’s previous marriage. You’re good at math. So I came back to work for the family company and then a year my father died. And they had a pre-planned buyout scenario, so we actually had to sell our shares to the company. While I was there I meet my wife, who was working there at the time. |
ML: | What’s your wife’s name? |
DM: | Marion. |
ML: | What was her maiden named? |
DM: | Richmond, but it was Walker at the time I met her. |
ML: | And your son? |
DM: | His name is now John McWilliams. That’s not a story worth getting into here but he had a longer, much more complicated name before that. He was the IV of something in her previous life. He was born in ’82, so he was just turning eight when we got married. |
ML: | When? |
DM: | We got married in 1990. It was Memorial Day weekend of that year, a Sunday. We got married at the Bernard’s Inn, which was the best deal we could find at that time. My mother remembered the Bernard’s Inn as a shot and a beer joint, so we she heard we were going to the Bernard’s Inn, she said: “There’s no way you’re getting married there.” So we took her to dinner there one night and she went, “Wow, I can’t believe the difference.” It really was a rough and tumble place way back when. We had a wonderful wedding. It went well. The sad part for us was my father was at that point dying of cancer and he was not feeling up to coming to the wedding, and he was also afraid that he would be the center of attention instead of us because he was so sick. So he chose not to come to the wedding.And that was hard for us. And going on the honeymoon was difficult because we had to gauge whether he would be here when I got back. The doctor assured me he would be. Oddly enough, you know how doctors never give you a straight answer? I demanded a straight answer and he told me when my father would die and he died exactly when the doctor said he would. It was like six week or eight weeks later. But then it was time for me to figure out what else to do with myself. |
ML: | So you had come back to work with your father… |
DM: | Ultimately, I was there for two years. But she stayed on for another two years after that and then she left there and ended up getting a job working for the first occupational center in New Jersey, which is really meant to be for the physically and mentally disabled to find work opportunities — to be trained to do work and then go off to work in the workplace. That company is the oldest one in the state and it still is in Orange. So she started there in 1991 and has been there ever since, on and off. She’s now the senior vice president, but they’ve struggled, with all the cutbacks. They’ve lost so much funding they can barely function anymore. They’re really having a hard time, which is a shame, because I think what they do is wonderful. But the company grew under her tutelage as the HR director, grew from about 200 employees to about 600 employees in the first 10 years she was there. Now they’re going through changes and are reversing that. I think their time is about done, unfortunately. But I’m very proud of her doing that.And I guess, for me, I started doing real estate, because I couldn’t get a real job. I didn’t have a degree, so it was hard to go out and get a meaningful skilled job. |
ML: | You never finished your degree? |
DM: | I never got a degree beyond an associate’s degree. But I started doing real estate. It was fascinating and I liked helping people. I went to one of those counselors to figure out what I should be doing and that was near the top of the list and I figured okay. And I’ve done quite well with it over the years. But I’ve always had — and I think that came from my mother — a real strong desire to be of service. There’s not much money in volunteering, but I do it anyway. As a result, about the time my mother was sick, I joined the fire department. My mother had battled cancer as well. She had sold the house on Laurel Hill and had bought a townhouse down at Spruce Edge. And I think in ’92 we bought this house. We moved from Boonton to here in ’92, so I’m back in town at that point, and pretty quickly I got involved in some committees and stuff. Got involved in the solid waste committee that was the group created the program that we work with now and the famous green bags. |
ML: | Wasn’t Gordon [Tasker] involved with that too, at some level? |
DM: | No. He was very involved with the fire department. But that was my first step in getting involved with public stuff. It was a three year effort — and I know some people still don’t understand it, still don’t get it — but it’s a very creative and good working program. |
ML: | Just explain briefly what that is so we have a record of what that is. |
DM: | The program we currently use in town with the green bags, what it is — we determined there are some people who just don’t put out that much garbage, so we came up with a plan that everybody would pay a base fee, and it used to be a separate fee, now it’s built into your taxes, and I have a problem with that because I think it’s unfair to some people — they have expensive houses and they pay much more for trash service than someone with a small house, but they get to write it off so I guess it works. I’m told to shut up, don’t worry about it; everyone’s happy. So okay.But initially, it was I think $75 a quarter just to have a service come to your house, and they would take recycling and trash. But there were some people who would put out a tiny bit of trash and some people families who put out tons of trash every week. So we had to come up with a program that would get people to pay their fair share or not pay if they weren’t using it much. So the green bags — a lot of people say I can buy green bags cheaper somewhere else — but it’s not the bag that costs the money. The bag represents the tipping fee of what you put in that bag — that’s what it costs us to get rid of whatever you put in that bag. I remember one resident, a former classmate of mine, came to me, yelling at me at a party when we started this thing about how unfair it is. “We put out three giant trash bags a week.” I said, “You’re a family of four, how do you have so much trash, you must not recycle?” “Oh, no, we’re really good at recycling.” It turned out that what they did is, they entertained a lot. So my answer was: “So the rest of the town should help support your entertaining by paying for the extra trash that you’re throwing out?” So it was really a great equalizer. We couldn’t come up with a way of putting a sticker on a can or a sticker on a box because there was not way to represent what was inside the container. The bag was really the only answer we could come up with. We’d have all been happy if someone could have come up with a better one, but after three years of turning over every rock we could possibly turn over, it really is a very fair program. Although I will acknowledge that this new batch of bags they bought — everybody hates them. They’re awful. |
ML: | Because they’re so thin? |
DM: | They’re thin. They’re smaller. They break easily. I don’t have a problem with it, because we just don’t put out that much trash. We use one small bag a week. |
ML: | You compost? |
DM: | We compost. And we’re also very good at recycling. As a matter of fact, one of the things we do — there are lots of things you get that are number 5 plastics. We also save those, because if you go to Whole Foods, they take number 5 plastics. I’ve been trying to get the word out, but it’s like beating your head against the wall. So: number 5 plastics, take them to Whole Foods.Another small Mountain Lakes fact: my sister Lisa, she had two sons, Geordie and Pliny. Pliny went to school and became an architect and what he’s been doing for a number of years — they live in Austin, Texas — he designs all the interiors of the Whole Foods in the Northeast. So, if you’ve been in a Whole Foods in the Northeast, you’ve been in a place that was designed by him, by a Mountain Lakes connected kid. |
ML: | Was he a McWilliams? Oh, no. |
DM: | He’s Reynolds. His father — my sister and he got divorced eventually, but they were also from Mountain Lakes. |
ML: | The Reynolds family? |
DM: | They’ve been long out of town but used to live at 95 Laurel Hill and my older sister at one time dated the older brother. Ricky is actually 10 years older than my sister Lisa. But he now lives down in Lewes, Delaware. We just went and saw him last week or two weeks ago. And across the street from him was Rob Pitcher, who is another old Mountain Lakes name. Rob went down to visit Ricky in Lewes, Delaware, and decided it was so nice he bought the house across the street. Funny how that works out. |
ML: | I think we’re going to stop now and we’ll do a Part II sometime later. |