Greenwood lake in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s

 

There was wonderful ice skating in the winter. The village had a small shelter with a stove to warm the skaters and music to add to the joy of skating. I am sorry but I cannot remember the name of the man who played the music and lit the flood lights for the night skating. One year when the ice was not good there was a group of men who cut through the bad ice so that the new “black ice” could freeze over and make a wonderful area to skate. For some reason, possibly currents, the ice under the Waterston Ave. bridge was most often questionable. We encountered this because we often started skating from Greck’s Maplewood Inn dock and then proceeded all the way down the main lake to Sterling Forest. It was a great skate, usually helped by the wind going down, but a tough skate coming back. Cars and fisherman were plentiful on the main lake, as I recall.

Greenwood Lake also had two toboggan slides and a small ski run that was maintained by the village. Babe Ruth visited several times and slid down the toboggan slides. It was great fun but eventually it had to be canceled because people feared lawsuits against the village.

In the 1930s and 40s I went to school in a little four room schoolhouse. Margaret Tilt was my teacher for the 1^st and 2^nd grade. Margaret Feckner was the teacher for the 3^rd and 4^th grades, Elizabeth Larkin was the 5^th and 6^th grade teacher and Harry Harp was the principal as well as the teacher of the 7^th and 8^th grade. My graduating class had eight kids!! Then it was off to the “big school” in Warwick. Bill Utter drove the school bus over the mountain and we all took paper bag lunches since there was no such thing as a school cafeteria.

            The “Recreation Girls’ was an all girls drum and bugle corps that started in 1939. This group had much fun traveling around to various parades in the area and I believe it was the spark that started the Queen Village Queens in 1961.

            Summers in Greenwood Lake were something different. A sleepy little village became a tourist Mecca with 52 bars and grills and 2 churches. There was music at the Long Pond Inn; formerly Murchio’s, and Warwick’s own, Ken Durland, had a group that often played there on weekends. The winter population of 900 swelled to 10,000 – 15,000 in the summer. Hotels were thriving all around the lake and my dad, Harry Sudman, had three speedboats that took passengers for rides around the beautiful lake.

My grandmother and my mother ran a boarding house called Sudman’s Hillside Lodge. Room and board in the late 1930s was $16, $18, or $20 dollars per week and that included 21 meals. My grandmother told me that when she started back around 1920 the room and board was only $3 a week.

 

Millie Sudman Littell Stewart