Out of the Blue

Draper Cottage must have been built on a field of four-leafed clovers. That is the only explanation of the incredible luck the Hastings Historical Society seems to have. We have a question, and miraculously, within two or three days, someone will call or e-mail with the answer. We start researching a subject and suddenly every box or file we open is brimming with information about it. And the way donations seem to flow in is incredible. Take the package that arrived on Monday. It contained at least two dozen photographs of Hastings and here is the letter that was inside:

“To whom it may concern: My name is Trampas King and I am the superintendent of a small municipal waste transfer station located in Dexter, Maine. We recently found these pictures in one of our resident’s trash. They were very interesting to me so I looked up Hastings-on-Hudson, and found your address. Maybe you can use some of these. I don’t know who they came from but I didn’t want to discard them either.”

And how did he know about Hastings on Hudson? In with these photographs was an envelope postmarked 1947 and addressed to Master Thomas Fogler, 18 Calumet Avenue, Hastings on Hudson. We looked up Thomas Fogler in the yearbooks and found him in the class of 1948. The caption under his senior photo reads: “As his camera records pictures… He leaves a picture of success.” Many of the photographs in the collection that Mr. King sent us are of the school itself, like the one above, and high school sporting events. Tommy may have taken many, if not all, of the photographs. They certainly seem to all date from the late 1940s. We are especially curious about the one below – the group includes several shots of this dinner. Does anyone recognize one of the boys or the event?

We are more grateful than we can express to both Trampas King and Thomas Fogler -- who has certainly left behind a picture of success!