April 23, 2014 • www.theobserver.com • Vol CXXVI, No. 48
COVERING: BELLEVILLE • BLOOMFIELD
Going out in style with Blue Ribbon
• EAST NEWARK • HARRISON • KEARNY • LYNDHURST • NORTH ARLINGTON • NUTLEY
Moving day is coming
By Ron Leir Observer Correspondent HARRISON – You could say Ron Shields’ career as a Harrison educator was preordained, given that both his parents taught at Harrison High School. His dad, Fred Shields, a 1936 soccer Olympian, was a physical education instructor and his mother, Amelia Nowak, was in the business department. Fred taught 40 years at HHS; Amelia, 28 years, after spending a decade at Hillside High. They met while teaching in Harrison. On June 30, Ron Shields will be calling it a career after 42 years at HHS, the last 19 as the school’s principal; and, joining him in retirement will be his spouse, Mary Pat (Millea) Shields, who has taught English and art at HHS for more than 30 years. By coincidence, Ron and Mary Pat also first got to know each other at HHS. But the public school legacy goes back even farther: Mary Pat’s grandfather, Robert B. Millea was a Harrison Board of Education trustee when the board broke ground for a new school on the site of what is now the Hamilton Ave. elementary school. Ulimately, all roads led to Harrison High, no matter what the location. Mary Pat and see SHIELDS page
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Photo by Ron Leir
Small businesses in the old Congoleum-Nairn factory and others will be leaving to make way for new BJ’s and other new stores.
By Ron Leir Observer Correspondent
home away from home, commuting back and forth from his actual domicile in Long Branch, seven days a week, for 22 years. Shalom is one of a row of several small retail businesses that have managed to carve out a niche for themselves in the old Congole-
BJ’s Wholesale Club as a new anchor store, will be “a good thing for the town.” KEARNY – At the same time, though, ven Steven Shalom, he feels “it’s a shame that I who has run Discount have to pay.” City in Kearny since That’s “pay,” in the sense 1992, concedes that sprucing that he’s got to leave the up the Passaic Ave. mall with place he’s known as his
E
um-Nairn linoleum factory (where torpedo parts and grenades were made during WWII) on the eastern side of Passaic Ave. But, as of July 31, they’ll all be just a memory as the mall’s owner, DVL Holdings, see RETAILERS page
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For the sake of the Passaic By Karen Zautyk Observer Correspondent KEARNY– Plastic lawn chairs, propane tanks, wrought iron railings, pipes, dead shrubbery, pieces of street signs, and innumerable plastic shopping bags and plastic bottles -- but no
groundhogs. The groundhogs who burrow along the banks of the Passaic River appear to have weathered the winter nicely. “Sometimes, their dens flood and they get washed into the river,” Kearny High School teacher and girls’ varsity crew coach David Paszkiewicz told
us. But this year, no deceased critters. We learned this detail about local fauna last Friday morning at the annual KHS-crew team’s Passaic River cleanup, during which the aforementioned detritus -- and lots of other trash -- were collected. About 100 students,
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teachers, coaches and parents turned out for the effort, held from 10 a.m. to noon at the Kearny crew team boathouse on Passaic Ave. High school kids from Belleville and Nutley also lent a hand. When the cleanup was see RIVER page
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