By Ed Wendell

A hundred and three years ago, a beautiful tradition was launched in Forest Park, the creation of a living, breathing memorial to 70 young men from Woodhaven who lost their lives in World War 1.

Although our country’s time in the war was brief, we suffered many casualties and Woodhaven was hit very hard. Week after week, the front page of the Leader-Observer announced the names of the newly dead and wounded.

It was a dramatic turnaround from the early days of our involvement in the war when the newspapers and the public were quite enthusiastic, seeing our young men off with rousing cheers and festive parades.

In the days and months after the war ended, residents of Woodhaven wanted to create a unique monument to the young men whose lives were lost. The idea they finally settled upon was original indeed, and the press stated that it was the first of its kind in the United States.

In May of 1919, fifty-three trees were planted along the road entering Forest Park at Park Lane South and Forest Parkway, each in the name of a soldier that perished. Over time, as more names were added to the Honor Roll, the number of trees grew to approximately 70.

And every Decoration Day (as Memorial Day was originally known) families would gather in Forest Park and decorate their loved one’s tree. The annual parade would end amongst the memorial trees, right outside the golf clubhouse that sat on the hill high above Woodhaven.

Up until the late 1930s, the annual Memorial Day Parade in Woodhaven ended outside that clubhouse, which today is known as Oak Ridge, and is the headquarters of the Forest Park Administration Office.

Chairs would be set out on the lawn in front of the clubhouse and hundreds and hundreds of veterans, family members and residents would march up that hill to pay tribute to the dead.

The Woodhaven community held a number of yard sales to raise the money for a large granite monument with a plaque listing the names of the dead and it was erected atop that hill, among the trees planted for those young men.

It was a beautiful tradition that faded away due to a series of events triggered by the widening of Woodhaven Boulevard in the late 30s early 1940s.

You see, the old American Legion headquarters sat on Woodhaven Boulevard, which back then was still called an Avenue as it was a sleepy single-lane dirt road. But the rise of the automobile required more roadway and so Woodhaven Boulevard went from 1 to 10 lanes.

That meant that the old Legion building was torn down by the city and money granted to build a new headquarters, which they did, at 88th Avenue and 91st Street, behind PS 60, where it sits today.

And since they had a nice new building with a lovely front yard, they decided to move the monument from Forest Park to its current location. If you’ve ever been to a WRBA meeting or at the Senior Center, then you’ve seen this monument. It’s still there, listing the names of these young heroes.

But once the monument was moved, the parade route was switched and as families moved away or died off or just plain forgot, the tradition of decorating the trees disappeared.

But the trees are still there.

Sure enough, time has been harsh to the trees and many of them have fallen. In fact, one of the original trees came down a few weeks ago, having never recovered from being struck by a car last year. But quite a few of these trees have passed the century mark and they still stand on that hill, high above Woodhaven.

The Woodhaven Cultural & Historical Society and American Legion Post 118 worked together to revive this tradition in 2015 and each year a group of volunteers gather to decorate the trees. This year, we are scheduling the decorating for Friday May 19th starting at 6 p.m. If you’d like to participate, email us at woodhavenhistory@gmail.com for more information.

By Ed Wendell

projectwoodhaven@gmail.com

“Local Man Is Held On Double Murder Charge” read the headline in the Leader Observer 90 years ago. Here’s the story behind that headline.

It began in March of 1933 when police were called to the offices of the Waxcraft Candle & Crayon Company on York Street in Brooklyn. There they found one of the owners, Hyman Berson, shot to death. Nearby they found his nephew Charles, also shot and clinging to life.

Charles was able to identify their assailant, Hyman’s partner in the business, Simon Stern. Stern lived at 94th Street and 86th Road in the Brooklyn Manor section of Woodhaven, Queens.

Police traveled to the Stern household, a lovely attached home on a beautiful tree-lined street where they found the businessman eating dinner with his wife and son. They brought Stern to the bedside of Charles Berson where he pointed to Stern and, again, identified him as the killer just before dying from his wounds.

Stern was arrested and incarcerated without bail at the Raymond Street Jail, the notorious Brooklyn prison which operated from 1836 through 1963.

The trial began in November of 1933 and the prosecutors wasted no time laying out the case against the businessman.

First, they noted that Stern had ample motive to murder his partner, Hyman. Their business had been foundering and they were in debt. But the two businessmen had both taken out insurance policies worth $20,000 with each partner serving as the other’s beneficiary.

Next they told the jury that Stern owned a revolver, the same kind that would have produced the wounds that killed the two men. However, Stern was unable to produce the gun, claiming it had been lost in early 1932 when he lost a bag on the Sutter Avenue Bus in Brooklyn.

The driver of the bus testified that Stern did indeed report a lost bag on his bus but that Stern did not mention a gun when reporting the contents of the lost bag. Furthermore, Stern renewed the permit for his revolver with the local precinct in late 1932, months after he claimed to have lost it.

Woodhaven’s Simon Stern may have escaped justice in the 1933 slaying of Hyman and Charles Berson, but fate caught up with him on a lonely road in 1938 outside of Goshen, NY.

And finally there was the deathbed statement from Charles Berson, who stated in front of witnesses that Stern was the gunman.

Stern’s defense was led by Leo Healy, a former Brooklyn District Attorney and Homicide Court Judge appointed to that position by Mayor Jimmy Walker. Healy had resigned for health reasons shortly after being cleared of charges of corruption and spent the rest of his career as a famed defense attorney.

Healy told the jury about candle and crayon trust racketeers who had paid Charles Berson $150,000 to stay out of the candle business only to be double-crossed when he resumed business under a dummy name with Stern and his uncle.

Healy dismissed the missing gun, maintaining that it had been lost on that Brooklyn bus, explaining Stern’s permit renewal as an effort to retain pull with the local police when pulled over for traffic violations.

And finally, Healy noted that Berson’s dying declaration that Stern was the shooter was of no value because Berson had not been made aware that he was going to die. The law at the time stated that any person giving a dying declaration be fully aware that they were dying with no hope for recovery.

The jury spent three hours deliberating Stern’s fate before leaving prosecutors stunned by coming back with a verdict of Not Guilty.

Stern waited until the crowds left the courthouse before leaving. Outside, he was attacked by Charles Berson’s widow Sadie who, according to news accounts “punched, bit, kicked and battered him into a bloody pulp” before police could intervene.

Stern declined to press charges against the widow, saying “Probably if I were in her place I would do the same thing.” Stern returned to his Woodhaven home a free man.

The arrest of businessman Simon Stern of 94th Street and 86th Road in Woodhaven made headlines in the Leader Observer 90 years ago in 1933. The trial would keep Woodhaven riveted until a verdict was reached later that year.

Over the next few years, prosecutors kept investigating the murder while Stern opened a shoe store in Brooklyn. Stern was under secret indictment for the murders and the state was preparing to retry him in 1938 when he was killed in a head-on automobile collision outside of Goshen, in Orange County, New York.

And with that, the case was closed; the secret indictment was quashed and no one else was ever charged in the murders of Hyman and Charles Berson.