The Journal News from White Plains, New York • Page 22

THE JOURNAL-NEWS, MONDAY, MAY 4, 1987 AROUND ROCKLAND Take a cue from 'Grateful' ANN LANDERS Volunteer Ambulance Corps is holdings free blood screenings from 9 to 10:30 a.m. Saturday and from 7:30 to 9 p.m. Monday, May 11, at the Ambulance Corps building, Red Schoolhouse Road. In-step meets ENGLEWOOD, N.J. In-Step, a amputee self-help group, is holding a meeting at 2 p.m.

Saturday in the main floor Clinic Conference Room at Englewood Hospital. The guest speaker will be Dr. Albert Freeh. The meeting is open to the public. For information, call Dian Liebman at 886-0228.

Self-help meeting NYACK Phobaid, a weekly self-help group for people suffering from phobias (unreasonable or excessive fears), has several openings in its May sessions. The group is led by a therapist trained at the Phobia Clinic of White Plains Hospital. For information, contact Phobaid at the Rockland County Guidance Center, 83 Main St. Animal rights SUFFERN The Animal Rights League of Rockland Community College is hosting a talk by Ed Aston of PETA (People For The Ethical Treatment of Animals) at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at Rockland Community College, 145 College Road, Room 3101.

For further information, call Marc Rosenfeld at 356-4650, Ext. 373. Send items for Around Rockland to The Journal-Newt Features Department, 200 N. Route 303, West Nyack, N.Y. 10994.

Submit items, in writing, two weeks before the event Include the name and telephone number of a contact person. Photography club meets NEW CITY The Rockland Photography is holding its next meeting from 8 to 10 p.m. Thursday at the Germonds Presbyterian Church. The meeting will feature "Gadget Night." For information, call Arline Giller at 634-6694. Nurse recognition day SUFFERN The Registered Professional Nurses of Rockland County and their affiliate agencies are holding the fifth Annual Nurse Recognition Day from 2 to 5 p.m.

Friday at Good Samaritan Hospital, Route 59. There will be speakers, exhibits, award presentations and refreshments. Freeze film party POMONA The Rockland Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign is hosting a film and potluck dessert party at 7:30 p.m. Friday at the Unitarian Society Building, just opposite Palisades Parkway North, Exit 11, Conklin Road. For information, call Kate Gregg in Pearl River.

Senior citizens meet SUFFERN The Rockland Community College Senior Citizen Club is holding a meeting at 12:30 p.m. Friday at the RCC Student Union Building, College Road, Room 3101. Lanny Taylor, a teacher of semantics, is the guest speaker, and the topic is words and reality. Free pressure check SOUTH SPRING VALLEY The William Faist Dear Ann Landers: I think it is time I told you that a letter I read in your column changed my life. It was from the man who never was able to say to his father, "I love you." He realized what a hole there was in his life when his father was lying in his casket in the church.

At that moment, for the first time, he said, "I love you, Dad," but it was too late because his dad couldn't hear him. I am a 34-year-old woman. I never was told by my mother that she loved me and I never was able to say those words to her. After I read that letter I went to my mother's house with your column in my purse. I handed it to her and said, "Mom, I love you." She read the column, took me in her arms and held me as if I was a little child.

Then she said, "I love you, too." We both cried. It was the happiest moment of my life. Since that day things have been wonderful between us. It changed our relationship completely. Thank you for making such a difference in my life.

Grateful in Michigan Dear Grateful: How nice of you to let me know. And now if any of you readers see yourselves, please take a cue from "Grateful." Dear Ann Landers: I recently learned a painful and expensive lesson. May I pass it on to others? I used to be one of those drivers with a bad habit of doing a million things while driving my car. I would talk to people in the back seat, eat a sandwich and drink coffee, put on makeup and fool with the radio. Last summer my brother helped me move across the country.

The longer we were on the road, the less attention I paid to my driving. Despite my brother's protests, I continued to study the map when behind the wheel. While he was asleep I was doing just that and suddenly luck ran out. I lost control of the car. We went off the road into a ditch and rolled over twice.

My brother and I escaped with minor injuries, but the car was totaled. We were so lucky I can't believe it. attention to their driving, maybe another one will. It happened near our home. A 17-year-old girl ran over and killed four bicyclists two couples who had young children.

How did it happen? The girl was looking in the back seat of the car for a cassette tape. Because of her carelessness, four children are now orphans. Lesson Learned in L.A. Dear L.A.: Thanks for shaking us up. And now, anyone who is reading this column while driving, for heaven's sake, put the paper away and give full attention to the task at hand.

I hope those of you who are accustomed to eating, drinking, applying makeup and so on while behind the wheel will clip this column and tape it to the dash-. board. Dear Ann Landers: I wouldn't miss your column for anything. I love it when you print a snappy comeback. How do you like this one? It really happened.

While traveling in the Midwest, I met a man who, when he learned I was French, asked, "Is it true that all you Frenchwomen have loose morals?" I replied, "I wouldn't know. I came to this country when I was 16. My morals got loosened up in San Francisco." A Californian Dear Californian: Beautiful! And just what he deserved. Ann Landers' column appears daily. Write to Landers in care of The Journal-News, 200 N.

Route 303, West Nyack, N.Y. 10994. DATEBOOK If my story isn't enough to make people pay SINGLES Events for Tuesday, May 5 HAVERSTRAW Court Joan of Arc No. 504, Catholic Daughters of the Americas meets 7:30 p.m. at the Knights of Columbus Hall, West Broad Steet, Haverstraw.

NEW CITY The New City-Bardonia Welcome Wagon Club meets 8 p.m. at the Cooperative Extension building. SUFFERN The Rockland Chapter of the Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders Association is sponsoring a family support group 7:30 p.m. at Rama-po Manor Nursing Center, Cragmere Road. POMONA The Depressive and Manic Depressive Association is holding a meeting 7:30 p.m.

at the Dr. Robert L. Yeager Health Center, Room 156, Building A. SUFFERN The Epilepsy Society Inc. is holding its monthly self-help meeting 9 p.m.

at 222 Route 59, Third Floor Conference Room. NYACK The Optifast Program of Nyack Hospital, a weight-loss program, is holding a free orientation 7:30 p.m. in the Krutz Auditorium, Nyack Hospital, North Midland Avenue. SLOATSBURG The Rockland Scrabble Players are holding a playing session 7:30 p.m. at the Sloats-burg Library, Route 17.

PEARL RIVER F.N.A. (Friday Night Alternatives) meets every Friday at 8:30 p.m. at the Naurau-shaun Presbyterian Church, Sickeltowwn Road, Pearl River. Single, widowed and divorced persons over 35 years of age are welcome. For further information call 425-8998.

RAMSEY, N.J. Ramapo Valley Single Hikers meet at 11:30 a.m. Sundays at Bennigan's on Route 59 North for novice-intermediate level hikes in the Ramapo Mountains. Bring lunch. For information call 201-265-1692.

NEW CITY "Getting It Together," a non-sectarian group for separated, divorced and widowed meets each Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. at the Community Center across fron the Germonds Presbyterian Church on Germonds Road. A rap session starts at 8:30 p.m. Admission is $1. for information call 623-4169.

NYACK Maryann's Singles, a non-sectarian Rockland County group for singles ages 28 and over, holds a midweek party every Thurday starting at 8:30 p.m. at the West Gate Supper Club on Route 59. Liv music alternating with a disc jockey is featured. Admission is $6. For information call (201) 664-1606.

NANUET Parents Without Partners Pascack Valley Chapter No. 548 holds a social dance every Sunday evenng at 8 p.m. through May 24 at the Holiday Inn, Route 59. Orientation for new membm-ers starts at 7 p.m. Yearly dues is $25.

For information call (201) 573-9510. BARDONIA Spectacular Singles, a new networking organization, is offering a meetingmatching interest service for women to women, men to men, and women to men. For information send $3 to: Spectacular Singles, P.O. Box 13, Bardonia, N.Y. 10954.

PEARL RIVER The Sociable Singles sponsor an evening of bowling and socializing on Saturday, May 9 at 8 p.m. the Pearl River Lanes on Middletown Road. Cost is $1.95 per game. For information contact Teddy Von Zwehl of Bardonia. CONSTITUTION Continued from CI approved the Declaration of Independence, although he is said to have left early without participating in that historic action.

A man of his time, he was a farmer and a slave owner, the father of 10 children by his wife Mary, who was also his cousin, and he lived at various times on the Haring farm in New York City (in the vicinity of Washington Square and New York University) and in New Jersey, as well as in Orangetown. Sh- mm $19 a month. We've got it all. Everything it takes to develop your body as far as you want to take it. From 90-pound weakling to world-class body builder.

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JTM I signer. After independence, Wisner served in both the State Assembly and Senate. He assisted in drafting the State Constitution and he was a member of the first Board of Regents. As the debate on ratification unfolded at Pough-keepsie, Wisner, although a strong Clintonian, began to harbor some doubts about rejection of the documents, and while, in the end, he voted against it, he said if it were approved, he would "aid it all he could." Of the four delegates from Orange County, John Wood is the most puzzling. He was a farmer, a blacksmith, a veteran of the Revolution, and perhaps a minor office-holder, but he does not seem to have field any public office that would qualify him to pass upon a new constitution.

At the time of the ratification convention, he was a resident of Minisink, but his military record shows that he was born at Kakiat (New Hempstead), and that he was of medium height, and had brown hair and a full face. At the time of the ratification convention, he was 50 years old. If his life was obscure, it was nevertheless eventful and stressful. A captain and later a major in the militia, he was taken prisoner in an Indian attack on Minisink in 1779. Joseph Brant, who led the attack, reported to the British that he and his Indian braves had taken 40 scalps and one prisoner John Wood.

The hapless Wood remained a prisoner, but finally got home in 1783, starved and half naked, only to find that his wife, believing him dead, had remarried. Deciding to stay out of her life, he got the legislature to annul their marriage, then went on to become a successful member of the community in business and civil affairs. His attendance at the Poughkeepsie convention seems to have been the high point of his life. He died in 1812. And finally there was Jesse Woodhull, the renegade, the defector, who, defying instructions, voted for the Constitution.

A resident of Bragg's Clove, he had served as sheriff of Orange County, supervisor and state senator. When the delegates to the ratification convention were selected, he was the top vote-getter. In the early deliberations at Poughkeepsie, he stayed with the Clintonians in opposing the Constitution, but on the decisive final ballot he voted for it, supply one of the three votes by which it prevailed. He was never hgain elected or appointed to public office. As for George Clinton, the popular, populist governor who generated such opposition to the Constitution that he almost kept New York out of the Union, he did very well under the new order.

In 1804 he was elected vice president under Thomas Jefferson, and four year later again became vice president under James Madison although he tried, both times, for the presidency. In retrospect, the remarkable genius of the convention was Alexander Hamilton, who, against overwhelming odds, was able to convert a majority of 27 votes against the Constitution into a majority of three votes for its adoption. Paper-thin though that margin of victory was, it assured the Empire State's inclusion in the Union. Otherwise it could well have gone down in history as the quarrelsome holdout, the missing link, the go-it-aloner. James Parton, the historian, once wrote that New York was dominated in those days by three families, the Clintons, the Livingstons and the Schuylers, the latter family having been the one into which Hamilton I JackLaLanne Holiday Spa fbrt of America's Uatttnx lleallb Club t)ranizutiun At the time of his death on April 1, 1809, he was living with his family in "Greenbush" as the Orange-burg-Blauvelt area was then called.

He purchased a home from Van Antwerps there. He is buried in the "New Cemetery" (which dates back to the Revolution), opposite the Reformed Church in Tappan, his weathered tombstone a mute link to the great events and times through which he lived. While his official life sounds formidable and austere, he left some records which provide other insights. Clearly a man with a sense of history, he took his 5-year-old daughter, Maria, to witness the hanging of the British spy, John Andre after the discovery of the Andre-Arnold treason plot. In her 90s, Maria could still recount the scene in vivid detail.

She was possibly the last surviving eyewitness to the event. Yet Haring harbored doubts about the guilt of his colleague, Joshua Hett Smith, who was arrested and tried in the plot along with Andre. He sent a blanket to Smith and visited him in the small room at the Reformed Church at Tappan where he was imprisoned while awaiting trial by court martial. (Smith eventually escaped and fled to England.) Another surviving item about Haring is terse but eloquent. On the day after Christmas in 1795, he sold a slave, 4-year-old Susan, back to her father, John Fernando, an already-freed slave.

In his will, somewhat reminiscent of Shakespeare, Haring left to his wife, the mother of his children, one bedstead "together with the bedclothes and appurtenances." (Shakespeare left to his wife his second-best bed.) But Haring also left Mary "my Negro woman slave, Abigail," as well as $800 in cash "in preclusion of her right of all other claims, for, in and to my Estate." He provided, however, that as long as she remained his widow, she should be "at liberty to occupy and enjoy the two northerly rooms in my present dwelling house." Mary survived him by 16 years, but not in those northerly rooms. She lived out her life with her daughter, Elizabeth, and son-in-law, the Rev. James D. Demarest. She is buried in the churchyard of Brick Church, West New Hempstead.

1 Henry Wisner, a lawyer of the town of Goshen, was, like John Haring, a man of imposing stature in early colonial and state government. He owned a grist and powder mill on the Walkill from which he supplied the Americans during the Revolution. On one occasion he wrote Congress that he had 3,000 pounds of powder available, and he apologized for the appearance of his letter, explaining that he had but two more half-sheets of paper available and, when they were gone, did not know where he could get more. Called "the most influential man in his area," he once commended Noah Webster to the favorable attention of Gov. Livingston of New Jersey, saying he "is now doing some business in a literary way which will be of great service to posterity," but might need some assistance.

1 Webster, then a school teacher in Goshen, became the author of our standard dictionaries. He was then working on a spelling book for elementary schools. Like John Haring, Wisner served in many public offices. He was a delegated to the Second Continental Congress that drafted the Declaration of Independence, but, like his fellow New Yorkers, felt obliged to return to New York for instructions from the Legislature, which, in that transition period, called itself the Convention of Representives of the State of New York. He thus missed his chance to go down in history as a Heather Locklesr NEW JERSEY (Area Code 201) NASSAU St FFOI.K (Area Code 516) BRICK M.r- BAY SHORE fiMi-iN CUETON IIICKSVII.I.E 'MK-NIKI MONMOl Til MALI.

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till ALL ST. AREA 22-W" rHthAVE. "(H(k had married. "The Clintons," he the power; the Livingstons had the numbers; and the Schuylers had Hamilton." And Henry Adams, commenting upon this contentious trilogy, wrote, "Had they lived in New England they probably would have united in support of their class; but being citizens of New York, they quarreled." ISABELLE K. SAVELL is senior historian of the Historical Society of Rockland County.

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