The Courier-News from Bridgewater, New Jersey • Page 21

The Sunday Gouner-News Food C-3 Ann Landers C-2 Horoscope C-4 Sunday, September 9, 1990 INSIDE Berkeley Heights cottage grows Young Berkeley Heights couple rj A In i i t. ssr r' ms Ti'f WM Wl 0 see enormous potential in a small summer cottage close to New York City and take on the construction project themsel-vesC-2 IN THE NEWS i if tutl fi if I I 9 ir-nrmr-' .55 ti item- is. Art workshops begin fall class schedule Photo courtesy of Ellit Island Foundation Three workshops herald the start of Somerset Art Association's fall classes. Landscape painters will work on location, weather permit Bills Island, 1892- 1990 ting, with painter Lee Hughes on Monday mornings, tomorrow, Sept. 17, and Sept.

24. Students will learn how to work quickly in any medium, capturing the light and colors of au tumn. Other sessions will be held for watercolor landscapists and portrait painters, for a brochure call Somer set Art Association 234-2345. Adoption inquiry for disabled kids Spaulding for Children, the free adoption agency for older and disabled children, will be holding an adoDtion inauirv meeting on Wednes day at 8 p.m. at the First Baptist inurcn in westneia.

rnese special children of all races are brothers and sisters who should remain together or those with significant physical or emotional disabilities, including ba bies with AIDS. For further informa tion call 233-2282. Women's group seeks flea-market vendors The Piscataway chapter of Worn' 1 en's American ORT (Organization for Rehabilitation through Training) is seeking vendors for its 11th annual flea market to be held next Sunday at Piscataway High School. A single parking space is available for J10; a double space is $15, if reserved by a iriaay. proceeds will benefit voca tional schools in the United States and abroad.

For more information mm- Courlaf-News photos by Dean Curtis Top and left, Ellis Island's main building before and after its multimillion-dollar facelift. Above, a clamshell bucket frames the Statue of Liberty. A genuine American legend is lovingly restored ELLIS ISLAND rrrrrfo AiIjJIjLiiirl Coming to America By PHILIP HOSMER Courier-News Staff Writer Tomorrow, America will rescue a long-neglected symbol of its past when the great hall on Ellis Island swings open its doors once again this time to receive not immigrants but thousands of camera-snapping tourists. The Island of Tears, named for the raw emotions that gripped new immigrants there, has been given a bright, shining face. The Ellis Island Immigration Station was closed in 1954, and lack of interest and maintenance funds doomed the island to a slow death.

But after the government failed to come up with the funds needed to save Ellis Island, 20 million people donated money for its restoration, a testament to the powerful meaning the island has to Americans. A 156 million privately funded restoration project revived the decaying immigration station that has stood abandoned in New York Harbor for 36 years. America, made up of more than 100 ethnic groups, has been called a mosaic of peoples. Ellis first In a series Island is where the pieces of the mosaic came together. A surge of public interest in ancestry during the 1976 Bicentennial celebration grew into the formation of a private Ellis Island foundation that was headed by Chrysler chairman Lee Ia-cocca, himself the son of an Italian immigrant who came through Ellis Island.

For the past six years, the main building on the island has been sand-blasted, scrubbed, painted, fixed and built into a modern museum. See LEGEND on Page C-5 See Critics ViewC-5 contact Karen Zweig at 469-0717. Big BrothersBig Sisters holds meeting Somerset County's Big Brothers-Big Sisters will hold orientation for volunteers on Tuesday from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at the agency's Somerville office. Preregistration is requested.

The non-profit organization is dedicated to serving children from primarily single-parent families. To register call 722-3630. Red Cross gives safety courses The Plainfield area chapter of the American Red Cross will be holding safety courses throughout September. Topics will include Infant and Child CPR, Community CPR and Standard First Aid. Early registration is advised.

Each course is $35. For more information call 756-6414. Ladies auxiliary needs craft exhibitors Green Knoll Volunteer Fire Department's Ladies Auxiliary needs craftspeople to exhibit at their Nov. 17 bazaar in Bridgewater. For more information write to: Bazaar, P.O.

Box 44, Lebanon 08833 or call Charlotte James at 526-2551. Young scholars invited to apply for grants The New Jersey Committee for the Humanities Invites students who wish to take part in a summer of paid research and writing to apply to the National Endowment for the Humanities. Applicants must be college students below the level of senior or any high school student. Awards to college students are high school students, $1,800. Applicants may request guidelines and application forms from: Young Scholars Guidelines, Room 316, Division of Fellowships and Seminars, National Endowment for the Humanities, 1100 Pennsylvania NW, Washington, D.C.

20506. For more information contact Lloyd Carver (609) 924-7301 or (201) 932-7726. Calling all artists to YM-YWHA gallery The Adult and Cultural Arts Department of the YM-YWHA of Union County is seeking local talent who would like to display artwork In the "Y's" gallery during the upcoming year. In 1989-90 the "Y's" art gallery1 previewed works of almost a dozen artists. Each artist received extensive newspaper coverage.

For more information contact the office at 289-8112. Escalators are one of "the modern conveniences that critics say mar the character and authenticity of the Ellis Island restoration. tl I .1 num. One immigrant relives frightening experience Maria Searles Czechoslovakia, 1922 1 I rT i -r- fj? i Vv f4--j Jfl-. P.H".t."i (V LI 1 7 By PHILIP HOSMER Courier-News Staff Writer Maria Searles remembers everything except the ceiling.

She remembers the food, the smells, the crowds, the noise, the frightening chaos of Ellis Island Immigration Station. But she doesn't remember the famous vaulted ceiling in the Registry Room, because as a young girl in 1922, she mostly looked at the floor, hoping to find a penny or nickel. Last week, Searles, of Rahway, toured the newly renovated Ellis Island's main building. The place that she remembers looking "like a prison" now houses an immigration museum, two theaters, a cafeteria, a set of escalators, a souvenir shop and a computerized information center. Searles is disappointed by the results of the 156 million renovation project.

"This is a modern place now; this wasn't a modern place back then," she says. Back then, Searles came to America from Czechoslovakia dressed in a burlap bag, huddled In the leaky steerage deck of the SS France. Her mother, Anna Tkacova, a steely-eyed, dirt-poor woman with three young girls in tow, was determined to get to America because "she knew it was better here." She had been to America years before with her husband, who found work as a miner In Wyoming. "A letter came one day, and I heard my mother let out a horrible scream," Searles says. "My father was dead, killed In a mining accident.

My mother wanted to go back to America, to be with our cousins. She was going to make it, no matter what." Anna Tkacova received a benefit payment from an American life insurance company, and with the money stuffed In her belt pouch, the family set out on foot from their tiny, grass-roofed home in the Carpathian mountains and headed for Prague more than 200 miles away. It was a bitterly cold winter, and to See IMMIGRANT on Page C-6 TO CALL THE EDITOR Maria Searles stands In the great hall of Ellis Island, remembering her first time there as a 1 0-year-old girl, after an arduous voyage from Czechoslovakia with her mother and two sisters. Features Editor Esther Wu can be reached by calling 707-3160..