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Leo Ullman

As to Port Washington connections, my parents, brother and I landed in November 1947 and our home, purchased for us by my maternal grandmother, was at 36 Carlton Avenue (Corner of 2nd Avenue). We rented out the third floor apartment to the Sorianos, high school teachers and coaches. I started in 3rd grade, first at the Manhasset Bay School on Carlton Avenue, before my parents learned from the Ganchers next door that there was a public elementary school, the Main Street School just a block or so way. My teachers included Miss Gardner, Miss Van Schaik and Miss Carlson. The principal was Miss Merriman.

 

The Junior High was then on the top two floors of the Main Street School building. It was there, in 7th grade (1951) that I met Kay Marbut, who arrived in Harbor Acres (from Grosse Point, Michigan) that year; we married 9 years later. She, however, was part of the Flower Hill School social grouping that flowed into the Junior High School, which featured a higher demographic than students from the Main Street School, so we really didn’t mingle much in Junior High. Miss Weber was our Principal. 

 

Schreiber opened in 1954, I believe. That was also the year my family moved from Carlton Avenue to the corner of Ridge Drive and Montfort Road. I left after 10th grade to attend Phillips Academy, Andover. Kay and I started dating the morning after the 1957 Senior Gambol, which we both attended with different dates. We started talking and flirting at a pool party at Sheila Kane’s house in Sands Point.  Sheila’s father was the Mayor of Sands Point.

 

My parents were very active in many Port Washington community activities, as were Kay and I. We were both Community Chest Citizens of the Year in Port Washington and both members of the School Board and its President. I became a Member in 1970 and its President in 1971. After I finished college, law and business schools, and a tour in the Marines for me, we returned to Port Washington, where all four of our kids graduated from the Port schools; three of our kids returned to Port and in turn raised their kids in Port Washington.

From Amazon.com: A mesmerizing first-person story of a young Jewish boy pushed into hiding over a period of nearly two and a half years during WWII with total strangers who did not know who he was, while his parents hid in an attic elsewhere, not knowing where their son was or whether he was alive. This all in the heart of Amsterdam during the brutal occupation by the Nazis.

Their family, long established, leading honest, law-abiding, normal and comfortable lives were suddenly forced to (in their own words) <">disappear,<"> to <">become illegal,<"> and to <">live like rats<"> to avoid capture and deportation to killing camps. Yet they survived, facing constant fear of death, house-to-house searches, betrayal, disease and hunger, until liberated by the Allies.

They then left their home, their country and their friends to start anew, in the U.S., seeking freedom from oppression. They quickly grew roots, becoming active and involved in their chosen community, and were able to succeed with zeal and good fortune.

This chronicle includes not only Leo Ullman s own personal story, but stories of other family members and their often miraculous survival. The book contains numerous unique photos, copies of documents and correspondence in support of the stories, as well as valuable historical and factual context of those terrible times.

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