 Good morning to this conversation with the residents of Concord Park where the Wonderland Puppet Theater began in 1961. I am Paulette Richards, curator of the wonderful Wonderland Puppet Theater exhibit here at the Puppeteers of America 2023 National Festival and also author of the book Object Performance in the Black Atlantic, which features a chapter on American puppet modernism detailing the Wonderland Puppet Theater. What we're going to do is spend about 35 minutes at this point talking about Concord Park, hopefully 40 minutes talking about the Wonderland Puppet Theater, and then open conversation for the rest of the session. I don't have bios from each of our panelists, so we're just going to go down the line and if you could say your elevator speech about who you are, where you come from. Thank you. To my right, please. Good morning, everyone. My name is Joyce Hadley. I am retired, Verizon Communications, and I am currently still living in Concord Park, Trevoste, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. I'm very happy to report that I am still there, and there are just maybe a handful of original Concord Park residents who still remain. But Bucks County and Trevoste is still a wonderful, wonderful area to live in. In my retirement, I am involved in many organizations. I volunteer for many organizations, so that keeps me quite busy. I'm very happy to be here today with my colleagues and friends, I've known all my life, to tell you more about my Concord Park experience, and they as well will tell you about theirs. Thank you. Thank you. Elevator pitch is 25 words. Hi, I'm Jennifer Swan, I'm the oldest of the five Swan children, and I grew up in Concord Park. We moved there when I was three years old. Joyce was our babysitter for several years, I know I'm beyond the 25 words, and we were, I currently am a professor at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and I am a professor of neuroscience, and I am also one of their three buds. I'm Jeff Swan, I'm the oldest son, and obviously the best looking of the Swans. I was the first child born into Concord Park, and we moved out of Concord Park when I turned 13, so my childhood for all intents and purposes was in Concord Park. I am a almost retired owner of several computer companies, and I cannot wait to be fully retired. There you go. Jay? I am Jay Swan, the youngest of five, as you can tell. I grew up in Warminster, when I was two, I moved out of Concord Park, I grew up in Warminster, and that's about it. Thank you for keeping the time. The only one who got to 25? There you go. I'm Lauren Swan, I am the third child and second daughter of Alice Swan, and I thought I was the first baby born in the Concord Park, but who knows, we'll have to check the records on that. I happened to be a nutritionist by profession, and one of my specialties is cultural food ways, and I got another connection here with, I did a cookbook that Faith Ringgold did the cover art for, so that was another connection with Paulette, so very happy to be here. Good morning. I'm Mark Schmaly, the only son of Nancy Schmaly, Alice's puppetry partner, and I ran a whitewater rafting company for about 35 years, and currently reside in the beautiful Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York, and plan on residing there forever. Thank you. Yeah, I grew up in Concord Park. Okay, thank you panelists. I'm going to give a very quick rundown on what was Concord Park, and then we'll get into our questions. So, Morris Milgram was the son of an impoverished Jewish immigrant family who worked in the garment district in New York City. By the time he was 18, he had become the equivalent of a woke radical and was expelled from city college for leading a protest against a reception for a visiting delegation of Italian fascist students in 1934. Milgram completed his education at Dana College and then took a job with the Workers' Defense League. William Snello, his father-in-law, repeatedly invited him to join his construction business. Finally in 1947, Milgram agreed, but with the goal of building open occupancy housing. After Snello passed away, Milgram partnered with George Otto. They raised $150,000 in venture capital by challenging their socialist and Quaker networks to put your money where your heart is. Having secured the financing, they acquired a property in Trevost, Pennsylvania with plans to develop a subdivision of single-family homes for middle-class buyers. The development Milgram launched with the money was Concord Park. So, my first question, and I'm going to start on the end with Marco Schmaly, is how did your family get to Concord Park? Well, my parents both grew up in Pittsburgh. My father, very poor, and so he lived in a diverse neighborhood in Pittsburgh. They went to college. My dad went to med school, and then they went to India as missionaries for a church. In 1954, they went to India in 51, I believe, 54. My sister Becky was born, and they decided to come back to the state. So they took a eight-month freighter ride from India back. They arrived back in Pittsburgh, and sadly, the church that they were doing the missionary work for said, well, we didn't think you were going to come back, so go back to India. My parents didn't like that welcome, and so they kind of just pulled up from Pittsburgh and moved to Philadelphia to Friends Hospital, where my dad took a residency in psychiatry. It was there that I was born, and they were looking for a place in the suburbs, and Concord Park just kind of checked the boxes of the right place, and the diversity and the intentional integration was not a major factor, but it was certainly not a stumbling block. They just saw it as a wonderful place to raise their now family of two children. And so that's how we ended up there. And I think we moved in, let's see, I was born in 57. So we probably moved in in 59, I think. Thank you. Now I'll pass that also to Joyce. My parents, Marjorie and George Hadley, were living in Philadelphia at the time. In North Philadelphia on the street called Bouvier Street, which was a pretty little tree-lined street, row homes, and one day, my father worked for the Veterans Administration, and one of his friends told him about an ad that they had seen in a newspaper about this place called Concord Park in Treavos, which was an intentionally planned integrated community. So my father told my mother, and they decided to take this venture, because in those days there was no I-95. There was only Route 1, which was the Roosevelt Boulevard, which was a section, three on one side and three on the other side of roadway, and it took about 40 minutes. So it was like going through the country back in those days. So my parents took the trip out to see the Concord Park homes where they met Morris and some of the people who were the sales representatives, and they thought that this is an ideal place to raise me, because at the time, my sister and brother, I have siblings, one of whom is deceased now, but my siblings were Marguerite and Henry, and so at the time, it was just myself. So they thought that this would be an ideal place to raise children and get out of the city, because the city for their purposes didn't have much to offer for a young family. So that's how I came about coming to Concord Park. I was seven or eight years old when I came there, and I'll never forget looking at the houses being built and the wonders of a child having your own bedroom, and I never forget my father said, well, what color do you want your bedroom to be? And I said pink. And in those days, they used this spray paint that had all these speckles in it, and it was just marvelous. I had this pink bedroom with these speckles. And it was what I still to this day remember the smell of the 2x4s as they were building the house, because every so often my parents would come out to see exactly what was going on with the construction of the house, and it was a very exciting thing, plus meeting new friends along the way. So that's how, and this was, by the way, my parents moved in January of 1956. And Warren Swartzspeck, who was also a community member there, sold the home to them. And to this day, we are still friends with his daughter, Karen Swartzspeck. So it was just an ideal situation. Okay. Thank you. I'm going to delegate Jennifer Swan. I have no idea, so I'm going to go to you, Jennifer. As I understand the story, my mother and my father, my father was a World War II vet. He had come back and under the GI Bill had gone to Howard, where at a dance he met my mother. There's some argument about how actually that happened, but we'll just go with that story. They got married, and my mom in a statement said that they did not believe that my father, who was now an architect, was going to get any opportunity in Washington, D.C., as a black architect to do any work. So they were going to move to Boston. They were on their way to Boston and ran into an ad in the paper that offered a job that my father applied for and got. So that's where they stopped. So they stopped in Philadelphia. Then they had Jennifer, and they realized that that was kind of an error. Anyway, so they had Jennifer. So they were living in the apartment. I believe my mom got a job at the time. My mom was a teacher by profession, and her mother, Nanny, to us, moved up to Philadelphia. I'm not sure how that worked. Nanny, my mom, my dad, and Jennifer in a one-bedroom apartment. So I'm sure that that was a pleasantly unpleasant time. Then my mother became pregnant with me, and she realized that, or they came to a conclusion that perhaps this was not the best idea. I don't know how they found Concord Park. I cannot speak to that, but I know that they had decided that that was when they needed to move and they could afford the mortgage, which I believe was $90 a month. I think that was the mortgage bill. And they moved to Concord Park. So I'm pretty certain, I don't know the exact time, but I'm pretty certain it was the spring of 57 that they moved to Concord Park. Thank you. So the next question. Unlike today, when parents often feel it is not safe to let their children play outdoors unsupervised, Concord Park was like a village where children could roam with a wide degree of freedom and even be fed in any house. What are your memories of playing in the neighbor's yards and eating in neighbor's homes? Oh, sure. A lot of fun. You know, one of the things when I think back on my experiences in Concord Park is I felt really safe. I didn't have any fears at all. On the block with the houses, all those neighbors were family. We were like one big extended family. We lived, it takes a village before it became a coined phrase. And part of that was also the 1950s and 60s. We had more community neighborhoods than what happened later in the 80s and 90s. But we just had lots of fun. We didn't really have a lot of worries. Your friends were all up and down the block. Their parents welcomed you into their homes. There were community activities going on all the time. So I have very good memories of Concord Park. I sometimes feel like I was one of the luckiest kids in the world to grow up there. We had a community babysitting. We had a community kindergarten that my mom started that we all went to. And the neighbors were so united that if you were playing at someone else's house and it got dark, one person, the parent would call the parent of that house and say, can you get those kids and send them back home? Because it's time. You could not do anything without having the network react to what you were doing. And so it was really, really a community. You could not get away with very much. One time I was fighting with somebody. And before I could get home, my mom knew about it. So when I got home, she was like, I heard what happened. And I was just walking down the block. It was on the same block and walking down the block and she's like, get in here. You know, I was like, how did you, because the mom of that kid had already called her before we even got down the street. This was before cell phones. This was landlines. So that's how connected they were. And it was really a nice, I'll say one more story. We had a dog named Miracle and he would lay in the middle of the intersection of the roads that ran by our house. He would just lie in the middle and people would stop. They'd come over, can you get your dog? Because he's right in the middle of this. So yes. The sense of community was for real. You could walk at any time of the day, walk up and down the street and just say, oh, they're having lunch right now. You just walk into the house and sit down and have lunch. No invitation, you know. Every child felt free to go wherever they wanted to go. There was no sense of fear about anyone. And this is the thing about, we knew about DEI way back then, because there were many different cultures that were living in Conker Park at the time. Also, the sense of community was wonderful during the Christmas season because we would all go Christmas caroling up and down the street and sing in front of this neighbor's house, that neighbor's house. And quite often, the neighbor would come out and give us hot chocolate or some marshmallows to go in the hot chocolate. It was just wonderful. There was an artist by the name of Henry Boseman Jones, who used to put a beautiful canvas on his garage door. Sometimes it was the Magi, sometimes it was Santa Claus. And we loved to go to his house because his wife would always give us some nice little treats when we sang at his house. So the sense of community was always there in the summer. There were community picnics where each household would bring a special dish down to the playground. And I'd like for someone to speak about the playground because I think your dad designed it. Yes, yes. The Conker Park, if you looked at it was sort of... I want to say one of the things about Conker Park. It was like living in a bubble. It wrapped around, the way the roads wrapped around, and we were butted up against a highway and a highway. And then behind us was a driving movie theater. So you were kind of like enclosed in an area. And as a result of that, you grew up in a unique bubble because there were issues if you went outside of the bubble. It was truly a bubble. But there was a piece of land at the very end and they decided they were gonna put up a playground. So my father, being an architect, and there were several engineers in the community, got together and they designed the playground and then the community built it, as I understand it. The, no one was brought in from the outside. They laid the concrete and the foundation. They put up the things and we all went and played there. It was very, very, it was truly a unique experience. I think that's a fair statement. Yeah, I would like to add too. My father told me the reason that my parents moved to Conker Park, that was a place he could find in the suburbs that accepted blacks. That was it. And it was sort of a bubble, but it's important to also point out it was intentionally put right next to Lincolnia. Lincolnia was the first all black neighborhood in the suburbs and the two were not connected in terms of their origin, but Milgram intentionally put Conker Park next to Lincolnia to give the black residents, you know, a sense of belonging and that sort of thing. And I remember that's something else I remember as a child, I felt so lucky. I'm like, there's an all black neighborhood here. I'm in the mixed one. And then there's this outer world that even though we were in this Conker Park bubble, we knew that there was racism out there. So we did enjoy our experience, but we were aware that, you know, the world out there wasn't exactly the same. I just want to add that the reason that it was so communal was because of the Quakers. So when Milgram did this, he opened it up to whites and blacks. The blacks bought in because it was a place where they could come and get housing that they could afford, which was not really prevalent in, at least in Philadelphia, and I know about the rest of the world. And then he said, because he was getting more blacks than whites, he said, okay, then I have to sell the whites before. And the Quakers who lived in Bringuelet, which is very near Conker Park, were the other group who then bought in. And so that's how they balanced out the neighborhood. Quakers have an amazing sense of community. And I feel that those were, that was the reason that we had the communal approach that we did, and it was extremely communal. And so I credit the Quakers for that. Yeah. Yes, and to that point about the Quakers, directly across the street from my home, the Quakers bought the home house for a German family who had escaped from Berlin at the time. And the father was in the German Navy. And he told, he used to come over to our house all the time. And he and my father would exchange stories about his being in the German Navy and my father talking about the, being an African American in the segregated army. And the two of them would share some very important stories all the time. But also I just wanna get back to the playground for just one second. Because not only did we have picnics there, but also in the winter, the men would flood the playground and we would go down there and ice skate. And that's how many of us learned how to ice skate. It was just wonderful. And also other community activities, Fourth of July was a big to do in Concord Park because we would, you know, we were very patriotic. And we had a crate paper and we would decorate our bicycles and ride all around up and down all the circles of Concord Park. By the way, 135 homes were, that was a total amount of homes that Morris Milgram built. At the end of the bicycle parade at July 4th, one of the parents or two of the parents would be the judge and they would select the bike that was most wonderful and so forth and so on. Then the child would get a little prize. So we just had lots of love, I should say. Lots of love from all the parents in the community. Thank you. Marco? Yeah, I just, wrote down quickly my first, the first words that came to my head when I thought of Concord Park. So no fences, Fourth of July, many moms, freedom, intact families, playgroup, boats. There were a lot of boats for being a long way away from water, but there were boats. Mosquito trucks, Gloria Lawrence singing, tricycles and then bicycles. Hiding in the hamper. I don't know if you guys hear a hamper. I hidden that hamper all the time. That was the first place my mom looked when she couldn't find me. Diversity, highway pool and St. Francis for swimming. Fun, tree climbing on the smaller tree. There weren't a lot of trees in Concord Park, but we climbed, I think, every one of them. And just life of plenty. It felt like as a child, had everything that I could have wanted. And that included food, which we did, I did enjoy, I don't know if I was one of the better ones at finding my way into other people's kitchen. And at lunchtime or dinnertime and finding snacks, but according to my mom, I had a reputation for finding food in other people's houses, so. Which was strange because Mark's house was the only house that was serving anything good. I don't know why he came down to our house. We had peanut butter and jelly. His mom was putting out ham and cheese. We're like, what the, what are you doing down here? It must have been change of pace. It must have been change of pace. And I can assure you the fathers might perceive that differently because I heard different things from my father about what your father said about meals. There could be some different perceptions going on there. And when it comes to food, I think it somehow sparked my interest in cultural foodways because we would have potlucks where the table would be laid out and they would put these little tent cards up and it would say the dish and the ethnicity, like Kugel, German or whatever. And I still remember that and I just, I love it. In my profession, there's a concern about cultural foods othering, like there's mainstream foods and then there's cultural foods, which might be African American or Latino. I've never seen it that way. I think because I was raised in Concord Park, I know every food has a cultural or ethnic story to tell. So I don't see it as othering. I see it as a way that we can learn about each other through food. Speaking of food, there was a gourmet club that eventually arose. I don't know if your mother was in the gourmet club. No. Oh. Not was it include fish sticks. Spam. Spam. Well, eventually there was a gourmet club and speaking about cultural identity and learning about other people, we used to go to Fellowship Farm in the summer. And did you go to Fellowship Farm? And it was a wonderful place. Pete Seeger, that's where we first learned about Pete Seeger and his guitar and his lovely singing was at Fellowship Farm. And then when we would go there, you would meet people from all over the world and it also have different types of food that you could taste. And so the whole premise of being a child of Concord Park, it was to further your education about other people and how to respect other people. And that was just the most wonderful thing. Okay, those were some lovely memories, but Concord Park was full of human beings. And so did somebody else have any? No, no, no, no. Yeah, and so if you would speak a little bit about some of the human foibles that you observed as a child in Concord Park. I would like to start off with that one because I learned something very interesting just a few years ago. I'm still learning things about Concord Park, I didn't know, but we have reporters who come and interview us for book chapters. And these are young people, they could be my kids and they're still interested in learning about Concord Park. And one of the things I learned from someone who did a real in-depth research on Morris Milgram and his legacy was there was concern when Concord Park was established. There was concern from white Quakers and they felt that there could be some risk with Concord Park because you're putting blacks in the 50s and 60s next to whites who want to be in an integrated neighborhood or are okay with an integrated neighborhood. And that's not necessarily the real world. We discovered that when we moved to Warminster. They didn't want us there. So the concern was you could be creating a confidence in integration that might not necessarily be mirrored in the outside world. And again, I just learned this like five years ago. I never thought of that angle or perspective before but this was something that this reporter when she dug into the research found it. So very interesting. I don't know under the word foibles. It was a diverse community, not just race-wise but also background-wise. I think the common thread through most of the families was almost everyone there was a World War II GI. So the guys, white and black had a common speaking point in the sense of their background and their history which came out a lot at parties and so forth. And of course, people married people. So there was a fairly artistic bend to a lot of the people that were there. There were artists, as Joyce had spoken of. There were musicians, there were, and there was also a high number of people in the teaching profession. I don't know if that's because teachers by default are, their knowledge base brings them to other things and they're more open. I don't know but there were a lot of people in the school and the education area there. So they were adults and I also wanna state, we were kids, right? Joyce, I'm not saying Joyce is old but Joyce is the longest resident on the panel. So the average age of the people on this panel when we were in Concord Park is fairly young. So you know, you're a kid. You look at parents and you go, okay, it's an adult. If the adult says, do something, you do it. They say, don't do something, then you don't work. Well, okay. Okay, but you get the general idea. When you mentioned foibles, are you speaking about negative things necessarily or? Whatever you're willing to share. Okay, well in that we lived in this bubble, we were very content amongst each other and our families but outside of the bubble, we were ostracized basically. People from outside, at that time, the knowledge about diversity was very limited in scope in Trevos, Pennsylvania and in Ben Salem Township. So unfortunately we were referred to as, oh, you're the people from checkerboard square. Okay, these white and black people and God knows what else are living over there. You're a bunch of liberals, a bunch of communists. What are you over there? So we being the children didn't understand that but that we were kind of labeled that way as these weird people from this weird neighborhood. Where are they coming from? From Mars, what are they? So that was some of the outside activities. And some of us who went to the public schools, I went to private school, Catholic school and some of us on the outside really got some knocks and some pings and arrows when we went outside of Concord Park. But it was important on us having parents and all of the love and caring that we had to know how to handle that and for myself to teach others about what diversity really means. And I think all of us are pros at doing that. We don't just settle and sit back like, oh, what was me? No, I'm going to instruct you how to be a loving human being too because that's what Mars built. That man put his life on the line for us and so I figured that's the least that I can do and I think all of us can do. Yeah. Yeah, I think that I just, this is something else I just realized recently. We were like little soldiers out there. Our parents moved us into white areas in the 1950s and 60s. This is new turf for the entire country. And we were just kind of out there on the front lines and I think as a result we've carried that with us throughout our lives and it's been a fascinating journey because when I look at the 60s that was getting the laws into place, the laws about equality and civil rights, just getting them into the place. My parents lived with Jim Crow. My mother, when she grew up in Washington DC if there were three blacks congregating on a corner the police would come by and say, break it up. Okay, so this is what she grew up with and now she's in Concord Park. And we do try to carry this with us and it certainly can be challenging but things have changed over time. The civil rights movement of the 60s was not the same as the valuing diversity movement of the 90s and we just continue to learn and evolve. We all know 2020, the year of the George Floyd civil rights protests ushered in a whole new level of digging down to what really is preventing us from moving forward with the progress that was made. So it has been fascinating and I've been glad to be a part of it and still learning as we move along. I would like to say something. Go ahead, Jay. I had a friend in Concord Park that he said that my parents, his parents cleaned her diapers when we were kids. And I remember moving the warm and stir and I was afraid and invite my friend who was of color into warm and stir to be my other friends who are what and it didn't work out. It just did not, it didn't work. So that's one of the things that I've observed. Yeah, yeah. There was a pool called the highway pool that was right up the street from us and we didn't go there a lot because you had to pay to get in. There were five of us but I remember one time we went and these white kids were in the pool and I remember them coming out and I say, does that come off when you get in the water? And we're like, what? And they're like, that color on your skin and we're like, what? So then we said, you can touch it and they were like, oh no. So then I was chasing them around and I'm like, all right. And they were all running away. It was great. It was very, very great. Speaking of Concord Park, as I mentioned or as we have mentioned about being in the bubble. Well, Levitown, Pennsylvania. I'm sure you've heard of Levitown, Pennsylvania which was approximately no more than 10 miles up the road, up route one from Concord Park. Well, that was not an intentionally planned integrated community, whites only. All right, so that being said, I for one never went to play with anybody up there. I don't know if anyone here did but that was like off limits for us. However, the very first black family that moved into Levitown is Daisy Myers. Oh, and they went through some horrible situations but it was some of the fathers from Concord Park and I think some of the fathers here, people here, had to go and sit on her lawn 24 seven to protect Daisy, her husband and her children. So here again, the ideals of a whole community, DEI diversity comes from Concord Park from our experience. That is, there's a story there worth, it's not the story for today, but there's a story there that the Myers really were on the front lawn because unlike where we had families, there was a collection of families, they were out there by themselves and the fathers did go and sit in their living room and sit on their front lawn and protect them and that was everybody. It wasn't just, I wanna be clear about something because the nature of this panel is a little different. I grew up, my best friend was Mark. We weren't friends, we were brothers. I didn't realize he was white until I went to school. It was never a conversation. That wasn't how you were taught in Concord Park. They were just, he's your friend, that's it. So the idea of race within the bubble didn't really exist. It was, as Lauren stated, there was kind of a shocker when you finally got sent off to school but in the bubble, there was no discussion of color or race. If there was, it wasn't at our level. It was never a thought, a concept, a word that just didn't exist. And so to me, that was the coolest thing about Concord Park. To me, the fact that you actually grew up realizing that there was no difference, there was just, they're just people, just people. And so that was, I think the biggest benefit that I took away from that. So yeah, my dad did go to Levittown and I remember a pretty difficult conversation that my parents had with my sister and I about why he went there. And I think it was, I mean, I was just a little kid but I was kind of like, well, why wouldn't they like them? And I think that's where my friendship with Jeff and a lot of the neighbors in Concord Park and then eventually we did move to Bringweled, which was another kind of exceptional community to grow up in as a kid. Quaker founded, very diverse. But that conversation with my parents about the Levittown thing, I mean, I might've been six. I don't think in 60, I was probably six years old and I still remember it as something that was, they were trying to explain to me something that I couldn't understand. Because it wasn't in my, it just wasn't in my wheelhouse of thought that you would not like somebody. And sometimes unfortunate things not only happened in Levittown, but right in our own community, such as cross burning on one of the Concord Park neighbors, the Duffins, KKK came and burned across on their front lawn. So there were always people from outside the community who just did not like this event that was happening here in Bucks County. Who were these people trying to influence us? I think they felt very threatened by us instead of embracing what we had done and brought to the community. Speaking of what we brought to the community, by the way, was the bookmobile, all right? All right, there was no library in Ben Salem Township. So Concord Park, the people in Concord Park started their first bookmobile. And if I can recall correctly, it would come down from the Doylestown library and each home would have a bookshelf, a lovely bookshelf. And each home, the bookmobile would come to your house and I think it was two weeks at a time, two or three weeks at a time. And then any child or any parent for that matter could come to your home because the books were housed at your home for two or three weeks. And you signed out a little car and take your books and come back. The bookmobile would come and go to the next home, the next home. Eventually, there was a library in Ben Salem Township, rah, rah, Concord Park. We started all. Yeah, we had a panel at Penswood, I think it was back in 2006, with a lot of Concord Park kids with gray hair in their 60s and 70s, but yeah, we were the Concord Park kids. And they asked us that. They said, what did you think of race? And every single one of us at one point said, we didn't think anything of it. We didn't, it just, it was not an issue that would separate or differentiate us as children. And it really was sad to discover that the rest of the outside world wasn't like keeping, wasn't also progressing towards that. I am old enough to be a grandmother and I thought when I reached this age, when I was a child in Concord Park, I thought by the time I'm this age, everything is gonna be fine. It's not. And that is a disappointment. So there's clarification. Penswood is a retirement community. I just wanna make sure, because she said Penswood, you might be thinking, well, okay, what is that? It's a run by the Quakers. It's a phenomenal facility. So it was a natural migration point for a lot of the people from Concord Park who reaching that point where they wanted to retire, they all ended up there. So it was almost like Concord Park three because Brink Wellard was Concord Park two. So it was almost like the group just moved over to another spot. Our moms ended up together after Nancy married and moved to New Hampshire and lived there for what, 25 years or something? 25 years, yeah. And then she and my mom ended up in Penswood together for their final years. And the cool thing about Penswood is it always had events and things going on and it pulled the Concord Park kids back together again as adults and we'd hang out there and have dinner and watch movies and it's beautifully laid out. And it was a really, really nice experience. And Penswood, it's a Quaker run facility. So as my sister said, a lot of our very positive experiences are because of Quaker values. And I just wanna mention outside of not having a library in Ben Salem Township, there was no kindergarten. And I think one of these lovely people would like to speak to who started the first kindergarten. Let me just say something real quick about Penswood. I think my mom said that there were a lot of Concord Park and Bering Wellet residents that were at Penswood. And she felt that it was such an important part of their lives, Concord Park and Bering Wellet and the connections that they made in Concord Park and Bering Wellet were so strong that my mom who was living in New Hampshire for 25 years wanted to reunite with those people because she felt such a strong connection. I agree. I mentioned the kindergarten before my mom started the kindergarten. She was trained as a teacher and she wanted to have a teacher. And then also that way she could keep all of her kids near. And I know from being a mother, kindergartens aren't all, they're some of them are all day, but it was helpful to have her run the kindergarten and then all of us as kids entered school through the kindergarten. So I am still in higher education. I've been in school since I was three years old and I am still there. And that's, she is a tribute to that love of learning and the ability to learn things. And she was very active with the community and very active with the kids. It was a really nice place to be. It was very good. Which is the natural segway. Yes. Okay. So the kindergarten gets started was a lovely kindergarten. We had a lot of really good toys. Refrigerator boxes. We had some cartons. I think we had an old, we might even had an old refrigerator. In fact, we had an old steering wheel. Steering wheel. Nice. Anyway, it was the top of the line. But anyway, so kindergarten starts. So Nancy Shmalie and my mother were both involved. My mom started it. And I believe Nancy was the event coordinator or something like that. Yeah. Some position in the kindergarten. So they decide that the best way to entertain these kids is a puppet show. That's the way they're going to do it. This is a Mrs. Shmalie and I want to be clear. Mrs. Shmalie insisted forever to say, Jeff, my name is now Mrs. Penny, but I'm sorry, 50 years of Mrs. Shmalie. I can't cut that over. Anyway, so she comes to my mother and says, oh, I read this thing in Women's Day Magazine by Bill Baird on how to do a puppet show. My mom is somewhat skeptical of this process and says so. That doesn't seem like the world's best idea. But Mrs. Shmalie insists that this is a great idea. And so they proceed with the idea of doing it. And of course, Bill Baird had written all the instructions, how to build the puppets. So here's the story, blah, blah, blah. This becomes a massive community event. The puppets are, they involve all of these other people to build the puppet. So it's not just Mrs. Shmalie and Mrs. Swan, it's Mrs. Mims and Mrs. Hadley and the Bytels. And the Lawrence is, this is like a gigantic community event to make this puppet show. So they create the puppet show and they're gonna have it one evening in the backyard. And as Mark said, the reason why he said no fences was, there were no fences. You could walk down from the top of the block to the end of the block through everybody's backyard. There was nothing to stop you and no one would. So they decided to put it in the backyard so they set it up. I think they used the refrigerator box for the stage. I'm pretty certain that was the case. They put the refrigerator box up, they need music. So Nettie Mae Hare, who lived across the back and slightly down from us, she actually lived behind, what was it? The Fagallies. The Fagallies. The Fagallies. So they moved the place down so that they could get it near her house because what she did was she pulled the piano to the back window so that she could play the piano and sing while they were doing the thing which was in the backyard. I was there, I don't really recall it, but this must have been a phenomenal event. Anyway, they complete the initial puppet show, it's a massive hit. Everybody loves it. And I think they loved it too. So they decided that what we should do another, and I don't really know if they went first to Shriners. I know that the story is that they then went to Shriners Hospital and performed it. I'm not certain that was the next stop, but it doesn't matter. Somewhere in there, they took this massive structure to Shriners Hospital and did another puppet show. And then it sort of, oh wow, we're doing really well. So then they went to a kindergarten and then they went to another kindergarten. And hence the story starts because at that point they've now decided they're practically bros, they've done three shows. So off they went. It's true. Great. Lauren, do you, go ahead. Do any of you remember that first show and how did you like it if you do? I don't really, I can't say I do. You might remember, Joyce. I just remember because their mother always had me as the coordinator of all these children. Joyce, you sit down there, Joyce, and make sure they're behaving. So. That was a tough task. And that was. That was very tough. So I remember just sitting on the lawn and watching this box, because I had to watch the puppets and I was just intrigued by the box, but also I had to mind all of you and make sure that you were behaving and everything. So that's, I just have a, you know, a vague memory of that because your mother always had me baby, I babysat you all, and there's not only you all, I had the babies at the other children, you know, everybody was in your immediate circle. I had to just make certain everybody behaved. Yeah, one of the things my mom used to say when she was rehearsing, she said, if you kids started leaving the room, I know that I had to read you the script or the music because you were bored and you didn't want to pay attention. She told us that a lot. And I think one of my favorite shows as a child with the original Wonderland Puppet Theater was The Carnival of the Animals. I learned a lot about classical music from my mother's puppet shows. When I went on into junior high and all, when you study music, I knew that song. I knew that, you know, and that was from The Carnival of the Animals and the things they did like they would get the punch tickets from the turnpike and throw it out and with the fluorescent lighting, it looked like water. They did all these creative things with this show. You know, as a child, you just kind of assume that's the way it is, but when I reflect back on it now, they were pretty darn amazing what they were able to put together. I knew how to make paper mache. My mother made these puppets out of scraps of fabric. They rarely bought anything brand new. They used, you know, renewable resources back in the 60s. So really, really amazing. And to your point about classical music, because here I am, I'm nine years older than my siblings at the time and a lot older than you guys, but what I enjoyed about listening to my mother, who was the puppeteer for the Sauceroo's Apprentice and the Nightcorkers, was the classical music because my mother loved classical music. I mean, she was not a rock and roller. Here I am, the rock and roll generation, but, you know, she taught me to appreciate classical music. And then when I listened to all the puppet scenarios, it was always classical music, which I really appreciate. And I knew the songs because my mother played, you know, she listened to this music on WFLN, plus she had the big, was it 33 and a third records and all that type of thing. So yes, it was a very cultural thing. You know, we weren't, it was cultural, all the puppet shows. So it felt, in the very beginning, our job was to be the audience. And as Lauren said, if we got bored, you know, they could tell. But I also remember very well saying, hey, I see your arm, you know, we were, and that would be, that would be the highlight. Like I remember sitting there going, I'm looking for some, I'm looking for some forearm. If I see it, man, I'm gonna tell them right away, because that was my job. And so I think sometimes I probably got a little lost in the puppet show, but I was all about watching for mistakes. And I was like, oh, I caught you on that one, Mom, you know. Right, and they also, they had something they used to do with a puppet called Dimples called Theater Matters. And at the beginning of the show, they would teach things like be quiet and when to clap. And you can look behind the stage later, but don't try to come behind the stage now. And I remember her Dimples, hello boys, hello girls, hello parents, hello everyone. And Mom said, sometimes Dimples would keep singing because whoever was supposed to do the next thing wasn't doing it right. She, after a show, my mother could tell you every mistake, because she knew. But the audience didn't know, the show usually went fine. But of course, that's for any of us who do presentations or performances, we always know what we could have done to make it better. But yeah, she could always point out, well, we should have started the tape here or whatever. I just want to be clear here, not every show went perfect. And some of them, some of them we were actually quite aware they didn't go perfect. The Marionette with, what was her name? Dorothy Pierce, Dorothy Pierce, yes. One of the legs was hanging during a show with the Marionette. I don't know if you guys know the Marionettes or not, but it was, I remember seeing that show and they were laughing and I was like, uh-oh, something went wrong here. Dorothy Pierce would prerecord all of the shows. And then you would just do the puppets. And my mom did not like doing that. And in this one particular show, while the background was running, the music and the script, the Marionette leg got stuck. So he leaves the stage with his leg stuck and comes back with it dragging. Right, there was some trouble. But I want to be clear, the early show, the Shriner show, the stage fell over. So that probably didn't look all that good on that one. And then when they were actually performing at the, in Ontario, no. Yes, in Ontario, they were performing. No, it wasn't Ontario. It was the one before that. The Puppet Convention conference before that, the 63, I guess, or 64. They, in front of Jim Henson, they were very impressed that Jim Henson was there in the audience. And they were doing the Sorcerer's Apprentice. They had left the Magic Onion because of the fact that Bill Baird had contacted them and stated that what he had published in Women's Day was for them to do for free. So he sent a note basically saying, if you're going to collect money on it, we have to have a conversation. So they abandoned that play and they went on to the Sorcerer's Apprentice. They were originally using water for the cauldron. They had water in the cauldron. And according to my mom, she turned the wrong way and knocked the cauldron over. So the dry ice and all the water spilled all over the stage. And then Mrs. Shmali in somewhat of a panic stopped the music, so they went around to the front. I was there, I do not recall this, but they went around to the front and they said to Mr. Henson, what do we do now? And Mr. Henson's famous reply was, keep going. We're not here for this. We want to see the rest of the show. So not all the shows went perfectly. There were some troubles. But they were pretty intrepid in their thing. And I do believe that their commitment to inventiveness, which was driven, in my opinion, by the fact that they were really cheap, not so much that they were being inventive. But we all learned to work with paper hangers and paper mache and tennis balls and stuff like that. And I think anybody on this panel, if given a couple of pieces, could assemble a puppet in probably four or five minutes without a problem. Yeah, I once did a paper puppet bag show. I did a table. They loved it. Mm-hmm. All right. But I went to a puppet show that my mom did in the 80s. This was when she was Alice's Wonderland of Puppets. And kids were a little different then. And I remember her, it was at a German club and it was a Christmas show. She got a lot of those. My mom could clean up with pocket money at Christmas time because she would do a couple of shows in the weekends for like YMCA or Breakfast with Santa or something. And I remember her with the puppet at the top saying, go back, boys and girls, go back because the kids were coming up to the stage. And I think it was because, again, it was the 80s. It wasn't the 60s, so things were a little bit looser. But this German club, it was this Christmas, happened to be the last weekend before the Christmas. And I think those parents just let those kids go because they had it. We all know how kids can get leading up to Christmas. I think they were relieved to be in a room where the kids could just run around and do whatever. But my mom was like, go back, boys and girls, so yes, not everything went as smoothly as she would have liked. She also had me in the garage of the Warmthrash. She used to practice the show with Mrs. Molly and she would have me sit out there like an audience and see if I saw anything that went wrong during the show. So we'll prepare her for the next show. So I do remember that there were times, I was so much into it when I was a kid, I would make a cardboard box, refrigerator cardboard box into a stage. I just cut a square out and I would stand and practice. And there were times where I had a friend from school and another friend come over and we would do lining the mouths together with my mom's puppets from what I knew how to do it from seeing the show and we practiced in the garage as well. So there was a lot of good times. I had with my mom. I would go with her to set up stage, different puppet shows and they had all her puppets and suitcases and I would carry them. And there was a time, I think she actually paid me or she would buy me lunch or whatever. What? I think, yeah, I really do. I think there was a time that actually was when at your friend's birthday party. I got paid for that. I could have sworn I got paid for it, but I would help her set up and I would help her with the shows, it was really neat for me and everybody. And I know when we did the first time with Ola, she wanted to help, so she started to help out. So it was just very, it was entertaining for everybody. Yeah, and when you talk about this stage, when I used to tell my friends, my mom's a puppeteer. Oh, she has her own theater. I said, yeah, where is it? In the back of her station wagon. If you saw this stage before she put it together, it looked like a bunch of scrap wood. But she would tell you, put this clamp here, do this, do this, and then when she draped it and put the lights up, it was amazing. And one of our Concord Park neighbors, Ray Wilkins, was into electronics. And remember the Sony reel-to-reels? He would do their soundtracks, they were beautiful. So it really was something that the research and the details and what they went into to come up with a really good show. She had a push button that she would push to activate something in the puppet show. So she was using her hands, reading a script, at the same time she was hitting that push button with her foot. And just one more thing, my mom used to, in the Warminster House, she used to set the stage up in the garage on Halloween night and the kids would come into the garage and she'd do like a little thing before they got their candy. And the kids loved it. They loved coming by our house for Halloween. So this performance thing was just in her. She just liked doing it. I just want to mention that I had the privilege and the opportunity to be behind the stage for one of the last times with Alice and some of you were at Ringwell. Ringwell was having an anniversary and so Alice went over to Ringwell and set up the stage and I had never done, I think I have my mother's, one of my mother's, the night workers, that's what I did, the one that my mother did. And Alice just, she says, keep going, keep going Joyce, keep going, keep going if I didn't have my hand up far enough or something like that. But I was so privileged to do one show with Alice. Right, we would pack things in the station wagon. This is something they could never get away with today. There would be a space this big for any kid traveling with. They called it the capsule. Yeah, you'd be in there like this with all this puppetry stage equipment and I'm telling you that would not go over today with safety standards, but we survived, right? We lived, we lived. So I think one thing that was interesting, when I think of puppetry and I think of what happens behind the screen, it does seem kind of like a dance. And both Alice and Nancy love to dance and at weddings and et cetera, et cetera. And then Alice was quite the tap dancer. And what was the name of her tap dance group? And it was a toe tap. Toe tap, doils, toe tapers. And I remember at different times, because my mom would always keep me updated on what was happening with the swans when she was in New Hampshire because I was in the Adirondacks. And my mom would say, oh, Alice just did this new performance and et cetera. So I always thought of the behind the scenes puppetry because when they started, they had a lot of community members involved. And then I think they figured, wow, I mean, not everybody can make it. It's kind of like when you're in a rock and roll band and a drummer doesn't show up, you know? It's hard to perform without your drummer. So I think they had some experiences where they were like, wow, we got too many people. I think we should just have the two of us do all the puppets. And then I think it was Carnival Animals where they had a whole bunch of different puppets and they used to hang them on the hooks. And if you see the hooks are still on the puppets and they would go from puppet to puppet and they would, you know, all over and they'd be moving around. And I just always thought that was great that they liked to dance and interact in that way because it was a dance. There was music and then, you know, my mom for years was a folk dance instructor and did folk dance and just loved to dance. And I think that that dance aspect was kind of an interesting part of being a puppeteer because, you know, there's footwork involved and there's arm movements and things like that. So. And it should be said, I agree with Mark, one of the, in my opinion, the coolest parts of going to a show in the later 60s when they had really gotten their act down was that at the end of the show, they would do the show and then they would take the curtain down so that the people could see what they were doing and they would do a piece of the show again and you got to see because there was, it's hard to imagine today the complications involved then because not only were there two people and the stage wasn't very wide. It wasn't like the stage, it was maybe as wide as this table. You have two women behind them they're doing this thing with their hands and at the time they had wired microphones. So instead of twisting around because then they had to constantly get twisted up in the microphone cable, they would actually unjack the microphone and move to the next jack and then plug it back in. They had to do this while holding up the puppet, grabbing the next puppet, not bumping into the person. So it really was, it was my favorite part of the show. It was actually the one thing I was like, yeah, okay, I've seen all that stuff. Let's get right to the important thing. And that was the cool part. And I agree with Mark, I think they found that to be truly the enjoyable part. Yeah, that was the challenge, yeah. That was the challenge. Looking at, we saw a performance yesterday and I think what was interesting, he had all kinds of high tech things. It was a beautiful performance, the three pigs. But he had lights and cameras and he said it took him three hours to set it up and which I think it took my mom and Alice three hours to set up their stage. But that was just because it was like hinged here and little clamps and I mean, it was crazy. But yeah, I think that the fact that they didn't have all of the technological, I mean in the beginning, they put a record on. So they had to queue up the, I mean, all of these things happen, you're queuing up the record and then you have to time it between the two seconds before it actually kicks in. And so I believe they were great improvisational puppeteers and I think you maybe had to be better at that back then because there were just lots of things that would go wrong. Things would get caught on things. I'm sure current day puppeteers have the same issues, but I think that the soundtracks and I do remember my mom saying, yeah, we didn't like it to be canned, the whole thing canned because they wanted to be able to change if they were on a roll with something and everybody was laughing hysterically, they wanted to go with that because they were truly performing for the audience. It wasn't them, it was for the audience. They were very much into the fact that they were performing for the people in front. And while I never discussed with my mother or Mrs. Shemali the idea of why they didn't like it, they were very emphatic about it, they didn't like it to be canned, but they were very, if you went to a show, if you went to a show of an elementary school or whatever and the crowd was interacting with them, they would adjust the show to the crowd's interaction. So it didn't matter what the story was, if they were getting feedback, they would adjust the show to the feedback. And that's why some of the shows that were the simplest, the dance contest, which was probably the simplest one that they had was one of the ones that they enjoyed the most because the whole idea of the dance contest allowed for people to interact. People would shout out stuff and they could react to that because the show didn't really have a structure, really. It was kind of goofy, but they loved that. They loved the fact that they could respond to what someone would say. And there's more than once that they would, a child would yell something out and you would hear something back from behind the stage. A response to the child's statement. So they did really, really like that. So one thing that was interesting too, they performed W-H-Y-Y, The World Around Us. And I remember this was a TV program that was filmed live and they were kind of nervous, but there was no audience. And so Jeff and I were the audience, but we weren't really audience. We weren't a normal audience. And so this was one of their biggest performances. They were on TV, it was a big deal. And I remember my mom being pretty nervous about the whole thing. And the fact that there was no audience, so they weren't getting the feedback, made it a little more challenging for them. And it turned out, who was it? Anita Cleaver was her name. She was the woman. And I remember talking to Anita Cleaver just a side note out of that. Anita Cleaver afterwards was asking Jeff and I, so what do you boys do? I think we were probably 10 or 11 at the time. And I said, well, I collect turtles. And so then about a month later, I get a phone call, or my mom gets a phone call, and she says, Mark, go get all the kids. And this was, at this point, we were living in Bringwell. And she says, get all the kids. She says, I got an announcement. And I'm like, what announcement? She says, and then she gets everybody together and she says, I just got a phone call from Anita Cleaver. She wants you boys to go on the world around us and race turtles. Yes. Yes. One of the best days of my life. Yes. All right, we had a good time. We actually went on TV, we put the turtles in a thing, and we raced. We went on a couple of times, and she gave us all kinds of prizes. And it was fantastic pleasure. The world around us was a special treat, but we had to get up like five o'clock in the morning to get up to City Line Avenue. Because we went from Warminster with the frogs. When we moved to Warminster, there was a ditch behind us and all these frogs. So we had frog jumping contests. Races. Races, but we were often, we were invited a couple different times. And to me, the coolest thing was, after the taping, we got a free breakfast at the Marriott across the street. And that was a big deal, because eating out was a big deal back then. You did not just order out a couple nights a week because you didn't feel like cooking. The other thing is the stage, the most interesting thing, they spent a lot of time with the set up. So they had hooks, and they had puppets in certain places, and they had the script. If they didn't have a second show after the first one, you could just take that stuff down and put in any suitcase. But if they had a second show, you had to carefully take everything down, put it in the organized places because you had to set it back up again. And that's one of the reasons that the shows flowed so smoothly. The details that they thought out to me were just incredible. And I remember speaking about turtles. One of my latest mom's show was Yurtle the Turtle. I remember that. I don't know if you have that on record. Yes. But yes, I remember the show. I remember when she made it, I cannot remember the details of it because it was like what, 20 years ago, 30 years ago? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Ah, that's right. The turtles, a turtle would go on top of each turtle, and I think it was the highest turtle or something. They were the king of the pond. The highest turtle was the king of the pond, so they just kept trying to get higher. Until, of course, they fell over. And there was also another show. Wasn't it Sambo? Yes. Yes, I remember the show Sambo. And that was towards the end of my mom's career. She was doing stuff like that on her own. Yeah. I think, Aala, how many years did you get a puppet show at your birthday party? Everyone? Yeah. And I got one at my birthday party too. Not just you. At my 50th birthday party, I invited all the professors from, and the graduate students from Lehigh University, and they came and mom did a puppet show in the basement. And I had professors asking me years, and when are you gonna do another puppet show? When are you gonna, that was really, really great. That was so neat, so. Yeah, it was a unique thing. Sorry. We had one year, we used to have a big family Christmas Eve party, and when my mom and my dad split and she moved to a townhouse in Ben Salem, a bunch of people from the old gang came. And we were sitting around talking about her show so much. She said, do you all want a puppet show? Went into the back room, set the stage up, and did a puppet show. Everyone loved it. And we were all young adults, and we weren't expecting it that night. It was really something great. Good, I'm gonna jump in here. And ask this question precisely about your mother's careers. In the early 60s, press coverage referred to your mothers as Mrs. Raymond Schmalley and Mrs. James Swan. In this time period, women were not expected to pursue careers, especially not as artists. Even today, puppetry is not widely regarded as a serious profession. What did you, your family, and other kids at school think about your mother's work as puppeteers? Well, I'll go first. Okay. Just the fact that my mom has like Mark and Jeff was sharing about the coordination and the way they did stuff with their puppet shows was amazing. I think, I'm gonna take a little risk here. My father's not here, so I cannot speak for him. I can speak to him, but I cannot speak for him. He was not thrilled. No. I think that's a pretty good assessment. Yes. He was not that happy with the puppet show situation. In fact, he pretty much hated it. But to that end, they didn't agree, of course they didn't really agree on anything. But it went on anyway. I don't know that, it should also be stated, I'm not 100% certain if and when it could be stated that my mom's career was solely puppets. She was an employed teacher. So I don't know, that's a question we'd have to ask her and that would be very difficult at this time. But I don't know of anybody who really had an issue with it. It seemed like, and as you began to know the puppeteering community, which if you went to a conference like this or whatever, there were lots and lots of women. So while puppeteering may have been considered to a certain extent, somewhat of an odd direction to go in, in the sense of the general people. I mean, if you talk to people now, you guys are puppeteers, if you talk to people now, of a puppeteer, it's not a common phrase. But I don't think anybody had a problem with it. I mean, we didn't have a problem with it. We were like, whatever you wanted to do, right? Yeah, you might, no one who knows me now might believe this. I was actually a very quiet and shy child. But anyway, I remember at St. Chris, my mom arranged to do a puppet show. I can't remember if it was for a class or whatever. And after it was over, the nun was like, Lauren, you didn't tell us your mother was a puppet here. And my friends were like, wow, you're so lucky. And I'm thinking so, because it's just something that I grew up with. But yes, I have, to this day, I have put things on Facebook about this weekend. And I have friends in my Facebook group going, wow, that's really cool. That is so neat, you know, that you're really fortunate. And I didn't know they'd be impressed. I just want to say, for the Ben Salem community, every time Alice Swan's name was mentioned, it's synonymous with puppetry. Oh, you know Alice Swan? Is she still doing the puppets? Her name was all over Ben Salem and Bucks County, for that matter, because she went all over Bucks County. And she was known as being this wonderful puppeteer with the wonder, and they knew the name, the Wonderland Puppet Theater. And from whence it came. So your mother was famous. She was famous in Bucks County. And she loved that. And it has to be stated that they did achieve a certain level because the puppet show with my mother and Mrs. Shimali did do, for four years, four years on Story Corner? Story Corner, yeah, that was. They were booked in on the Channel 12, which was the PBS or Public Television Station. Yeah, Public Television Station. As the, and I won't use the phrase just recently, the insertionalist, I never heard that phrase, but she said that when puppets are used to bring in or cover the gap between the intro and the story, they're called insertionalists. I don't know. Anyway, so they would have a puppet. The puppets are downstairs. Dimples was a big guy. Toby, the dog, was used. One or two of the hunters from, Peter and the Wolf were used, and they would bring them up. And I always get her name wrong, not the last name. Will it? Will it Dean? Will it Dean? Will it Dean? The voice that was in Willow-Drina. Miss Willie. Miss Willie. That's right, Miss Willie. Would come on and she would, Story Corner, so she would read stories to the kids and the puppets were booked as the puppets that would introduce or interface with her leading up to the story. So in the local level they had achieved a fairly significant position. And not to go back on it, but the need of Cleaver's show was like the morning, like the local today show. It was on channel six. It was, and everybody watched it. It was a kind of a big deal. So when they had achieved that level, they had certainly achieved a certain level of local fame in the sense of who they were. And there weren't, you know, this is back when Sherry Lewis was the big thing. This is pre Jim Henson, keep in mind. Sesame Street hadn't started yet. So this was all unique and new. And then he figured out the magic sauce and carried that forward. But these were people on TV before there was Jim Henson, before there was Sesame Street. All in education. They were all doing educational things, so. Was Willardine Bain a squeegee? No, no, squeegee was one of the puppets. No, I mean, she wasn't, but that's what she did squeegee for Willardine Bain. Yes, yes. Squeegee was a puppet where they took, it was almost like a Brillo pad or something. It was like a scrubber that you use. It was a copper scrubber for the dishes and that was squeegee's head. That is what they did. Again. They were incredibly resourceful. Resourceful or cheap. Whatever one you like. Whatever one you go to. So I wanted to just say real quick. It was interesting, we were talking about how Nancy and Alice, when they started and then they got involved with Puppeteers of America and went to some of the puppetry festivals, I think it was kind of like Girls Night Out. They felt, and they had such a strong bond, Nancy and Alice, that they loved their children dearly, but boy, they liked getting away too. And so this was an opportunity for them through Puppetry, which they were in love with Puppetry as well as their families. But I'm not sure both our moms got divorced. And so I think their friendship and their wanting to spend time together and probably talk about their jerk husbands. I don't know, you know, I mean, they, sorry dad, but you know, they probably commiserated some and said, did Jim do that? I don't know, what did Ray do? Did he, Ray, did he did that really? So I think there was a camaraderie that they found with Puppeteering that just grew and grew. And I think that, you know, it's interesting when I think of kind of the other things they did, you know, they were not able to, I mean, maybe they paid for the gas money being Puppeteers, but they really didn't make a lot of money. They always had, my mom was the Director of Volunteer Services at Holy Redeemer Hospital and Alice was teaching at the time. And so, you know, they were all, they were gainfully employed and then doing puppetry on as the side gig. But, you know, I wonder as I kind of go around here and I look at maybe some of the puppeteers that are actually making a living as a puppeteer, it's gotta be extremely difficult and it's gotta be a true labor of love. And I think that, you know, they were fortunate, you know, that they had, you know, husbands who had the financial means to allow them to go to these festivals and, you know, take part in their puppetry pastime and their creative outlet that I think was just, I don't know, I mean, partially some of what they really lived for was to do that and perform. And I think that, you know, some of the other things that, you know, my mom did with folk dancing and leading other activities, she probably got some of that because my mom also said that she was kind of a timid, younger person. And I think through puppetry that enabled her to feel more confident and to teach folk dancing and to do things like that, that maybe without puppetry, who knows what they would have done, you know. I have to agree completely. I mentioned that yesterday in the other presentation, someone asked a very, very insightful question about, well, what did you learn about your mother in putting together the show that is downstairs? And I comment, was I didn't really learn much about it, but much new. But I believe she learned a lot about herself in doing that. I think she, I agree with Mark 100%. I believe puppetry brought her, brought them both a level of confidence and that confidence then allowed them to do more and more things. And it led them to explore other areas. I have to agree, that's what I want to say. One other thing it could be helpful to remember with what Jeffrey and Mark are sharing, our mothers were 1950s housewives and mothers. This was before the 1960s, women's rights and civil rights movement that they began their journey as a wife and mother. Very different mindset. And they had to mix both worlds, the worlds of them wanting to get out there and be independent and make a name for themselves in addition to, you know, being the expectations of a wife and mother at that time. Nancy once told me that Ray wasn't that distressed about it, but she said Alice was always upset because she had to cook food ahead of time and put it in the fridge and make all these notes about what was gonna be for dinner and Jimmy was just so, you know, you're gonna be away and what isn't gonna get done. So they had to juggle all of that, which was a very different world. I think it was, my mom being a puppeteer with Mark's mom was kind of like their hobby, you know, that was her calling, that's all I feel. Like today, people have certain things they do, they work and then they play and they do whatever they wanna do, join like the YMCA or, you know, take karate or ski. And I think at that time, that's what it was for my mom and Mark's mom. So I think what's interesting too is that they, I lost my thought there, but yeah, they were able to, you know, do the puppetry as that side light. And I think having five kids is harder than having two. So I think my mom, my mom probably had a little more time to, you know, and my dad was pretty chill. So I think he was probably just like, oh yeah, sure, I'll watch the kids for the weekend or something like that. But one other story that I did wanna just tell that my mom told me at Penswood and I had never really heard this before, there was a library that they went to, I believe in Bucks County. And when they showed up, my mom did a lot of the logistical setup of making the phone calls, and probably because she had more time. But anyhow, they showed up and when the person at the library realized that Alice was black, she asked that they not like come out afterwards. And my mom said, no. She said, absolutely not. And I think that that was really powerful. And it's funny, she never told me that until later. And I think that when approached, I think my mom was just like, you know, no way. I would never, we are not going to change our values for you. And it's not written anywhere. And I've been through most of the documents that we've used in putting together. They make no mention in anything explicitly about how that must have gone, but that must have happened. That there's no way. You couldn't be a black and a white woman traveling around in 1963 and not have run into that. But there's nothing noted. I didn't know that story until you told me. It was against what actually. And there must have been that, but that wasn't the thing. Not to go back to Concord Park, but I think that one of the things about Concord Park is hard to convey is you would leave the bubble and there would be some pain, but then you would come home to the bubble, right? So you'd go out and things did not go well. You'd go to school and maybe they didn't go well. You'd ride your bike. Maybe that didn't go well either. But you would come back to the bubble and the bubble would then take you back in and you would be safe and well again. So I assume that that was true for them too, but I think so. Again, it's an assumption. They're not here. Can't ask, but that's why. I also want to point out, my mom earned her master's in, my mom and I completed our master's the same year in 1983. So she was working full time. Five kids, I think a couple, Jeffrey and Jennifer might have been gone by then and doing the puppetry on the side and earned a master's degree. And a husband that wasn't all that supportive. So that again, that's pretty darn amazing and phenomenal. I just want to mention my mother, Marjorie, she did not know the first thing about puppetry. And I think what intrigued her about becoming a small part of the Wonderland puppet theater was the excitement, the adventure, watching Alice. Alice was the one that coaxed her. Come on Marge, you can do it because my mother had no idea about puppetry, but it was your mother that encouraged her to take a part in the Wonderland puppet theater, which she immensely enjoyed because my mother, like all things knew, that was the whole purpose of she and my father moving to Concord Park to experience new things of which she went on to become an integral part of other community related events in Concord Park. My mom may have done that to avoid paying you for the babysitting. I just want to point that out. We're cheap. Well, that's really beautiful. We're going to open the floor to questions, but this might be the point to bring in the anthem. Oh. Yes? So I'll just set that up. Can anybody take a little more? Yeah, the question. All right, before, because I'm going to take a very low point in this because I don't actually know all the words. I only know the intro and the ending, but when they did, when the Bill Baird show arrived in Women's Day, there was a concept of the song. It was not actually completed. It was not that they, this was actually created by Nettie May Hare, the woman across who was a Juilliard graduate and they came to her and said, we need a song for the tune. And she, as I understand it, she wrote the song. The concept was delivered, but she wrote the song and then they went and took the song and had it recorded in Philadelphia Recording Studio. It's interesting, not only is the song known by anybody who was ever involved in the Wonderland Public Theater and it's sung constantly at Thanksgiving and Christmas and whenever more than two people get together who were part of that. At her funeral. At her funeral, it was sung. However, but more importantly, the words of the song are, could not be more spot on to everything we've discussed. It literally is the anthem of everything we've been discussing. I cannot express how, as a man of my age, how many times I have referenced the song to people, as Joy said, when you're trying to educate them about what is the way to be a decent human being. The words of this song, a kid's song in a puppet show, in the first puppet show they ever did, is literally, there is nothing better. So with that, I'll further ado. Do we wanna start singing? Yeah, yeah. Everybody ready? Okay. The things we don't understand are the things that we're afraid of but we're no longer afraid when we find out what they're made of. I look in the book and a pinch of salt stops the magic onion cold. The night corkers too didn't know what to do so they crawled right back in their holes. The things we don't understand are the things that we're afraid of but we're no longer afraid when we find out what they're made of. When we find out what... Questions from the audience. We have about 25 minutes. Talk to the question. Mm-hmm. Duck tape, any duck tape? And it was masking tape. Masking tape. That belongs to the theater. That was masking tape, that's it. I was on a Zoom the other night, a business, not a client, but I serve on a board in the dietetics group but they said grab something near your computer and explain it, that was the icebreaker. So I grabbed one of those little, it looks like a duster and you use it to dust off the keyboard and I said we're honoring my mom this weekend and this reminds me of something she would say I need that for the puppet show because certain things would work beautifully as props. And I remember when I bought it, I thought this is a puppety thing. I don't think so. Conker Park, it's so intricate, it's so involved intertwined with your childhood that it's hard to separate things out but the nature of my mom, this was... And again, I want to restate, the person who thought this was a good idea was Mrs. Schmalz. My mom actually thought the idea of the puppet show was kind of whack. So, but I think Mark nailed it. I think the outlet that it provided was such that they just went with it and my mother, as your grandmother was a person who ran with the ball. If you said, as we all know, if you said there's going to be a costume party, you didn't really want to tell her because, you know what I mean? You're like, it's a costume party. We're going to put like a mask on. Oh, no, no, let's build a gigantic machine that will bring to the party. So, you know, so she was kind of like, just give me a, and I'll start and then it often goes. So, we had sort of gotten used to that. Well, you kind of had really never choice early on. You know, there's, there are many stories about the Concord Park that have nothing to do with the WPT. And one of the best is speaking about communal things is Mark had mentioned it. Everybody, my mother was definitely afraid that we would all drown. I know the reason why and it doesn't matter, but the point was, so she decided we would all learn to swim. And then that became everybody in the neighborhood would learn to swim. So, St. Francis, which was a convent in Ben Salem, maybe it was 20, 20 minutes away, 20, 30 minutes. So what would happen is they would literally, every kid would come to your house and get in your car. Every kid, there'd be like 18 kids in a station wagon. Luckily there were no seatbelt laws and I'm not kidding about the number of kids in the station wagon, right? And off we would go. So we would drive to the, to this convent where they had a big pool. She would open the door and everybody would go out and they'd take lessons. And then at the end, there'd be some kind of weird thing where everybody was just sort of re-congregated by the car and they would go back to the thing. There was never any question about, well, is Tommy going or Dave Della? It just, people just showed up and got in the car, right? In fact, one of the favorite stories of Concord Park is the time that we were leaving and my mom was driving because they alternated who was responsible and she's counting heads and there's an extra head. It's an extra kid. So she stops the car, it was a dirt road to the pool. She stops the car and she makes everybody get out because you know, you got to check and see which kid it is. And she goes, you're not with me. And the kid goes, yeah, but I want to come back with you. She's like, no, that's not how it works. You can't come back with us. She said to drive back to the pool and drop the kid off. We were so much fun, Jeff. We attracted all the other kids. We wanted to go. So she had to drop it off. So, and there was at least once or twice, there were so many kids in the car that when you went, when you left St. Francis, you were on this dirt road and you went over this big hill, should we get to the hill? The car wouldn't go over the hill. So she would stop the car and then throw several kids out. You'll need to walk a quarter mile because we need to get over the hill and then you can get back in. What, what, that's how it works. So the community was, and no one's parents, parents were like, yeah, where are you going? Okay, we're going to the pool. There was no like arrangement or head check. It was like, okay, you just get in. Mr. Bodie, remember he used to, I don't know, you didn't go, but Mr. Bodie would drive and he would, remember you were always singing, he was always singing that song that caused me so snatched to the whole time. And if you put it on, he would start to dance in the car. Like, this is what you grew up with. It was the Marrakesh Express. If you put that on, he would start dancing in the car. And you're like, okay, all right. The Red Cross swimming lessons, they were free. And I was certified all the way up to, I think advanced swimmer. And this is an incredibly valuable skill to learn at a young age for free. That's why my mom was just taking advantage of this. Everyone, let's go and get these. I'm glad she did. I learned all the basic swimming and the dead man's float and treading water and all of that stuff. As an adult, I still run across people who don't wanna wade in past their thighs. They can't swim. They don't know rhythmic breathing. So that's one more thing. I'm like, thanks mom. Again, at the time you're just like oh, my mom's hurting me into the car and we're going off here. But it was a very valuable thing to learn at such a young age. And I'm not sure. An addendum to what Jeff was speaking about the costume contest. I always remember that Aunt Alice would win every last one she went to. For instance, there was a tennis shoe contest and she decided to outdo everyone by going as a tennis shoe. Yes, yes. Yeah, and I would like to share too. One year I was about 13 and she made me into a spider. Nice. Yes. Jay came to my house as a sandwich for one of the. Which was my mom's costume. She made a costume and he wasn't like, he was a sandwich. Like as big as he was was a sandwich. She was a telephone pole one year at Penswood Village. She was a whole bunch of costume people. There was a crowd going around and out of the corner of my eye I saw it and I knew that's what she was. She stood still for a long time. And also she moved. I screamed. Even though I knew that was my mom. And that's what she wanted. She wanted this effect of an understanding still. I am a telephone pole and you don't know that there's a person in there. I still think I still think without a doubt the best though was the energizer bunny. Well, yeah. It was embodying the person that was in the costume. Right, right. Just keeps going. That's right, that's right. No one asked, no one asked who's in that costume. Except for Marie Chapman who was like, who is that? And I'm like really? The wonderful thing about Alice that whenever you were around her, you laughed. I mean, she would look at this microphone, Joyce. What do you think? What do you think about this microphone? What do you think, Joyce? She was hysterical. I mean, no, if you were in a bad mood or had a bad day or something, just go to Alice Swan and that would correct that immediately. Because she was effervescent. No matter what her was happening in the background, Alice never showed it. She was effervescent at all times. That's why people loved her immensely. At her funeral, people came from out of the woodworks. I mean, they came from all over the place to honor Alice Swan because she was the most charitable, the most loving person she really was. I refer to her as Aunt Alice because she used to walk me down to my school stop in the morning. When my parents went off to work, my mom and dad would drop me off at their home and then Alice would walk me down to my bus stop. So she knew me from the jump. I found a letter after she died and it just said how she felt about her life and she said, when I die, do not be sad. Have a party. And her memorial service was like a party. It was a party. And that's exactly what she wanted. So I still have that letter. My mom also, we got into a thing when I was in Concord Park. I wanted to be a witch for Christmas and you know, a witch has to wear all black. And my mom did not want me wearing all black and going out in the street, even though at that age, I wasn't allowed to cross the street Halloween night. I could go up and down the block when I was escorted by a parent and Halloween night in Concord Park, there were not a lot of cars out. There was usually a car cruising around, kind of checking out, like the fathers would do that. They'd kind of cruise around and check out and make their thing for okay. So we had this big argument and then finally we settled on, she made me a gold cape and she sewed black stars on the cape. And then I was allowed to be a witch with the black gown and the gold cape and the black. And the gold was the type of gold. It wasn't fluorescent, but it was the type of gold that when headlights hit it, it kind of illuminates it. So yes, that's what she was not gonna let me trick or treat all black on Halloween night, even if I only stayed on one side of the road. She just was not going to. Well, I have a question. In the exhibit, we have some Indian shadow puppets, which I believe the Schmalis brought back from their time as missionaries. And I was wondering, Marco, if they saw puppet shows in India and if maybe that planted a seed in your mother's mind. I don't know. I do know that she had some of those puppets. They did do some shadow work. It was not obviously one of their major productions. But yeah, the India experience was, I think, a little overwhelming when they went as missionaries. It was after the war, but it was early 50s. And I think they were kind of like, oh, the church essentially had paid for my dad to go to medical school. And that's why they felt that he needed to go as a missionary for longer than the period of time that he went for. But no, I think my mom always had a creative, kind of inquisitive, well, sure, let's try this or let's try that. And I think that when put together with Alice, that was like the dynamic duo, because my mom would be like, well, what do you think of this, Alice? And Alice would be like, whoa, that sounds like a great idea. Let's do it, you know? And I think that's where that initial push came from. But I'm not sure, we didn't have pictures of a thing. I actually, for this presentation and getting all the puppet stuff together, I looked at a bunch of slides from India. And there were none that were really puppet related. But one thing that I did wanna mention too, earlier Jennifer had spoke about the Quaker connection. And I think that there was, in some of the scripting, especially Punchin' Judy, there was a nonviolent scripting that occurred. And, you know, I mean, this was the 60s and I don't know, there's a lot of violence now. But I think violence was kinda in the forefront then. You had the Vietnam War, you had the Cold War. And so war was, and then, you know, they stopped doing the Valiant Taylor because it had the word killing in it. He was killing the flies, even though it was just flies. He was killing them, you know, the Valiant Taylor. And so, you know, I think later in life, my mom, when she was in New Hampshire, she went to prisons, not as a prisoner, but she went to, she went to prison. That was, she used to say that she did a program, there's a Quaker program called Alternatives to Violence. And she did that, she actually did it in schools also. Which I think she was kinda filling the void of puppetry, cause she didn't do as much puppetry on her own as Alice did. But I think it's interesting that they actually thought about what they were putting out there and how it might affect the audience. Maybe these are children, maybe these are adults. But they were really conscious and conscientious about what they put out there. And I think that my mom, I feel really embraced the Quaker values, even as she got older. And I think the nonviolent part of that is what really, I don't know if it made the shows special or just different. But it certainly, I think, made them better, made a better message to convey to the audience. Thank you. I would agree. Yeah. I would agree completely. I do wanna say one thing that I did learn in putting down, putting shit together. What Mark said is 100% true. 90% of what I can evaluate of the ideas came from Nancy, and then she would hand them to my mother who would then be like a dog with a bone and drive the thing home. So the weighted tail in the wolf, the pop-up hat on the... Ostrich. The, I believe, the dry ice. In one of the videos, they go through and your mother apparently would come in and say, hey, here's an idea. And then my mom would say, oh, okay. Okay, let's make that happen. So I think they did make a, they were obviously a compliment to each other. They brought different skills and approaches to the process. I think they learned from each other because Mark's mom passed away and my mom was still doing shows, I believe. Yeah. So it was like the beginning and the end. Yeah. Your mom started it and my mom ended it. And the Mr. Punch thing is correct. The traditional Mr. Punch is a lot of slapping and smacking and he blows up and he gets hit and the dogs in it. And mom made sure the last shows she did were Punch and Judy and there was no, nobody was hit in those shows, no one at all. I mean, there was a conflict between the Punch and Judy, but it did not involve any violence at all. And so that speaks to the fact that she was not about violence. She was very, very... So she wanted to Punch and Judy, but she had to really revamp it in order to make it something she could do. Well, and she made Judy a much stronger character too. Yes. Yes. And I think when you look at Nancy and Alice, I mean, they were pretty strong individuals. Yes, yes. And so I think they wanted to put that out there that Judy could be a strong individual, could be a strong woman, could do great things. Which in the 60s, I mean, now Me Too and other things, in the 60s, that was pretty revolutionary to have those thoughts. And that's where I think a lot of that comes back. I mean, I don't wanna push the Quaker aspect, but Quakers, I feel, were ahead of their time when it came to a lot of just equality, period, just equality. No question. Excellent. Any more questions from the floor? Yes, yes. She still lives in the original house and her neighbors on either side are original homesteaders. No? Only one side. Oh. Her net read is still an original homesteader. And Chris Thomas is another one. She's around the corner about three houses away. Mrs. Takashima is another original homesteader. And I think that the original ones, so there's only three families. They have their children, there's some of their children's descendants of the original homeowners. We've had reporters come out and wanna go back to Joyce's house and talk to Ernette Reed, standing in her backyard, just wanting to get the feel of here we are, where it started talking to people who were a part of it. That what had happened was as people's families grew, the houses were too small. Each house only had one bathroom, five kids, two parents, one bathroom. Oh, hell no. So they had to, that's why we moved out. We didn't move out because we didn't wanna be there. We moved out because it was just untenable. And as people moved out to larger places, because Milgram was no longer involved, people who moved in were minority people of color. And so it became largely, it wasn't as integrated as it was before. And of course, whites didn't move in because they had other choices where they could go. And so it's not the same integrated neighborhood that it used to be, but it's still there. Although now it is changing, it's changing now. Morris Milgram will be very happy because most of the homes that are for sale now are going to either whites or Asian people. So it's doing a turn around, so it's just wonderful. Just wonderful. It should be stated that part of the force of the change was driven by actually a positive thing. The Morris Milgram had essentially embodied for obviously ethical reasons a quota. Well, the quota was deemed illegal. You can't have a quota system. So whether you have a quota for good or for bad, the point is the quota was deemed illegal. So the minute the quota was deemed illegal, and again, going back, you have to put it in context, you have nice houses in a nice neighborhood outside of Philadelphia where if you were a black person, you could actually move. So as people moved out, it was probably a waiting list of families going, okay, this is my opportunity. It wasn't as we found. You could move to other neighborhoods, but it wasn't without cost. And the whites in Concord Park obviously weren't prejudiced, so they didn't mind selling their house to a black family. And Concord Park is now considered part of Lynn Park, Lincolnia and Concord Park, and my understanding is Lincolnia has become integrated too. So yeah, so that's kind of a nice thing that has happened. I wanted to share one more thing off the topic about punching Judy night before Christmas. There was no violence in that show, none. But you have to wait till Christmas. But to get back to Milgram, I think, we had a 50th reunion and he really, he was very sad. He thought that it was a failure because the integrated nature did not maintain. And we thought it wasn't, but he was not very happy. We feel that our legacy really embodies the spirit of Concord Park. So we've continued to live our lives with those values. One of the other things that happened when we were there and left, my father had already converted the garage, the zoning laws at the time did not allow for additions. When you drive through Concord Park now, they become second story homesome of them and they become because they're allowed to do that. We couldn't do that. So that's another one of the reasons that we left. I wanna mention that I had the wonderful opportunity to work for Mars Milgram one summer when I was attending Temple University. At this point, he had an office on Roosevelt Boulevard and the name of his organization at that time was Fun for an Open Society. And I was just so happy to work for him just on the weekends doing some filing in the office and so forth. And he would just talk all about the experiences that he had. And by the way, he's written a book that's called Good Neighborhood by Mars Milgram. You can find it online. There aren't many copies left, but it is online. I have the autographed copy of Mars Milgram along with some notes. He would always write notes to me. As a matter of fact, one time he had to go, he had to leave the office early and go to New York for something. He says, get on the train with me and get off at your stop and have somebody pick you up. And I'll tell you more stories. So I got on the train with him going, I think I got off in Trenton or something like that and had somebody come pick me up at the Trenton train station because he was telling me all the stories about his life. And to your point, he had some disappointments that Concord Park did not remain the same 55% white, 45% African American because that's the only way that he could entice whites to move into Concord Park. However, his second project, which was called Green Belt Knoll, which was in northeast Philadelphia near Nazareth Hospital, that remained, and I don't know how it is today, but that remained integrated for a long period of time. But I haven't talked to anyone down there lately. I know one of his daughters had moved in there. Yeah, interesting connection to Green Belt Knoll, Reverend Leon Solomon, who was a pioneering African American with inner city urbanization and revitalization. My dad worked for him as an architect, designed Progress Plaza, the first black-owned shopping center in Philadelphia, and Leon Solomon lived in Green Belt Knoll. So it's amazing how some of these things all connect. Milgram also went on to plant many other residential areas, apartments, townhomes, and other places. And myself and some others, I got a Concord Park Wikipedia entry going. We're trying to get entry for Morris Milgram. One of the things my dad pointed out when Warren Swartzbeck died, Karen's had her father told her, do not write an obituary and do not have a ceremony. He did not want that. You cannot find anything about his death online. And I said to my dad, why? And he said, they were very humble men. They were not in it for the fame. They were in it because they believed it was the right thing to do. So that, to me, was just fascinating. Warren Swartzbeck was like Morris Milgram's right-hand man. And they were the last original homesteader white family in Concord Park. And they actually endured some unpleasant times because some of the blacks who moved in later didn't know the history. And they just were confident in who they were and why they were there. You can find an article online about the last original white family leaving Concord Park. They both passed away. They moved into a retirement community and what that was like. OK, we are at 1201. Deepest thanks to the panelists for taking the time to have this conversation with us. Thanks to HowlRound for hosting the live stream. And thanks to the puppeteers of America for giving us this time and space. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you.