OH. Oral Histories / Queens Memory

Scope and Contents

Khaleel Anderson discusses growing up in Far Rockaway, Queens; sheltering at Queens College due to Hurricane Sandy in 2012; his time at Queens College as an undergraduate in the SEEK program and graduate student in Urban Affairs; and his political activism as a campus and community organizer. A few months after these interviews took place Anderson was elected to serve Assembly District 31 in Queens, becoming the youngest Black Assembly Member in New York State history.

Scope and Contents Leonard Hausman shares his experience fundraising, organizing, and participating in the Virginia Student Help Project of Queens College during the summer of 1963. The Virginia Student Help Project was a six-week long educational effort where Queens College students went to Prince Edward County, Virginia where public schools were closed for five years in massive resistance to federally mandated integration. Hausman discusses his role as a project lead and tutor in the Virginia initiative, as...

Scope and Contents In these two interviews, Dr. Leonard Rodberg discusses his journey as a scientist and as a member of the faculty at Queens College. He reminisces about getting interested in science as a boy growing up at the beginning of what he calls the Atomic Age, about working in Washington, D.C. on nuclear arms control and energy policy, and about the highlights of his career at Queens College, including being chair at the Department of Urban Studies. This interview was conducted as part of English...

Scope and Contents Leslie Francis Griffin, Jr., colloquially known as “Skip,” is the son of Reverend L. Francis Griffin, who coordinated with Dr. Rachel Weddington to have Queens College students tutor children in Prince Edward County during the summer of 1963 as part of the Student Help Project. The public schools of Prince Edward County were closed for five years starting in 1959 in massive resistance to integration, denying many of the local young black students access to education, including Skip Griffin...

Scope and Contents Lori Wallach is the outreach coordinator for Queens Memory at Queens College. In this interview, she discusses the days in March leading up to school closures. She reminisces about March 11th, the last day CUNY was open, as the day the seriousness of the virus sunk in, thinking back on the surprise she felt. Lori talks about her life since the pandemic—working from home, the quietude of her neighborhood, experiences shopping, and the concern for her elderly mother. She also reminisces about...

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Manny Sanudo's career as a librarian spans more than forty-five years. In this interview he reflects on the various roles he has played at Queens College's Benjamin S. Rosenthal Library, including a two-year stint as Acting Chief Librarian. He also discusses changes to the library profession brought about by technology; his earlier job as a conductor for the MTA; his interest in Revolutionary and Civil War history; and his work as a certified New York City bike tour guide.

Scope and Contents In this interview, Maria Terrone, a poet, writer, and former assistant vice president of communications at Queens College, talks about the COVID-19 pandemic in her neighborhood near Elmhurst Hospital, one of the epicenters of viral outbreak. A long-time resident of Jackson Heights and, in her words, “the ultimate New Yorker,” she gives a dramatic narration of the apocalyptic atmosphere in her beloved neighborhood in the early weeks of the pandemic when restaurants closed, her life changed,...

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In this interview, DellaPina reflects on his career in development, including his time with the Catholic Archdiocese of New York, and what led him to Queens College. He offers a look into the process of cultivating large gifts for a public university, and shares many anecdotes of donors and alumni he has worked with, including the Kupferberg family and Ruth Madoff.

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In this interview, Pine looks back on his career and the changes he saw at Queens College through the decades. Some highlights include the student and faculty protests over the Vietnam War, the development of the college’s physical campus, the increasingly diverse student body, and the revolutionary effects of technology in education.

Scope and Contents In the first of these two interviews, Dr. Mary Reuder discusses various aspects of her academic career: the importance of being active in one’s academic community as well as outside it, the difficulty of getting academic jobs especially at a time when discrimination against women was common, her view that there is no conflict between religious belief and science as well as the anti-Catholic prejudice she experienced as a young academic in the 1960s.In the second interview, she...