Interviewer(s)
Mary Ann Cardillo Fitzgerald, WSONP Co-founder and City Historian of Saratoga Springs, UWW Class of 2000
Editor(s)
Michael C. Ennis-McMillan, Associate Professor of Anthropology
Elijah McKee, Class of 2021
Mary Ann Cardillo Fitzgerald, WSONP Co-founder and City Historian of Saratoga Springs, UWW Class of 2000
Document Type
Annotated Transcript
Creation Date
May 10, 1999
Annotated Transcription Publication Date
March 16, 2021
Keywords
School No. 1, World War II home front, telephone operators, local artists, Van Dorn family, Waterbury family
Abstract
Edith Van Dorn Luce (1928-2009) was born in Saratoga Springs, New York, to a family with ties to settlers who had arrived in the area as earlier as 1796. In this conversation, she warmly shares memories of her youth on the West Side, including attending School No. 1, ice skating, roller skating, winter sleigh rides, dancing, and swimming at King’s water hole. She mentions significant people in her life—including her childhood friend Roy Luce whom she married during World War II—and cherished places within the tight-knit West Side neighborhood where she and her husband raised four children in a house they owned for over forty years. Edith also discusses working as a switchboard operator at the New York Telephone Company, and she shares how she has pursued a lifelong passion for creating arts and crafts, including paintings of historic buildings and places of the city she loved. [Interview duration: 0:47:40]
Recommended Citation
Van Dorn, Edit Marie Luce. 1999. “An Oral Narrative Recorded by Mary Ann Cardillo Fitzgerald.” West Side Oral Narrative Project: Transcribing Discourse and Diversity in Saratoga Springs, New York, Annotated Transcript No. 4, March 16, 2021, edited by Michael C. Ennis-McMillan, Elijah McKee, and Mary Ann Cardillo Fitzgerald. Saratoga Springs, NY: Scribner Library, Skidmore College.
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