Kitty Genovese and Sophia Farrar

Just when I thought I'd never read about the 1964 Kitty Genovese attack in Kew Gardens again, along comes Sam Roberts's obituary on Sophia Farrar, 92, a neighbor of Kitty's who was with her immediately after she was viciously stabbed in a mugging and tried to comfort her as she was taken away in an ambulance. Kitty died en route to the hospital.

It takes a reporter of Mr. Roberts's age to write such an obituary, most of which I have no doubt he could do from memory. My guess has always been he and I remember the same mayors and presidents, and probably saw Bambi when it was first run in the movies.

The obit might just be the piece that puts a lid on a story that really has never seemed to go away, particularly to this teenage resident of Flushing in 1964.

Without completely repeating the story which is so ably recapped in the obit, the era of the 1960s in Queens is firmly etched in my memory. After all, I was born in Flushing when Truman was the president, and lived there for 43 years.

The World's Fair opened in Flushing Meadows in 1964, after much delay and cost overruns. Shea Stadium opened, finally giving the Mets a home after spending their initial, hapless years at the Polo Grounds in Manhattan. The city was jumping.

Traffic through that area of Queens on the expanding Long Island Expressway was an absolute mess. The World's Fair and Shea were being built at the same time. Houses were sprouting up in Nassau and Suffolk counties like dandelions. The migration out on the Expressway was measured by the exit number of your new home. "We're just 10 minutes from..." People were buying lawnmowers and rakes.

The story of the mugging and death of Kitty Genovese took hold in the consciousness of the nation after the NYT ran a story in their Sunday Edition by A.M. (Abe) Rosenthal, an executive editor, that basically painted the residents of Kew Gardens as a callous. indifferent lot who listened and watched a woman be savagely murdered at 3 a.m. and basically went back to bed.

The reporting was false, and Mr. Rosenthal stood by it even after more was known about the response of the residents and the inaccuracy of the reporting. He was interviewed in his antique-filled apartment for the documentary, 'The Witness," produced by Kitty's youngest brother Bill and pretty much thumbed his nose at any hint he was wrong.

The Rosenthal piece rapidly gained traction as an example of indifference to the plight of others. It basically slandered an entire community and borough. When the story about 38 "witnesses" who did nothing was unfurled I remember thinking to myself, how did they know it was 38? They counted that many heads that popped out of windows and then went back to bed? The image from the words was too far fetched.

Mr. Rosenthal took the number from a police report that counted 38 people who were interviewed after the mugging. Some did try and call the police. Some only heard screams, but actually saw nothing, and considering where they were in some buildings, could not have possibly seen anything.

In that era, there was no 9-1-1 centralized way to reach the police. You either dialed O for Operator, like in the movies and asked for the police, or you knew the precinct's phone number and they answered. They were never too eager to answer the phone. It was a different world.

I always remember my father and a neighbor asking each other if they knew the telephone number for the local precinct if they had to call them to report something. Neither man did.

The above photo included in the online presentation of Mr. Roberts's obit is of Sophia Farrar in 1960 with her young family, probably taken on a Sunday when everyone seemed to dress up, going to church or not. Your "Sunday best."

How odd it is to look at a photo from an era I was a teenager in, It looks like it was taken by Matthew Brady at a Civil War site. I almost expect to see a tent pitched in the background near a wagon wheel.

The Kew Gardens area where the mugging took place is basically unchanged around the Kew Gardens LIRR station and Austin Street. There are still Tudor style buildings, and the viaduct over the tracks with stores is still three, but I've  been reading is in imminent danger of collapsing. The "Ponte Vecchio" of Queens.

To Mr. Roberts's credit, he clears the air of Mr. Rosenthal's obstinance and quotes Joseph Lelyveld, a NYT executive editor in the 1990s as admitting that the reporting that omitted the presence of Sophia Farrar coming to the aid of her friend and neighbor as "inexcusable."

There are plaques and memorials all over the city. Perhaps there should be something there for Kitty and Sophia.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com