Edward Gruber

Interview Description

Oral History Interview with Edward Gruber

Edward Gruber was born at Brooklyn Jewish Hospital in 1937 and raised in the Crown Heights neighborhood until he was eighteen. He attended P.S. 241, near Ebbets Field, which afforded him frequent stops to Dodgers games on his way home. His family's home was a brownstone on the north side of Eastern Parkway. He attended Erasmus Hall High School, graduated in 1955, and went on to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. Gruber had a career as a telecommunications engineer and manager for International Telephone & Telegraph Corporation (ITT). When he first married, he lived on Long Island. At the time of the interview in 2010, he lived with his wife in Northern New Jersey and their daughter and grandson were new residents in the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood.

Ed Gruber begins the interview by noting that he was born in the neighborhood's Brooklyn Jewish Hospital, lived on Eastern Parkway, and that he has been a repeat visitor to Brooklyn's Crown Heights since leaving for college in 1955. He observes the renewal on this 2010 visit, including new stores on Franklin Avenue, coffee shops, and a construction site. He reflects on a visit to a butcher shop in his youth and his father's reporting to air raid headquarters on Franklin Avenue for duty as a warden in 1940s wartime. He tells of his grandfather's time as a restaurateur and a bartender. Gruber would walk his dog past the Town Hill nightclub to see who was singing there. He recalls the trolley on Eastern Parkway, attending P.S. 241 and seeing Dodgers games, Franklin D. Roosevelt's motorcade and, from his stoop, the Memorial Day parade. Gruber talks about childhood games he played, going to Erasmus Hall High School and getting a driver's license. He remembers seeing stores that were looted or closing down in the early 1960s and he shares some of his grandmother's recollection of the neighborhood in the early 1900s. Gruber mentions he has come back for school reunions, and even got involved with a reunion committee for P.S. 241. He closes with some praise for Brooklyn and words of wisdom for schoolchildren of this era. Interview conducted by Alex Kelly.

Listen to This: Crown Heights Oral History includes interview audio and summaries created and collected within the context of a community project undertaken by project director Alex Kelly and Paul J. Robeson High School interns Treverlyn Dehaarte, Ansie Montilus, Monica Parfait, Quanaisha Phillips and Floyya Richardson. These interviewers recorded conversations with forty-three narrators. In addition to the educational experience for the student interns, the oral histories were conducted as life history and community anthropology interviews. Topics of discussion include family and parenting, migration, cultural and racial relations, occupations and business, education and religion, housing and gentrification, civil unrest and reconciliation, and community activism.

Citation

Gruber, Edward, Oral history interview conducted by Alex Kelly, March 25, 2010, Listen to This: Crown Heights Oral History collection, 2010.020.021; Brooklyn Historical Society.