March 23[SUP]rd[/SUP] Update
My wife and I spent 2 days in Atlantic City New Jersey on our little Fact Finding Mission. We booked a room at the Tropicana Casino which was central to where we needed to be. The place is a dump! No good directions to be found and the place is huge so you have to walk miles to get anywhere. It took over an hour and a half to get our stuff to the room from Bell Service and at one point in time they had no idea where our stuff was. The room had a comfy bed and decent view of the ocean, but was dirty, dusty and was supposed to be a non-smoking floor. As soon as one steps off the elevator, all you smell is baked in smoke. Anyway, that rant and more was already sent to the Hotel Manager.
On Tuesday we met with Owner/Collector of the Princeton Antique and Book Store, which has been there for over 50 years. We met at his house as he was recovering from recent surgery but the store was only a block away. He was not much help in identifying any of the unknown’s we had but provided lots of help in other ways. After he heard of how much research I had already done, he was not in any position to make us an offer for the collection. We don’t want to sell it anyway. He was honest about the overall value and that it is only worth what a collector of these specific items wants to pay. Also there may be a shrinking time window since with each new generation, the people we have pics and autographs of become less familiar. As for the Frank and Dean signed pic, that will fetch a nice sum since there are many whacko Sinatra collectors. He had a copy of same pic but was part of a promotional picture souvenir item that you could open and place another pic inside. He did have a book of many old 500 Club pics and in one shot of the crowd from the stage while Sinatra performed, we found my wife’s uncle. We had several people in the store compare our pics to that and we were all 99% sure it was him in the audience.
He called the store and had his assistant look thru some old Polk Directories for my wife’s uncle and his businesses and residences and they found several entries and made copies for us. The Polks are a year by year local directory of people and businesses just like a phone book but without phone numbers.
He also recognized my wife’s uncle’s Lawyer from a newspaper clipping and the opening dedication of The American Academy of Beauty Culture along with the then Mayor Jackson. He called the lawyer but his memory and health is fading and he did not recall the time, but asked for a copy of the clipping to jog his memory so we will provide that to him shortly. That ended our search for day 1.
We walked around the Casino and people watched since we don’t gamble. The Tropicana has a shopping mall and large food court market, Hooters, Chickie’s & Pete’s and more. We had a few good brews and a burger at Chickie’s and Pete’s while watching the hockey playoffs and our loser Phillies on the many TVs in the place.
Wednesday was another very nice day and we started out with a nice breakfast and some boardwalk shopping before heading to the Library for assistance searching thru all the great data they have stored there. The Archivist was very helpful and we were able to find all of Uncles home addresses and businesses with addresses. He had 5 different businesses in AC and that many places of residence. We located them all on the maps and many are still there. She gave us many suggestions on searching for the unknown cousin as well as directing us to the Vital Statistics office close by. They could not help because we are not next of kin, nor did we have accurate names and dates to search on. They sent us to the Courthouse to get a Judge’s order to get records but we decided to wait on that til after more research.
All in all we came away with a ton of info and to thank the library for their help, we agreed to provide them scans of many of the pics and they will create both online and paper archive of my wife’s Uncle, Businesses, and also add to the 500 Club collection, which was slim. She was able to help us identify a person in one of the back room shots, which was a guy who later became Mayor of AC only to go to jail before his term ended. All the political deals of the time were conducted in the back room of the 500.
While we continue the research, we are awaiting patiently the hand written letter from Mariska Hargitay that she promised to send us. We won’t bug her as she could be including other family members or better yet, putting together a little something special for us.
For now, most of the fun is over and we have to do some heavy searching to possibly find the lost cousin. I will update again if anything worth saying happens.
Cheers!
to verify we are not stalkers.
