Post a reply

Thank You for all you have done here!

I grew up on Dewey Avenue, along the border of Mt. Laurel cemetary..... Memorial School Class of 1968, Passaic Valley, Class of 1972.....I realized some time ago how much the cemetary was a part of my life... I did not realize why,until I came here.... to your web site.

So many have said and it is so true, that Totowa is truely the place where Paterson buried it's dead. Laurel Grove Cemetary with it's flat graves and Chapel smack in the middle.... is a serene place, it was my play ground, my park, my athletic field.. growing up... It was where I went to contemplate my existence as a teenager... and to this day, whenever I go back to totowa, I drive through to see what has changed.... not very much...

I hung out in Balkins, later Franks, stopped into Cozy's growing up from time to time... Pauls Pizza.. The Dairy Queen(gone now), the bank on Union Blvd...I have probably been in almost every buiding in town... I grew up on Hot Dogs all-the-way at Pappy's...People today look at me like I have 3 eyes when I say I wish I could have a Dog all-the-way.

You have truely done a wonderful job preserving the feel, and the essence of that cement and wooded town that binds all of us together forever.... with a cemetary that was my park... a short cut to get to totowa road....A place where dreams were formed and lives were changed forever, a place that makes you and I brother and sister, The "gritty" ghost-filled town, with the long past, a cemetary town where there are more dead than there are alive( and it is still true today). So many times I came home from PV through West Paterson, Over what they called the tressel back then(the RT 80 Road bed over the Passaic River.... was there for about 4 years before they finished the construction and opened the road, it got the knick- name from the Errie- Lacawana train tressel that was there in the 50's and early 60's). Home through the Cemetary and over the fence along Dewey Avenue....

The cemetary was and still is the center of Totowa, the people that grew up in Totowa and lived there share a common bond, that will always be.... because Totowa is a mystery, hallowed ground... and we are all drawn to it forever. Your website gives us that opportunity when we can not make the drive....

Please add more Content, I never get tired of seeing it.