Stories by Howard Zendle

Mission Statement


My goal is to tell stories that show what the people of Central New York and Northeast Pennsylvania have achieved over the course of history. To show how new institutions arose which improved life not just locally but on the international scale. To illuminate how the choices made by our neighbors and their ancestors have influenced the world in unexpected but highly positive ways.  For part of the attraction is the whimsy of a good story and part is to stimulate action in the present and future when we realize how creatively our neighbors have solved problems in the past. These ideas inform my stories and are intended to drive readers to put such solutions in place in their own lives and work.  We breath the same air, eat the same foods, and encounter the same natural world (more or less) as our ancestors did. Perhaps these stories will spur us to emulate their examples of creative problem-solving for today and tomorrow.

 

 

All of these sites are within a 100 mile radius of my studio in Vestal, New York.  Join me now and explore the people that have made Central New York and Northeast Pennsylvania a world-class distillery of ideas into action…………..

 

 

The stories……..

A 19th century cream cheese plant burns down in Town of Columbus, Chenango County, New York.  In 1920, its successor is built and becomes the core of the 21st century’s leading yogurt plant, employing an ethnically diverse and significantly local population…

 

The Crooner, A Dropped Vowel, And Three Centuries of Dairy Production in New York’s Unadilla Valley

Intro Chobani 250

The Scranton family turns Slocum Hollow, Pennsylvania into America’s first large-scale producer of steel rails in time to spark the opening of America to long distance travel. From this house (now the University of Scranton Admissions office), Joseph Scranton overviews the building of the Lackawanna Iron and Coal mill….

 

Iron Rails and the Birth of Scranton PA

Intro Slocum 250

    During the 19th and 20th Centuries, six distinguished Oneonta entrepreneurs, from Eliakim Reed Ford to Sherman Mills Fairchild, improved the American way-of-life in important ways. Their stories are told in a series of 7 papers entitled From the Roundhouse to the Moon: The Pantheon of Oneonta Entrepreneurs.

    The individual papers are:

  1. Getting There:  Early Roads and Rails to Oneonta, Courtesy of Eliakim R. Ford
  2. Family, Friends, and Ambition:  Harlow E. Bundy, George W. Fairchild, and the Advent of IBM
  3. Aerial Mapping, Flight Training, and Ground Support:  Sherman M. Fairchild’s Legacy to Aviation
  4. Apollo 11 to the Moon:  Sherman M. Fairchild’s Legacy to Space and Beyond
  5. Binding East and West: Collis P. Huntington’s Role in Uniting the States
  6. Developing the Los Angeles Basin:  Henry E. Huntington’s Role in Building Southern California
  7. Coast-to-Coast with C.P. and H.E. Huntington:  Echoes of Oneonta
  8.  

Intro Huntington 250

The main character of Grace Miller White’s novel Tess of the Storm Country is a girl who grows up as a squatter on Cayuga Lake.   This paper argues that she is the ”female Huckleberry Finn“, perhaps the most enduring character of another local author, Mark Twain.  The reader may judge how convincing my arguments are…

 

Tess and Huck - Two Paths to Fulfillment

Pic Tess & Huck 250

Utica, Syracuse, and Rochester, NY all produced essential parts for the newborn 20th century automotive industry, and their contributions are intertwined with the founding  and growth of General Motors.

 

With This Or Nothing

Pic With This Or Nothing 250

A chain of technology that began in Syracuse with the innovative Franklin air-cooled automobile spawned an aircraft engine that powered the antecedent of today’s Northrop-Grumman B-2 Stealth Bomber as well as many civilian aircraft like the Piper Cub.  Syracuse can be proud of its technical achievements on the world stage!

 

Franklin of Syracuse
 

Intro Franklin of Syracuse 250

In this final segment of the Syracuse Automobile Trilogy, we discuss how General Motors failed to develop its own air-cooled Chevrolet. Surprisingly, GM’s Brown-Lipe Chapin Division (shown from the Lipe incubator on South Geddes St. looking east) was a couple blocks from the  Franklin Auto Plant, America’s most successful producer of air-cooled cars. Why did not synergy occur?

 

GM’s Approach to Air Cooling

 

Intro GM Air Cooling 250

My father, Abraham  Zendle, was heavily engaged with the USMC in the Pacific during WW2. The noted Vestal artist Michael Aigen has portrayed a Sabbath celebration on Saipan which my  Father attended.  He is in the second row 2nd from right.  He was an atypical marine in that he volunteered for service at the age of 31 craving combat.  He found it.  This is the oral history of his career interlaced with a strategic overview of the actual events in which he played a small but enthusiastic part. The story is enlivened by being embedded within the popular 1950’s novel and movie Battle Cry.
 

Abe Zendle

 

Intro Abe Zendle Ed 1 250

Last  Updated 10/28/23 11:25:06 AM