BY MARC FERRIS

Marc Ferris is a freelance writer.

Newsday - October 27, 2005

They came from California, Chicago, Kentucky and Connecticut. They blocked the sidewalk outside PS 99 on a soggy Sunday and reminisced about their youth. Monica Strauss passed out rugelach from Zabar's and recalled how classmate Ed Feige tormented her. Then, the three dozen people attending their informal elementary school reunion walked their old stamping grounds, swapping stories and basking in memories.

True, the chance to appear in a film about their bygone days also served as a draw. But, attendees insisted, growing up in Kew Gardens during the 1940s and 1950s was so special that they would have come back to see their old chums anyway.

"People who grew up here have an attachment that seems disproportionate to the place," said Robert Lieberman, a Cornell University physics professor and movie producer who attended PS 99 in the 1940s.

His film about the neighborhood, which is being assembled by a professional crew, is tentatively titled "Kew Gardens Remembers." "This thing has spiraled out of control," he said. "I thought we'd have a few people show up, but I can't keep up with all the e-mails I'm getting."

The project owes its existence to www.oldkewgardens .com, created by relative newcomer Joe De May, who moved to the area in 1974. "It began as a compendium of buildings and streets, but it really took off when I started to chronicle the people," he said.

A PS 99 alumnus, Lenny Schneir, convinced De May to post pictures of graduating classes, and traffic increased. After Anne Parnas Skandera's son discovered the site, she began contacting old classmates and organized a reunion. Lieberman heard about her endeavor, found the funds to make the film and hired Andrew Young, an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, who operated the camera at the reunion.

Though many of the tales centered on institutions in the insular neighborhood that can be found in Anytown, USA, like the park and the school, what made Kew Gardens special was that many residents had fled Europe before Hitler's killing machine kicked into high gear.

In this haven, the children thrived, though their parents' past weighed heavily on them, said Lieberman, whose father, a lawyer in Vienna, went into the printing business and never really recovered from the shock of losing his stature. "Some parents wouldn't talk about it, but I had the bodies of all these dead people on top of me," he said. "We were expected to succeed and many of us did."

Kew Gardens served as a magnet for refugees because of a glut of affordable housing, a European feel and the typical genesis of many ethnic enclaves around the city: a family or two moved in, put down roots and the word spread.

The neighborhood's geographic insularity forged a sense of community, said De May. The compact area, wedged between Forest Park, the Jackie Robinson Parkway and Maple Grove Cemetery, began as a golf course. Developers began building single-family homes in the 1910s and apartment houses in the 1920s.

"This place was designed to be special; it's no accident," said De May. "It was made to be aesthetically pleasing, with green lawns and streets that curve, instead of the iron grid in other parts of the city." Through the 1950s, about half the people spoke German until the refugees' offspring assimilated and moved away. "Back then, the American kids were the exotic ones," said Strauss. "Out there was the other world; this was our world."

Now, Koreans worship at the First Church of Kew Gardens, Mimi's Candy Shop is a cell phone store, and familiar buildings have been torn down or turned into McMansions. "People who grew up here during those times are really passionate about Kew Gardens," said Skandera. "I've never encountered that same sentiment anywhere else."