The New Jersey Meadowlands Commission (NJMC) is bringing the rich and colorful history of this region to life through its newly launched Oral History Blog, www.meadowpast.net.

    The blog, featuring recollections of longtime Meadowlands residents, is part of the NJMC’s 40th Anniversary Celebration.

   Click "Continue reading…" for more about the new blog.

    The first batch of blog entries includes audio clips of lifelong Carlstadt resident Estelle Rochat Oehlmann. Estelle tells several fascinating  stories from her childhood in the 1930s and 1940s, when she hunted bullfrogs with her father and every day was a new adventure. Secaucus resident and North Bergen native

   Vince Petto relates humorous close calls and precarious predicaments from a boyhood spent hunting, fishing and swimming on the Hackensack River, and Moonachie native Don Torino tells how growing up in the Meadowlands led to a lifelong love of nature.

    The blog also features audio clips of current and former NJMC employees explaining the Commission’s role in helping develop the area while protecting and cleaning up the environment over the past 40 years.

    Retired naturalist Don Smith discusses the NJMC’s pivotal role in restoring the Hackensack River, and former Director of Land-Use Management Ileana Kafrouni talks about development in the area and the challenges she faced as the NJMC’s first woman engineer.

   Look for more posts in the coming weeks  –including the video reminiscences of men who trapped muskrats in the Meadowlands as long as 65 years ago.

     Anyone with a fascinating story to tell for the NJMC Oral History Blog, or who wishes to submit written material or photos, should contact Brian Aberback at 201-460-4619 or brian.aberback@njmeadowlands.gov.