Woman's Day ... then and now

By Francis J. Cammuso

Special to Reveille/Between the Lakes

Just before Memorial day my wife Athaleen and I made our usual visit to the cemetery on East Bayard Street. We go twice a year to check on my family's grave.

After working on the urns we went uptown to get a bite to eat. I was amazed at the huge changes on Fall Street. Seneca Falls has really changed since my going to Mynderse Academy (Class of '50). My old high school located across the tracks between State and Cayuga Streets is now an office building (Academy Square), with the new Mynderse Academy built near the old football field.

I felt very proud of my home town, remembering Elizabeth Cady Stanton School for my first grade. This school was only four blocks from my house at 16 Lincoln Avenue. My friends and I would shinny up the sign in front of the Stanton Home, now a pro- tected U.S. Park site on Washington Street. We were totally unaware of the historical significance of this site. In fact, I can't remember any time being spent in school even explaining the women's rights movement or that it started in Seneca Falls in 1848.

When I returned to Baldwinsville that evening, I dug out some old yearbooks, pictures, 60-year old post cards and a 1933 picture of my father's restaurant, currently the Mary Baker Eddy exhibit two doors down from the original Wesleyan chapel where the Declaration of Sentiments was signed in 1848. Among the postcards I found were some showing the old Ovid Street bridge, Fall Street, VanCleef Park, Trinity Church .. but nothing on women's rights, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott or Susan B. Anthony. I could not find a word or phrase in my four yearbooks about the suffragist movement.

What a difference a few years have made! I keep asking myself, "Where was this local history when I was going to school? Whoever said," You can't go home, was only partially right. You certainly can go home, but many things will have changed. Some I've seen include bridges, Fall Street with it's seven new memorial stores of buildings, New York Chiropractic College and the Village Hall at the old railroad depot site.

No doubt, Seneca Falls will be well known after Hillary Rodham Clinton's visit. I am proud of the new Seneca Falls, but I wish these memorials were started 50 years ago. You can bet your last Susan B. Anthony dollar, women's rights are well covered in the school's history lesson plans today.