Top 10 Memories: New York Trips

For many years the week before Thanksgiving meant one thing to me: New York City.  Beginning with my own high school United Nation Seminar experience on this week in 1976, I spent many of the next 20 years with groups of teenagers in NYC.  In the later years of my ministry the trip often took place during Spring Break for school purposes.  With help from a few readers and lots of old files, I would like to share with you today 10 of my favorite memories from those trips.  A few of these stories I have shared before here on the blog; links to those posts are included.  For even more stories, click here to see a post from this week last year and here to read the legendary stories of Mike Mercadante and Charles Freedle (pictured) in the Big Apple!  Here we go:

1. On one of the earliest UN Seminars (1978 or '79) we were discussing the concept of bringing peace to the Middle East.  Due to a scheduling conflict, the representative for the Palestine Liberation Organization (the PLO was a radical Arab group) and the representative from Israel were, for a few moments, in the same room.  We almost got to see what war looked like up close and personal...
2. On the ferry out to the Statue of Liberty in 1982 a group of us turned our Paul Newman look-alike leader Wallace Sills into an instant celebrity with Asian tourists.  That's also the same place where Alan Brown and I sat on Liberty Island watching mentally defective seagulls crash into the rocks off the island while diving for fish.  That inspired another Brown/Jones unreleased classic song, Watching the Seagulls Crash!

3. Over the years we saw many of the greatest shows that Broadway had to offer, including Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera, The Sound of Music, Cats, A Chorus Line and Rent.  We also saw lesser known shows like Shenandoah, Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Movin' Out!, Good Vibrations, The Scarlet Pimpernel, How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying, Beauty and the Beast and Once Upon A Mattress.  And with the exception of Cats they were all wonderful...
4. We also saw the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular a number of times.  Almost every person who sent me their memories of these trips mentioned the living nativity in that show, complete with live animals- including camels.  Very moving and truly spectacular!

5. The food was always memorable, whether it was eating at pizza places, Chinatown, tiny deli/stores or from street corner carts like we did in the early years, or dining at Mama Leone's, Carmine's or Ollie's Noodles like we did later on.  We also often had meals at Planet Hollywood, The Hard Rock Cafe or The All-Star Cafe.  For my favorite food-related story, check out the Chinatown Chicken Head.
6. My old friend and faithful reader Susan Allen reminded me how many romantic connections came from these (and other) youth trips.  I know several long-time married couples who actually met on NYC trips, and many others who dated for a while following the event.  Marilyn went with me in 1981, and we tried to be romantic and take a handsome cab ride through Central Park, but Frank Massey, the big boss on that trip, said no.  MASSSSSEYYYYY!!!!!  A number of year later we got to take that ride...

7. On my last trip in 2005 the group from Wesley Memorial UMC was waiting at LaGuardia airport.  I convinced them we were waiting on a shuttle bus or van, when in fact I had pre-arranged limos.  When they pulled up and the kids saw my name on the signs (see picture) they went nuts! 
8. When we first started going to NYC, Times Square was a terrible place full of hookers and drug dealers.  By 2005 it was one of the safest, most tourist friendly places in the city.  Walking to the Virgin Megastore (and sticking those "Virgin: $9.99" sale stickers on each other became a very late night tradition.  That and cheesecake at the Celebrity Deli located in our hotel.

9. Speaking of hotels, from the late 1980's on we stayed at the Milford Plaza in the heart of the Theater District- 45th & 8th.  But before that I also had groups at the Hotel Tudor (42nd & 2nd) and the Madison Towers (38th & Madison).  The Towers had phones in the bathrooms (that's me on that very phone in 1982, pictured), which we thought was the ultimate in luxury...
10. In the early years we used to go worship on Sunday morning at 15th Street Friends Meeting or Marble Collegiate Church.  At 15 Street the "silent worship" often turned in to a political debate.  One year at Marble Collegiate (despite the preaching of the legendary Norman Vincent Peale) we had a guy sitting near us who snored so loudly we couldn't help but laugh.  Shorty afterward, we started doing our own worship...

There is so much more, including mission projects handing out sandwiches to the poorest of the poor in the depths of Grand Central Station and working in the coldest place anyone has ever been with Habitat for Humanity- but that's it for today!  See you tomorrow with a slide show featuring New York pictures from over the years set to the music of Billy Joel.  Don't miss it!

Because of Jesus,