Five SO, Bloomfield residents take honors in Legacies contest

SOUTH ORANGE / BLOOMFIELD, NJ — Older Americans Month is usually in May, but Essex County took the liberty of delaying it until July, holding off on announcing the winners and honorable mention honorees of the Essex County Senior Citizen Legacies Writing Contest because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of an in-person celebration, all eight honorees received a book with the winning pieces in it. Five of the eight writers are from South Orange and Bloomfield.

Alfred Sonny Piccoli received an honorable mention for his story “Remembering Downtown Newark in the 1960s,” in which he wrote about his memories of growing up in Newark and spending time in the downtown section of the city.

“I was an eyewitness to an interesting time in history there,” Piccoli said in a phone interview on July 30. “I covered a lot of the character of downtown Newark.”

Describing the department stores, movie theaters and museums in Brick City, Piccoli talked about the time he would spend in Newark’s city center as a child.

“It had it all,” he said. “I used to play pinball for 15 cents a slice. It was my playground.”

Piccoli spent 27 years as a probation officer in Newark and now lives in Bloomfield. He’s not a writer professionally but has spent years writing his own stories, memories, and poems. He is also an avid book collector.

“I know I’m a good writer,” he said. “The contest is an opportunity for me to write stories for people to read. I have a lot more.”

Lorraine Barnett, one of the winners from South Orange, also grew up in Newark and recognized many of the places Piccoli described in his piece. Her winning story, “The Fatality of Dreams,” is based on one of her own memories, when a college professor at Rutgers University discouraged her from applying to graduate school.

“He said ‘Grad school isn’t for everyone,’ and I said, ‘I know it’s not for everyone, that’s why I want to go!’” Barnett said in a phone interview on Aug. 3. “Then he said, “Grad school isn’t for everyone’ again, and I realized what he meant.”

Barnett didn’t listen to that professor. She went on to law school at Rutgers and became an attorney. But legal writing isn’t quite the same thing as writing for fun.

“In law school you don’t write creatively,” Barnett said. “Now that I’m not working full time I have more time to spend on it.”

She’s been doing creative writing for herself since she was a child and has always called herself a writer.

“It means a lot to have someone recognize that I can write,” Barnett said. “I am a writer. For older people, I think it’s valuable to share your experiences with the people coming behind us. That’s history.”

Janyce Wolf wrote about Sept. 11, 2001, and her proximity to the attacks on the World Trade Center. She wasn’t in the building but had left her office in Brooklyn for a meeting in Manhattan.

“I wasn’t in danger but obviously was affected,” Wolf said about her contest entry, “The Day the World Changed,” in a phone interview on Aug. 1. “I had thought about it a lot but had never written about it. It’s an account of the event and how I felt afterwards, and the government’s response. Then I brought it into today’s world with the pandemic. Things don’t happen in vacuums. What is the reason for these big events?”

Wolf began writing a couple of decades ago, when she took a class on memoir writing at the SOMA Adult School. She’s continued taking writing classes, which are meeting over Zoom now because of COVID-19.

“When you get older you start thinking about your life,” the South Orange resident said. “My father wrote a book that never got published. He just did it for his own interest. Sometimes I write just for myself. I’m interested in what happens in someone’s life that makes them the way that they are.”

Her piece in the contest, which is one of the winning entries, is a true story. Wolf hasn’t written a ton of fiction but believes that even made-up stories have some truth to them.

“All writing has a basis in people’s lives,” she said. “Some people claim, ‘This is made up,’ but your imagination comes from your experience.”

The other two local residents who obtained honorable mention are South Orange’s Terry Salley, with “O My Grief,” and Bloomfield’s Paula Zaccone, with “What Grandma Didn’t Tell Us.”

  FEATURED, Senior Citizens