My family moved to Summit, New Jersey in the summer of 1963. Six years later, Summit, celebrated the 100th anniversary of its incorporation as a separate township. Today’s #stampoftheday, which isn’t a stamp, marks that celebration with a special envelope that was cancelled by the post office in Summit on January 1, 1969.
While the logo on the envelope is familiar, I don’t remember the celebrations. I think there might have been a parade that spring, which I might have marched in as a member of Boy Scout Troop 162. Or maybe I watched my older brother or sister march. I really can’t recall.
Seven years after the centennial celebration, I graduated from Summit High School. Except for the summer of 1977, when I had mono, I never lived in Summit again. And I haven’t been back to there since 2001, when my mom sold our house on Brantwood Drive next to the Beacon Hill Club.
The envelope, like several other items I’ve posted during my #stampoftheday odyssey, made me reflect on the town where I spent my childhood. Not surprisingly, I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I felt out of place, particularly out of step with what I thought of as the town’s dominant, WASP culture. On the other hand, I had good friends, good experiences and good opportunities. So perhaps it wasn’t such a bad place to have grown up after all.
I turned, as I often do, to Wikipedia. I was surprised to learn that according to Bloomberg, in 2019 Summit has 65th highest per capita income of all places in the country and was ranked by NJ Monthly as the second-best place to live in New Jersey.
Wikipedia also led me to a 2006 New York Times article in which Kevin Cahillane, a Summit-based writer, wrote: “I must confess to a certain shame in being a five-figure guy in a six- and seven-figure town,” he wrote, adding, “While my plight may not move you, there is a growing divide between Summit’s haves and have-nots that just might….The working classes are being priced out, and there will soon be no wrong side of town in which the huddled masses can live and prosper….Now, I’m no sociologist, but I can say for certain that this is not a welcome prospect.”
I also learned that Summit was (or had been) home to a host of notable people including then Governor Jon Corzine, CNBC host James Cramer, Al Leiter, who pitched for both the Mets and the Yankees; New York Giants Quarterback Eli Manning; and football coach Rex Ryan, among many others.
The economic data and the list of notables surprised me because I don’t remember Summit as being an amazingly affluent place (though I did have some friends who lived in some really big houses, some of them with “one long staircase just going up and one even longer coming down). In my memory, the only people of note from Summit I knew about were William Simon, who was the “energy czar” during the first oil crisis and then served as US Treasury Secretary, and a professional football player whose name I can’t even remember.
After I left Summit, I was aware of two other natives who became well-known: Willie Wilson and Meryl Street. In school, I had been a year behind Wilson, an amazing 3-sport athlete, who went on to play center field for the great Kansas City Royals teams in the 1980s. I still remember playing kickball with him in elementary school and watching in amazement as he kicked a ball over the fence in center field, farther, by a longshot, than we’d ever seen anyone kick a ball. I also remember his final football game, played in freezing rain on Thanksgiving 1973, when undefeated Summit beat its archrival, undefeated New Providence before a crowd of something like 12,000 people. In contrast, I didn’t have any connection with Streep, who was born in Summit.
To see if the Summit of my youth was so much richer than other places I looked at data from the 1970 census, taken a year after Summit’s centennial.
In 1970, the average family income was $23,310 not quite twice the statewide average of $13,025. That’s about $144,000 and $81,000 in 2019 dollars. But, according to the 2019 American Community Survey (ACS), the actual median household income in Summit was about 10 percent higher ($157,835) while the actual statewide figure ($82,545) was about the same.
Because Summit is divided into four census tracts, I also could see that there were and are wide discrepancies within the town and also that it’s getting harder to be a person of modest means in Summit. In the lowest-income area, the part of town closest to Springfield, which was home to kids who went to the Franklin and Jefferson Elementary Schools, the average family income was about $13,000 (slightly less than the statewide average). In highest-income area, the part of town closest to Mountainside, where kids went to the Brayton School, the average family income was just over $35,000 (not quite three times the statewide average).
In 2019, the relative positions of the four tracts hadn’t changed and the median household incomes ranged from a low of just under $90,000 (about $7,500 more than the statewide median) to a high of more than $250,000, about three times the statewide median.
The patterns in home prices are even more dramatic. In 1970, the median reported value of owner-occupied homes in Summit was about $44,309, not quite twice the statewide average of $26,188 (in 2019 dollars, those figures would be $261,068 and $154,300). In the 2019 ACS, the median reported value of owner-occupied homes in Summit was $890,000 well over twice the statewide median of about $336,000.
Among the four tracts, the 1970 prices ranged from a low of about $29,000 (a little higher than the statewide average) to a high of just over $51,000 (almost twice the statewide average). In 2019, the values ranged from a low of almost $526,000 (about 1.5 times the statewide median) to a high of more than $1.1 million (more than three times the statewide median).
Like much of America, Summit has become more racially and ethnically diverse. In 1970, according to the Census, 94 percent of Summit’s residents were white and 6 percent were black and less than 1 percent were of “Spanish origin or descent.” The comparable state figures were 89, 11, and 2 percent.)
In 2019, 69 percent of Summit’s residents were non-Hispanic whites; 6 percent were Black; 9 percent were Asian; and 14 percent were Hispanic or Latino (and only a handful of these people identified as Black). The comparable statewide figures were 55, 13 percent, 9 percent and 20 percent.
On my journey I learned a few other fun facts. In December 1965, Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground played their first concert in Summit (and they were the opening act!). From 1880 until his death in 1915, Summit was home to anti-vice activist Anthony Comstock, namesake of the infamous Comstock Law, which made it illegal to use the US Mail or other modes of transport to deliver “obscene, lewd, or lascivious” material, including information related to abortion, the prevention of conception and the prevention of venereal disease.
And while no Democrat had been elected to a city office between 1921 and 2001, since then local politics has become more competitive. Moreover, in 2018, Democrat Tom Malinowski was elected to represent the congressional district that includes Summit, making him the first Democrat to do so since at least the 1950s.
None of this resolves my ambivalence about the place where I grew up. But it does help me understand it a bit better.
Be well, stay safe, fight for justice and work for peace.