Re: John Adams High School
Just now found this, on other JAHS alumni...
“Nick Santamaria, Mike Mincelli and Vinnie Narcardo, founding members of The Capris vocal group. Their most famous Doo Wop recording was “There’s a Moon Out Tonight”.”
This is especially interesting to me because I was a member of a garage band when I was in my teens and an organ player who later joined the group told us that his father had written the song “There’s A Moon Out Tonight” for the Capris.
However, they would have went there several years before I did, maybe even close to 10 years earlier. Gleason would have been even more long ago.
Other alumni...
Jimmy Breslin, acclaimed columnist for the New York Herald Tribune, the Daily News, the New York Journal American, Newsday, and other venues and author of numerous books. He is also the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. [1]
Steve Cangialosi, play-by-play voice of the New Jersey Devils on MSG Plus and the New York Red Bulls on the MSG Network.[9]
Mortimer Caplin, Internal Revenue Service commissioner, law professor and tax attorney
Jackie Gleason, American actor.
Keith Gottfried, former General Counsel and Chief Legal Officer of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and a senior official in the administration of President George W. Bush, is a 1983 graduate and the former Editor-in-Chief of the school’s newspaper, The Campus.[2][3]
Jack Lord (John Joseph Patrick Ryan), American actor, director and the star of the long-running TV show “Hawaii Five-O,” (the original version from the 1960s) [4].
Richard (Dick) Parsons, International business leader, former CEO of Time-Warner, Citi-Bank, General-Consul to Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, Presidential Advisor.
Bernadette Peters, American actress
Jermaine Turner, American professional basketball player
Jason Wingreen, American actor who was the original voice of Boba Fett in The Empire Strikes Back.
Joseph Wiseman, American actor.
Nick Santamaria, Mike Mincelli and Vinnie Narcardo, founding members of The Capris vocal group. Their most famous Doo Wop recording was “There’s a Moon Out Tonight”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Adams_High_School_(Queens)#Notable_people
I think Cyndi Lauper was from that area as well.
And Jack Kerouac wrote On The Road in his mother’s house in Ozone Park.
Arlo Guthrie went to a school in Ozone Park, but lived in Howard Beach around the corner from John Gotti. Bob Dylan used to go there to visit Woody Guthrie when he first moved to New York. Arlo Guthrie’s mother was Jewish. His bar mitzvah teacher was Meir Kahane, the right wing Israeli politician who was assassinated in Manhattan in the 90’s.