Visit to Fairyland Amusement Park in Elmhurst, Queens (New York City) in Summer of 1963

My soon-to-be eighty year old mother recently handed me a small box containing a reel of Kodak 8 mm Kodachrome Movie Film that was marked with the year 1963 and the of-that-era hand-scrawled notes of her Uncle Alfie.

My mother and grandmother were both refugees from the Hungarian Revolution and fled by foot over the border to Austria, literally with the clothes on their backs, in the middle of a November 1956 night. They were escaping the onslaught by Soviet and Warsaw Pact armed forces on their native Budapest. My mother, an aspiring ballet student, also carried a small bag with her toe shoes and her dance costume.

While my grandmother's world travels left her fluent in five languages {and familiar with six others} my mother, taught only Russian and Hungarian in her post-World War II society dominated by the Cold War Communist overlords, did not speak any English. They transited through a refugee camp in Vienna until they were accepted and processed by United States officials who soon had them on a TWA flight to New York with stops in Iceland and Greenland.

President Eisenhower enacted Operation Safe Haven which eventually welcomed 30,000 Hungarian refugees to the US over an eight month period. My grandmother, mother and her Uncle Alfie were three of those lucky Hungarians who were offered a home, and a much better life, in a free and safe fascinating new country. My mother remembers a "Welcome To The United States" banner, which she couldn't read yet, when they arrived at Newark Metropolitan Airport and took their first steps on American soil.

They were first processed at Camp Kilmer in New Jersey and then sent to a town called Sherburne in upstate New York. My mother's ballet talents soon led them to Manhattan where she was awarded a dance scholarship at Professional Children's School.

Although still quite young, a few years later my mother fell in love with and married my father after meeting him in Manhattan's Theater District. I came along not very long afterwards which brought an abrupt end to her ballet career. Two years later my wonderful sister Linda was born. Although my mother certainly faced challenges raising two small children in her new country, compared to the bleak existence she would have endured in a Communist Hungary she was truly living in a Fairy Land.

Which brings us back to the 8mm film my mother recently handed me. She dimly remembers from five decades earlier her Uncle Alfie saying it was shot at an amusement park when I was a little boy. My mother didn't know if the film had sound or was even in color. She entrusted this movie processing project to me with no idea what to expect.

I received the finished footage earlier today. It is only one minute and seventeen seconds long but it is in color and there was not much degradation considering it's from 1963. My mother and father raised my sister and me in the Queens, New York neighborhood of Jackson Heights at a building on the corner of 92nd Street and 34th Avenue.

The beginning of the film shows an adorable little Mark Barbour at 2.5 years of age along with my mother Lilyan (black sunglasses), grandmother Klara (stunningly bright orange hair and a fistful of moxie to match) and my 6 month old sister Linda. We are seen walking along 34th Avenue as the four of us prepare to go out and have some fun. Uncle Alfie, always a keen photographer, documents the escapades as four new Americans eventually arrive for a frolicsome romp at a nearby amusement park.

While I have no memory whatsoever of this outing, I was able to discern the location of this amusement park based on a building that appears in some of the shots. On this day we had all gone to the nearby Fairyland Amusement Park which was on Queens Boulevard in the neighborhood of Elmhurst. The park was operated from 1951 until 1968 at that location until it was torn down to make way for the Queens Fashion Mall which later changed its name to the Queens Center Mall.

I have made that 77 second movie film of little Markie (looking fairly nervous and sometimes awkwardly terrified on the Fairyland rides) the meat in a sandwich breaded on both sides by pictures of and information about both the Fairyland Park and the Queens Center Mall. Credits on those graphics are due the Juniper Park Civic Association who have posted them over the years.

So there you have it...a very long story about 77 seconds of film from 1963. We covered it all: my Hungarian family members climbing out of the Axis-allied rubble of World War II Budapest, domination of Eastern Europe by an oppressive Soviet regime, a midnight flight on foot to freedom whilst toting ballet gear all eventually leading to two proud new American citizens enjoying a sunny day at a Queens amusement park with two small and I'm sure sometimes bratty children.

You are very welcome. Never take your freedom for granted and always make time to enjoy life with your family members. Amen.