Descriptive Summary
Administrative Information
History
Scope and Content
Organization and Arrangement
Index Terms
Related Items
Series 1: Minutes
Series 2: Reports
Container List

Chester Optimist Club Collection, 1980-2016

Descriptive Summary

Title:

Chester Optimist Club Collection

Creator:

Chester Optimist Club

Dates:

1980-2016

Extent:

13 linear feet (16 boxes of varying sizes) and 86.8 GB of electronic data

Abstract:

From 1980 through the late 1990s, the Chester Optimist Club raised scholarship funds and held many local activities including the Art Show and Auction, Chester Science Fair, Halloween parade, oratory contests, and New York theatre trips. Likely their most famous annual event, documented extensively in this collection, was Turtle Racing. The Chester Optimist Club Collection contains hours of high-definition, video narrative histories from Club members and former officers, as well as photographs, scrapbooks, and other materials donated by club members. Along with detailed descriptions of what being a member and/or an officer of the Optimist Club was like, the subjects in the video recordings also describe what Chester was like when they first moved to the area and what has changed since. Some of the members interviewed for the collection spoke about their experience as young parents of young children in Chester, and what activities and sports they experienced during the 1970s and 1980s. Yearbooks (i.e., scrapbooks) from 1980-1989 document club activities, fundraisers, members, and officers. Digitized photographs include images of t-shirt designs, turtle races, and oratory contest winners. Also included are membership and Turtle Racing News newsletters.

Language:

English

Repository:

Local History Department
Chester Public Library
250 W. Main Street
Chester, NJ 07930
Phone: (908) 879-7612
Fax:  (908) 879-8695
Email: debra.schiff@ChesterLib.org
http://www.chesterlib.org/

Table of Contents

Preferred Citation:

[Identification of item], Chester Optimist Club Collection of Chester Public Library, Chester, New Jersey.

Collection Processed By:

Debra Schiff, Local History Librarian in 2016

Finding Aid Author:

Debra Schiff, Local History Librarian

Description Control:

Description based on DACS.

Table of Contents

Founded by former Chester Borough Councilman Joe Hilber in 1980, the Chester Optimist Club was sponsored early in its tenure by the Jefferson Township Optimist Club. Other charter members included Larry Bartholomew, James Byrnes, Chuck Feller, Edwin Polito, Dan Pope, Bill Sill, and Dennis Whorley, among others. Many of the members were attracted to the Optimist Club for its informal, friendly atmosphere. Additionally, the activities were family based, and most members had young children. They also liked the motto of the Optimist Club “Friend of Youth.” Many became lifelong friends.

Each year, the Optimists held a Halloween Parade, Breakfast with Santa, and Turtle Racing in Chester. The annual Turtle Races drew up to 1,000 people each year. When NJ told the Optimists that the local turtles were endangered, and that people couldn’t race their own locally caught turtles, they bought loads of soup turtles from Oshkosh, WI. The bought turtles were rented to participants, and later turned loose in Chubb Park.

The Optimists also held a Youth Safety bicycle event each year, which hosted bicycle experts who taught kids how to ride and inspected the bikes for safety.

They also took over the Chester Science Fair, which still exists today. They held design contests for children to create t-shirts, hats, and other advertising for the turtle races. The Optimists also held annual oratory contests.

In its early years, the Chester Optimist Club began as a 36-member, all-male organization. During Ron McConnell’s presidency, the first female member was inducted in 1989. Many of the members worked at Bell Labs, either at the Chester location or elsewhere, having been transferred to New Jersey. They held regular meetings on the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month at Oliver’s Restaurant, which is now Redwoods. The meetings were lively, informal, and social. The meetings began with the Pledge of Allegiance, a singing of America the Beautiful, and a reading of “The Optimist Creed.”

Members recruited people they knew to join the club and help with the activities and fundraising. They also helped with local causes. For example, in 1981, the Optimist Club helped move the Library from its location in a Quonset hut on East Main Street to its current location at 250 West Main Street. Spouses and children of members often participated in the fundraising activities, with many participating in the Turtle Races. The Optimists also sponsored several sports teams including girls’ soccer and baseball.

The members spent a significant portion of the spring and summer preparing for and carrying out the Turtle Races. It required obtaining bleachers from around Chester (they eventually bought and donated aluminum bleachers because the wooden ones became too unwieldy) and maintaining and building the Turtledrome. The Turtledrome was a concave, circular, freestanding structure where the turtles were raced. It was 20 ft in diameter with a wooden arm and a box at the end for placing the larger, snapping turtles during the early races. The concave area had a 15 degree bank so that the turtles would naturally race toward what they perceived as a horizon.

In 1982, the Club was required to have Rent-a-Turtle stands instead of allowing kids (and some adults) to capture and race found turtles. The N.J. Division of Fish, Game, and Wildlife prohibited the use of N.J. turtles in the races because collecting bog and wood turtles is illegal due to their endangered status. Each of the Turtle Racing News newsletters included detailed information on the rules and protection of turtles.

Local students were encouraged to participate in design contest for the event’s posters and t-shirts. Most of the participants in the design contests were elementary school children. The Optimists also brought a miniature version of the turtle races to the Metheny school for children and adults with medically complex developmental disabilities.

Optimist Club members would sell ads for the Turtle Racing News to raise enough money to be in a profit position prior to holding the race. A local business could purchase a full-page ad for $250. Many people in town, as well as in Mendham, Flanders, and Long Valley purchased ads.

All Optimist Clubs are retired to keep a scrapbook of the year’s activities, and these are well represented in this collection, from the Club’s inception. The Optimist Club slogan is “Friend of Youth,” and that attracted members who were interested in helping kids obtain scholarships and participate in educational and fun activities. However, after most of the members whose children had left for college or moved away, the club’s membership waned and disbanded in 1996.

Table of Contents

The items donated to the Library for this collection document the administrative and fundraising activities of the Chester Optimist Club from its inception in 1980 through its waning years in the mid 1990s. Those materials include scrapbooks, photographs, correspondence, newsletters, and fundraising documents.

Three of the charter members of the club, James Byrnes, Edwin Polito, and Dennis Whorley, participated in individual recorded interviews in 2016, which led to the collecting of Optimist Club records by the Local History Department of Chester Library. During group interviews, the other participants were Ronald McConnell and William Robinson. Former Library Board member, Dennis Whorley worked with the Local History Librarian, Debra Schiff, to gather members of the club for the recordings. During the recordings, subjects donated materials related to the club’s activities such as the Turtle Races, fundraising, scholarships, oratorical contests, and the Chester Science Fair, among others.

In 2019, Linda Berliner, whose husband Neil was an active member and served as Chester Optimist Club President in the 1980s, donated his Optimist Club pins, a Turtle Races hat, and 6 of her son Noah’s t-shirts for the Turtle Races, some of them indicating “Staff.” She specifically requested that these items be added to this collection to be shared with the public.

The inherent value to the researcher lies in the collection’s documentation of a lively local organization’s efforts to raise scholarship funds for local youth. Additionally, the narrative interviews describe the subjects’ experiences moving to and living in Chester during the 1970s, working in the area during the 1970s-1990s, and raising children in Chester during the same period. Interviewees also speak at length about the socioeconomic and other changes to the area during the period.

All of the items in the collection, other than the recorded video interviews, were donated by Ed Polito, Ron McConnell, William Robinson, and Jim Byrnes.

Table of Contents

The Optimist Club Collection is divided into 15 series:

1. Artifacts (1984, 1990, undated), 2 boxes, 1.5 linear feet
2. Architectural Drawings (c. 1986), 1 box, 1.5 linear feet
3. Awards (1990, 1995-1996), 1 folder and 1 box, 1 linear foot
4. Clippings (1988-1996), 3 folders
5. Correspondence (1991-1996), 5 folders
6. Ephemera (1990-1996), 8 folders
7. Events (1992-1995), 8 folders
8. Financials (1991-1996), 10 folders
9. Fundraising (1993), 1 folder
10. Membership (1992-1995), 4 folders
11. Newsletters (1985-1996), 7 folders
12. Personal Histories (oral history interviews) (2016), 81.1 GB of data in 155 files
13. Visual Materials, 5.6 GB of data in 105 files
14. Yearbooks (1980-1989), 5 boxes, 2 linear feet
15. Textiles (1983-1988), 1 oversized box, 2 linear feet

Files are arranged by individual donor (i.e., Ed Polito), then by topic and date.

Table of Contents

Corporate Names/Organizations Subject:

Chester Optimist Club
Optimist Club International

Subjects:

Fundraising.
Fraternal organizations.
Turtles

People:

Berliner, Neil
Berliner, Noah
Burns, James
McConnell, Ronald
Polito, Edwin
Robinson, William
Whorley, Dennis

Places:

Chester (N.J.)
Chester Township (N.J.)
Morris County (N.J.)
New Jersey.

Genre Terms:

Administrative records
Correspondence
Newsletters
Oral history
Photographs
Realia
Scrapbooks

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