AN OPEN LETTER FOR OUR COMMUNITY:
None of us thought this day would ever quite come. But the unsinkable Joan Silbersher of Pound Ridge NY has passed. She was 95. Joan stands alone as an icon, a pioneer—a cigar store Indian to a timeless place. Many generations of locals have grown up with her at the helm of the greater good, been gently or deeply shaped, affected, and moved by her.
Born Joan Carol Piken on October 19th, 1929 in South Orange, NJ, to Burnett and Marguerite (Kirschbaum) Piken, she loved nature and hated dresses. Her youth was formed keeping up with two star-athlete brothers Herb & Dick, in endless days of stoop ball, stick ball, and spraying water guns through holes their father drilled in the garage for creative hide-and-seek. She remembers her parents adoring and making each other giggle, with a busy social life around bridge and mahjong. She found a summer mecca at Eagle Island Girl Scout Camp on Saranac Lake, where she earned the nickname “Pike-ahontas” from her bronzed face, regal braids, and ‘can-do’ personality, and where she made lifelong bonds.
Soon tennis became Joan's forte and the little local Berkeley Club (NJ), her stomping ground. A famous tomboy at Columbia High School and committed athlete & teacher at NJ State Teachers College (Hall of Fame inductions for basketball, field hockey, swimming/diving, and tennis), she had also by the early 1950s been competing in tennis locally, regionally, and statewide. Her P.E. teaching career began in the Millburn (NJ) school system, while her tennis took off as NJ State Ladies Champion, earning rankings and then invites into premiere tourneys like Orange Lawn and Merion Cricket Club. The ultimate crown was qualifying for the U.S. Open at Forest Hills, where one of her most valued experiences was being asked by Althea Gibson to partner in doubles. As Joan spoke 'trailblazers language', she related to like minds and was more proud to stand with Althea than win alone.
Back on the red clay at Berkeley Club, Joan met Paul Silbersher of neighboring Millburn, himself a strong player as well as “a nice Jewish boy” studying to be a Cantor…a good fit for “a nice Jewish girl” who knew how to hold her own with the boys. They married in 1955 and honeymooned in Provincetown (MA)---a longtime family pilgrimage begun by her beloved Aunt Mil who started painting there in the 1940s. After a stint in Cincinnati, they returned East where Paul finished his studies at Hebrew Union College and Joan continued her teaching career in P.E. while they looked to settle somewhere peaceful. A country drive north found them a studio for rent in North Stamford (CT) owned by fabled radio show producer Himan Brown (who had previously rented the studio to J.D. Salinger). Soon the couple discovered nearby Pound Ridge and acquired a few acres to build on. A cathedral-ceilinged house of their own design went up and the phone number assigned had last been Tallulah Bankhead’s, so life there already had a powerhouse christening. Two children followed: Erica (“Ricky") in 1959 and Jared (“Jed") in 1961. Her homestead in place, Joan began to really roll up her sleeves. She dug out and poured a swimming pool for the kids, handmade their toys, and hammered up a tree house. After sport, teaching, and family was in place, she added her next passion…dogs---specifically Great Danes. Joan always had one at her side and began breeding them, often traveling with them in her open convertible, ears flapping in the wind. Many might remember her longtime license plate: WOOOF. An amusing newspaper article from early days shows Joan’s MGTD stuck on the Tappan Zee Bridge with her baby Ricky in the front while pregnant Dane “Gida" was in the back whelping puppies. All in a day for Joan.
The couple’s tennis fame found them meeting neighbors with private courts, and soon Joan was whipping up tennis socials at Maisie and Paul Kohnstamm’s on Lower Shad Road that were so popular, she realized they needed to make the party permanent. And so, in 1964, the Pound Ridge Tennis Club (PRTC) was born. Joan designed the charter with fellow founding members, scouted land with local real estate character Larry Malawista, storyboarded the site plan with construction paper, submitted applications to the town, and organized commitments and funds. Founding the club was just the beginning. She manned the first backhoe to grade the land for 3 clay tennis courts and a shed. She and Paul hand-planted evergreens along the roadside bunkers for future privacy. While Joan sat on the board, Paul became the first club pro, often offering rabbinical game analyses with his unique lessons (as recalled by pupil and longtime local John Bria), which was fitting, as Paul was also the first Cantor for the PR Jewish Community.
Eventually, the couple divorced---Paul moved back to North Stamford as head pro at Newfield, Roxbury, and Long Ridge Swim & Tennis Clubs, and Joan dug in further at PRTC. Decades followed of dawn-to-dusk, unpaid devotion to building an entire program and infrastructure for PRTC with an origin charter based on volunteerism and unpretentious facilities set in an open, natural landscape. Her design was featured in an article in “Tennis” magazine, where she credited the humble Berkeley Tennis Club as inspiration. As a top player, Joan attracted other excellent players to join which kept the level high and the waitlist overflowing. She registered the club for US sanctioned events and ran years of ranking tournaments on the tennis and paddle circuits, drawing top players of all ages from far and wide. All this while she herself kept competing on those circuits, maintaining Eastern & National rankings in Open and then Senior Women’s Tennis and Paddle, singles/doubles/and mixed. But internal club play was her also her baby and soon she had full tennis and paddle A, B, and C teams playing in leagues all over the county year-round, as well as running club “ladders”, fun events, and organized socializing. For decades her home was the sole host of the annual cocktail party, where members would be stepping over Great Danes to reach the appetizer trays. By the swingin' 70s, Joan even joked that she should run a mixed doubles tournament “for exes and their new partners,” as club couples were actually divorcing to switch spouses. She made use of that glittery era, attracting national paddle sponsorships to include the club in their upscale playing calendar when Passport Scotch and Dr. Pepper were investing in the game. She got Arthur Ashe to come to PRTC to give a tennis exhibition, spearheaded special guest memberships for summering celebrities like Walter Matthau and Art Carney, taught paddle to Colleen Dewhurst and Zoe Caldwell. All to invite and infuse diverse energies into the club culture.
As a single mother of two, Joan also had to start patching together an earnest living. After starting as a gym teacher at PR Elementary School (where young student and longtime local Artie Clark recalls her being "tough but great fun"), she joined Art Houlihan in his new real estate company, but was disinterested in the fuss of showing houses. Since tromping through the town woods to find a property for the tennis club had enamored her, Art (also a longtime friend and mixed paddle partner) agreed to let her create her own branch of specialty by just showing land. Soon she broke off and started her own firm, “The Northern Westchester Land Co.” in the little cottage in front of Houlihan that still stands on Westchester Avenue.
By the early 70’s, local tennis friend and publisher Warren Schloat suggested to Joan that a little newsletter was needed in town. Joan went home and mentioned this at the dinner table, and the next day she and her daughter Ricky (age 15) decided to start one… Joan would cover business news, ad sales, and admin, and Ricky would do design, layout and illustration. They would publish it monthly and the land company’s cottage would become the newspaper production office. Ricky named it “The Country Shopper.”
The first issue in 1975 was a one page newsletter folded up and mailed out free to everyone in Pound Ridge. Within months the size, scope, content, and mailing area doubled, and Joan asked her best friend and next-door neighbor Alice Marpet to assist with ad sales, since Alice had last done that for The NY Times. With Alice on the team, the CS exploded and was soon upwards of 100 pages and being distributed to all of Northern Westchester and Fairfield Counties. The little cottage space was outgrown, and the office moved down the street into #67, a wide open space with picture windows facing the sidewalk (where the store “The Cottage” is now). Desks were added for new ad sales staff: dear friends Toby Morris, Claire Newman & Viola Johnson, and the Great Danes could sprawl out across the floor in the sun. Actual production moved to the house and consumed her living room, where art desks were built for Ricky and a burgeoning staff including Ruth Mendes, Lillian Petruccione, Pat Middleton, Ruth Behan, and Sally Griffith. Those were the days of rubber glue, “letra-set” burnish fonts, Selectric typewriters, rapidograph pens, non-repro blue markers, and liquid white-out. Most everything was accomplished by hand.
The paper was refreshingly unique, featuring columns such as “Dining Way Out,” about wild eating experiences described by witty friends. Bedford’s Dave Binger wrote about eating in a tree in Africa, with dishes delivered on a small train track that ran throughout the tree; Foxy Gwynne (also from Bedford, and Fred’s [Herman Munster’s] wife) told of serving venison at a party she gave, only to discover that one of her guests had hit and left the deer that she picked up to prep and serve. Joan’s “Main Street Minutes” reported on all the latest goings-on of local businesses, like openings and closings, new chefs, additional services. Ricky’s cover drawings and spot sketches peppered the pages, a la The New Yorker, as well as colored her individual ad designs. And a healthy Classified section gave the old Pennysaver a run for their money.
The paper’s success was a reward but all-consuming, so after 15 years they both wanted to move on. When Dr. Hy Nadel’s office became vacant next door, Joan said she had always liked antiques and thought that was enough reason to open a shop. Ricky missed the old “Little Book of Numbers” local phonebook that had disappeared and thought that was reason enough to revive it. So in 1990, they both chose those paths and Joan hung out a shingle at 65 Westchester Avenue in Scotts Corners, with the typically no-nonsense name “Antiques & Tools of Business & Kitchen.” And for 27 years, she filled the aisles and shelves with “charming but useful” treasures. Her policy was to buy items for a song, clean them up and price them at triple; so if she scored an urn at a yard sale for $3, she’d tag it at $9…even if it had a book value of $300. She didn’t care about maximizing, she cared about fairness and decency. Her personality was most alive in the shop, where she could employ her earthy generosity, outspoken style, and own brand of humanity. And quickly she built an institution.
Joan planted sunflowers and cherry tomatoes to grow up the lampposts out front, spread old wine casks out as flower pots, hung bird feeders, kept a full candy jar for free handfuls, always pulled chew treats from her leather satchel for visiting dogs. She hired fellow seniors like Bob Suda & Sonja Godfried for meaningful work manning the shop, and local kids for chores and assistance running her events. She saw opportunity to fill her corner at the 4-way stop with community gatherings: installing picnic tables for Sunday chess games for kids; establishing a farmer’s market where local artisans could set up tents and sell their goods; holding Sunday antiques markets to encourage smaller vendors; grilling burgers and marshmallows on her sidewalk BBQ for optional donations to “The Fountain Fund”---which did eventually pay for the design and installation (by storied architect and local character Vito Fosella) of the fountain in the center of town that she erected to honor Fred Zwick, an esteemed town supervisor who for Joan “though Republican, was a very reasonable thinker who made a lot of good things happen.” The shop became her hearth for politics, and around election periods she was known to vocalize this, even querying customers about their party and boldly voicing disappointment when the answer wasn’t “Democrat.” She was demanding but honest, felt free to expect moral excellence without apology, but was equally as quick to admit error and apologize. Her accessible & genuine personal & shop style created a sacred meeting place in Scotts Corners where all wanted to explore, wander & be.
Famed locals became regulars, like Tom Brokaw, Richard Gere (and wives), Eartha Kitt, Ralph Lauren, Stanley Tucci, Paul Schaffer, Andre Agassi & Steffi Graf, Martha Stewart; Lena Dunham filmed an episode of “Girls” there. But Joan was her own brand of famous. A constantly public figure, her lifelong uniform was 'early trendsetter', always in worn-out jeans layered with patches, a bleach-spattered polo shirt, and leather sandals even in winter. She always carried a clipboard with a pen hanging around her neck so she could jot down ideas. She could be seen traveling plein air on her classic bicycle with canvas pouches to retrieve mail from the post office or in her open convertible stuffed with the day’s projects. Her commanding voice often boomed but her laugh was quick and easy, and often at herself. Her yelling and screaming could cut to the bone, but her unselfconscious way was so endearing that you knew it wasn’t personal. She didn’t care about makeup or skincare, but her eyes twinkled and that was her beauty.
Funny and inventive episodes abound about Joan’s unique way of getting things done. In the 1970s (way before easy technology) while watching paddle matches from inside the cozy confines of the PRTC clubhouse, the lack of sound during matchplay made it hard to enjoy or to learn the score, so she installed microphones outside wired to speakers inside to complete the viewing experience. Instead of throwing out cold, once-used paddle balls, she built a “warmer” out of an insulated milk box and installed a lightbulb in it, which allowed balls to stay warm around the bulb for constant winter use. Frustrated by the lack of progress about improving parking laws in the business district, Joan took a can of spray paint out and when no one was looking, drew new parking spaces along the laneway to the left of The Kitchen Table. A devout digital-age resister, Joan never adopted a cell phone (they were purchased for her and she always managed to conveniently ignore the instructions written out and taped to the backs); she attempted the internet only once, sending out an email letter to her daughter and throwing a tantrum after “it didn’t work” (she sat waiting for an immediate reply, as thought it was a phone call). She also refused to adapt to seat belts. When the law said you had to wear one, Joan said no. Town cops would stop her in the beginning, and then quietly gave up (picture who would win?) Joan’s free spirit colored everything she did. The tales of her are endless and many of you can likely recall your own.
All along, Joan relentlessly pursued, fundraised, donated, supported, and fought for causes where she felt she could affect the most good. She was a longtime spearhead in multiple town organizations such as: the PR Business Association (where her dear alliance developed with mother-to-all, Agnes McMurray of gift shop “The Strap Hinge”, where Breads ’n’ Bakes kitchen is now); the PR Democratic Committee (coaxing Kennedy’s speechwriter and local Ted Sorenson to share an unforgettable speech at her back yard fundraiser). She campaigned for the League of Women Voters, worked the polls, collected for the United Way, and lobbied for a Montessori School. She introduced a paddle tennis facility to the Town Park, ran its first program and taught lessons wherever needed. She created a junior bowling league that had buses going to Armonk Bowl. She campaigned for Democrat candidates near and far, and wrote to the papers or stood up in meetings when a little extra passion for a project was needed.
Joan is the reason for a plethora of landmarks that we take for granted, such as the: town clock, town fountain, lamppost streetlights, Halloween Walk, Farmers Market, Sidewalk Sales, July 4th Markets, Kids Chess Sundays, and Sunday Antiques Markets & Labor Day Market, where in a 2000 coincidence her daughter went into labor and Joan comically made a pitstop to hustle her event staff into gear before jumping back into the running car to get Ricky to the birthing center where Scout was born minutes later. After all this doing and giving, she quietly admitted her most poignant moment was receiving the town's “Good Neighbor Award” in 2003.
She was mostly social through her activities but had dinner parties at home, with early ones built around bridge games and later ones around grilling butterflied lamb on her BBQ pit. Personal pursuits were rare but she loved throwing pottery on a wheel, and religiously fell asleep reading the New Yorker. She traveled a bit in her life—usually for tennis tournaments, like with husband Paul to Squirrel Island, Maine and with daughter Ricky to Bar Harbor and Point Judith for the annual Mother-Daughter Grass Court circuit (reaching National #4 together in 1976). But even as far afield as she went, like on safari in Kenya in 1999 with Ricky to celebrate their 70th and 40th, Joan was always thinking about home; while at a small African airport, she spotted a huge old wooden airplane propeller on the runway and talked a steward into selling it to her to take home for her shop. She loaded it into the hold, shlepped it through connections, coerced it through customs in NY…only to get it home to sell it immediately at Antiques & Tools for a song. She took a workshop out of town to learn how to solder water fountains out of copper and ‘found' items, took a year to build several, and promptly sold them in the shop at face value. Ultimately Joan just found pleasure in the doing. But her most precious travel was in making the daily drive between 3 points: her homestead on Sherwood Road, her tennis club on Major Lockwood Lane, and her multiple shopfronts on the little stretch called Scotts Corners. Pound Ridge was her everything.
By 2017, at 88, her determination wasn’t enough to keep up with the demands of buying, managing and selling antiques and keeping a shop afloat. So in her typical no-frills simplicity, she announced her retirement with a big sale, and took home her store sign. Her only commerce became selling ads once a year for Ricky’s “Little Book of Numbers”, and considering but never managing to sell all the remaining antiques piled up in boxes at home. She eased into enjoying a new habit of puttering happily around her homestead, napping in the afternoons with the bevy of wild cats on her chest who had all showed up from out of the woods and become pets, and continuing to bring restaurant leftovers home to feed generations of raccoons and throw seed to the birds and deer. She tootled in her BMW every day to the post office to collect mail to take home and write out a stack of $10 checks to all the charities who asked. She gathered with the neighborhood “girls” for mutual potluck birthday parties, and sent out her xeroxed newsletters with hand-scrawled updates and polaroid snapshots. And she looked especially forward to time with her only grandchild Scout, who brought her the deepest most intimate joy. Her end was not as designed, having to be moved out of her beloved home to a safe nursing facility. But after two years being taken care of there, remaining pain-free, receiving visits from old neighbors, and having nothing but time to reflect, Joan spent her last words radiating deep gratitude for a life fully lived, and then passed in her sleep.
She was a fierce and unique individualist who blazed, voiced, inspired, invented, demanded, gave, and charmed. Her one true love was her community. People miss Joan’s presence dearly, but her spirit is alive, the stories flow, and her gifts are everywhere.
A community gathering to celebrate Joan will be held in the spring.
