Ken Appell came back on summer break from his studies at Georgetown University School of Medicine to marry fiancée Marcella Varmuza, and the ceremony was performed on July 29 at St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church at 30th Avenue and 42rd Street in Astoria, Queens (below, pictured in December 2008).
While attending Manhattan College in the Bronx in 1940-42, Ken helped pay for school by working with his boyhood friend Arthur Barnett at the information desk in the card catalogue room (room 315) of the midtown Manhattan main branch of the New York Public Library (exterior at top in 2009, reading room below as it appeared in a Life magazine photo from 1944). His job was twofold: he would send patrons' request slips down to the stack via pneumatic tube (which required him to memorize which Dewey decimal numbers corresponded to which stacks), and also replaced the long, narrow card-catalogue drawers that patrons would regularly leave on the desks after using.
In the 1920's, this neighborhood was fairly new, settled by Czechs, Slovaks, and other Slavs as well as Italians, Greeks, and Germans (see two views below). Today, some of these ethnic groups are still in evidence, but it’s become much more diverse, including for example Colombians, Israelis, Koreans. The stretch of Steinway near Ken Appell’s childhood home has especially attracted immigrants from Muslim countries such as Morocco, Egypt, Lebanon, and Bosnia; there’s even a mosque practically around the corner from where he grew up (last picture below).
The house at 2515 42nd Street:
A colorized shot of Steinway Street at 30th Avenue in the 1920's:
The Loew's Triboro Theater on Steinway Street at 28th Avenue in 1931:
Steinway Street at 25th Avenue in December 2008:
In May 1967, Dr. Appell enjoys a Sunday morning with his young children David and Ann on the back stoop of his home on King Street in the Westchester County city of Port Chester.
After graduating from New York City's Manhattan College, in 1947 Kenneth Appell moved with his fiancée Marcella to Washington DC to begin postgraduate work at the Jesuit-run Georgetown University School of Medicine. Living in an apartment on the Anacostia neighborhood's Ridge Road, just off Fort Dumont Park and across the river from Capitol Hill, while Ken attended classes Marcy worked at a large K Street real estate company. They spent four years in DC, during which time they returned to their old neighborhood in Astoria, Queens to get married, in 1949, and Ken graduated from Georgetown in 1951 with honors, including the class' gold medal in pathology.
Kenneth Appell enjoys breakfast in the summer of 1970 with his wife Marcy and daughter Ann, on the porch of their home on Aspinwall Road in the Linden Acres neighborhood of Red Hook, New York.
Northern Dutchess Hospital, pictured in August 2008. Dr. Kenneth Appell moved to the area from Westchester County with his wife and two young children in 1969. He eventually became Chief of Surgery and even in semi-retirement still regularly assists in the operating room today.
Based at Northern Dutchess Hospital in Rhinebeck, New York, Jim Wing moved to the area and became Ken Appell's partner in 1988. Here he's pictured at his home in August 2008.
