Hattie Adler
Whitestone Volunteer Ambulance Corps dispatcher
Whitestone
COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT: Some time around 1950, when Hattie Adler first noticed the Whitestone Volunteer Ambulance Corps, it was an all-male institution. She said to herself, “When I retire, that’s what I’m going to join.” After a long career in teaching, that’s exactly what she did - as a dispatcher, in 1991. Adler rose to the rank of Chief-Dispatcher, a position she held for 10 years until cutting back on her schedule and responsibilities a few years ago. She still volunteers as a dispatcher today - just weeks shy of her 90th birthday, that comes on Sunday, February 8.
PERSONAL: Adler has three grown sons, six grandchildren (four girls and two boys) and a great-grandson, Ara, who’s “almost three.” She was a “stay-at-home-mom” for awhile, while her husband of 53 years, Hy (Herman) worked, but she soon returned to her chosen career as a teacher. Hy Adler passed away in 1994. She still lives in their Whitestone home, which she shares with one of her sons.
JOB: “I taught English and Math at P.S. 149 in Jackson Heights for 26 years,” Adler pointed out, adding, “After that, I taught at College Misericordia [of Misericordia University, a private Catholic institution] in Pennsylvania for another 12 years.”
PROUDEST MOMENT: Adler admitted that “I’m proud of a lot of things.” The first recollection of a ‘proudest’ moment was in 1940, “When I graduated from Columbia University.” After a little prodding, she admits this was a second graduation; she received Master’s degrees in both Education and Mathematics at the time. She graduated from Columbia with a pair of Bachelor’s degrees two years earlier. When asked how few women advanced to graduate degrees in that era, she responded matter-of-factly, “We were a group and happy to be there.”
BIGGEST CHALLENGE: “To continue living,” she laughed. “The secret of living this long is to always be a very active person in the community,” Adler said, somewhat more seriously. “Also, I try to be happy every day,” she revealed, adding, “Service of any kind makes me happy, because it gives you the feeling that you’ve achieved something.”
FAVORITE MEMORY: After so many years, Adler has a lot of favorite memories. “I first found Whitestone when I walked across the [Whitestone] Bridge from my home in the Bronx (it had footpaths when it opened in 1939) and I fell in love with the neighborhood,” she recalled. “Hy and I were courting at the time and I told him, ‘We have to live here.’ We bought a hole in the ground in 1951, and made a home there,” Adler said. Later in the conversation, she settled on another. “Through my work at the Ambulance Corps, I have been instrumental, to some degree, in saving 530 lives. How can you top that?”
INSPIRATION: My father was my inspiration. He was very much for education; it didn’t make any difference to him whether you were male or female. Even though it was the Great Depression, he told me to complete my education. “You have to be a teacher,” he said.
