Floyd Hasselriis, the oldest life-long resident of the Gardens, died yesterday.
Floyd was born in 1922 in the house at 116 Ascan Avenue. Shortly after that, his family moved to 52 Seasongood Road and that is still the family home. Floyd and his wife, Helen, raised their two children, in the Gardens.
Floyd was a loyal, active, contributor to all aspects of the Gardens. As a child, he participated in the pageants of the 1920’s in Olivia Park and helped make ice-skating rinks on empty lots on Ascan Avenue.
He was one of the original students at P.S. 101 and went through 8 years of school there. He graduated in 1935 and was a member of our first kindergarten class when our current building opened in September, 1927.
Floyd was the 2011 PA Celebrating Community Recipient and was present at our Centennial Celebration in May 2014.
He later graduated from Columbia University in 1943, worked at Curtiss-Wright on airplanes, went into the merchant marines, and was a professor of mechanical engineering at Cooper Union.
He told stories of the horse and buggy that delivered baked goods and how happy everyone was when the wheels on that buggy were covered with rubber!
As an adult, Floyd was involved with the Celebrations Association and, among other projects, oversaw the sound system for Children’s Day activities. He was on the FHGC board in the 1970’s, again in the 1990’s and was vice-president of the Corporation as recently as 2006. Some of his particular areas of interest for the Gardens were identifying ‘sick’ trees, inspecting and servicing our sewer system, overseeing patching and repair of our streets.
