‘If it wasn’t for Fire Island, I may have never started acting.’

Paul Rosenbaum, Ocean Beach

“Fire Island plays a humongous part in my life, not just because it’s my favorite place to be on the Earth. If it wasn’t for Fire Island, I may have never started acting.

“My father was in the clothing business. He owned a couple of clothing stores in Connecticut and one in Queens. He met someone who had a store on Fire Island called Flair House. Selling negotiations soon took place, and my father bought the store. He had never been out to Fire Island. None of us had. In March of 1964, we took the ferry out, and the place looked so desolate. I remember hearing my mother say to my father, ‘My God, Alvin, what have you done?’

“The store became an ingrained part of our life. As a kid, I worked in the store tagging clothing. When I was young, I used to be a cute kid. Somebody out here who knew my mother suggested I do commercials. We hooked up with an agent, and the next thing you know, I started doing commercials and got pretty proficient at it. My stage name became ‘P.R. Paul.’

“Then I started doing a little bit parts — ABC after-school specials and things like that. One day, I got an audition for TV show ‘Fame’ to play the character Montgomery McNeil, from the movie. I said to myself, ‘Oh my God, this is going to be terrible. Who will watch this?’ Next thing you know, I got the part, and what a wonderful opportunity it turned out to be.

“But I would always return to the store and help out behind the register. Then my father got sick with prostate cancer. Neither my brother or I were interested taking over Flair House, but when my father was dying, he looked at me and said ‘Paul, it’s a shame that you were meant to be in the clothing business.’ He passed away in 1989. So, I took over the store. And I have to tell you, my father was right. Slowly but surely, it became successful.”

I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I went through my treatment, and decided I would give up the store and change my life.

“Then in 1996, this young lady named Joy came into the picture. Joy is a television writer, director and producer. We met through a friend. I brought her out to Fire Island on a really miserable day because I knew that if she didn’t like Fire Island, the relationship wouldn’t last. To my surprise, she fell in love with it right off the bat, and it was an ugly, cold day. We got married and ran the store together, becoming even more successful than I could imagine.

“In the winter of 2007, I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I went through my treatment and decided I would give up the store and change my life. But then as I got better and decided I wasn’t ready to give up the store yet, we ran it for another year. Then one day, I was by myself walking down the marina. I looked up in the sky and asked my father for permission to sell the store. And I heard his spirit say, ‘Are you out of your mind? Of course, it’ OK. What, are you going to kill yourself in that store? Go, sell it!’ He was long gone by then, but I heard his words.

“So, we sold the business. I was always ‘Paul Flair,’ that’s how people out here knew me, even with ‘Fame,’ and my acting over the years, my identity, was wrapped up in the store. I actually cried when I signed the sale contract. I actually had tears in my eyes selling it. I asked my wife, Joy, ‘Who am I going to be?’ She said, ‘You’re going to be Paul.’ And I didn’t quite know what would happen, but I knew she was as right as rain because it’s that old thing — when one door closes, another opens.”

The next thing you know, I get invited to do these “Fame” reunion concerts in Europe and the U.K. 40 years after doing the show.

“I used to play in bands back in the ’70s and ’80s in Los Angeles. I had a band named Rock Beat and started doing my music again. The next thing you know, I get invited to do these ‘Fame’ reunion concerts in Europe and the U.K. 40 years after doing the show. Thousands of people come to see us. ‘Fame’ was a humongous hit in Europe, as opposed to in the States, where it was only moderately successful. The next thing you know, I’m releasing my own songs and videos. Joy is a big help in all of that because she was right behind me in everything I wanted to do and making everything better, the music, and my life, more importantly. My latest song is called ‘Not So Blue,’ which we just released the video and can be seen on YouTube. We just returned from an Italian film festival, where they gave me a lifetime achievement award!

“My non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma stayed in remission for 11 years. Then in 2018, something jumped up on my bloodwork. It was the precursor to a different form of blood cancer called CLL, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, which is chronic, which means that it’s not treatable, but it is manageable, meaning that they can keep you around for a long time.

“My CLL stayed dormant for five years. Then on Memorial Day weekend in 2022, I caught COVID. It was a minor case of it, but somehow it activated my CLL. The doctor basically said, ‘If you want to start treatment, we can start treatment, and if you don’t, we can wait a while, but you would have to live a sedentary life not to feel the effects of this CLL.’ Because I’m active, playing tennis, biking and playing ball, we chose an aggressive treatment regimen. Anyway, I really don’t think about it a lot. I go on with my life. I’m the happiest guy around.”

Interviewed by Shoshanna McCollum

‘Finding this side of my family has been one of the most rewarding things.’

Carol Kushner, Ocean Beach

“Finding out in 1979 that I was mixed-race on my dad’s side has been just an ongoing process of meeting the family and discovering ancestors. Every year I stop in Charleston, South Carolina, and I do a little archival research. I find out a little more about who my family was, where they’re buried, what their stories were.

“One of the things I found out about my third great-grandfather in Charleston was that the family needed to carry papers so they wouldn’t be enslaved. These papers are dated in the 1700s. They were known in Charleston as freed people of color that had come to Charleston around the year 1779. The common ancestors are referred to in these documents as being of the Moorish race. My third great-grandfather’s family had to carry these papers. The papers state who was covered by this document, not only my third great-grandfather, but his daughters.

“It was common during the time that somebody had to vouch for you to say you were known as a free person of color. In this case, a lawyer, Henry Rutledge, vouches for the family. Their common ancestor came from Morocco as a domestic.

“In 1979, I was 27 and finally began to find out about the true roots of my family. Being raised Italian and Irish, I marched in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade with my Brownie troop. My mom had four sisters; all worked in the garment center as seamstresses and managers.

“I didn’t feel connected to parts of that family. It turned out the things that I loved to do were from the other side, from my dad’s side. They’re singers, social workers, librarians. I started out as a librarian and became a social worker. So it seemed like these things were in my DNA. Finding this side of my family has been one of the most rewarding things.

“Was I angry, angry that I wasn’t raised with this family? Yes, but I came to understand that my dad being light enough to pass gave him certain benefits in society. He could join the sanitation union. He became an officer in the union.

After a while you say, oh, I’d love to see that family again, but we don’t see them and [I] stopped asking after a while.

“My parents divorced when I was 15, which meant from the time I was 15 to the age of 21, I did not see my dad. Divorce usually meant that one person was kind of cut out of the picture and most often the father in those days. I was born in 1952 and had two older sisters.

“My grandmother on my father’s side was still alive, but he never took us to meet her. The separation was almost like thinking of a door closing when my parents married. It was, I guess. They made a bargain with one another. His family lived in Harlem. We lived in the Bronx. We were close by. It was easy for my mom to explain why we didn’t see my father’s family, because she would cut people off. It wasn’t uncommon for mom to say, someone is not good.

“We saw my dad’s brother’s family once when I was 5 or 6. My father took me and my middle sister, just the two of us, to Mount Vernon. We had an amazing day. Went to a picnic, had a Hula-Hoop contest, but I never saw them after that. I did notice they were browner than me. It stuck in my head all those years that something was not being explained to me, but I didn’t get any answers.

“After a while you say, oh, I’d love to see that family again, but we don’t see them, and [I] stopped asking after a while. When we did reconnect; they had a picture of that day. They said, ‘We remember you from that day.’ It was a painful situation.

“My parents felt like they were protecting us. They were going to raise us as white. They didn’t want people of color to come to our neighborhood. My dad’s sisters are a variety of colors, but my dad was very fair.

“We had a family reunion, and it was a color palette from the blond, blue-eyed to dark African looking. Literally, the color palette was a spectrum of color. My dad had four sisters and a brother; each one went in different directions. My uncle married a mixed-race lady, an aunt married a mixed-race man. My Aunt Sarah is the most interesting of the group. She’s turning 104 in September, and she has been really my rock during this whole process. She has answered all the questions I had, given me all of her memories.”

I confronted my mom about keeping this secret, saying, “Did you expect to keep the secret, till you died?” She said, “I almost did, if it wasn’t for you and your big mouth.”

“Aunt Sarah is an amazing person with a beautiful voice. She sang for a church in Harlem and became a Women’s Army Corps member in World War II. They needed entertainers for the Negro troops, as they were called in those days. Sarah toured Asia. When she left, they gave her a $7,000 stipend. Sarah wanted to buy her mom a house, but Grandma said, no, go to college. She went to Howard University and met a wonderful black man, Uncle Ed.

“She decided she wasn’t going to straddle the color line like her siblings because of what she saw in my dad’s marriage and her sister’s marriage – Aunt Beverly married a Jewish man, then a black man – but never really found a spot for herself. Sometimes people of mixed parentage are told they are not white enough or black enough. There’s this mid-place for people of mixed parentage and race.

“My family’s common ancestor came to the country in 1779. Imagine how many classifications this family has had through every census – colored, mulatto and Negro. In my dad’s case, he crossed the line and became white at some point. I’ve never really been able to figure out when he did that. It was a moment in his space where he checked the box as white.

“He threw himself a party when he was 65, and there was his brother, who I remembered from years ago. I gave him the third degree about my family that’s been hidden from me. He sent me some photos and papers. This was the document from South Carolina. To find that my dad’s family had been here since 1779 was quite an eye-opener. It’s an amazing unfolding of a story of a family in America that in fact had to hide their roots in fear of being discriminated against.

“I confronted my mom about keeping this secret. ‘Did you expect to keep the secret, ’til you died?’ I asked. She said, ‘I almost did, if it wasn’t for you and your big mouth.’

“At my father’s funeral in Harlem years ago, I was surprised by how many people came. A man asked me who I was. I said I was Richard’s daughter. ‘Whose Richard?’ he asked. Then I said I was ‘Dick Fordham’s’ daughter, the name he went by in his old neighborhood. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘You’re one of the girls that was hidden away.’”

Interviewed by Shoshanna McCollum