Background
He was born September 27, 1933 at Rockaway Beach Hospital, Beach 85th Street and Java Place, to Emil Gerald Lucev of Prvika’Lucka, Croatia and Anna Mary Lewis of Hoboken, New Jersey.
- Photos
- Works
- Photos
- Works
Emil Lucev
Edit ProfileEducation
He attended Jacob Haaren High School where he studied refrigeration.
Career
His work includes study of the early amusement parks created by LaMarcus Adna Thompson and George C. Tilyou, the restoration and history of the Cornell Cemetery, and other features of The Rockaways, and his newspaper articles in The Wave of Long Island. He is the author of The Rockaways, a 2007 postcard history of the peninsula. Emil Gerald emigrated to the United States in 1927 and became a hotel chef.
Anna"s family moved to the Rockaways when she was very young.
Emil Robert is the oldest of three children that also include Anthony and Almeda. At Paramount Carton, at Rockaway Beach Boulevard and Beach 79 Street, he worked as a finishing machine adjuster.
The Army drafted him and sent him to Fort Belvoir, Virginia, sending him to refrigeration school. Eventually they had four children, Michael, Emil Robert, Junior., Aldine and Katherine.
He returned to working for the finishing department Paramount Carton until 1961, when he was hired as a security guard for The New York Daily News until the security force was laid off in 1991.
They began researching the companies whose names were on the bottles. On a boat trip in Jamaica Bay with dignitaries, authors, and politicians, Locke appointed Lucev as tour guide. When he revealed to the impressed crowd his low level of education, he was shunned by them for the remainder of the trip, although his greater familiarity with the channels of Jamaica Bay also forced him to act as navigator on the trip.
This convinced him of a serious need for a greater stock of knowledge of the area, driving him to document the entire peninsula.
The result was a 2007 postcard history book, The Rockaways. In 1985, Lucev was involved with the Rockaways’ Tercentennial celebration, and in 1986, the time capsule buried at the Doughboy Monument at Beach 95 Street and Rockaway Beach Boulevard.
In 1986, Lucev was involved with the re-enactment of the North Carolina-4 Transatlantic flight of Alcock and Brown, and wrote a booklet of the event. He edited the centennial and 110th anniversary editions of The Wave in 1993 and 2003, supplied “Irishtown, Rockaway” for The Irish Echo, and has helped schools, hospitals, churches, fire departments, and organizations document their history.
He has also researched the peninsula"s beaches and boardwalks.
In 1991, he worked with Stanley Cogan, President of the Queens Historical Society and Cornell Cemetery Corporation President to restore the cemetery and to designate it a New York City Landmark.
