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Jersey City isn’t what it used to be.
In fact, it’s nothing like it used to be. The old Jersey City has vanished.
Just ask Ron Semple.
The Advance man, 90, has published his third book, “On The Stoop: Growing Up In A Vanished World,” about the New Jersey city across from New York.
He should know. Semple spent his first 33 years in Jersey City, working as a newspaperman – from cub reporter to publisher.
He describes his new book about the Jersey City world that has vanished.
“A gritty, grubby, often grim world that I thought was the promised land. It was swiftly disintengrating even as I lfet more than a half century ago.
“It is gone now escept for a handful of diehards cherishing the past and cursing the present. It was a workingclass world of immigrants, their children adn their grandchildren, very American in its peculiar way, vary patroitic, hard working, very Democratic, mostly Cathloic albeit with a sizable separation of Lutherans, half educated, highly opiionated, very tough, parochial in every sense of the world, hostile to outsiders, idiffernet to criticims, prejudiced, misogynic, cynical and compassionate in equal measure, fiercely loyal, ignorant as spit, and it was a wonderful world to grow up in.”
That’s not the Jersey City of today.
“The vanished Jersey City is the center of my story, surrounded by a circle of others places whose radius was not much more than 15 miles. My Irish and Italian family and friends lived within that circle mostly in Jersey City, Hoboken, Queens, Brooklyn, The Bronx, Union City, North Bergen and Secaucus.”
The book is available at Barnes & Noble bookstores and online at barnesandnoble.com.
Semple retired from newspaper work at age 52, and took on a second career, serving as a firefighter, paramedic, US Coast Guard Auxiliary member and a disastr response reserv ist with the Federal Emergency management Agency. He retired again at age 80, and took to writing books.
He is author of “Black Tom: Terror on the Hudson,” “Her Morning Shadow” and was co-author with the late Warren Murphy of “Miss Bidwell’s Spirit.”
He was a fifth generation resident of Jersey City, and was educated at St. Peter’s Prep and St P{eter
s Univeristy there and at Loyola Univerisity in New Orleans.
He served in the US Marine Corps during and after the Korean Conflict as a drill instructor at Parris Island and as a rifle squad leader with the 4th Marines in the Pacific. He was honorably discharged as a sergeant.
He was married to the late Jane Guarascio Semple for 42 uyears. He has two grown daughters, two grandchildren, and a foster son and his family.