William Riker Remembers…
Interview, October 2008

As a very young child, in the summers of 1942 and 1943, William (Bill) Riker lived at the home of his grandmother, Mary Riker, at 99 Rumson Road. Winters were spent at her house on E. 70th Street in New York. Bill’s mother and sisters were in Florida, where his father, who commanded a ship in the Navy, was based. But the risk of tropical disease in Florida was thought to be too great for an infant in the days before penicillin. When in 1944 his father (also William) was transferred to a ship in the pacific, the rest of the family (Bill, his mother and his three older sisters) returned permanently to their home on Bingham Avenue in Rumson.

In the 1940s, Mrs. Henry I. (Mary J.) Riker (seated in chair) held family luncheons at her home every Sunday. In this photo taken at the front entrance in 1943 or 1944, the woman standing at right is Mrs. William C. Riker, mother of Bill Riker. The man seated in the foreground is Dr. John L. Riker, son of Mrs. Henry Riker. Bill Riker, who is not in the photo, would have been younger than two at the time. “I was probably inside taking a nap,” he says.

Bill notes that in the early years of the century Sea Bright exceeded Rumson in prestige. By the 1930s and 1940s Rumson was in transition from a farming community to an estate area. “Our side (the west) of Bingham Avenue had three properties (Metcalf, Stout and Riker) between Rumson and Ridge Roads,” he says. We had animals, but it was a hobby farm at best. The east side of Bingham Avenue from Rumson Road to Ridge Road was owned by Mike Jacobs, who had a pure breed cattle farm but was primarily a boxing promoter.”

He adds, “Those who bought farm land in Rumson from the 1930s forward did so to develop country estates and homes, as the ocean had begun to encroach upon the beaches of Sea Bright and Monmouth Beach.” Mary Riker had purchased her country house in 1934.

An artist’s rendering of Linden Crest reveals the massive size of the original house at 99 Rumson Road. In 1952, two sections of the house on the left side were removed and relocated to separate lots on Bingham Avenue.

Bill Riker’s earliest memory of his grandmother’s home, then called “Linden Crest,” is the pungent aroma of the English boxwood that grew in large clumps around the grounds. “It permeated the area,” he remembers. He also recalls that prior to heavy rains the staff would place pans and buckets at places where they knew the rain would come through the slate roof. (Lloyd Christianson solved the problem years later when he found blocked gutters inside the attic.)

Bill Riker today in his Locust garden.

Bill’s grandmother, a widow of ample means, mandated that the family gather at her house for luncheon each Sunday. There was a children’s table for Bill, his sisters and assorted cousins. The Sunday luncheon tradition continued until his grandmother’s death in the summer of 1947. Bill continues to live in Monmouth County; he and his wife are residents of Locust.

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