The Oneida Daily Dispatch (Oneida, NY)
FOND MEMORIES
Former and current residents recall Devereaux Street home
ONEIDA, N.Y. » Melissa Krzal can still recall the ins and outs of her grandparents’ Devereaux Street home decades after leaving Oneida.
“I can still see that house in my mind,” Krzal said. “I could tell you the set-up of how that house was, just from memory.”
The 536 Devereaux St. home is one of 60 homes slated for demolition as part of a FEMA buyout related to flooding that devastated the area in 2013. Several have already been torn down, but their memories live on in those who once lived in the Flats.
Krzal was born and raised in Oneida, living on the corner of Earl and Seneca streets un- til she was 21. She would eventually marry and move out of state, following the job market before settling down in Vermont in 1973. Now 68, Krzal found the family home once more in her life.
“My grandfather and grandmother owned that house,” she
said. “They bought it in the ‘50s, between 1955 and 1960, I think.”
Jane and Earl Griffin lived at the Devereaux Street house for years after marrying. At 13 months old, Krzal’s biological grandmother died, so she grew up with Jane as her grandmother.
“My grandmother had a son that was two years older than me and a year older than my sister. We’d go over to her house and play or have picnics or read comic books. My grandmother had a lot of comic books,” Krzal recalled. “She had ‘Donald Duck,’ ‘Archie,’ ‘Veronica’ and we’d sit and read. And MAD Magazine. They don’t make MAD Magazine like they used to.”
Krzal said she and the other kids would play hideand-seek along the cityowner berm behind her grandparents’ house, or play in the creek.
“It’s just a house, but for me, it represents family, the love inside and all the good times we had,” Krzal said. “I’m a little sad it’s going, but I still have my memories.”
While Krzal returned to Oneida a few times, the last time was when her father died in April 1987. She walked from her father’s house to Devereaux Street to visit her grandmother and whenever she was in the area, she’d make time to stop and see it.
Krzal isn’t the only one who has good memories about the house. Sally Ready, Krzal’s step-aunt, was engaged and married at 536 Devereaux St.
“My mom and my stepdad, they moved there from Little Falls. Doug and I were married from that house in 1960. I became engaged there, too in ‘58 I think. Everybody dressed up and I put the corsage on my mom in front of the mirror and somebody took the picture,” Ready said.
Ready said her mother “got along with everyone,” but as she grew older, the neighborhood began to change. Her mother eventually sold the house and moved to the Oneida Towers.
The house always seems to be in the back of Ready and Krzal’s minds. Even while out of state, Krzal finds her grandparent’s old home coming up.
“That house keeps reaching out to me.” Krzal said. “Every so often, I keep hearing about it. I’ve been in Vermont for quite a while and I worked for the post office in computer forwarding. If you moved, we forwarded your mail and I got a change of address form from somebody that was moving to that house from Vermont.”