Stanley Peck, among others, collaborates on maintaining the accuracy and authenticity of this compilation.

In keeping with athletics, our collection is a team effort, various Club members having contributed.  A criterion for inclusion was bona fide residence in Forest Hills.  An exception is Rego Park’s Lou Wertz, who played the piano nightly at the Forest Hill Inn Grill.

As evanescent as fame may be for its individual residents, Forest Hills itself endures as a well-known and admired community.  (See below, A Modern Arcadia.) Forest Hills certainly enjoys an ample share of accomplished, widely acknowledged residents.  An explanation for such a magnetic attraction may well lie in its intrinsic worth as a pleasant place to live;  Also in its proximity to the world's pre-eminent city, of which it is a suburban part;  As well as being an established town in the United States of America, the country with the planet's largest economy.  All considered, for Forest Hills a trifecta kind of confluence.

On our list, where we were unsure of accuracy, I have so indicated with a question mark: “(?)” The Forest Hills Club acknowledges an ample element of arbitrariness in the grouping “Famous Forest Hillians,” with its three subsets.  Observers are therefore encouraged to propose additions and corrections.  Unlike one of our notable’s tombstones, existing entries are entirely editable.

“Fame is nothing but an empty name,” chided Charles Churchill in The Ghost, 1763.

Another apt aphorism, albeit anonymous, arrests attention:  “Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, riches take wings.  Only one thing endures, and that is character.”

Amen!

Bibliography: 
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A Modern Arcadia: Frederick Law Olmstead Jr. and the Plan for Forest Hills Gardens.  Susan L. Klaus.  University of Massachusetts Press, 2002.

An Illustrated History: Forest Hills.  Robert Minton.  Focuses on the W.S.T.C.   J.B. Lippencott Company, 1975. 

“Celebrities Living in Forest Hills” and “Forest Hills Gardens Self-Tour and Houses of Notables.”  Both by Jeff Gottlieb (via Robert Marsh Hof) in private research during the early 1990s in and around Forest Hills including the Queens Historical Society. 

Forest Hills Diary: The Crises of Low-Income Housing.  Mario Cuomo (with preface by Jimmy Breslin).  Describes a controversial proposal by the City of New York to establish  so-called scatter site housing in Forest Hills by the border with Corona near the Fairview Apartments.   Random House, 1974.

“Forest Hills, New York: A Piece of Small Town America Smack Dab in New York City.”  Bonnie Fernald Fontayne and Cynthia Fontayne of the Fontayne Group, Inc., 1998 – 2002. 

“The Community House Bulletin: Published Ever [sic] So Often by the Community House Staff.”  December 30, 1929.  Courtesy of Susanna MacInnes Hof.