Cynthia, not Ginny, say classmates

The consensus is this is Cynthia Barker, not Ginny Spataza.

An old photo published on November 12 with the profile of Billy Dickerson has stirred up quite a response from our readers.


Among the young ladies surrounding a uniformed Billy, just before he headed off to World War II, was a dark-haired gal in a Shelter Island School letter sweater. Billy couldn’t see the face well enough to ID his friend. The majority of Islanders shown the picture before it went to print thought that the girl was Ginny Spataza.


Not so, said about a half-dozen readers, including some classmates of the school girls and at least one in the photo.


Edith Lechmanski, Betty Kontje, Fran Klenawicus Johnson (who was in the photo), Tom Young and Tom McNamara (who wrote from Florida) all say, definitively, that it is Cynthia Barker.


Thank you for helping us set the record straight.