The Borough's Humble Historian

Municipal historian. It's a job that Fair Lawn resident Jane Diepeveen was hesitant to accept at all.

"I said, 'Maybe you should ask someone [else]!'" Diepeveen admits, laughing. "[But then-mayor] Mary Burdick, who I knew from the League of Women Voters, insisted that she wanted me to do it."

Not that Diepeveen–author of Fair Lawn New Jersey: Historic Tales from Settlement to Suburb, released in February 2010–is complaining. Nor is she saying that she was unfit for the job. A resident of Fair Lawn since the age of 3, Diepeveen has seen over five decades worth of changes to her town. In fact, she and her mother accumulated a sizeable collection of newspaper articles chronicling these changes, which Jane still has in her possession today.

As an adult, Diepeveen was a member of the Planning Board (a position she kept for 20 years) and has been with the League of Women Voters since the age of 21. As part of her role within the organization, she helped write and edit several editions of Know Your Town, a book which is published every decade. And in 2000, she co-authored a book for Arcadia Press called Images of America: Fair Lawn with her friend and former Fair Lawn borough council member Elaine Winshell.

So when History Press contacted Diepeveen about writing a book on Fair Lawn for its American Chronicles series, she wasn't the least bit miffed–despite the fact that this new book would be much wordier than the photo-intensive Images of America. "When you are a community planner, you write a lot of reports," Diepeveen said. Intensely focused on the project, Diepeveen kept herself on a strict schedule, writing a bit every single afternoon and evening, allowing herself only one day off per month. "Thanks go to…my husband…for his patience with my long hours at the computer," Diepeveen writes in the Acknowledgements section at the beginning of the book. "[History Press] wanted 30,000 words," she writes, "but [in the end] I gave them 35,000."

In just seven months, the text portions of the book were completed. With the addition of photographs and other documentation such as deeds, maps and floor plans–which were generously donated–Fair Lawn New Jersey: Historic Tales from Settlement to Suburb this past February.

The book is an in-depth narrative chronicling the history of Fair Lawn–which wasn't incorporated until 1924–beginning with its very first inhabitants, the Lenape Indians, in the 1600s. In each chapter, Diepeveen focuses on specific topics in Fair Lawn's history, such as Garretson Farm, Fair Lawn's earliest settlement; the history of Dunkerhook; the origins of the name "Fair Lawn" (which was mis-documented as "Fairlawn" for a time); the genesis of street names; the development of the Radburn community, which was advertised as the "Town for the Motor Age;" and the evolution of Fair Lawn from a farming community to the industrialized town it is today.

Copies of Fair Lawn New Jersey: Historic Tales from Settlement to Suburb can be purchased through Amazon.com.