The Orangetown Known Throughout The World

Let's start with the Lederle Laboratories, or what followed. It started in 1907 on Middletown Road in the Hamlet of Pearl River and kept changing its name to American Cyanamid to Wyeth to Pfizer. What I do know is how much the research that took place on its 99 acres impacted the entire world.

Just the words and names of diseases and drugs on its records scream volumes, such as the small pox vaccine, tuberculosis, aureomycin, oral polio vaccine [Orimule], the anti-cancer Novatrone, tetanus and more, much more.

But as a person who grew up listing to the radio every day and evening about WW II, I was thrilled to learn that they were the largest supplier of all of the sterile blood plasm + 1/3 of all the typhus vaccine + 1/3 of all the gas gangrene antitoxin +1/3 of the influenza vaccine to our war warriors. This made a difference in the USA's ability to save the world from the attempts of Germany and Japan to rule the world.

Moving on to 1949 when the Lamont [& later Doherty] Earth Observatory of Columbia University appeared in the hamlet of Palisades. It is our planet's greatest global research center of earth sciences. It maps the ocean floor with not only very advanced technology but with a 235 foot research ship that has sailed all the world's seas. It is the collector of all the fundamental knowledge of the origin, evolution and future of the earth.

Finally, let's talk about the New York State Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research that came into the hamlet of Orangeburg in 1952. It's my particularly favorite. Its research into psychopharmacological resource for schizophrenia, mood disorders, dementia, alzheimers, etc. has had a very positive impact on the world. Its research played a huge role in the deinstitutionalization of mega facilities for our intellectual disabled and our mentally ill.

Ergo, our wee Town in our wee County is host to three of the world's iconic research centers, maybe not the most or biggest but quality counts too.