Queens Chronicle, November 12, 2014

Bob Holden and his pal Pete Savage were walking up Eliot Avenue in Middle Village one day in 1968 looking for girls — they were 16, what else would they be doing? — when they saw two up ahead near Lutheran Avenue, going the same direction they were.

Savage went up the block to check them out. He came back quickly with a blunt report.

“Hey Holden, they’re Chinese,” he said, only he used a less-kind term.

“So what?” Holden said. “I want the taller one.”

It was Bob’s first indication that the girl he would eventually marry, Amy Sciulli, was seen as different by people in the Middle Village-Maspeth area where they both lived. For Amy, if she had heard Pete, the casual slur would have been nothing new.

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