■HISTORY HALF A CENTURY By Orestes Gonzalez TOGETHER LIC Residents for 32 years, Donald and Trudy McDonald will celebrate 51 years of marriage this coming February, and thus have witnessed the changes in their LIC neighborhood first hand It was 1965 and Donald McDonald had seen this pretty blonde with the light blue eyes in Sunnyside many times before, but had never approached her. This time, he spotted her at the local laundromat, waiting for her laundry. Trudy was her name, and she was sitting inside, holding a drivers license manual, intently reading its content. He saw this as an opportunity. “Excuse me”, he said,” Are you learning to drive?” She looked up and smiled affirmatively. “Well, I just happen to own an old jalopy. I really don’t care if it gets more dents, so if you want, I can let you drive it.” Thus began a relationship that culminated in marriage 3 months later. At 38, Donald McDonald knew it was now or never. “I showed a friend of mine a photo of her and he said, “Wow, this ones a keeper. You need to marry that girl. You can’t pass this one up.” He courted her fervently, going out on their first date with her mother. Eventually, Trudy’s mother moved back to her native Czechoslovakia. And Donald, originally from Canada by way of New Jersey, moved in right away. ‘”I lost a closet but gained a husband” she now says gleefully. “He was a very charming guy. He had a pilot’s license and would fly me from an airstrip in New Jersey to have lunch in Pennsylvania,” she said. “We both shared a love of travel and adventure. He was hard to resist.” For the past 50 years, Donald and Trudy McDonald have lived all over Queens. They first lived in a $67 a month apartment in Sunnyside, then in another one in Elmhurst. She needed to be close to her job as a physical therapist at Jamaica Hospital. He was a high school biology teacher in Manhattan and needed to be close to the subways as well. By 1975, they thought investing in an apartment was a good idea, and decided to put a deposit on a nice two bedroom co-op in Jackson Heights. “We wanted the ease of a co-op so we can take off during Donald’s long summer school hiatus ”. But a chance encounter with a lady on the subway changed their plans. “I met this lady whose husband was very sick. She lived in LIC and was looking for help in caring for her husband. They lived in a big two-story house, close to Queens Plaza,” Trudy said. “The rent was very low. It was a good situation for us.” They moved in and helped her for a long time, eventually buying the house. But Long Island City was a very different place in the late 1970s. “In the day it was active and pleasant, with lots of stores on Jackson Avenue. But at night it was a different story. The streetwalkers and the Johns would take over the warehouse areas,” Trudy said. “Drugs were sold. The transient car traffic from other parts of the city would clog up the streets. Nobody had told us about that although, Donald had a friend that said he wouldn’t visit us if we moved here.” Residents would stay inside and avoid going out or avoiding certain streets at
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