<MUSIC>

 

Lucille Horn (LH): When I was born, My father said I was so tiny, he could hold me in his hand. I think I was only about two pounds, and I couldn’t live on my own. I was too weak to survive.

 

Barbara Horn (BH): So the hospital didn’t have anything to offer?

 

LH: No, they didn’t have any help for me at all. It was just, you die because you didn’t belong in the world. 

 

KK: In 1920, a father made a split-second decision during a moment of desperation… 

 

LH: My father was looking for a blanket or a towel to wrap me up in, and somebody said, ”Where are you going?” And he said, ”I’m taking her to the incubator in Coney Island.” 

 

KK: In this episode…how a sideshow attraction saved thousands of lives…and changed the course of American medicine.

 

It’s the StoryCorps podcast from NPR…I’m Kamilah Kashanie. 

 

<MUSIC>

 

KK: Even if you’ve never lived in New York City, you’ve probably heard of Coney Island… it has a boardwalk, a theme park, Nathan’s hot dogs …and this really rich, colorful, and kinda bizarre history of “freak shows” …you know, like, tattooed ladies and sword swallowers…

 

Well, in the Summer of 1903…a brand new sideshow opened. An article in a local Brooklyn newspaper at the time, quoted the barkers from the boardwalk …who were trying to get people to come see the exhibit….

 

Here’s what it said: 

 

VO Actor: “Come this way, ladies and gentlemen! See the tiniest little bits of humanity in the world warmed, nourished and fed. Maybe the future president is inside!…All done by the baby incubator! Step right in and watch the babies grow well and strong before your eyes.”

 

KK: Baby incubators can be found in most hospitals or NICU’s today…but it wasn’t always that way. 

 

In the early 1900s, a man named Martin Couney helped pioneer this technology. But when he brought incubators to the US from Europe, he was rejected from the medical community. 

So each summer for 40 years, he funded his work by displaying the tiny babies at Coney Island’s Luna Park…and charging admission. It cost 25-cents to enter. 

Lucille: They thought he was crazy. But his daughter was a preemie and he saved her. You know, he treated her and she was alive.  

 

Barbara: So then he decided to do something. And that ended up saving you. 

 

Lucille: Thank God for Coney Island. 

 

KK: Lucille Horn was born premature in 1920. And at the age of 95, she sat down with her daughter Barbara to talk about how she ended up in one of Martin Couney’s incubators. 

 

[TAPE Horn]

 

Lucille Horn (LH): The doctor said, ”There’s not a chance in hell that she’ll live.” My father said, ”But she’s alive now.” He hailed a taxicab and took me to Doctor Couney’s exhibit. And that’s where I stayed for about six months.

 

BH: Do you know how your parents knew about the incubators?

 

LH: They saw the exhibit on their honeymoon. You had to pay to go in, and then the babies would be all lined up in special units like a crib. It was an enclosed crib.

 

BH: How do you feel knowing that people paid to see you?

 

LH: It’s strange, but as long as they saw me and I was alive, it was alright. I think it was definitely more of a freak show. Something that they ordinarily did not see. Thank God my parents went in. Because if they hadn’t looked at them, I wouldn’t be here talking.

 

LH: But I remember going when I was older to see the babies. I was walking on the boardwalk and I walked past it and I realized my parents had told me I was put in the incubator.

 

BH: You met Doctor Couney, right?

 

LH: Yes, he happened to be there at the time I went in. And I went over and I introduced myself to him. And there was a man standing in front of one of the incubators looking at his baby, and Doctor Couney went over to him and he tapped him on the shoulder, and he said, ”Look at this young lady. She’s one of our babies. And that’s how your baby’s gonna grow up.” 

 

It made me feel strange, as if I was something that wasn’t normal, you know, it was funny. He was very nice. He said, We’re very proud of you and we’re very glad you came here. I remember he gave me a hug before I left. 

 

BH: And you must have told him you went to nursing school. 

 

LH: I did. When I received my cap in nursing school.—

 

BH: He sent you a corsage.

 

LH: Yep. You know, there weren’t many doctors then that would have done anything for me. And here I am, ninety-four years later, all in one piece. I’m thankful to be here.

 

<MUSIC>

 

KK: That was Lucille Horn, who was one of the incubator babies of Coney Island…speaking with her daughter, Barbara, in Long Beach, NY. 

…there’s a lot of mystery around Martin Couney. He may or may not have been a real doctor. There is no record of his medical license or degree in the US or Europe.

But even so, with the help of several nurses, he is credited with saving at least 6,500 babies…and he did this for 40 years with his exhibition. 

 

He died in 1950…shortly after incubators had been introduced to most U.S. hospitals. 

 

<MUSIC>

 

Something else that Lucille talked a LOT about in her interview…is the fact that she was born a twin. 

 

LH: They told me that I had a sister, she was never named. And she died at birth. 

 

I wish she had lived. But she’s up in heaven, and I’m down here. 

 

<MUSIC>

 

Lucille died two years after recording her StoryCorps interview…she was 96 years old. 

 

Her daughter, Barbara, wrote to us:

 

Mom always wondered: “What would it be like to have my twin sister around?” She never knew what happened to her twin’s remains. When making arrangements for Mom’s burial, Evergreen Cemetery informed us that the family plot had three available graves. One grave appeared to contain the remains of an infant, also born in May 1920. 

 

We buried Mom in the grave with her sister.

 

At birth, they had been separated; in death, they were reunited.

 

<MUSIC>

 

KK: When we come back… we’ll hear from someone else who made Coney Island their home…

 

Stay with us.

 

<MIDROLL>

 

KK: We wanted to leave you with one more story from Coney Island. It comes from Sound Portraits Productions – that was Dave Isay’s radio documentary nonprofit before he founded StoryCorps. 

 

Today, Coney Island has one very famous, very old, wooden roller coaster called the Cyclone. 

 

But for decades there were TWO iconic coasters. The other one was called the Thunderbolt. 

 

Back in 2000, the city of New York decided to tear it down…This was a hard moment for Mae Timpano (tim-PAH-no)… 

 

In 1946, Mae was working as a waitress on Coney Island when she met Fred Moran, who owned and operated the Thunderbolt roller coaster…

 

They fell in love… and for 40 years, they lived together in a house that stood… under the roller coaster. 

 

Mae Timpano (MT): It’s hard to say how you get to know a person when you’re waiting on him seven days a week. 

 

[MUSIC] 

 

I knew Freddy — I got to know Freddy, because he came in every morning and every afternoon, and then when we got friendly, he was in pretty near every three or four hours.  He was big and heavy. I didn’t care, he was . . . I liked him. I liked his personality. He was funny, he was good to me. Whenever he would put his arms around me I would feel the world — nobody could hurt me.

 

I went out with him a few times. And then one night he came and he says, ”When you finish, do you want to come up to my house?” I said, ”Where do you live?” He says, ”Under the roller coaster.” And I said ”You’re kidding.” He says, ”No, no.” He says, ”I’ll pick you up and we’ll go over to my house.” I says okay. So we went over to the house. I was hungry so he went over to Nathan’s to get frankfurters and French fries. And he had a bottle of Rémy Martins brandy. And we were sipping that, listening to records. That’s how it started. And then for forty years, we had a lot of fun together.

 

The Cyclone has a bigger dip, a bigger fall. The Thunderbolt was rougher in the turns. You know when you went down you bounced out of the car almost. The car would be practically sideways.

 

If you were a stranger and you came in the house, and you would hear it go over, you’d say ”What’s that? Thunder?” You know, it sounded like thunder. A few things, you know, broke. My perfume tray fell off one time. Pictures would be a little slanty, but not much. I had wall-to-wall mirrors, three bedrooms, three bathrooms, a large living room, dining room, kitchen. But it was like living in the country. I was in the country in the middle of the city.

 

I got a call from California. A man out in California called me. And he says, ”Mae do you know what they’re doing today?” And I said, ”No.” He says go down to Coney Island they’re tearing your house down. I says you’re kidding. He says no. I didn’t own it anymore. I got dressed, I went down, and sure enough they were tearing my house down.

 

[TAPE Sound of the demolition]

 

It was sad standing there looking at it. Seemed like every — all my memories just wiped out. But everything changes. I don’t know if it was for the better. We’ll see when they park the cars there. It looks like it’s gonna be a parking lot.

 

Lots of times I think of this, and before you know it I’m in tears. And I figure, no, I want to get away from that, you know. But uh… it’s very sad thinking back, you know, on it. I don’t want to remember anymore.

 

<MUSIC>

 

KK: That was Mae Timpano talking about living underneath the Thunderbolt roller coaster at Coney Island.

 

That’s all for this episode.

 

It was produced by Jasmyn Morris and Michael Garofalo, who is our Executive Producer. Our Senior Producer is Eleanor Vassili. Max Jungreis is our Associate Producer. Our Technical Director is Jarrett Floyd, who also composed our theme song. Special thanks to Mayra Sierra, Chris Dikeman and to David Miller who produced the Sound Portraits story.

 

Find out what music we used on our website StoryCorps-dot-org. While there, check out original artwork by Lyne Lucine.