Office of the Saratoga Springs City Historian West Side Oral Narrative Collection
Edith Van Dorn Luce (1928-2009) was born in Saratoga Springs, New York, to a family with ties to settlers who had arrived in the area as earlier as 1796. In this conversation, she warmly shares memories of her youth on the West Side, including attending School No. 1, ice skating, roller skating, winter sleigh rides, dancing, and swimming at King’s water hole. She mentions significant people in her life—including her childhood friend Roy Luce whom she married during World War II—and cherished places within the tight-knit West Side neighborhood where she and her husband raised four children in a house they owned for over forty years. Edith also discusses working as a switchboard operator at the New York Telephone Company, and she shares how she has pursued a lifelong passion for creating arts and crafts, including paintings of historic buildings and places of the city she loved.