A Life Chronicle

The Life & Times of Gus Allmacher

Born Gustave Allmacher in 1936 — "Sonny" to everyone who knew him. From a dyslexic kid nobody could teach to a paratrooper, a drive-in theater manager, a builder of parking lots out of swampland, and a Conservative Party chairman who never lost an argument in print — this is the record of a life, told in his own words wherever we could keep them.

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Gus Allmacher outside a Fort Lauderdale bakery, cigar in hand — Gus today, Fort Lauderdale

Who He Was

Born: October 5, 1936 — Mt. Kisco, New York
Passed
Known For: The Starlight Drive-In · The Parking Lot · Cortlandt Conservative Party
Family: Married Janzie Seltzer, 1963 — 60+ years together

Gus grew up in Astoria, Queens, and on his grandmother's farm in Brewster, New York, the oldest of four children in a large, close family. School fought him every step of the way — an undiagnosed dyslexia that wasn't identified until his late teens, after years of being told he was simply "dumb." He wasn't. He was smart, stubborn, and a fighter, in every sense of the word.

He built his life out of relationships: a 40-year bond with the man who gave him his first job at 14 and taught him to read, a 30-year business partnership turning a landlocked swamp into a commuter parking lot, and a decades-long second career as a combative, unapologetic voice in local Conservative Party politics.

"If you're not afraid, you're dangerous. I've always been dangerous."

This chronicle is being built from Gus's own written memoir, his published letters to the editor, and family photographs spanning nearly a century.

The Timeline

Seven Stops Along the Way

A life doesn't move in a straight line, but this one had seven clear waypoints. Each stop below can hold as much — or as little — as you have: a paragraph, a photograph, a voice recording, or all three.

Stop 01

1936 – 1949

Early Years

Gustave "Sonny" Allmacher was born October 5, 1936, in Mt. Kisco, New York — the first of four children, named for his father and grandfather before him. His sister Sissy followed in 1937, his brother Monkey (David) in 1939, and his sister Bonnie in 1947. He grew up in Astoria, Queens, in a household run by his grandmother, "Granma" Rebeca, the matriarch of a large, close-knit family with roots in Vienna and Poland.

School was a battle from the start. Undiagnosed dyslexia made reading and writing nearly impossible, and what teachers read as slowness, Gus felt as fury. "I understood everything the teacher said, but I couldn't get it when it was on the blackboard or in a book," he wrote. "This anger carried through the next fifty years of my life." The family split its time between the city during the week and his grandmother's farm upstate on weekends — a rhythm that shaped everything that came after.

Gus in football stance on a practice field, 1956, Croton-Harmon High School

Lillian and Gus Allmacher, Gus's parents, 1940

Gus in Astoria, Queens, standing next to the fire alarm box he pulled as a kid

INSERT AUDIO CLIP

Stop 02

~1943 – 1949

The Farm

His grandmother's 157-acre farm in Brewster, New York was the other half of Gus's childhood — cows, cornfields, and a barn that had already survived one insurance fire before he was born. One summer he and his siblings dug up bones by the creek, convinced they'd found dinosaurs; his mother had to explain they were cow bones from the fire, and that she'd cried for days as a girl because her cat died in it. They built a museum out of the bones anyway.

The farm was also where Gus's luck first got tested. At nine, a found box of .22 bullets and a hammer ended with his brother Monkey shot through the leg. A few summers later, curiosity about a box of dynamite caps found in a cousin's garage ended far worse: an explosion that hospitalized Gus head to toe and permanently blinded his cousin Butchie in one eye. "I've never touched dynamite again," he wrote.

INSERT AUDIO CLIP

Stop 03

1950 – 1972

The Starlight

The family moved to Croton-on-Hudson when Gus was about 13. At 14, a friend's tip led him to a job opening at a drive-in theater owned by Jerry Britchey — a WWII general turned Harvard Law lawyer turned theater magnate. It became a 40-year relationship. Britchey, recognizing Gus was sharp but couldn't read, personally tutored him after school and got him tested at Columbia University, where Gus finally learned he had a high IQ and dyslexia — not that he was "dumb," as school had always told him.

After the Army (drafted 1958, honorably discharged as a paratrooper in 1960), Gus returned to the theater business and became manager of the Starlight Drive-In itself in 1961. That same year he hired a young cashier for the summer — Janzie Seltzer, the girl he used to talk to on the stone wall outside his high school years earlier. They married in 1963 and honeymooned in Mexico. In 1964, Gus hosted Robert F. Kennedy's Senate campaign rally at the Starlight — 800 free admissions, Kennedy speaking from the roof of the projection booth — the event that pulled Gus into politics for good.

The Starlight Drive-In Theater exterior with a car parked outside

Two men standing outside the Starlight ticket booth, 1973

Billboard advertising the Starlight Drive-In Theater and golf driving range

Gus Allmacher as a paratrooper with the 101st Airborne, Fort Campbell, Kentucky, 1960

The Starlight Drive-In Theater on South Riverside Avenue, Croton, just after a rainstorm, circa 1948

The Starlight Drive-In Theater featured in Showmen's Trade Review, 1948

A 1955 Starlight Drive-In showtimes flyer listing The Glass Slipper, Timberjack, The Purple Plain, and Daddy Long Legs

A Starlight Drive-In poster advertising Anthony Quinn in R.P.M. and Tony Curtis in You Can't Win Them All, October 14-18

Starlight Drive-In posters for Concert for Bangladesh, July 5-11, and Walt Disney’s Swiss Family Robinson with 101 Dalmatians, May 24-30

A Starlight Drive-In Theater courtesy pass, admit one, No. 2941

Aerial view of the Starlight Drive-In's screen and curved parking rows beside the Route 9 bridge

Janzie, Gus, and Gus's mother on their wedding day, December 1, 1963

Gus and Janzie at the Copacabana in New York for their first anniversary, December 1964

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Stop 04

1970s – 1986

The Parking Lot

When the new Route 9 cut Jerry Britchey's remaining land off from the road entirely, Gus and his childhood friend Jimmy Coward saw an opportunity in the landlocked swamp: a commuter parking lot for the Harmon train station, the last electrified stop on the Hudson line. It took buying a sliver of land from a broke diner owner, brokering a road donation from the railroad to the village, and — improbably — a partnership with a Yonkers hauling company to fill the swamp with fifty years of discarded railroad ties. What started as a landlocked piece of nothing became, in Gus's words, worth "probably $1,000,000 overnight."

The business — formally North Branch Operating Company — ran for decades. Gus became sole owner alongside Jimmy after buying out their third partner, and the Parking Lot became as much a part of Croton's daily life as the Starlight had been.

Aerial view of the commuter parking lot, 1978

Gus, Jimmy, and Jerry with a child and a dog in the Parking Lot office

Gus and Jimmy Coward on the golf course, Gus lining up a putt

Gus and Jimmy Coward sitting in a golf cart

Newspaper clipping: 'Croton duo lived American dream' — village buys parking lot from Gus Allmacher, James Coward

Newspaper clipping continued: 'No regrets' — Allmacher and Coward on selling the parking lot

Newspaper clipping continued: 'Parking: Partners sell lot' — Croton pays $7.8 million for the Allmacher & Coward lot

Stop 05

1964 – present

Politics

Hosting Robert Kennedy's 1964 Senate rally at the Starlight pulled Gus into local politics, and he stayed for decades — as Chairman of the Town of Cortlandt Conservative Party, and later First Vice Chairman of the Westchester County Conservative Party. He was a prolific, combative letter-writer, sparring regularly with the Croton-Cortlandt News' Democratic correspondents over local spending and elections.

"My mother always told me to pick who I sit with. I took the job on the Planning Board under a good chairman and a board made up of men, not lackeys."

Two confirmed letters to the editor, Croton-Cortlandt News:

Feb. 12, 1981 — "Better off": "After reading the outright lies and vicious attacks on Supervisor DiGiacomo and Councilwoman Betty Basel by Mr. Delamater, the Democratic Town Chairman, you can see with your own eyes what last year's Democratic Candidate Steve Lewins meant when he called Mr. Delamater 'inept' and 'stupid'... Republicans are better off with you as Chairman of the Democratic Party than anybody else." — Gus Allmacher, Lakeview Ave. East, Cortlandt

"Some party" (date to be confirmed): "It seems my critics scream every week about something I said the week before — yet somehow they never seem to answer the questions about Alfred Myers' record..." — Gus Allmacher, 16 Lakeview Ave. East, Cortlandt