At midnight Sunday, as the ball drops in Times Square and ushers in 2024, the New Year’s Eve anthem of “Auld Lang Syne” will broadcast for the tens of thousands in attendance and the millions watching at home.
And the first voice they’ll hear is Guy Lombardo, who popularized the Scottish folk song and is known to many in the community he called home as “Mr. Freeport.”
The legendary big band leader, alongside his Royal Canadians orchestra, entertained New Year’s Eve audiences on the radio, and later on television, for nearly five decades at the Roosevelt Hotel and the Waldorf Astoria in New York City, and was once as synonymous with the holiday as Dick Clark or Ryan Seacrest.
“I love that old style of music and a tradition I wish was still around,” said Pastor Richard Ishmael, a Christian hip-hop musician who lives in one of the five homes built on the Freeport property where Lombardo lived for nearly four decades. “He’s a big part of our history, and I don’t think he gets enough credit. He’s fading as a memory and I’d like to see some things to keep his memory alive. He was a staple of Freeport.”
While the road running along the Freeport Long Creek Marina, where the dashing entertainer lived, was later renamed Guy Lombardo Avenue, and a historical marker notes the house he shared with his wife, Lilliebell, there are scant other reminders in Freeport of the original “Mr. New Year’s Eve.”
The Lombardos came to Long Island in 1933, living on the boat “Tempo” for the summer season on Freeport’s Woodcleft Canal and eating at Otto’s Sea Grill on what is now known as the Nautical Mile. In 1940, they moved into a large estate on South Grove Street. The couple, who met at a Lombardo show in Cleveland, were married 51 years and did not have children.
“He was Freeport’s favorite son, and he was a really nice guy and a good citizen,” said Regina Feeney, a historian at the Freeport Library who recalled that Lombardo would park…
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