I remember right about that time [the Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1962], Dad taking the whole family and saying, ‘You know this full basement we have down here, if we have to, this is a safe place to come. You need to be safe and this is where you can be safe, underneath.’  Because that was the only part of the basement that was so secure that if the house collapsed, it wouldn’t.”

-Jim Castagneto, son of Col. Frank Castagneto, Fort Slocum’s commanding officer, who was 10 years of age in 1962

(interviewed 2007)