North Tonawanda History Museum © The Croff Family

Roncroff Drive was named by a loving father for his little son. In 1948, Louis Burton (Burt) Croff, ran a general contracting company named Roncroff, Inc., which sought to develop a large tract of land along Sweeney Street for housing. Originally planned to include streets, drives, and lanes, a significant amount of the land was wooded or swampland. It extended through to Wright Avenue.

Croff proceeded with his development and laid out Roncroff Drive, which he named after his son Ronald Croff. He planned to include a series of cross streets, one of which was to be named Sondra Lane after his daughter, but because of Croff’s untimely death in December of 1949, these streets were never built. Present day Sandra Lane was intended by the developer to be Sondra Lane.

The large ranch style home at 65 Roncroff Drive was the builder’s own home. Located on the northeast corner of Roncroff Drive at Sweeney Street, it was his widow’s home until she passed away in 1996. Eva Claire (known as “Peg”) Croff later remarried and became Eva Claire Hagedorn.

The home Croff built for his own family had some unique features, including a large chest freezer which was lowered into the basement before the house was built over it. It was too big for them to have gotten it in after the house was completed. It had a television antenna which could be rotated from within the house, something unheard of at that time. The basement floor was heated.

After Burt’s death, Peg attempted to continue the business under her direction. It was not common in those days for a woman to run a business, especially a contracting business. Ben Fedeson had worked for Burt, and when Burt died, Peg used his service to continue building. Eventually, she sold out and Sam D’Angelo completed the construction of homes on Roncroff Drive. Among the original buyers of homes on the street who remain in their homes at the time of the writing of this book are James Hooper at 142 Roncroff Drive and Mrs. William Tubbs at 113 Roncroff Drive.

Burt Croff was also a noted Buffalo area parachute jumper. He had hoped to obtain the local dealership for Lustron Homes, made of steel covered with porcelain enamel inside and out. Burt and then Mayor Stanley Rosinski traveled together to Cleveland Ohio, with a Tonawanda News reporter accompanying them, to preview the Lustron Home. They flew in Burt’s twin-engined Cessna. The reporter called it a trip “to see a home of tomorrow via the businessman’s transportation of tomorrow.”

Burt began flying in 1924 and once flew Henry Ford in a tri-motor plane. Also during Rosinski’s term in office, Burt and North Tonawanda patrolman Jerome Kalota flew Burt’s plane over the Tonawandas, showering handbills announcing the Stephen Sikora Legion Post Field Day which was to raise funds for a new post home.

In August 1937, Burt was described in the Buffalo Courier-Express as “our only local parachute jumper,..one of less than a dozen Americans with more than 600 such jumps to his credit.” He lived at 507 Stenzil Street at that time.

He had made his first parachute jump on a dare when he was 14 years old while visiting the Detroit airport when he was a sophomore at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. He became a parachute jumper, and dropped out of college, making an average of $250 a week. At that time, there were only fifteen qualified jumpers in the country.

Burt became associated with Curtiss Aeroplane & Motor Company as a tool and die maker in 1937. He continued his parachute jumping. He was a golf enthusiast and also enjoyed horseback riding. He also drove race cars in Cleveland and was a stunt flier. He taught many people to jump with parachutes. A later article indicates that he made nearly 800 jumps after 1927.