A recent Newsday survey of local historical societies took, quite unintentionally I'm sure, a rather dim view of their vigor and versality; a gloomy outlook more fitting for a profile of some Shaker-like sect dying off without new blood. This is misleading on two accounts.

Firstly, local historical organizations such as the Levittown Historical Society offer a "public history." That is to say, that run by volunteers like myself rather than paid administrators, local societies present a history conceptualized by residents interwoven within academic approaches. A "public history" is one as multidisciplinary as any of the more formalized methodologies encompassed by simplistic standardized text books and commercial publications, diluted curricula, and the detached culture of the Ivory Tower with its pretentious jargon and pious political correctness. Indeed, the rapprochement to local history in recent years - ironically championed by Newsday's "Long Island/Our Story" series - suggests that local historical societies are beginning to correct the defect of the before mentioned.

Rosalyn Baxandell and Elizabeth Ewen's recent Picture Windows: How the Suburbs Happened, are at the cutting edge of this revisionism. The authors of the book changed their minds in the course of writing, confessing that when they set out to write about suburbia they had a stereotypical view. Levittown's history, in part, was responsible for this reappraisal.

One might want to keep in mind, too, that 10 years ago, this letter and many of the other items I have written celebrating the Levittown legacy, would have been considered quaint. Fellow Levittowners, our critics are enjoying a slice of humble pie.

Secondly, sporadic meeting attendance, shoestring budgets, limited publicity opportunities and the struggle for recognition among professional historians is likewise misleading. Local societies have generally older core members, due to the time restraints many young people face. Levittown's historical society's total membership and public support hails from a broad cross section of the population.

Until very recently, the local historian was seen as a rambling old- timer. We are impressed by the faithful attendance of our seniors at monthly meetings of the Levittown Historical Society, and not always conspicuous is our younger membership, including baby-boomers and net surfers. As I write these words, the torch is being passed.

The return of local historical consciousness is part and parcel of a technology driven informational revolution that is operating right at the grassroots, greatly affecting areas such as academics. This "democratization" of academia is not merely technological but organizational as well. Consider that the biological sciences are emerging from what entomologist William Morton Wheeler called "the dry rot of academic biology." In Figments of Reality: The Evolution of the Curious Mind, Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen write that:

"Not long ago, most of the world's biology departments got rid of all the old fogies doing things like zoology, botany, and taxonomy because they knew that the only important biology in the world was molecular. Now that environmental problems such as algal blooms are on the agenda, they are trying desperately to reconstitute the kind of expertise that resided in those old fogies."

For different reasons, but with akin circumstances, this is what is happening to historical studies. In the schools, history, long ago usurped by "social studies," is making a return. We at the Levittown Historical Society delight in helping journalists, educators, and professional historians in this fashion. First and foremost, however, is our commitment to Levittown.