NAMES IN THE NEWS : Mickey Spillane Way Dedicated

ELIZABETH, N.J. —  A street that runs beside Mickey Spillane’s old elementary school now bears the author’s name.

One of Spillane’s grade school teachers showed up for the dedication ceremony attended by the writer Thursday, along with dozens of young students from the Theodore Roosevelt Elementary and Middle schools.

“At least it’s paved,” the 72-year-old Spillane said of Mickey Spillane Way, which runs by the schools. “If it wasn’t paved, I wouldn’t go.”

Spillane, who has written more than 40 detective novels featuring the hard-boiled private eye Mike Hammer, said he attended grades three through six at Roosevelt Elementary.

The writer’s family moved to Elizabeth in 1918, when he was a month old. He lived here until his senior year of high school, he said.

Spillane has been living in Murrell’s Inlet, S.C., where he’s finishing a novel and rebuilding his home. The novel was lost and the house destroyed last fall in Hurricane Hugo.