John D. Re, 54, an East Hampton man accused by the F.B.I. earlier this year of selling forged Jackson Pollock paintings, pleaded guilty on Monday in federal court in Manhattan to one count of wire fraud. He could face up to 20 years in federal prison when he is sentenced by Judge P. Kevin Castel on April 10.

According to the F.B.I., Mr. Re made his first sale of the allegedly fraudulent Pollock and Willem de Kooning paintings in 2005, claiming that the trove had come from the estate of an East Hampton antiques dealer and restorer, George Schulte.

Mr. Re told buyers that he had come across the paintings in a basement after Mr. Schulte died in 1999. He said that he had been hired to clean out the space by Mr. Schulte's wife, Barbara.

Mr. Re described the paintings to one buyer as "the greatest contemporary art find in history."

During his court appearance on Monday, Mr. Re admitted that he had committed a crime when he falsely used the Schultes to support the paintings' provenance in an attempt via email to authenticate them for sale.

In all, Meredith Savona, a special agent for the F.B.I. who deals in art fraud, said Mr. Re took in almost $1.9 million on sales of about $2.5 million conducted through personal contacts with individuals and with others that he had gotten to know on eBay.

"Re said he would take the weight for anything he did that was wrong, but that he did not think he had done anything wrong," Ms. Savona wrote in a statement that produced Mr. Re's original arrest warrant.

Mr. Re has also been charged by the State of New York with one count of failing to pay income taxes. In that matter, he is being represented by Brian Francese, an lawyer from the Legal Aid Society.

Mr. Re was convicted two decades ago on a charge relating to a scheme for printing and distributing counterfeit $20 bills in 1995 and served two years in state prison.

 

The Rev. Dr. Katrina Foster, pastor of St. Michael’s Lutheran Church in Amagansett and Incarnation Lutheran Church in Bridgehampton, marks the 20th anniversary of her ordination today. A celebration of the occasion will happen on Sunday at the 11 a.m. service at St. Michael’s, with the Rev. Dr. Gary LeCroy serving as guest preacher.

Ms. Foster, a native of Fernandina Beach on Amelia Island near Jacksonville, Fla., was ordained by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. She began her service on the South Fork on July 1, 2010. She serves on East Hampton Town’s Anti-Bias Task Force and the board of the East Hampton Food Pantry. She is also vice-president of the St. Michael’s senior citizens housing development, located on the church grounds, and is a member of the East Hampton Clericus, the Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor Clericus, and the Bridgehampton Fire Department.

The pastor’s recognition of a call to serve came early, she said last year. “I started acolyting” — performing ceremonial duties — “when I was 4. I got to wear a little robe, light the candles and extinguish them, and carry the cross, carry the Book,” she said. “I would stand up there and sing louder than the pastor. I knew the entire service and absolutely loved it.”

Ms. Foster served the Fordham Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Bronx from 1994 to 2010, and was a recipient of the Bronx Borough President’s Citation of Merit in 2000 and 2004. She was awarded the N.A.A.C.P.’s Women Who Make a Difference Award in 2001.

In 2007, she risked defrocking by coming out as gay at a time when the Lutheran Church allowed openly gay pastors but forbade same-sex relationships. Two years later, she, along with her wife, Pamela Kallimanis, and their daughter, Zoia, were featured in a documentary, “One Baptism, Many Gifts: The Story of Three Lutherans Called to Ministry.” The documentary was sent to eligible voters attending the church’s national gathering, a move Ms. Foster said was instrumental in effecting change. “People went from seeing this as an issue to seeing this as people,” she told The Star last year. “And in 2009, we changed the policy of the church,” when it voted to recognize the call of gay pastors and to recognize their families.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America recognized her with the Dr. Richard Lee Peterman Good Steward Award in 2007.

For a change the Old World is the source of some new thinking. On Saturday when a ribbon is cut in Sag Harbor to mark the opening of a hamlet-to-hamlet trail system on the South Fork, it will be the realization of a waking dream that struck Tony Garro while hoofing the footpaths of southern England.

“A bunch of us went to England,” he said of his Southampton Trails Preservation Society compatriots, “specifically to hike the moors, and one of the first things I noticed was how many trails were on private lands,” even, for example, those at Dartmoor, near Devon, the inspiration for Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Hound of the Baskervilles.”

“The public has the right to hike trails on private land in England,” Mr. Garro, who used to teach in the Massapequa School District and has lived in Noyac for about 18 years, said Monday.

“Many villages in rural England are connected by footpaths, and this is what fascinated me the most. They’re miles long, some of them, connecting villages in a web of trails. So I started to do a little research. Every May all the trails are hiked by British hikers to ensure that the right to hike them is kept open. And most of the landowners have no problem with it. The only thing I ever found, a farmer left a sign saying, ‘Please close the gate,’ for after we passed.”

“Back here, it would buzz around in my head. We have these quaint towns and really beautiful wild lands. We have two invaluable features — the glacial moraine and all these ponds, relics of 20,000 years ago. So why couldn’t we create those footpaths here?”

On Saturday at Mashashimuet Park, after the 10 a.m. ribbon-cutting and refreshments, there will be two hikes on newly opened trails, one, of about three and a half miles, will follow the Long Pond Greenbelt and head along the old railroad bed to Lumber Lane in Bridgehampton.

A second one will trace five and a half rolling miles of the glacial moraine, with water views and large rocks left by the retreating ice sheet, cross the Mulvihill Preserve and skirt the Bridge Golf Course, and wrap up by circling Trout Pond in Noyac.

“And we’ll provide transportation back,” Mr. Garro said.

“We’ve worked on this for a year and a half to two years. We took existing trails and linked them, and created new trails to link. . . . Others will go from Mashashimuet to Elliston Park,” on Big Fresh Pond in North Sea, “and from Elliston to Southampton Village.”

Hampton Bays is a 90-percent certainty, he said, with negotiations still to be ironed out with some residents of Shinnecock Hills, and Flanders and Westhampton Beach are possibilities.

The hamlet-to-hamlet footpath will be marked by green oval blazes, and three new kiosks are up at the Trout Pond, Lumber Lane, and Mashashimuet trailheads.

“There’s so much public land here, a lot has been preserved, so there are no crossings of private land, not yet. . . . Most of the trails are on town lands, but some cross Nature Conservancy lands too. And then there are places like Laurel Valley, which is a county park.”

Every Thursday Southampton Trails Preservation Society volunteers have what Mr. Garro called a work party to blaze trails and clear footpaths. “I would estimate there are 300 miles of trails in Southampton Town, and we’re the primary caretaker. We do hikes every weekend, year round,” this time of year being a particularly good one to hit the woods, tick-wise.

For Mr. Garro, who has had Lyme disease in the past, forgoing his walks is simply not an option, so in the warm-weather months he has taken to wearing clothes pretreated with the insecticide permethrin.

“That’s the only thing out here that keeps it from being Eden, the ticks.”

The agenda of Tuesday night’s meeting of the East Hampton School Board focused on whether to expand the district’s prekindergarten program from a half day to a full day, and on forthcoming budget work sessions, which the board vowed to have televised despite added expense.

The matter of expanding the half-day pre-K program has been discussed several times over the past year, with the added cost weighed against budgetary constraints. On Tuesday, the board announced that it had decided to seek competitive bids from organizations for a full-day program.

“We really see the need for the full-day program and if we can afford it, the benefits certainly speak for themselves,” Richard Burns, the district superintendent, said. He explained that a formal request for proposals, now in draft form, would explore pricing for both half and full-day programs, including costs of programs within the district or off-site. Mr. Burns set a deadline of mid-January for bids.

The district now contracts for a half-day program for 4-year-olds at the Eleanor Whitmore Early Childhood Center, which is adjacent to the John M. Marshall Elementary School. Montauk runs a full-day pre-K for 4-year-olds and Bridgehampton and Amagansett offer full-day programs for 3 as well as 4-year-olds. Figures for what the program costs the district were not immediately available.

Anticipating the line-by-line budget work sessions, which will begin on Jan. 27, the board agreed to cover the anticipated $1,400 cost of having them broadcast. LTV now records the board’s twice-monthly meetings at no cost to the district, but the agreement does not extend to budget work sessions. At its Nov. 18 meeting the board had said it would welcome local businesses or individuals interested in covering the added expense but apparently none have come forward.

In other news, the board approved a seventh and eighth-grade foreign language field trip for 40 students to Montreal and Quebec from Feb. 5 to 8 at an estimated cost of $829 per student, with costs to be subsidized by individual fund-raising.

Ashley Pite and Nancy McMullan were approved as replacements for teachers on leave, each at a per diem rate of $262, and Wendy Albrecht was appointed senior clerk typist for a probationary period of 12 weeks at an annual salary of $53,460.

The board also accepted donations of young adult books for the East Hampton Middle School from Kathleen Doherty, publisher of the children’s and young adult division of Tom Doherty Associates, and a large Meade Autostar III telescope from Alan Weinschel.

Before adjourning, Adam Fine, the principal of East Hampton High School, said an anonymous donor had approached him with the possibility of supplying lights for the school’s athletic field. Mr. Burns said the issue would be tackled at a future meeting. 

The board also acknowledged student athletes in golf, volleyball, soccer, and cross-country for various honors.

The board will convene next on Dec. 16 at 6:30 p.m.

Limiting the use of the East Hampton Airport based on the season, day of the week, and time of day would be a reasonable way to address aircraft noise, an environmental consultant told the East Hampton Town Board on Tuesday. The board, in response to a tide of complaints and pleas from local residents and town officials from both the North and South Forks, has vowed to put new rules in place by next summer.

Information compiled about the effects of aircraft noise, including data on the type of aircraft that fly in and out, their patterns of approach and departure, and the complaints themselves, defines the problem, said Ted Baldwin of Harris Miller Miller and Hanson, and points to limiting use during certain days and times as part of the solution.

Other actions, such as limiting the number of takeoffs and landings by time or type of aircraft, or banning certain aircraft such as helicopters, which have been identified as the most disturbing to residents, could also be feasible but would require more study, he said.

Mr. Baldwin was charged with reviewing the results of a phase-one noise study by another firm, presented to the board in October, as well as updating data on airport operations, noise, and complaints, in order to hone a draft statement on the aircraft-noise situation. A “short list of the most promising alternatives” was also created.

The consultant summed up the problem as follows: “Noise from aircraft operating at East Hampton Airport disturbs many residents of the East End of Long Island. Residents find helicopters more disturbing than any category of fixed-wing aircraft. Disturbance caused by all types of aircraft is most significant when operations are (1) most frequent and (2) in evening and night hours.”

In concert with Mr. Baldwin, Catherine van Heuven of Kaplan Kirsch & Rockwell, the town’s aviation law firm, assessed a list of potential airport use restrictions that were laid out in the noise study’s first phase. She weighed them against the data-driven description of the noise problem to determine how, or if, they might address the issues and also meet the Federal Aviation Administration’s standards for acceptable local regulations.

Although the F.A.A. maintains a degree of authority over airports (and the sole authority over planes in flight), proprietors of local airports such as the townmay enact restrictions if they are nonarbitrary, nondiscriminatory, and “narrowly tailored to a local problem” that is clearly defined, Ms. van Heuven said.

The town, for instance, “cannot be overly responsive” to citizens’ complaints about noise, she said, by enacting broad restrictions that are unsupported by facts.

In a recent 12-month period, Mr. Baldwin said Tuesday, 24,000 complaints were received about aircraft noise — “an extraordinary number,” he said, in comparison even to major airports such as Boston’s Logan, where 1,000 to 1,200 noise complaints are received each year.

Of eight alternatives for action presented to the board in the first-phase noise study, four can be disregarded, Ms. van Heuven said. Three may eventually prove viable, but that will “require a little more digging” to ascertain.

But, she said, establishing restrictions on landings and takeoffs based on the season, day of the week, or time of day, such as, for example, an evening, night, and early-morning curfew, would clearly help the town address the noise problem as defined and borne out by the data.

And there is “clear data,” the attorney said, showing that helicopters prompt the most noise complaints. Decibel levels have often been used as the measure for a disturbing noise, she said, but while helicopters may not be as loud as some other aircraft, the tone and pattern of their noise and vibrations has been found to be more disturbing than louder sounds. Should the town target helicopters in potential regulations, a “more sophisticated analysis” could be warranted, she said.

In a recent court case, the F.A.A. successfully used the number of complaints generated by helicopters, rather than their absolute loudness, to support the imposition of a mandated flight route over the water off Long Island’s north shore.

Eliminated as workable alternatives for East Hampton Town, said Ms. van Heuven, were “mitigation” — decreasing noise disturbance by installing sound insulation in houses or buying up affected properties — and instituting fees that would deter specific planes from using the airport, or during peak periods. A fee would “have to be high enough to change behavior,” the lawyer said, but such a fee in East Hampton, where there are numerous wealthy airport users might not be considered “reasonable” under the F.A.A.’s definition.

In the federal agency’s view, she explained, airport fees must be linked to “the burden on the airport . . . not necessarily aggravation to the community.” For instance, she said, a heavier plane might be charged a higher landing fee, as it causes more runway wear and tear.

In addition, she said, setting high fees could have “unintended consequences,” limiting use of the airport by local small-plane pilots, who, it was agreed at the meeting, are not part of the problem.

David Gruber and Pat Trunzo, both of them attorneys who have been vocal in discussions of the airport and aircraft noise, questioned Ms. van Heuven’s depiction of the F.A.A.’s legal stance on fees and asked for further citation.

Taking no action at all was also “not a reasonable alternative,” Ms. van Heuven said. “Your ultimate solution is not going to be just one thing,” she told the board.

The town board continues to seek public comments on the issue; they may be submitted by email to [email protected].

More than a dozen members of the public spoke during Tuesday’s meeting, most of them imploring the board to do something about noise from the skies. But Kathryn Slye, a pilot, said the board had ignored the needs and opinions of local pilots. She said she had been asked not to speak at an aircraft noise hearing in August, where more than 50 members of the public made comments, and that she had signed up to speak on that day, but had not been called. She wondered whether the aviation subcommittee of the town-appointed airport planning committee had been asked to weigh in on potential airport use restrictions.

It had been, said Councilwoman Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, but had not submitted comments.

Ken Lipper, a former New York City deputy mayor, and Peter Wolf, a planner, have mounted a public campaign to ban helicopter and seaplane landings and takeoffs at the airport, among other restrictions. Mr. Lipper reported Tuesday that Cravath, Swaine & Moore, a leading and “conservative” law firm hired by the two men to provide an opinion on whether the regulations they have proposed would be on firm legal footing, had said their proposal “fully comports . . . with existing legal constraints on the ability of localities to regulate airport operations.”

The firm is available for consultation with town officials and the town attorney, Mr. Lipper said.

A tie in Tuesday's voting for a Bridgehampton Fire District commissioner post left the candidates and election officials meeting with the district lawyer on Wednesday.

With 175 votes on paper ballots there was a tie between Phillip Cammann and John O'Brien.

There were three write-in votes, one for Mr. Cammann and two for John O'Brien. With at least three registered voters with the same name as Mr. O'Brien living in the Bridgehampton district, it was impossible to know for whom the votes were intended, Brad Pinskey, the fire district's lawyer, said. "This creates some very interesting legal issues."

Mr. Pinskey said that there were a few options to resolve the election's outcome. One would be to hold a revote; the other would be to go to court and let a judge decide the matter. That could be costly and perhaps protracted if either of the candidates decided to appeal the decision.

If a second vote were held it would have to be scheduled for a Tuesday within 45 days of the election, probably in early January.

Earl Gandel, who ran unopposed, was elected treasurer for a three-year term.

Members of East Hampton Town’s litter and energy sustainability committees supported the town board’s proposed ban on plastic shopping bags at a hearing last week, citing the resources used in their manufacture and the bags’ persistence in the environment.

A spokesman for the grocery-store industry cast the lone voice against the ban, questioning the other speakers’ conclusions. Jay M. Peltz, a vice president and the general counsel of the Food Industry Alliance of New York State, said the ban has been cast as a panacea to the environmental issues involved, without a thorough investigation into its actual effect.

For instance, he said, when plastic bags are banned, consumers tend to use more paper bags, and their manufacture has a greater environmental impact. The issue, he said, is more complex than advocates of plastic-bag ban make out.

“If paper bags are as detrimental as plastic, then we should do something about them, too,” said Jeanne Frankl of Amagansett.

Those in favor of the ban, like Frank Dalene, chairman of the sustainability committee, and Dieter von Lehsten, a co-chairman of the committee’s South­ampton Town counterpart, talked about the massive number of plastic bags used globally, and how the plastic amasses in the oceans and becomes part of the food chain. “These bags never quite vanish,” Mr. von Lehsten said. Consumers can be taught to use reusable tote bags, said Mr. Dalene.

Wearing a plastic bag plucked from the roadside on her way to Town Hall around her neck like a scarf, Kathleen Kirkwood, a member of East Hampton’s recycling and litter committee, said banning the thin plastic bags described as “single-use” bags has become “standard business and operating procedure from Malibu to Hawaii.”

“There’s just too much litter in East Hampton right now,” said Arline Gidion, another member of the litter committee. Afton DiSunno, also a member, cited the detrimental effects of wind-blown plastic bags on whales, turtles, and other wildlife who may ingest them.

Before enacting a ban on plastic bags, asserted Mr. Peltz, the town is required to follow State Environmental Quality Review Act procedures and analyze its potential environmental effects. New York municipalities that have already enacted plastic-bag bans have failed to submit “SEQRA-required evidence” in support, he said.

“I’m neither for nor against this, but we’re talking about changing the law,” said Kyle Lynch, an attorney. Town officials must do their “due diligence,” said Mr. Lynch. No facts specific to East Hampton had been presented, he added.

Jeremy Samuelson, executive director of Concerned Citizens of Montauk, called Mr. Peltz’s comments the “latest round of arguments” from the food industry. “But come on — nobody has ever done a necropsy on a whale and found a reusable bag in its stomach. Help us do better,” he said to the town board.

The hearing was held open and will be reconvened at the board’s Dec. 18 meeting.

Dr. Anthony Knott of the Montauk office of the Meeting House Lane Medical Practice is saying goodbye to the hamlet after 10 years in practice there. Friday was his last day at the Montauk office.

“The people of Montauk have been really good to me,” said Dr. Knott, 55. He has enjoyed the intimate doctor-patient relationship that a small town affords. “I am going to miss everybody profoundly.” He is leaving not just Montauk, but the country, at least for the time being — he is scheduled to fly to England tomorrow.

That he ended up in Montauk was a bit of serendipity. It was about 2003, he recalled, when at a wedding he attended in Boulder he met Patty Lieber. “She said, ‘You know, there is a doctor who is going to need someone,’ ” referring to Dr. Gavino Mapula. Dr. Mapula, who died last year, served the residents of hamlet as their doctor for over two decades at the Montauk office.

The two men met in a booth at the Princess Diner in Southampton, and hit it off immediately, talking about the treatment of lacerations over lunch. “He was old-fashioned,” Dr. Knott said about his predecessor. Dr. Knott agreed to come on board. “When he said, ‘I have a busy practice,’ I didn’t appreciate just how busy.”

Dr. Knott did not mind the busy practice; it was the style of medicine he was looking for. No matter how crowded the waiting room was, he took the time needed to deal with each patient’s needs, and even made house calls when needed, almost unheard of today. He eventually bought Dr. Mapula’s practice, then known as the Montauk Medical Center. It was not a good business move, coming, as it did when the medical industry was shifting.

Practicing medicine has changed over the past 10 years, and that has been difficult for him, Dr. Knott said. He is frustrated by a medical industry transformed during his Montauk years by the insurance companies, forcing general practitioners like himself out of business. “There is a loss of control over aspects of that practice,” he said. “Medical care is driven by the insurance industry.”

“Reimbursement was a big issue. Businessman I ain’t, and you can quote me on that,” he said, laughing. “Financially, I was under water. I was grateful to South­ampton Hospital for helping me.” Meeting House Lane is affiliated with Southampton Hospital.

As for President Obama’s health care initiative, he said, “He was trying to do something. My only criticism is, you have four or eight years, and you are trying to do all that. I don’t know if it is realistic.” He believes further reforms, particularly those targeting the insurance industry’s control, will be needed. 

One aspect of the president’s original proposal to Congress that would have greatly improved current medical care at the local level, Dr. Knott believes, was lowering the qualifying age for Medicare from 65 to 55. That proposal was stripped out of the final bill. “Medicare works. It is not just about reimbursement. Medicare respects the human element. It is more realistic,” he said, than the current approach.

Many of his patients in Montauk are fishermen who work long hours under dangerous conditions. Quite a few of them over the years, he said, go uninsured, and put off dealing with medical issues until they qualify for Medicare. That is a recipe for disaster, Dr. Knott said.

Patients speak of Dr. Knott in glowing terms, praising him for his medical attention as well as his bedside manner. “Dr. Knott is grounded. He is very kind and sensitive. He took his time,” said Donna Hadjipopov, whose husband, George, died of lung cancer last January. “Dr. Knott doesn’t compartmentalize the patient.” Ms. Hadjipopov helped organize a farewell party for Dr. Knott on Friday at the Inlet Seafood restaurant in Montauk.

While he did not tire of his patients, he is discouraged by the medical bureaucracy and is eager to turn his attentions now from medical pursuits to artistic ones. He has written three books already, two novels and one work of non-fiction and is looking forward to sitting down with his English friend and editing them. “You have to follow your own inner voice,” he said.

His attraction to the arts is not out of whimsy. He is the only child of a renowned theater couple. His English-born father, Frederick Knott, was the playwright of stage crime thrillers like “Dial M for Murder,” which was later turned into a film by Alfred Hitchcock, and “Wait Until Dark.” His mother, Ann Hillary, is a veteran of Broadway, Off Broadway, and television, from the era when much of what America watched on its TVs was shot in New York.

Growing up with theatrical parents may sound glamorous, but it meant that they were busy working and playing at night. He found himself attracted instead to the world of medicine. His role model was Dr. Bill Francis, an uncle who was a general practitioner in the small town of Cookville, Tenn.

“The guy was famous,” Dr. Knott said. “He delivered thousands of babies. He took out gall bladders. He was on call 24 hours a day.”

When he was 12, Dr. Knott’s family moved from Manhattan’s West Side to New Jersey. He graduated from high school in Lawrence Township, then attended Duke University, Brooklyn Polytechnic, and Hunter College. He went to medical school at the State University of New York Health Science Center at Brooklyn, and did his residency at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C.

Now, his two sons are in college and he is ready to begin his own next chapter.

Earlier this fall, The East Hampton Star embarked on a project to spend time in a kindergarten classroom at the John M. Marshall Elementary School, chronicling how the year takes shape with personalities and interests just beginning to form. Though the idea was initially approved, the district withdrew its cooperation shortly after the publication of the first installment, citing concerns about privacy, security, and the potential for distraction.

Though classroom access is no longer permitted, the intent of the series remains the same. Over the coming months, five families from an array of backgrounds will be profiled to help illustrate the changing face of East Hampton from the vantage point of its youngest residents.

Madison Alvarez, 5, is one of them.

Antonia Alvarez proudly boasts of a daughter with big dreams for her future. Madison has her sights set on becoming a doctor — specifically, a pediatrician.

“I want her to succeed, to become somebody,” said Ms. Alvarez during a conversation last week at the East Hampton Library. “She’s already saying she wants to be a doctor. I want to help her accomplish what she wants in life.”

Ms. Alvarez, 37, and her husband, Fernando Alvarez, 34, relocated from Seattle to East Hampton in August. The prospect of well-paid, year-round work, in addition to the close proximity of a good public school system and a safe community in which to raise their children, prompted the cross-country move. Their younger son, Isaac, is 2.

Mr. Alvarez works as the property manager of a large East Hampton estate. His father has tended to the same property for the past seven years. The family now occupies a two-bedroom, three-bathroom guesthouse on its grounds. Ms. Alvarez is a stay-at-home mother.

Madison is one of 18 children enrolled in Kristen Tulp’s kindergarten class at John Marshall. Over the past few decades, the school district, like others all across the nation, has undergone a sea change, from having a vast majority of white students to one where Spanish is increasingly the primary language spoken at home. According to the school’s recently released 2012-13 state-issued report card, the John Marshall enrollment is 51 percent Latino, 40 percent white, 5 percent black, 2 percent Asian, and 2 percent multiracial. Among its 621 students, more than one-third are classified “economically disadvantaged.”

Both Alvarezes are children of recent immigrants. Mr. Alvarez moved from Ecuador to Brooklyn at the age 17 with his parents and brother, speaking not a word of English, and promptly began classes at Newcomers High School in Long Island City, Queens, which has a student body from dozens of countries. His parents both worked at an electronics company in Manhattan, repairing VCRs.

He graduated from Newcomers and promptly enlisted in the U.S. Navy, eventually serving for eight years including, after 9/11, two deployments in the Persian Gulf. Under the post-9/11 G.I. Bill, he enrolled in online courses at American InterContinental University and earned an associate’s degree in business administration in 2008.

Ms. Alvarez was born in Long Beach, Calif., the daughter of Mexican immigrants. Her father drove a big-rig truck, and her mother stayed home, looking after the couple’s seven children. After high school, Ms. Alvarez took a nine-month certification course in medical assisting at Skadron College in nearby San Bernardino.

The couple met in 1998 in an AOL Spanish-speaking chat group and began a long-distance courtship. They married in July 2001 in Moreno Valley, Calif.

In recent years, the family has moved from California to New Jersey to Washington State — wherever Mr. Alvarez’s contracting jobs took them. While in the Navy, he had been trained as an aircraft mechanic, and he continued repairing commercial and military aircraft as a private contractor afterward.

After his eight years of active service, Mr. Alvarez joined the Navy Reserve, serving for another four years. The couple put off having children until his military career was over. “I didn’t want to have kids while I was in the military,” he said. “I didn’t want to go away and come back and miss their birthdays. Two deployments was enough.”

Though both spoke Spanish growing up, they have raised their children in a predominantly English-speaking home. Madison can understand some Spanish, but not enough to have a conversation. 

Slowly, the family is settling in, readjusting to a new climate and readying for snow.

“We’re planning to stay here permanently,” said Mr. Alvarez, who was helping Isaac to complete a puzzle. “That was always our goal, that once school started, we would find a permanent place.”

They see education as the children’s path to upward mobility.

“I want better for her than the life that I had,” said Ms. Alvarez. “Where you live makes a big difference. I grew up in a crazier neighborhood. That’s why I like it here for them. It’s a different environment.”

So far, since starting kindergarten, Madison has been sick a few times and has picked up a few bad habits from her classmates. She’s also acquired a pair of purple-framed eyeglasses. Her parents found out she needed glasses during a routine doctor’s appointment before the start of school. Ham and cheese sandwiches are a favorite, and Grace, one of her classmates, is her best friend.

Ms. Alvarez drives Madison to school each morning and volunteers in her classroom two mornings a week. In the evenings she sometimes gives her daughter extra assignments, hoping to challenge her further.

A quick learner, Madison knew her letters, numbers, colors, and how to add and subtract long before she started kindergarten. At night, she pores through her mother’s old medical textbooks, memorizing the names of different bones and muscles.

“I also wanted to be a doctor when I was growing up, but I didn’t know if I could,” said Ms. Alvarez. “I wish I had gotten more of a push from my parents. I want Madison to succeed, and I want to help her get there.”

After several attempts to continue operating the Montauk Movie Theater and subsequent Cinema Cycle classes, Montauk’s only movie theater will close its doors for good on Monday. The building will be available for lease.

A few years ago when movie theater owners all over were investing in new digital projection equipment, the Rutkowski family considered it, even though the costs were exorbitant. About 18 months ago they came up with the idea of offering Cinema Cycle spin classes, which, though popular, were not profitable enough to keep running on their own.

“We’ve enjoyed every minute of bringing movies and then cinema cycling to Montauk,” the Rutkowskis said in a release. “When we started cinema cycling we were confident but not completely sure what to expect and were pleasantly surprised by its success.”

Dave Rutkowski said on Tuesday that he looked at his financial records over the last 10 years and profits have dropped dramatically. “After 31 years, it’s so sad but so time to move on,” he said, adding that the number of people watching movies in theaters is dropping significantly.

The morning spin classes will continue until Monday, but the theater will be closed on Thanksgiving Day. On Saturday two final movies will be shown as a fund-raiser for the East Hampton High School girls softball team — “Elf” at 7 p.m. and “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” at 9. Admission is $5, and refreshments will be sold.

After that everything else in the building will be put up for sale, including bike equipment and cycling shoes, theater seats, popcorn and ice machines, and movie reels. Anyone interested in purchasing any of the items can email Mr. Rutkowski at [email protected].