With plans to return the historic Dominy clock and woodworking shops to their original location on North Main Street, the East Hampton Village Board accepted a bid on Friday from John Hummel and Associates to restore the structures and construct a timber-frame house as an adjacent exhibition space. 

The Dominy family, including Nathaniel Dominy IV, his son, Nathaniel Dominy V, and his grandson, Felix Dominy, were renowned for their woodworking and clock and watchmaking skills. The 1791 woodworking shop and 1798 clock shop, which have been sitting on the Mulford Farm, are the only Dominy buildings still in existence. The Dominy house and other structures were torn down in 1946, and replicas have been constructed at the Winterthur Museum in Delaware. 

In a Nov. 6 memo to the village board, Robert Hefner, the director of historic services, said he and Richard Barons, the East Hampton Historical Society curator, and Drew Bennett, a consulting engineer, had acted as an evaluation committee, and received proposals from two first-rate contractors. They chose John Hummel and Associates, which restored the Thomas and Mary Nimmo Moran Studio, because its bid of just under $1.5 million was nearly $500,000 less than the competitor’s, he said. 

The timber-frame house will be consistent with the 18th-century structures, Mr. Hefner said. Over the next few months, the numerous white oak timbers for its construction will be harvested, after which the New Jersey Barn Company will build the frame. The plan is to raise the frame on the site and join the two Dominy shops to it by next summer. The remaining work will be done late that year or in early 2020. 

A fund-raising effort to finance the project is underway, with the work to proceed as fund-raising allows. The goal, Mr. Hefner said, is to have the buildings open to the public in time for the village’s centennial celebration in September 2020.

On a more immediate matter, the village board scheduled a public hearing on Dec. 21 on a proposed law to allow two-hour parking between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. at a lot at 8 Osborne Lane, a parcel adjacent to the Long Island Rail Road tracks near Newtown Lane. In June 2017, the village agreed to buy the property for $989,000; in May it accepted a bid from Keith Grimes, a Montauk contractor, to demolish an existing house there and build the lot. 

The project will take two to three weeks to complete, depending on weather, Becky Molinaro Hansen, the village administrator, said on Monday. Since the proposed parking law cannot take effect until after the Dec. 21 public hearing, there may be a short period during which there will be no parking limits in the lot, she said.

In other news, Steven Ringel, the executive director of the East Hampton Chamber of Commerce, announced that the village’s annual Santa Parade, which will take place on Dec. 1, will have its first grand marshal. Hugh King, the village’s historian, has been chosen for the slot. 

Mayor Paul F. Rickebach Jr. ended the meeting by wishing everyone a “wholesome Thanksgiving” and offering “warmest greetings as the holiday season unfolds.”

Marshall Prado is 73 — or, as he says, old enough to remember when Montauk had only 50 or so families living there year round and everyone relied on everyone because life in such a remote place wasn’t easy. “It was all about survival,” Mr. Prado recalled last week, sitting in a diner just a few doors down from the Marshall & Sons Fuel Oil offices on Main Street, where he and his two brothers, Ed and Bobby, still work in the business their father started 75 years ago.

With the sale of Schenck Fuels Services in East Hampton last month to the Star Group, the publicly traded parent company of Petro Home Services, Mr. Prado noted that Marshall & Sons is now among only four family-run fuel businesses remaining between Westhampton and Montauk. 

He and his brothers have diversified their company greatly since their father, Marshall Sr., a Spanish immigrant, came to Montauk and married their mother, a native of Nova Scotia, in the 1940s. In addition to the Mobil station, attached convenience store, car repair and a towing service, the Prados also now offer indoor vehicle storage, and fuel oil delivery. They have a 24/7 plumbing, heating, and air-conditioning service called Prado Brothers. They also sell diesel fuel and kerosene and just recently began providing propane service too.

But Mr. Prado says all of that hasn’t erased the challenges they face to stay afloat. 

“We’re running out of tricks — we really are,” he said. “And I’m not getting any younger.”

Mr. Prado and his daughter, Dana Arikian, one of seven family members who work in the various businesses, both said they understand completely how Chris Schenck and Rodney Herrlin, the final owners of Schenck Fuels, could have decided to sell their 117-year-old family business.

“I’m very sorry to see the Schencks go, which may sound funny because we were competitors, and we did just hire three of their workers,” Mr. Prado said. “But I knew the Schencks. And we lost another respected company out here that we didn’t have to lose.”

How so? Mr. Prado explains by telling a story: He said his father used to talk about “the circle of economics,” meaning the way local businesses and the communities were inextricably connected to each other and patronized each other, especially in small towns like Montauk. 

“The people in this community are the people who built this town into what it is — it didn’t just happen lately,” Mr. Prado said.

Montauk has changed a lot since then. Longtime residents aren’t always sure it’s for the better. Ms. Arikian wonders if the people who find Montauk so hip and trendy now realize they could love it to death someday if they destroy the very fabric of the community that attracted them to town in the first place. If Montauk becomes the latest East End town to see its mom-and-pop shops pushed out, if its real estate prices continue to skyrocket, and significant swaths of its main streets sit boarded up or vacant in the winter because of the pop-up or chain stores that arrive on Memorial Day and leave by Labor Day, then is Montauk still Montauk anymore? And if so, Ms. Arikian asks, for how long?

“ ‘Buy local’ isn’t just a bumper sticker,” Ms. Arikian, the company’s director of finance, said. “It’s what keeps this town going.” 

The Prados are often at the center of it. Mr. Prado said he’s always done some kind of work as long as he can remember, and it wasn’t uncommon for him as a boy of 13 to jump in the tow truck and drive to a local job when a motorist needed help. Sixty years later, he’s still liable to make a tow truck run, or pump gas, or call a customer unbidden to say he noticed their power is out as he drove by their place, or they left a door slung open — whatever it may be — because that’s what good neighbors do. Not just good business owners. 

Marshall & Sons’ business cards and brochures read “Welcome to the Neighborhood” and show a sepia-tone photo of the three Prado brothers as young boys wearing one-piece coveralls with Esso patches on the chest and captain’s hats on their heads.

“Last Thanksgiving Marshall was literally in someone’s basement fixing their furnace for them,” Ms. Arikian said of her father. “If someone needs their car dug out of the sand, he will go dig them out of the sand. Bobby still drives the oil truck. Eddie is running the shop.”

Mr. Prado shrugged now and said, “We just don’t believe any job is beneath us. I don’t mind running out to the gas pump if someone needs gas and I pump their gas. It doesn’t ‘degrade’ me. We have young kids come in here now and I’m like, ‘Are you for real? You say you don’t do that? You don’t do what? Get the hell outta here.’ ”

Mr. Prado admits he can’t match Petro’s fuel prices because of the economy of scale such bigger companies enjoy. He speaks of having to compete, too, against “gypsy” drivers with fuel rigs who travel UpIsland and back to deliver oil but carry none of the overhead he does, and engage in none of the community work his family still finds important. 

Mr. Prado said to remain competitive, he has to hope that clients still value the highly personal attention, 24/7 care, array of services and values and integrity that his family’s businesses provide. But he wonders if that still matters to as many people as it used to — and if it does, are there enough such people?

Ms. Arikian said Marshall & Sons is constantly looking at how bigger companies create efficiencies, and “by trying to implement some of those tactics, we may be able to become profitable enough that we can keep operating the way we always did.”

To which Mr. Prado replied, “Yeah, but if you can’t become profitable enough, why keep doing it? What are you doing then? Again, I totally understand why the Schencks sold. To take a job for 20 hours a day, it makes no sense.”

“It’s hard for people here to make ends meet,” Ms. Arikian said. “Nearly everyone we know rents out their house at least some, if not most, of the time.”

How long can Montaukers keep it up? Mr. Prado asks the same questions.

“These stores that show up for a few months each summer where you can buy a $3,000 sweater, they don’t care about us here,” Mr. Prado said. “It’s just a billboard for their companies. Then they’re gone. The circle of economics my father talked about? It served us well here for two generations, and now it’s almost gone too.”

The longer Mr. Prado talks, the harder it is to know if it would be harder to keep the company going. Or harder to stop.

“We have 30 people working for us today — and not just our family, but families with families,” Mr. Prado said. “It’s nice to have a family business. But it’s a lot of pressure too.”

This image of Princess Pocahontas Pharaoh as a young woman was given to the East Hampton Library’s Long Island Collection by Red Thunder Cloud, also known as Carlos Westez. 

Red Thunder Cloud, who self-identified as Catawba, lived in East Hampton and documented indigenous people here. Pocahontas Pharaoh, occasionally identified as Sarah Pocahontas Pharaoh, was born on the Montauk reservation near Indian Field, Montauk Point, on Feb. 15, 1878. Pocahontas was the youngest child of David Pharaoh, typically known as King David Pharaoh, and his wife, Queen Maria Fowler Pharaoh. 

Pocahontas’s father would die from consumption six months after her birth, when he was about 40 years old. Red Thunder Cloud’s caption recalls his experiences with the disagreement between the Fowler and Pharaoh families, related to the leadership of the Montaukett people.

Pocahontas was born in the middle of the attempts by Arthur Benson and the Long Island Rail Road to force the Montauketts off their land. In October of 1879, before Pocahontas’s second birthday, Benson purchased Montauk for $151,000. When he took control of the property, he allowed the railroad to expand its rail service through it. In 1897, Pocahontas’s brother King Wyandanch Pharaoh turned to the courts to try to get the Montaukett land back, continuing the fight until 1910.

Pocahontas was known for her skilled beadwork, woven baskets, and the scrub brushes she whittled. She never married, working for much of her life as a janitor for the telephone company in its East Hampton office.

Known as the last Montaukett to be born on the reservation, she spent most of the rest of her life in the Freetown section of East Hampton, on the land the Montauketts were given as part of the deal for their reservation. Pocahontas died on Feb. 6, 1963, at the age of 84.

Andrea Meyer is a librarian and archivist in the East Hampton Library’s Long Island Collection.

Andrew Malone said he knew exterminators were coming six weeks ago to remove everyone’s belongings in the six-unit apartment building at Windmill Village II, the senior housing complex where he lives, to get rid of bed bugs. But exactly what happened then is in dispute and has left him threatening to sue the nonprofit management company that runs the complex. 

Mr. Malone, 92, is a longtime resident of East Hampton who once owned an auto body repair shop on Springs-Fireplace Road and has long been active in local Democratic politics. He admits he has occasional memory lapses, such as not knowing the exact dates the events in question occurred or not remembering the name of Windmill Village’s social services director, Michelle Rothar.

Nearly two months later, however, Mr. Malone is upset that nearly everything —  clothing, shoes, curtains, upholstered furniture, a mattress and box spring, refrigerated food, boxes of belongings, lamps, and his clock radio — was destroyed. In particular, he said among the items removed was a jigsaw puzzle worth $25,000. The puzzle depicted a Willem de Kooning painting that Mr. de Kooning, then a resident of Springs, had signed at the behest of his daughter, Lisa, who gave it to Mr. Malone as a gift. 

The sequence of events began when Ms. Rothar scheduled a Sept. 5 meeting with Mr. Malone after a foreman at Windmill Village visited his apartment and reported it in undesirable condition. Ms. Rothar said part of her job is connecting senior citizens with services so “they can live independently as long as possible.” 

In addition to Mr. Malone, Arthur Burns, his caseworker at Adult Protective Services, Linda Norris of the East Hampton Town Housing and Urban Development Department, and Francis Bock, a town housing inspector, attended the Sept. 5 meeting. It was near the end of the session that Mr. Malone mentioned he had some bug bites on his body. “That was a big red flag for us,” Ms. Rothar said. Mr. Bock and Mr. Burns visited Mr. Malone’s apartment after the meeting and discovered bed bugs.

When a technician from Premier Exterminators came to assess the problem the next day, Gerry Mooney and Kathy Byrnes, the co-managers, said he told them it was the worst infestation he had seen in 20 years.

Windmill Village officials said when two other residents then reported possible bed bugs — one had found a bug; another said he had a bite — they decided to have the entire six-unit building emptied, cleaned, and sprayed, with two treatments scheduled a week and a half apart. 

All the residents, including Mr. Malone, were displaced for about five hours during the first  treatment. Their belongings were removed, cleaned if possible, and stored on site until the second treatment was completed.

In an interview last week, Mr. Malone said there were so many bugs in his one-bedroom apartment that “one day, I put 20 or 30 of them in a cup and flushed them down the toilet. But I didn’t know what they were.” He said he kept numerous unpacked boxes, an unassembled bed, personal papers, and other files in the living room since he moved from Windmill I to Windmill II some years ago. He confirmed that he knew everything from his apartment, as well as the other five units, had to be removed so exterminators could do their work. He also recalls that Windmill Village officials told him “they think the bed bugs started in my apartment.”

The reason he intends to sue, Mr. Malone said, is that although he was asked to leave so that exterminators could do their job, he was told when he returned that all of his belongings were permanently gone. “I kept saying, ‘Where is my stuff?’ ” Mr. Malone said.

“We’re not an assisted living housing, we’re not a nursing home,” said Mr. Mooney. “Occasionally, some of our residents need more help. We try to work with them.”

Windmill Village officials have said Mr. Malone remembers the sequence of events incorrectly.

“He was told even when they were cleaning out his apartment that everything needed to go,” Ms. Rothar said. “His caseworker from Adult Protective Services, who was standing there with him, asked if he understood. Andy said yes. But Andy can’t seem to remember that.” 

Mr. Malone said he is looking for an attorney to argue his case. In the meantime, he has accepted the help of Brontie O’Neal, who has known Mr. Malone for over 30 years, and said he would write a civil complaint for Mr. Malone to pursue in court.

Mr. O’Neal, speaking by phone last week, said he was recently released from Attica prison, where he studied to be a paralegal. He said the complaint he wrote for Mr. Malone was filed on Nov. 1 and Windmill Village was “served with the papers by U.S. marshals” as of Friday. “We haven’t received anything, to our knowledge,” the Windmill Village management team said on Friday.

Tom Ruhle, the director of the East Hampton Housing and Community Development Office, said it was his understanding that Windmill Village “acted on the advice of professional exterminators, and it was their professional opinion” that Mr. Malone’s items were destroyed because the infestation was worse in his unit.

“As they picked up Andy’s clothes, eggs would just fall out of everything. Everything was infested. And that was stated in front of Andy,” Ms. Rothar said. Ms. Byrnes, the complex co-manager, said, “The bed bugs were just everywhere. You couldn’t open up a folder and not find them.” 

One thing Mr. Malone and the Windmill Village staff agree on is that this has been painful. Mr. Malone is known in the community as a genial, smart, well-liked man with a long history of public service. Windmill Village officials insist they run a caring facility for senior citizens, most of whom use federal Section 8 vouchers.

“Having to displace everyone for the exterminators to come in was traumatic for everyone here,” Mr. Mooney said. “I’ve known Andy 30 years. We all like Andy. We’ve tried to help him. Now he has gone to the papers about this, and we’ve even gotten calls from the Democratic Party about him. This story has been bandied all around town. It’s kind of hard to go to the hardware store and have people ask you, ‘Hey, what kind of place are you running over there?’ ”

As a rental facility, Windmill Village is not obliged to furnish tenants with anything beyond appliances and utilities. But the management, along with Marge Harvey, a board member, helped locate some used furniture for Mr. Malone as well as a TV, and St. Michael’s Lutheran Church provided him with a $500 gift certificate. Mr. Mooney said he took Mr. Malone to the East Hampton Ladies Village Improvement Society thrift shop to buy some clothes. “The L.V.I.S. has nice stuff,” Mr. Malone commented.

Other progress has been slower. Mr. Malone was sleeping on a low-slung cot until his bed was replaced only last week by Adult Protective Services.

He said he deserved to be treated with more dignity. He contends he was unfairly singled out, though Windmill Village, town officials, and his caseworkers have said that wasn’t the case. “It was a health and safety issue,” Ms. Byrnes said.

“And so what do you do?” Ms. Rothar asked. “What do you do for the Andy Malones?”

Havens Beach, the only beach in Sag Harbor Village, has drawn increasing concern from residents who have formed an advocacy group to prod officials to improve its condition. The beach, which faces Sag Harbor Bay, is popular with families and children who swim there, and it is one of the few public places where dogs frequently are walked.

“There’s a tendency to take open spaces for granted in this village,” said Carol Williams, one of the founders of Friends of Havens Beach who has been asking the village to protect the beach for at least a year. Ms. William lists numerous problems at the beach, in particular the proliferation of dog feces and potentially polluted runoff from snow dumped there. “But the major issue is the dredging,” she said. 

In November last year, an estimated 10,000 cubic yards of sand were pumped from the bottom of the harbor onto the beach. The spoils left the beach strewn with everything from rusty nails and rebar to musket balls, sea glass, and vast quantities of large rocks.

“There isn’t a blanket thick enough that you could lie down on and not feel those rocks,” said Terry Sullivan, another group member, who said the dredging, authorized by Suffolk County, had not been properly supervised. 

The village has combed, or sifted, the beach in an attempt to remove rocks and debris, but Jean Held, a trustee of the Sag Harbor Historical Society, said at a village board meeting on Nov. 13 that more remediation was needed. “Unfortunately, many of the rocks and other material have risen to the top,” she said. 

 In referring to runoff from the snow the Highway Department dumps there, Ms. Williams said, “You watch the snow melt and go into the bay; there really should be a silt fence around it, but there is no silt fence.” 

The Friends of Havens Beach would like the village to appoint someone to help Dee Yardley, the  superintendent of public works, monitor the beach. “The highway superintendent is basically in charge of the beach, and he knows about highways, that’s his skill set,” Ms. Williams said. “If I were him, I wouldn’t know what to do either.” Mr. Sullivan agreed that assistance was required. “Dee Yardley has more responsibility than one man can handle,” he said. 

In an effort to address a different environmental concern, a law that would require upgraded septic systems was introduced on Nov. 13 and scheduled for public hearing on Jan. 8. 

The board did not discuss the proposal, but Mayor Sandra Schroeder said proposed legislation would be passed on to the harbor committee, which oversees wetlands, for review.

The law states that research done by Suffolk County shows that “nitrogen pollution from conventional on-site sanitary systems is excessive, widespread . . . and adversely affects ecological health and drinking water standards.” The County Department of Health Services has given provisional approval to the use of five advanced, low-nitrogen systems.

 The draft requires the installation of such systems for all new residences and for existing buildings that expand their gross floor area by 25 percent. It does not distinguish between residential and commercial structures. 

The law also states that any buildings with septic systems that have been deemed by the county to be in need of “substantial upgrade” would be required to install an advanced system. “Substantial” is defined as any change that equals or exceeds 50 percent of the cost of the new system. The Harbor Committee would also be able to require upgrades. 

To monitor compliance, the law would give the village building inspector the power to require reports on the performance and maintenance of systems. The penalty for violations would be a fine of not less than $1,000, in addition to making the premises compliant with county standards.

The Sag Harbor Village Board’s decision to use a site adjacent to the Long Pond Greenbelt for a vehicle impound yard drew an onslaught of criticism during a public hearing on Nov. 13 and prompted Aidan Corish, a trustee, to make a forceful plea for another location. The greenbelt is part of an ecosystem of coastal plain ponds.

The village intends to use part of a 24-acre site off the Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor Turnpike to build an 80-by-60-foot paved parking lot, where vehicles seized by the Police Department would be stored. The plan was approved by the Southampton Town Planning Board in June, and, last month, the village board authorized an engineering firm to begin preparing for the lot’s construction. Mr. Corish was the only board member to vote against the resolution.

The project has faced pushback from the Friends of the Long Pond Greenbelt and others who believe an impound yard, which would potentially be subject to leaking car fluids, would threaten the environmental health of the greenbelt, which is over the sole-source aquifer and contains breeding ponds for the endangered eastern tiger salamander.   

During the public hearing, a procession of people, including Dai Dayton, the president of Friends of the Long Pond Greenbelt, and Frank Quevedo, the executive director of the South Fork Natural History Museum, pleaded with the board to abandon the proposal. The board did not take action.

“At first, we thought you didn’t understand the importance of this property to the health of the animal life, plant life, and waters of the Long Pond Greenbelt,” Ms. Dayton said. “Now, sad to say, we just feel you don’t care.” 

Mr. Corish said he found the testimony compelling, and he argued against building a “piece of permanent infrastructure” in such an environmentally sensitive area. “Most of the laws that we pass we can change; this is different,” he said. He asked Mayor Sandra Schroeder and his colleagues to find an alternate location. “There’s always one more solution to the problem,” he said.

Ms. Dayton said on Friday that she was encouraged by Mr. Corish’s comments, but since she has repeatedly tried without success to initiate a discussion with the mayor and other board members, she was doubtful Mr. Corish would have better luck. “I feel like they don’t want to hear it from him either,” she said. 

Ms. Dayton said she and other members of her organization planned to keep showing up at public hearings. “Since the board won’t speak to us, it’s the only way we can talk to them,” she said.

One certainly doesn’t hear many plaudits for chain stores, so learning that employees at the Home Goods and T.J. Maxx stores on the South Fork were “helpful and kind” when Daisy Dohanos and Nina Landi of North Haven approached them was positive news. 

Ms. Dohanos, who has a background in health care and higher education, and Ms. Landi, a Sag Harbor kindergarten teacher, are buying and plan to deliver fleece blankets to hospice patients in time for Thanksgiving. They had been inspired to begin the project after buying several small blankets for their mother, Marlys Dohanos, who was a patient at the St. Francis Heart Center. She died last Christmas Eve. 

The blankets added “a pop of color” to their mother’s bed, Ms. Dohanos said. “We’d take her fleeces and pillowcases that matched. We had all her favorite eye masks, her favorite shower gel. . . .”

“It gets to a point where you can’t make them cookies,” Ms. Landi said. 

“A blanket is a universally comforting thing.”

The women set a goal of 225 blankets this year, in time for Thanksgiving, and have begun fund-raising. The average price is $19.99.  Home Goods is letting them know when blankets, in three sizes, throw, twin, and bigger, arrive. 

“We’re really going to reach our 

goal this year, which is amazing,” Ms. Landi said.

The continuing needs of hospice patients are evidenced by the statistics. East End Hospice visits 100 residents regularly who have terminal illnesses and have chosen to remain at home. The Kanas Center for Hospice Care in Quiogue has eight beds, and St. Francis, in Roslyn, where their mother had surgery and died, has 38.

“We didn’t want to have blankets 

with cheesy designs,” Ms. Landi said. “Home Goods is a corporate giant with small-town goodness. It is nice to see something that some people may have feared coming in become a partner in our community. That’s a really hopeful thing given all the empty windows, and it adds another layer of happiness to this project.”

Anyone who wishes to donate can do so via gofundme.com (Blankets for Hospice) or by sending a check to Blankets for Patients, P.O. Box 2652, Sag Harbor 11963.

Fifty years ago in April, a 20-year-old from East Hampton was killed in action in South Vietnam. He would be East Hampton’s only casualty in Vietnam, and yet his ultimate sacrifice went unrecognized but for the friends who remembered him. 

On Sunday, Veterans Day, a memorial was dedicated to Army Pvt. First Class William Patrick Flynn on North Main Street, just down the block from where he grew up. “It was long overdue,” said Sid Bye, a childhood friend of Private Flynn’s. 

Private Flynn, who was known as Pat, was 19 when he was drafted into the Army in September 1967. “He was scared,” Mr. Bye said of his friend. The two met up during their leaves around Christmas at the bowling alley bar where everyone hung out in those days. “He told me it would have been easier but took more courage to go to Canada, than go to Vietnam. I didn’t understand what he meant by that until later,” he said. 

After basic training at Fort Campbell, Ky., and then advanced infantry training at Fort McClellan, Ala., he left for Vietnam on March 22, 1968. 

News of his April 28 death appeared in the May 19, 1968, edition of The East Hampton Star; his family first received word via telegram from the Army on May 5. The infantryman “was lost in a combat operation when engaged by hostile force in a fire fight,” the telegram read. Two days later, another telegram informed them that he had in fact been killed. 

His mother, Margaret Flynn, told The Star at the time that her youngest son had been stationed in Chu Chi, near Saigon, with the 25th Division. The Army telegram did not specify the city where he was killed.  

Mr. Bye learned of his friend’s death in letters from East Hampton. Some of his own letters to Pat that had never reached him were returned with a postmark noting that he was deceased. 

Mr. Bye had tried over the years to memorialize his friend. He presented a petition to the East Hampton Town Board in the 1990s to have a new beach along the Napeague stretch named in Private Flynn’s honor. He thought it was a done deal, but nothing ever came of it, and as it turned out, he said, the town record made no mention of it. 

Since then, the bridge from Sag Harbor to North Haven was renamed the Marine Lance Cpl. Jordan Haerter Veterans Memorial Bridge after a Sag Harbor native killed in Iraq in 2008. A 1.4-mile stretch of Route 114 was dedicated to Army First Lt. Joseph Theinert, who lost his life in Afghanistan in 2010. 

As the 50th anniversary of Private ­Flynn’s death neared in April, Mr. Bye enlisted the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars in his efforts. John Geehreng, the commander of the V.F.W. who also knew Private Flynn, ran with it, Mr. Bye said. “If not now, when?” Mr. Geehreng asked.

With support from Bill Mott, commander of the East Hampton American Legion post, East Hampton Town board members, and village officials, they settled on placing a boulder with a plaque and benches on an existing but unused brick area by the entrance to the parking lot near the East Hampton Grill. “We thought this would absolutely be the appropriate location” — right along the path Private Flynn walked to school — said Town Councilman David Lys, who helped coordinate the effort. 

A ceremony officially dedicating the spot to Private Flynn was held there on Sunday, followed by a lunch hosted by the East Hampton Fire Department. His namesake, Patricia Flynn, a niece born after he died, traveled to East Hampton just for the occasion and read excerpts from his letters home. 

  He never wanted to join the Army, his letters to his family revealed when they shared them with The Star in June of 1968. “I don’t agree with it myself,” he wrote in one letter, though he grew proud to be in the infantry.

In a Jan. 28, 1968, letter to his older brother, Richard, he wrote, “You see, I’m really quite shy about going to Vietnam. I think I’ll make it but if I don’t, I don’t want to have had my life wasted on another Korea.” A few sentences later, he added, “Don’t think I’m a coward, because I’m not afraid to fight.” 

In a letter he wrote to his mother after arriving in Vietnam, he admitting to be afraid, “but it’s not the kind of fear you feel at home. It’s like you’re just afraid of not being able to do your job right. Don’t get me wrong though, I’m afraid of dying too.” 

His confidence grew in the weeks he was in Vietnam. In an April letter he said, “You know it’s funny, God only knows how much I didn’t want to come over here, but now that I’m here I don’t think I would leave if I got the chance. You’re treated like a man over here and all the sergeants and other higher officers tell you straight. They say that we’re not fighting for God and country, we’re fighting to stay alive so we can go back to the world and live like a human being again.”

In a letter to his brother around April 22, he wrote about how the death of a man called Doc, “our medic a very good and close friend,” led him to think about his own death. He told his brother he wanted “a joyous funeral.”

“Don’t ever be sorry I died over here because I’ll have died like a true man. Sure, shed a few tears, but after the funeral I want all my friends to get very drunk. And most of all I want you and them to be proud of me,” he wrote.

“I am proud of him,” Mr. Bye said when read his friend’s letter. “He was a good friend. I always thought we would get together again,” he said, adding the two had talked about meeting in Australia if they could get leave after they both served in Vietnam. 

Prudence Carabine, a member of the class of 1966 with Private Flynn, remembered him as “a good guy” with an artistic streak. “I don’t think the war at that point, when we graduated, had really hit us in our senior class, and then he went off and died,” she said. 

She lost her brother, David, two years later in an accident coming off his tour in Vietnam (he was not listed as a casualty of war). “Unfortunately, I wrapped Pat and David up in the same ball of emotion,” she said. “The realization when Pat died, to all of us, was that this was serious business and there were a lot of questions about it.” She would later demonstrate against the war with the Students for a Democratic Society. 

While the Legion and the V.F.W. has honored Private Flynn for the last 50 years, Ms. Carabine and her husband, Brian Carabine, a Marine who served in Vietnam and the quartermaster at V.F.W., said they are both thankful that Private Flynn was recognized in a public place.

“I think that John and Bill and Sid kept pushing on it and talking to everybody. They organized getting the stone from Bistrian’s. They had it delivered and put in place with help from Scott Fithian from the village. They got a generous donation for the plaque from the man who owns Buoy One (Robert Pollifrone),” Mr. Carabine said. 

It came together quickly, Mr. Mott said. “We went from nothing in April or so to this day,” he said, adding that the Legion paid for one bench and the V.F.W. for another.

“It was a great coordination between civic organization and municipalities,” Mr. Lys said. “It was a long time coming.”

A rare before-Thanksgiving snowfall that paralyzed New York City and northern New Jersey during the Thursday evening commute had a negligible effect on South Fork roads.

Only a mix of heavy rain with occasional sleet was falling in East Hampton Village at 8 p.m. Thursday. The electric utility, PSEG Long Island, reported only a handful of outages, with fewer than 70 customers cut off in East Hampton Town. There were fewer still in Southampton Town. Areas with the highest number of power outages were in the towns of North Hempstead, Oyster Bay, and Huntington.

No snow accumulation was reported at East Hampton Airport, however, snowfall elsewhere on Long Island as of about 8 p.m. on Thursday ranged from 6.5 inches in Manhasset to 4.3 inches at Islip MacArthur Airport to 3.5 inches at Orient. 

Gusting east winds were the greater concern on the South Fork. A gale warning was in effect for Peconic Bay, Gardiners Bay, and the ocean shore, as well as New York Harbor and Long Island Sound until 6 p.m. Friday for northeast winds up to 35 knots, shifting to west with gusts to 45 knots. Minor flooding of low-lying areas was expected.

East Hampton Town Police Chief Michael Sarlo said there were quite a few reports of tree limbs down and minor debris in the roads. Stephen Lynch, the East Hampton Town Highway superintendent, said a tree fell across Oakview Highway by Hand's Creek Road in East Hampton around 6 a.m., blocking both lanes. "It was cleaned up by 7," he said. Gerard Drive in Springs washed over — "But it does that in every storm," he said.  The east wind spared the ocean beaches in Montauk from further erosion, he added. 

"We were ready for it though," he said of the snow that fell further west. "It stayed on the warmer side here."  

The Police Department called the East Hampton Fire Department's heavy rescue squad to get someone out of a car. Chief Turza said they found a small sedan stuck in the mud after its driver went through a puddle off the shoulder of the road up against the tree line on Cedar Street, near Pine Street, Friday morning. A tow truck was called instead. 

In Sag Harbor Village Friday morning, Police Chief Austin McGuire said the water nearly came up over the Long Wharf. "As usual, water was across Bay Street at Rysam Street," he said, adding there was nothing else unusual to report. 

On Shelter Island, coastal flooding around the high tide caused delays and closures at the ferries. The North Ferry shut down for a time earlier on Friday but is back up and running. One ramp on the South Ferry's Shelter Island side had to be closed and cars had difficulty getting onto the ferry, even three hours after the morning's high tide. 

On the North Fork, strong winds blew over the steeple on the First Baptist Church in Greenport at 3:30 a.m., according to the Suffolk Times. It teetered on the roof of the building and had to be lowered with a crane. No one was hurt. 

With Reporting by Taylor K. Vecsey 

The Hedges Inn will not be allowed to hold outdoor events, even in tents, the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals decided on Friday. The decision corroborates opinions of the village administrator and building inspector, who, in March, denied four permits for the inn, a frequent wedding venue, on the grounds that outdoor dining is not a permitted use of the pre-existing, nonconforming commercial property, which is in a residential zone. The pertinent village law took effect on Oct. 1.  

Christopher Kelley, the lawyer for the Hedges Inn, took the matter to the Z.B.A. in September after arguing against the law earlier this year. He contended that special events were a reasonable and legitimate accessory use for the inn.

In announcing the Z.B.A. decision, Frank Newbold, the chairman, referred to a 2004 ruling against using a patio at the Hedges Inn for outdoor dining. The ruling was based on the opinion that allowing such dining would “enable the owner to operate a different kind of facility altogether, a restaurant facility capable of hosting and catering large special events. The Palm Management corporation, the inn’s owner at the time, sued, but the zoning board’s decision was upheld in State Supreme Court and then in the Court of Appeals. 

Although Mr. Kelley had argued that the 2004 decision focused only on the use of the patio and did not preclude outdoor dining in general, Mr. Newbold said on Friday that there was “no language in that decision that limited it just to dining on the side patio,” and that the intent of the 2004 ruling was clear, namely to prevent the extension of a nonconforming use.

Linda Riley, the board’s lawyer, said she would draft a formal determination for the board to vote on. However, Mr. Kelley said he was likely to appeal the decision. “I will discuss it with my client, and my guess is they will disagree with the board and want to have a court take a look at it,” he said. 

In another matter, the board revisited an application from Morad Ghadamian, the owner of 20 and 24 West End Road, vacant lots he wants to merge in order to build a single-family house. The property fronts on Georgica Pond.

Mr. Ghadamian’s initial plans, which were presented to the board on Oct. 12, called for a house that would have been in excess of 10,000 square feet, plus a detached garage and accessory structures, which would require variances for an additional 1,431 square feet of ground-floor space and 2,752 more square feet of coverage than the zoning code allows. Mr. Newbold said, “The board would like to see a smaller structure.” 

On Friday, a pared-down plan was presented by Leonard Ackerman, the applicant’s attorney. The house would now require variances for 873 square feet of ground floor space and 1,842 square feet of lot coverage. 

Mr. Newbold described the matter as a balancing test. The board, he said, would have to weigh the benefits of having just one house on the lots‚ which would create less density and require just one septic system‚ versus the effects of two residences. 

Lysbeth Marigold, a member of the board, still thought the plans were grandiose. “We’re going from two empty lots to a house that, from the plans, it looks like the entire property is being covered,” she said. “If it’s not a tennis court, it’s two garages, two pool houses, two screened-in porches, three pergolas, umpteen gardens. I mean, it’s dense.”

Given the board’s critiques, Mr. Ackerman said his client might withdraw the application and build two houses instead.

Timothy Haynes, the architect who drew the plans for two houses, said that they would result in 30 percent more ground floor area and that one of the houses would be close to West End Road, whereas a single structure would be set farther back. 

“I think you’re missing the big picture here,” said Mr. Ackerman, making the case that approving a variance for 873 square feet of floor space would be preferable for both the client and the village. The hearing was adjourned until Dec. 14.

Also on Friday, the board heard from another applicant seeking to merge two lots. Michael De Florio, the owner of 18 and 30 Buell Lane, wants to combine the parcels, tear down one house and add an addition to the residence on the other lot, which would require a variance for an additional 397 square feet of gross floor space. A height variance of nearly two feet would also be required for the addition, which would exceed the 25 feet permitted.

Eric Bregman, Mr. De Florio’s lawyer, explained that the extra space is necessary to achieve the applicant’s dream, which is to install two bowling lanes in the basement. “There’s no way to get the bowling lanes in without the extra 397 square feet,” said Mr. Bregman. “Got to love the Hamptons,” Mr. Newbold said.

Before closing the hearing, Mr. Newbold said the board would also be able to consider the upsides‚ including a decrease in density on a street in the heart of the village and the need for only one septic system.   

Also on Friday, the board announced nine decisions on earlier applications.  

Joseph and Amy Perella, the owners of 43 Terbell Lane, were granted a freshwater wetlands permit for 250 linear feet of coir logs along the Hook Pond shoreline and granted permission to plant vegetation within and adjacent to the wetlands. The board asked that the following conditions apply: no grading or importation of soils or stone materials where the work is to occur, written notice two days before the work begins and within two days of its completion, and that the applicant plant bayberry at three to five-foot intervals along the edge of the lawn to prevent inadvertent mowing of the natural buffer.

David Gallo, the owner of 94 Apaquogue Road, was granted a freshwater wetlands permit to mechanically excavate phragmites and replant the adjacent area with native species in conformance with a plan prepared by Land Use Ecological Services. The following conditions apply: The applicant must provide written notice two days prior to beginning the work and within two days of its completion, a final “as built” survey showing the limits of the lawn, that only temporary irrigation be used to establish plantings in the buffer area and that no fertilizers be used in that area.

The Cohan Revocable Trust, which owns 12 Hither Lane, was granted an area variance to allow the construction of additions to a residence resulting in 8,270 square feet of gross floor area, where the maximum permitted is 7,852 square feet. Variances were also granted for a 19.7-foot side yard setback to allow a second story over an existing garage, and to allow 17,217 square feet of coverage where the maximum is 14,674 square feet. The variances were granted on the condition that the applicant provide a certified copy of a covenant that would be binding on any successor and that stipulates that the existing three-car garage will not be used for anything but storage of motor vehicles. 

Sheila and Taylor Smith, who own 36 Maidstone Avenue, were granted a 1.4-foot variance to legalize an air-conditioning condenser and a 167-foot variance to allow 1,667 square feet of coverage, where the maximum is 1,500 square feet. 

Roger and Kathryn Barton, the owners of 213 Main Street, were granted area variances of approximately 14 feet and 10 feet from the side lot line to construct an addition that will include a shed and a kitchen. 

Peter Morton, the owner of 57 West End Road, was granted variances to install a generator within the coastal erosion hazard line on the condition that there be no use of the generator except in power outages and for one 20-minute test period per week, only on a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. 

Michael Smith, the owner of 101 Lily Pond Lane, was granted variances to make alterations of a swimming pool, to legalize an air-conditioning condenser, and to install a weather station, all of which are seaward of the coastal erosion hazard line, on the condition that the construction plans submitted by J. Tortorella Custom Pools is implemented in full. 

Katharine Rayner, the owner of 85 West End Road, was granted coastal erosion hazard and dune setback variances to permit the construction of two second-floor dormers on the condition that the construction adhere to plans submitted by John Hummel and Associates. 

The Gerli family, owners of 58 Ocean Avenue, was granted a variance to legalize a children’s play set, which is 1.8 feet from the rear lot line where the required setback is 20 feet.