25 Years Ago in Bonac Sports: 08.24.17
August 6, 1992
Some say life begins at 40, still more would say it ends at 50, the half-century mark being the peak before the descent into old age. It’s an important milestone, as when an old table becomes an antique, when high school reunions become lonely events, when aging golfers join the senior tour.
But Loretta DeRose, who turned 50 on Sunday, doesn’t see it that way.
To celebrate her birthday, DeRose and Dean Webb, a Montauker who now lives in Port Jefferson, donned wetsuits and water-skied the 20 miles to Block Island.
. . . “What do you think of a grandma skiing to Block Island?” she asked. “I hope I can do it when I’m 60.”
“I used to jog when people would stop and ask if you wanted a ride,” she said. When not water skiing she enjoys snow skiing, bicycling, roller skating, and tennis.
Asked if she were afraid of being bitten by a shark, she said, “I’m too tough . . . a shark would never bite me.”
. . . When a birthday cake was served at Ballard’s restaurant overlooking Rhode Island Sound, DeRose hopped on the table and did splits for the benefit of the restaurant’s other patrons. She informed a surprised waiter that she was 50 years old and said something else that made him blush like a schoolboy and scurry away from the table. “Wrap him up and send him to my tent,” she said to her friends.
. . . “It was,” she said, “the best birthday I ever had.”
In what appears to be an ugly maneuver in the cold war between Lazy Point residents and visitors to the boardsailing mecca of Napeague Harbor, tires were slashed on five or more cars parked there Saturday.
While 20-knot winds raced over the low stretch of land between ocean and harbor, powering boardsailors across the water, air hissed out from under a Saab, a BMW, a Jeep Cherokee, and at least two other out-of-town cars, which slowly settled a little closer to the grass on the shoulder of Lazy Point Road.
Residents have complained that windsurfers have brought traffic, trash, and even environmental damage to their once-tranquil road end. Boardsailors respond that their quiet, pollution-free sport harms no one, and that its mostly 20 to 40-year-old devotees are thoughtful and clean.
August 27, 1992
Saturday’s Artists-Writers softball game began with a curveball thrown by the crafty Artists’ manager, Leif Hope, in the form of four members of the national-champion women’s softball team, who took the field in the top of the first inning. It was apparent from the first pitch, launched like a rocket by Pat Dufficy, that these young ladies could play. Their team, the Raybestos, of Stratford, Conn., went 51-1 this season. . . . Dufficy recently recorded her 400th win.
. . . “He’s playing with two artificial hips and a quadruple bypass,” John Scanlon, the play-by-play announcer, said of Ben Bradlee, who responded with a line single in the Writers’ third.
Roy Scheider and Sam Cohn were to make the Artists’ precarious 3-2 lead hold up, thanks in part to several outstanding plays by Billy Hofmann, the illustrative second sacker. For those and for his true grit, Hofmann was named co-winner of the most valuable player award with Eric Ernst, who wrote finis for the Writers with his two-run single up the middle in the bottom of the eighth.
A group of Shelter Islanders ran away with the Montauk Mile on Saturday. John Kenney, 36, was the winner, in 4 minutes and 57 seconds; Rich Webber, 32, was the runner-up, in 5:02, and Kevin Barry, 30, took third, in 5:16. Barbara Gubbins, 32, of Southampton, was the women’s winner, and fifth over all, in 5:37.