Dorothy King Led Us to Gold

Late in the fall of 2008, Dorothy King told my wife, Carol, and me how to access East Hampton Star archive microfilm through interlibrary loan. This tip greatly aided our research on Jud Banister, a former East Hampton Village mayor and great-uncle of Carol’s. By early spring I had logged 100 hours or more on Amherst College’s microfilm reader when the analogy struck me.

Over a decade earlier, when I was with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, my brother-in-law spent a long, ultimately unsuccessful day panning for gold near our home in Alaska. He found one small flake the previous day at a nearby state historic site. His gold fascination had surely been stimulated by stories of Captain Kidd’s buried treasure on Gardiner’s Island he’d heard during his summertime visits to Jud’s Three Mile Harbor camp in the 1950s.

I was relieved that I had to go to work, knowing I didn’t have the patience to search for those small flakes hours on end. Now, 15 years later, through eyes strained from having spent hours scanning microfilm, I realized I was doing the same thing — searching for those precious nuggets mentioning Jud, other family members, and friends during his lifetime in East Hampton. The rewards were worth the effort, thanks to the helping hand from Dorothy, or Dotty, as she was known by her many friends.

A series of emails followed, with Dorothy, who ran the East Hampton Library’s Long Island Collection for more than 30 years, providing more family stories of Jud, Aunt Hat, and her own family. By now my microfilm scanning antennae were attuned to more names, including that of Dorothy’s father, Clarence, especially his time in the East Hampton Fire Department, and her Aunt Mayme and Uncle Joe Burns, whom she lived with on McGuirk Street. Others with stories of Jud surfaced as nuggets, with historical names such as Barnes and Mulford, thanks to contacts from Mary Lou Barnes Mayo and David Mulford. As with Dorothy they all had tales about Jud when they were merely kids in the late 1930s and ’40s.

Dorothy lived for much of her youth with her aunt and uncle after the tragic death of her father when she was only 7 — a little girl old enough to have known love, admiration, and respect for him, but young enough to absorb a lifetime of memories that would crowd out some from those youthful years.

She told of how the Burnses’ McGuirk Street home had a backyard adjoining that of another aunt on Cooper Lane. “There was a path from my house to her house,” she wrote. “Sometimes I would go in the backdoor and out the front door on my way to school. I crossed the street, walked up ‘Uncle Jud’s’ driveway and crossed his cow pasture to Conklin Terrace, and walked on to school. Sometimes I went this way three times a day. I never heard Aunt Hat or Uncle Jud complain about the school kids using the cow lot for a shortcut.”

She said that Jud was a good friend of Mayme and Joe Burns. “They liked to play six-handed pinochle. As Aunt Hat did not play cards they needed another player. I was always thrilled when I was asked to play with them. Much fun.”

More followed in subsequent emails, including one that seemed typical for Jud. “Did I mention that Uncle Jud loaned his car to my brother when he got married? Gas rationing also, I think at that time our car was a pickup truck.”

Dorothy hosted Carol and me at her house on Gerard Drive in Springs the following spring and introduced us to Mary Eckey, her cousin, and Betty Cobb, a friend, both of whom, as young girls like Dorothy, knew Jud. Mary Lou Barnes Mayo also joined us as we shared a great afternoon reminiscing about Jud and the East Hampton of their youth. An unexpected connection that likely explains why Jud came to East Hampton emerged from that fun day of stories enhanced by coffee, tea, and pastries.

We had always credited Carol’s grandmother Edith Banister, Jud’s older sister, with having convinced him that a good life was possible for an ambitious young man in turn-of-the-20th-century East Hampton. We explained that Edith came in 1901 as a graduate of the Potsdam Normal School to take a position in the six-year-old public school here. Betty mentioned that her aunt, Mrs. Stephen J. Lynch, the former Effa Silver, was a Potsdam Normal School graduate of a year earlier, having given her commencement oration on “The Influence of Women.” Star archives list her as a new teacher that fall, 1900, a year before Edith. We now believe Edith was encouraged to come to here by Effa, launching the Banister ties to East Hampton.

Dorothy, Mary, Betty, Carol, and I always tried to share a meal during our subsequent visits. I still recall smiling as I saw Dorothy, long coat and floppy hat protecting a warm smile and heart, walking across the Reutershan parking lot to meet the rest of us at John Papas Cafe. We gathered at the big round table in the back, enjoying both lunch and one another’s company. Combining several hundred years of memories, we were grateful that we were never made to feel we should leave before our stories were done and we had the good sense to make a discreet exit on our own.

Dorothy was helpful to us in so many ways, and I was happy to convey several Star news notes not only about the Burns family, but also many about her father’s time and influence with the Fire Department. At the time of his death, Clarence had been re-elected as first assistant engineer, the second in command to Chief Steve Marley. Earlier he had replaced Jud as the captain of Hook and Ladder Company 1 when Jud became chief in 1930. I told Dorothy that his record made a strong case that he might have succeeded Marley as chief had he lived.

“I was amazed at all the info you have about my father in the Fire Department,” she said. As she pointed out, her brother was a charter member of the Springs Fire Department, and his two sons also joined. Fire Department service is in the King family DNA.

We last visited Dorothy at her Gerard Drive home in late October 2013. Though the visit was brief, we thanked her for the pictures she had found of Jud taken in Florida a month before he died. She had earlier passed on family notes from the time he first arrived to stay with them, and finally found the pictures that she gave us. Carol instantly recognized Jud, in his high-waisted, high-water pants, enjoying some Florida warmth in March with friends. They are important memorabilia for us.

Mary Eckey and Betty Cobb remain good friends whom we cherish spending time with during our spring and fall visits. We may not have met them if not for Dorothy. A July 21, 2014, email from Mary apprised us of Dorothy’s passing a couple of days earlier. The Star published a fitting tribute obituary that week that made us appreciate even more the friend we had known. Her niece Deanna Tikkanen sent us a thoughtful note including the Star obituary and enclosed the note repeating the story of Jud’s loaning his car to her parents on their wedding day to drive from church.

Dorothy King was special to family and a treasure to the community. And thanks to her tip on Star archives through interlibrary loan and her willingness to share her memories and bountiful information, we truly realize what a gem she was to us.

Steve Rideout, a regular “Guestwords” contributor, lives in Shutesbury, Mass.