Letters to the Editor: 10.16.97

A Peek

Ridgewood, N.J.

October 10, 1997

To The Editor:

Now that summer is over and we are all back home again, we love getting The Star each week by mail. Unfortunately, it doesn't always make it to New Jersey in a timely manner. So it's great to get a peek at what's coming! Keep up the great work, but don't be afraid to put it all on the Web, we won't cancel our subscription.

WILL, JOAN, MICHAEL and SAM RAPHAEL

Civic Duty

Springs

October 9, 1997

Dear Helen,

I think it was fine that The Star and Kiwanis were giving out magnets last weekend -magnets that will inform recyclers where to dump at the dump. However, that is not the answer!

Every time I go to the dump it's usually us graybeards who are tottering between bins, shaking out our wet garbage into the bin marked compostables, cooing to the pigeons - er, rather shooing the pigeons from our garbage -, watching out for their garbage, hobbling to the number one and two plastic bins, teetering to the metal bin, limping to the green, brown, and clear glass bins, making sure we are covered and have our safety glasses on to avoid the shards, heaving the magazines and junk mail into their bin, and then toting the newspapers into their bin.

Whew! I, as one of those gray-beards, heave a sigh of relief. Into the car, I manage to crawl, and, after a few gasped breaths, I start my car engine, turning the corner, avoiding the battery acid and the used clothing bins (I've heard they sell all that clothing to people in need - I have no proof of that statement - it's just what I've heard. Giving that clothing to AProgram Planned for Life Enrichment or the Animal Rescue Fund or the church is a much better thought.) Anyway, I am now in front of Mount St. Helen (John Conner coined the phrase, I think) - the pit. I have one small bag of nonrecyclables - mostly New York Times blue, and a few A&P plastic bags (they tear easily and are not able to be used again).

So here is the problem - dumping all that garbage into the pit. Young women and men tossing huge black bags obviously weighed down with wet garbage - a few guilty glances over their shoulder - but tossing nevertheless. There is a large sign saying "It's against the law to . . ." but they toss anyway. And no one stops them! Why, if it's against the law, isn't something done about it? How about putting some of our policemen or women there? It may not be as pleasant as walking up and down Main Street and ticketing cars but it might fill the coffers more quickly, and it sure would help our town and its people and future generations.

So whatta you say, East Hampton? Us graybeards wouldn't feel so alone doing our civic duty if we had some help from you.

Sincerely,

VAUGHAN ALLENTUCK

Fulfillment Of Hopes

East Hampton

October 13, 1997

Dear Helen Rattray:

Star readers following my periodic reports on the study of strontium-90 levels in baby teeth of Long Island families living close to the Brook haven National Laboratory will be pleased to know that the study is now being extended to other possibly endangered areas, with the support of the new Standing for the Truth About Radiation foundation. With offices in New York and East Hampton (66 Newtown Lane, 329-8994), the goals of STAR include raising funds in defense of those harmed by reactor emissions, including humans, wildlife, fish, and nuclear whistleblowers, including those now ready to testify but who are fearful of reprisal.

Grants will also be made to environmental grassroots organizations supporting the search for truth about the health effects of low-level radiation. For example, a small grant has already been made to permit independent measures of radioactivity levels in the Peconic Bay.

STAR's mission will be spelled out in detail at a fund-raising dinner being given tomorrow evening by Alec Baldwin and Frazer and Frances Dougherty. Speakers will include the attorney Jan Schlictmann, the charismatic protagonist of the best-selling "A Civil Action," whose role in representing Woburn children dying of leukemia will soon be portrayed by John Travolta in a Hollywood film. He has characterized the baby teeth study as follows: "People on Long Island, as elsewhere, may discover from this study that their fears that reactor emissions may be contributing to high neighboring cancer rates, which can affect both the rich and poor alike, are either groundless or of great concern. But no one can object to our seeking the truth about health effects of ingesting nuclear fission products. Even Congress has questioned the National Cancer Institute for long withheld information on cancers caused by post-war nuclear fallout."

Since I am told that tickets may still be available when this letter is published on Oct. 16, I hope to see as many of my supporters as possible at this dinner, which for me represents the fulfillment of all my hopes since moving to East Hampton 10 years ago.

Sincerely,

JAY M. GOULD

Letter Home From Boynton Beach

October 9, 1997

Dear Editor,

The school building on Newtown Lane first opened its doors in September 1924. At that time, it was a kindergarten through 12th-grade school, and its graduating class, in June 1925, totaled 13.

It replaced an older wooden building, which had been constructed in the early 1890s. Several years after the turn of the century, a two-story brick section was added, and today, it is still being used. In the '20s and '30s, there was an art classroom and a manual training paint shop on its below-grade floor. On the first floor, there were two second-grade classrooms and a school nurse's office. On the top floor, there were two seventh-grade classrooms and a freshman classroom.

During construction of the school, students attended classrooms of a temporary nature at the Methodist Church Hall, the Masonic Temple, and the Presbyterian Session House, which at the time faced Main Street.

In September 1926, when I entered first grade, Gilbert Lyons was school principal, until the end of the 1927-28 school year, when he left to become principal of the Smithtown School District. In September 1928, Leon O. Brooks became East Hampton principal and remained until his retirement in the early '50s. John B. Meeker succeeded him, and he was destined to become a very busy man.

During his administration, the School District purchased the former Edward Gay property, adjacent to the school yard, to construct additional classrooms, a library, and a gymnasium. The existing auditorium-gymnasium was converted into a fine auditorium.

As the grade school population increased, land was purchased for the John Marshall Elementary School to be built. While it was being constructed, classes were held in the Odd Fellows Hall on Newtown Lane and at the Louis Parr building down Pantigo way.

In the early '50s, the voters of the East Hampton School District defeated a proposition to purchase land, which was located between Oakview Highway and Cedar Street. Much of it was cleared and had been used for farming. The land was of a size adequate enough to hold all school facilities, including ball fields and playgrounds. Had that proposal been approved, many thousands of dollars would have been saved.

At the time, there were some who wanted to convert the Newtown Lane school into a town-village government office building as soon as the Cedar Street project was completed. Instead, a few influential citizens, who could not see beyond the length of their noses, convinced the majority to defeat the Cedar Street land acquisition. Afterward, the costs of purchasing the Edward Gay property, next to the Newtown Lane school, the Long Lane fields, the site of today's high school, and the Gardiner property, behind Church Street, far exceeded the amount the Cedar Street acquisition would have cost. It must have been a frustrating period for Mr. Meeker. Without doubt, he must have experienced many sleepless and tossing nights.

When going to school in the '20s and '30s, there were three general rules, which the students had to obey, and if one was broken, the one who committed the infraction was going to have an audience with Mr. Lyons, the school principal. Rule number one: No one was allowed to walk on the grass, for lawns were made to look at, not to walk upon. Rule number two: No one was expected to run in the halls when changing classes. Rule number three: Every student was expected to be in his or her seat when the final bells rang at 9 a.m. and 1 p.m.

For some reason, now long forgotten, the west entrance of the school was the boys' entrance and the east was the girls' entrance. Often Mr. Lyons would stand in the boys' entrance just before the final bell rang, waiting to nab a tardy boy. Girls, for some reason, were rarely late to their classrooms.

The front entrance was used mainly by parents and visitors who had business with the principal. After the sports seasons ended, the boys and girls teams had group photographs taken there, which afterward were framed and mounted on the south wall of the top floor hall. After there was no longer a high school on Newtown Lane, the pictures were removed. I wonder what happened to them. I hope they were preserved, for they contained many fond memories of an earlier time.

The rear entrance, which faced the railroad property, was used by teachers who used the area reserved to park cars, and by boys who lived on Cedar Street, Osborne Lane, North Main Street, Freetown, and Three Mile Harbor Road. The boys who lived on Cedar Street and the northern end of Osborne Lane walked the fields behind the houses on the east side of the lane. After they crossed the railroad tracks, they slid through an opening under the boarded fence which separated the school yard from the tracks. Boys from the North Main Street area below the bridge and points north walked the railroad tracks and crossed Percy Schenck's coal yard before crawling beneath the chain link fence which separated the two properties. Girls, during those times, were much too dignified to crawl under fences or walk the fields and railroad tracks to school.

Young boys dressed much like schoolboys of the World War I era. They wore knickers, knee socks, and brogans. A shirt was never worn without a necktie, and as winter approached, a woolen sweater was worn. Most boys wore a woolen mackinaw to repel the cold. Some boys wore woolen flat caps, and others wore woolen toques which could be pulled down over the ears. At Christmas, many boys looked forward to receiving leather boots, which were called high-tops. The reason for their popularity was that they came with a jack-knife that was pocketed in a sheath attached to the right-hand boot. Most of the high-tops leaked like a sieve, and if they were not large enough for several pairs of woolen socks, the kid wearing them suffered from cold and wet feet, especially when the ground was covered with snow.

Girls, at the time, wore dresses and skirts with blouses, and sweaters were added as cold weather arrived. They wore knee socks and tan lisle stockings to help keep their legs warm, but still suffered from the cold walking to and from school on days when those piercing northwesterlies cut like a knife. School boys and girls of today are so very fortunate to wear insulated jackets, parkas, and boots to repel the cold. A lined hooded parka was unheard of then. If they had been available, the average family would have been unable to afford them.

As there was no bus transportation for students living in the East Hampton School District, the majority of students had to walk to school. The Bennett children who lived on Springy Banks Road, opposite Soak Hides Road, and the ones who lived on the west side of Abram's Path in Amagansett walked each day to and from school. The Criscione children lived on the peach farm in Northwest, and each day they were driven to school by their father, Salvatore. At the end of each school day, he would wait for them on Newtown Lane. In their early years of going to school, the roads throughout Northwest were unpaved, and after snowstorms, plows were infrequently used to clear those two-tracked wagon paths.

A few years after the end of World War I, Oscar Brill opened a clothing store in the DeWitt Talmage building on the corner of Talmage Lane and North Main Street. A few old-timers referred to it as the Army-Navy Store, but in later years, most residents knew it as Brill's. Brill's customers lived in the greater part of East Hampton, Springs, and Amagansett. On Saturday nights just before the opening of school, the Brills were busy fitting school children with new clothes. At Christmastime, too, sales increased, as local people prepared for the holidays by purchasing winter wear for their children.

Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Epstein owned a similar store located between the A&P and the First National Bank on Main Street opposite the Edwards Theater. They, like the Brills, knew about everyone's size and what color would look well on them, making buying a gift for a youngster or a family member an easy task. It is a part of old East Hampton that has passed on. On the first day of school, there was nothing to surpass the joy of seeing all the schoolchildren in their new attire, the girls with pretty ribbons in their hair, patent leather shoes, and white knee stockings to match their dresses, and the boys in knickers, white shirts and ties, and new highly polished brogans. It was a real Norman Rockwell setting, complete with a newly painted room for each class.

In the early years of this century, the first six weeks of school were periods of apprehension, because of the dreaded infantile paralysis, more commonly known today as polio. In the fall of 1930, a Stelzer girl in the lower grades succumbed to that disease. Shortly after school opened in September 1935, Murray Hantz, son of Mr. and Mrs. Leo Hantz of Amagansett, also died as a result of contracting polio. Two years later, Harry Leek Jr., also of Amagansett, died of that terrible disease. In that same period, Robert Conklin, an East Hampton teenager, survived after coming down with polio, but was left a cripple for the remainder of his life.

Mrs. Cornelia Reiser, the school nurse since her appointment in March 1920, and Dr. David Edwards, a local physician and town health officer for many years, were very concerned about another disease, diphtheria, which in the past had claimed so many young lives. Although New York State gave the toxin-anti-toxin to the towns to be administered to each child between the ages of 6 months and 10 years, many families did not take the opportunity to protect their youngsters. Mrs. Reiser and Doctor Edwards decided that the only way for the youngsters to receive shots was through administering the shots after the children entered school.

In 1929, Doctor Edwards went to the Town Board and requested that the town pay doctors $1 for each inoculation, just as the Town of Southampton had been doing. The Town Board approved his request, and by 1932 he had his toxin-anti-toxin clinic in the school building. Prior to that time, he had been giving shots to the children, both in school and in his office, for which he received no compensation. I remember Mrs. Reiser taking me to Doctor Edwards's office for my three shots because I had been home with a very bad case of measles, another killer in those days.

By today's standards, when all children can be inoculated against contracting communicable childhood diseases, we who grew up those many years ago lived in a somewhat primitive era.

Most parents, at some time or another, spent sleepless nights wondering if they would be spared the agony of having a child come down with a fatal case of a communicable childhood disease. It was quite common to hear of a family in town who had just lost a youngster with a disease for which there were no preventive measures.

In the springtime, during our grade school years, boys, before classes commenced, both in the morning and afternoon, played a game of ball called "work up." It was played with a tennis ball and a flat bat two or three inches wide and an inch thick. No sides were chosen, and the batter remained at bat as long as he did not ground or fly out. There were several batters, and each batter had to advance the base runner. If the base runner was forced out, he had to go to the right field and advance each position as the runners or batters made outs. When a batter flied out, the person catching the ball became a batter, and the former batter became the right fielder. After the boys began to arrive in larger numbers, they became fielders, making it difficult to get a base hit.

The one thing the young boys learned was to swing at the ball. Had there been Little League baseball, most boys of that era would have become fairly good hitters. Years later, when I umpired Little League games, I noticed too many batters waited to be walked, rather than swing at the ball. One year, when the late Amasa Brooks was managing a Little League team, a kid joined the team, and Amasa asked him what position did he play. The kid replied, "Batter." That was good enough for Amasa, and the kid turned out to be an excellent batter.

Once in a while, a fist fight broke out, and the yelling commenced as the onlookers took sides. One such fight started behind the boiler room in the latter part of the noon hour, just as Coach Sprig Gardner returned from lunch. Immediately, he broke it up, but the incident planted an idea in his head. As winter was approaching, he thought an organized program, held in the auditorium during lunch hour, would be a good way for some of the boys to let off excess steam.

After he figured a way, he went to the principal and informed him of his plan. Mr. Brooks approved it, and Sprig purchased boxing gloves of various sizes, and placed boys in classes from 80 pounds to heavyweights. Each boy was required to wear his gym suit, but he had to provide his sneakers. Those who did not want to participate were free to do so.

Three bouts took place simultaneously, and each bout, scheduled for three rounds, was refereed by a responsible adult. It proved to be very entertaining for the spectators, a large number of whom were girls. Also, it allowed for a few grudges to be settled. When Sprig left East Hampton in 1936 for a better job at Mepham, Stewart McCaw, the new coach, continued that entertaining winter program.

To be concluded.

Sincerely,

NORTON (BUCKET) DANIELS

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