Oral Histories: Of Living Links

Sometimes it's hard, while driving down Montauk Highway or sitting on the beach at Accabonac Harbor, to imagine East Hampton as it was when fishing families used the sugar pine from fish boxes to add on to their houses and wagon wheels rolled along the roads instead of four-wheel-drives.

But those who have lived here a long time, whose childhood, adolescence, and middle years span times of sweeping change, have often heard firsthand, from parents or grandparents, of such things. These people are the town's living links to the past.

Two oral history projects now under way are preserving the stories and voices of some of East Hampton's older residents, whose recollections, whose very mannerisms and expressions, conjure up a different day.

On Videotape

The Autumn Project, whose name was inspired by a John Donne poem, is being conducted by Kyril Bromley of Springs, a professional photographer, and Julia Mead, news editor of The Star.

"Albie Cavagnaro was probably the real impetus," said Ms. Mead. "I've had a couple of older friends who died. I've thought probably a hundred times that somebody should have tape-recorded him - he had this idiosyncratic way about him."

Mr. Cavagnaro, the longtime proprietor of Cavagnaro's Bar in East Hampton Village, died in 1995.

"I see this as being a sort of homespun, old-fashioned oral history project, but using videotape," said Ms. Mead. "People telling their stories."

Storytellers

"What we want to preserve is not just what they're saying, but how they sound and look," she said.

"Hearing someone talk - it's a different impact than reading something in a book," said Mr. Bromley. "It's especially important for young people in the next century."

The project, whose costs are minimal, is being underwritten by East Hampton Town's 350th Anniversary Committee.

Tony Prohaska, a longtime East Hampton resident, has teamed up with Martha Kalser of Amagansett, a video producer, to form the History Project, a nonprofit corporation which has also begun to record the life stories of residents with long memories.

History Project

Two who are already on tape are Carl Jennett, who was in command of the Amagansett Coast Guard Station off Atlantic Avenue during World War II when Nazi saboteurs landed within a mile of headquarters, and Barbara Lester DiSunno, who shared her recollections of Amagansett's Poseyville Lesters.

The History Project aims to conduct and film up to 50 90-minute interviews. The tapes will wind up eventually in the Pennypacker Collection of the East Hampton Library.

Computer Database

Historic photographs and print materials will be collected and donated as well. Early interviews recorded on audiotape will be transcribed.

The project intends to cover, among other things, farming and fishing, the Springs art colony, and the days of Prohibition.

Carleton Kelsey, the longtime Amagansett librarian and former East Hampton Town historian, who was one of those interviewed, sits on its board, as do a number of other prominent local historians.

Long-term goals of the History Project include the creation of a computer database with an index to subjects and topics. The project has been awarded a $2,000 grant from the East Hampton Town Board, and will seek Federal and state funding.

Milton Miller

For the Autumn Project's first video, Capt. Milton C. Miller of Springs, 82, sat down at his kitchen table to talk about his life and times.

Including trips to the Atlantic Avenue beach in Amagansett and to the boat he fishes from now, the interview lasts an hour and a half - longer, Ms. Mead said, than most of the others will be.

"Milt was such a good storyteller that we couldn't bear to edit it out," she said.

An interview with four siblings in the Walker family of Wainscott, Roger, Henry, Mattie, and Clara, was the next to be filmed.

A Family's Eyes

The format, which will be followed throughout the series, focuses on the storyteller, with cutaways to relevant photographs and visits to significant locations.

"What I'm hoping is that [the interviews] will give the history of a place, but give it through the eyes of a certain family," Ms. Mead said.

Many of those asked to participate react with surprise, she said. "They don't realize that they've seen history . . . they just think it's been their own lives."

When the camera goes on, however, "It's almost as if they've waited to tell the story."

Each interview was filmed and edited with LTV equipment and will be aired on the public access channel. Mr. Miller's was recently shown.

After several have been produced, Ms. Mead hopes to make them available to the public, perhaps through libraries.

Both the History Project and the Autumn Project seek to cover the gamut of the East Hampton community, both both its hamlets and its residents. Ms. Mead said she was particularly interested in obtaining interviews from black residents, "who have an interesting history that isn't told very often outside itself."

Sense Of "Urgency"

The Autumn Project has about 50 people on its list to talk with.

"Every once in a while I have to take a name off because somebody's gone," Ms. Mead said. "There are a lot of people born and raised here who are in their 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s who have a lot to say. Once that generation is gone, East Hampton becomes something completely different. I feel a sort of urgency about it."

Plans are to continue the venture beyond the town's anniversary year, she said.

Both series of tapes will form an archive that will help viewers to recognize and maintain, as Mr. Bromley said, "the presence of the past in the present."