75 Years Ago 1947
From The East Hampton Star, January 2
Kip Farrington’s “Salt Water” column in the December issue of Field and Stream magazine is devoted to “The Angler” fish, a very ugly fish with a big head, mouth, and practically no body. It’s subtitled “He’s neither game nor handsome, but he arouses a lot of curiosity.”
—
The year 1946 in East Hampton and surrounding communities, as elsewhere in Long Island and the metropolitan area generally, has been the busiest the telephone company has ever known, according to J.F. Casey, manager here for the New York Telephone Company.
Calls from telephones in these communities are now running at the rate of 19,000 a day, an increase of 2,300 over the same daily period last year. The number of telephones now in service in this area is nearly 8,500, an increase of about 1,900 since the first of the year. In Suffolk County the number has reached an all-time high of about 58,100, with more than 10,000 added this year. At the end of 1941, the last pre-war year, the total was 37,548.
—
The Christmas Pageant of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church will be presented this Sunday evening, Jan. 5, at 7:30 o’clock. It will be a candlelight service, showing in pantomime the coming of the Light of the World to earth. The pageant beginning with the church in darkness, while the prophecy of Christ’s coming is read from Isaiah. Then the Christ candle is lighted for the Nativity scene.
—
The Suffolk Times of Greenport reports an unusual duel, a four-point Buck and huge Seal in struggle in Peconic Bay. Recently the crew and about 20 passengers on the ferryboat “Islander,” of the Shelter Island and Greenport Ferry Company, experienced a thrill which they will long remember. After casting off the lines at about three bells for one of the scheduled trips, Captain Walter Treadway, who was in the pilot house of the ferryboat with Mark Griffing on deck, witnessed one of the most unusual sights that they have ever experienced during the years that they have operated the ferryboats across the bay.
—
Summer Colony
Aymar Embury II is the architect for the John Peter Zenger Memorial Building and for restoration of historic Eastchester village green on the grounds of St. Paul’s Church, Mt. Vernon, N.Y. This is the American Shrine of Freedom of the Press and the Bill of Rights. Mr. Embury says he sought to design a simple, old and unaffected little building which will go well with the stone church built in 1765 to replace the original wooden church on the green, and with the parish house.
50 Years Ago 1971
From The East Hampton Star, December 30
Suffolk County Executive H. Lee Dennison, in his 12th and final annual message, delivered Tuesday in Riverhead, urged County takeover of most services performed by Suffolk’s ten Towns, which would all but abolish Town government, and called for the joining of Towns to reduce the number of Towns to five.
Mr. Dennison first delivered an oral summary to the County Legislature, and then later issued copies of his full annual report, a huge document, as in the past containing several pages of maps and charts. Most of the Legislators were noncommittal about the report, but Legislative chairman John V.N. Klein, who becomes County Executive Saturday, termed the document “comprehensive, and conclusive.”
—
A dispute over the right of way between motorboatmen and swimmers has led the East Hampton Town Board to recommend a dredging project on the Gardiner’s Bay side of Louse Point, Springs.
East Hampton Town Supervisor Eugene E. Lester Jr. said this week that after the channel into Accabonac Creek, separating Gerard and Louse Points, was dredged last summer, it became a battleground for boatmen and swimmers, who found it a good place to swim. “To swim off Louse Point, you’d probably have to wade out almost to Cartwright Shoal,” said Mr. Lester, speaking of the alternative swimming hole.
—
The New Year should bring hope to many East Hampton residents who have heretofore resigned themselves to a steady diet of Channel Eight television.
With the recent takeover of Hampton Cablevision Corporation by Sammons Enterprises of Dallas, Tex., the third largest community antenna television systems operator in America, both the East Hampton Village and Town Boards have seen an opportunity to nudge the local firm closer to extending service throughout the Town.
—
With holiday parties preoccupying body and mind, Guild Hall will have an uneventful weekend. “Darling Lili,” a film starring Julie Andrews, will be the only scheduled event, at 8:40 p.m. Saturday, and film time will be the only time the Hall and its galleries will be open on either Saturday or Sunday.
A film and three new art exhibitions will put the Hall back into action on Sunday, Jan. 9. The exhibitions will include one on Josef Albers entitled “Interaction of Color” lent by the New York State Council on the Arts; another by a nine-year-old Sag Harbor boy; and the third will be a study of heroes as seen through the eyes of school children.
25 Years Ago 1997
From The East Hampton Star, January 2
The final page has been torn off the 1996 calendar and the 52nd chapter completed. Will the year be remembered as one of triumph or tragedy?
It was the year of record-breaking snow — snow to ski in, snow to build with, snow to blanket the roads and bring the entire Northeast to a halt.
Snow to spare — 84 inches of it in the 1995-96 winter. It began before the first of the year and did not end until the second week of April.
—
Long Islanders won’t be paying their electric bills to the Long Island Lighting Company anymore if a planned merger between LILCO and Brooklyn Union Gas goes through. What impact the merger will have on LILCO’s famously high rates, however, remains to be seen.
“In a nutshell, I see the merger as a good thing,” commented State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. Monday. The Long Island utility has been criticized for years, while Brooklyn Union Gas is regarded as among the most efficient utilities in the nation. “But a whole host of other things needs to happen,” he said.
—
A group of residents who live near Rowe Industries, the Superfund site just outside Sag Harbor Village on the Bridgehampton Turnpike, charged last week that the contamination is more widespread than officials have acknowledged.
John DiStefano, the executive director of Carroll Street Remediation, said properties south of the site, previously thought to be clear of contaminants, had tested positive. His charges were made in a newsletter, the first issue of which was released this week.
—
The year just passed was a memorable one here in sports and the feats were broad-based.
During 1996, two East Hampton residents, Ed Petrie and Paul Annacone, were inducted into Suffolk’s Hall of Fame; a 36-year-old Wainscotter, Dennis Oehler, a below-the-knee amputee, competed in his third Paralympics and set a course soon after for Sydney; the fabled Bridgehampton Killer Bees won a sixth Class D state title for the tiny school; Gary Cowell, a Pierson High School student, won the state Class B triple jump — the first Sag Harborite to win a state title in an individual sport, and the Montauk Rugby Club enjoyed its best season ever, making it to the national quarterfinals in 15s, finishing fifth in the nation in 7s, and repeating as the Met Union’s Division II champion.
