125 Years Ago 1899
From The East Hampton Star, June 2
At Southampton an automobile carriage is one of the attractions on the streets. It is owned by Dr. Wyckoff, a summer resident.
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The next East Hampton anniversary worthy of a proper celebration will occur in 1949, when the town will be three hundred years old. Those of our people now in their prime will then either have passed away or be numbered among the oldest inhabitants. Many of the good old homes of today will then be crumbling away and the East Hampton of 1849 will have been almost forgot. The new East Hampton will be in full sway — with hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of new names in its census, with perfect roads, electric lights, or some new illuminant yet undiscovered; with new churches, new schools and new politicians; with fire engines, motor carriages and perhaps flying machines. But who dare attempt to foretell what the East Hampton of half a century hence will be? Let come what will, The Star will be on the scene to tell the story.
100 Years Ago 1924
From The East Hampton Star, June 6
The word "jazz" has already found its way to the scholarly dictionary, where it is defined as "a form of syncopated music played in discordant tones on various instruments, as the banjo, saxophone, trombone, flageolet, drum and piano." But this definition is incomplete. In the jazz band there are kettle-drums, cow-bells, kitchen pans, tin whistles, baby's rattles, etc. The "music" is full of shrieks, screams, moans and explosions. The leader usually adopts a suitable idiotic attitude. With cap set on one side of his head he prances around, rolls his eyes and twists his face into all kinds of simian contortions. The inspiration for all this was found among excited savages.
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Government figures show that in agencies depleting our forests, the ratio of burning to cutting is nearly two to one.
During 1923, there were 51,891 forest fires in the United States, burning an aggregate of 11,500,000 acres with a financial loss in excess of $16,500,000.
Some idea of the extent of this ravaged area may be gathered from the fact that it is eight times the acreage of French forests destroyed or damaged throughout the World War — and this, too, in one year.
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Fears for William T. Taylor of Manhattan, and William Grimshaw, his boatman, of Sag Harbor, who were caught in the storm of Saturday night and driven to sea in a small yacht with a disabled motor, were appeased Sunday. Captain Will Fellett, keeper of Cedar Island light, saw the yacht Gertwill, of the Sag Harbor Yacht Club, anchored in the middle of Gardiner's Bay early Sunday morning. He went to its aid and towed the yacht to Sag Harbor.
75 Years Ago 1949
From The East Hampton Star, June 9
The Ladies Village Improvement Society met Monday at the home of Mrs. Benjamin Chapman Jr.
Mrs. H. Allen Wardle read a report of the Tree Committee's winter work which had been prepared by Mrs. George Roberts, chairman. Mrs. Roberts stated that the 48 young trees which were planted last fall have stood the winter remarkably well, and those which died for lack of the specialized care which is given to individually planted private trees will be replaced.
Mrs. Roberts reported on Dutch elm disease. No cure has yet been announced but watering, spraying with DDT, pruning, feeding, recognizing and eliminating single diseased trees before the disease spreads — all combine to prevent widespread destruction of the species.
Mrs. Roberts reported an anonymous gift of two white willows on Egypt Lane, given in memory of the late Childe Hassam.
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Charles Reed, 43, who lived in East Hampton for several years until he left three years ago, was arrested in Southampton this week by State Police Sgt. Arthur Kannell and Tpr. Joseph Casey, charged with bigamy. Reed, a former enlisted man in the Navy, had worked in East Hampton at Palma's Tavern and also at Kelly's Liquor Store.
The bigamy charge against Reed was lodged as a result of his marriage in 1947 to Mrs. Helen Weeks, of Westchester. Police say that Reed met her while working at the Grasslands State Hospital, where he was employed as a cashier. In a five month's wedding tour in the new wife's Cadillac, it is reported that $12,000 was spent by the new wife.
Police say that Reed married the former Ruth Marfin in Brooklyn in 1930 when he was in the Navy. They have a son and daughter.
50 Years Ago 1974
From The East Hampton Star, June 6
East Hampton Town law enforcement officials were shaking their heads last Friday upon learning of a decision by the Appellate Term of the Nassau County Supreme Court which overturned a 1971 public lewdness conviction here.
"It's going to open up the beaches here to nudity," said Town Justice Edward W. Hults Sr., whose conviction of the appellant, Dian Hardy, 34, was the one overturned. "I'd like to see the case appealed to the State Court of Appeals; then maybe it will be hashed out in the Legislature," he added.
Two judges of the three-judge court, Justices David Glickman and Mario Pittoni, ruled last Thursday that "lewdness cannot be presumed from the mere fact of nudity." Miss Hardy, who now lives in Florida, claimed as a defense that the State law in question was unconstitutional and there was nothing lewd about a body.
The third Justice of the Court, Justice Thomas P. Farley, dissented, taking the stand that "the streakers of today may be the complacent unadorned strollers of tomorrow."
Miss Hardy, a California native who is an occasional summertime visitor to East Hampton, was arrested along with three companions on the ocean beach about one-quarter mile west of Indian Wells Highway, Amagansett.
A mother of five children who owned a home on the dunes at that spot complained to police that she and her children had been confronted by a group of nude sunbathers on several occasions when she and her children came down to the beach.
Then Special Patrolman, now Patrolman Toby Jacobs, was dispatched in bathing suit the afternoon of Aug. 26 to make an on-site inspection of the sunbathers.
25 Years Ago 1999
From The East Hampton Star, June 10
Of the three dozen or so car accidents on the South Fork last week, none was so tragic as the one on Saturday in front of the Amagansett Post Office that took the life of a 60-year old visitor from New Jersey and left his wife and one of his twin daughters deciding this week whether to remove the second twin from life support.
George Pagani of Teaneck died on impact when the driver's side hood and roof of his 1997 Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo were sheared off.
Police said Mr. Pagani, who had been shopping for a summer rental house that day with his family, was headed east when he swerved to the left and hit an oncoming truck. His wife, Vita Pagani, 56, suffered a fractured neck. Their twins Sabrina and Ariana, who will turn 28 on Tuesday, were in the back seat.
