125 Years Ago 1900
From The East Hampton Star, April 20
From the Treasury Department comes the announcement that the country now has more money — more gold and silver and a larger total in circulation — than ever before in its history. The per capita amount is $26. Four years ago it was $21.53. The silver in circulation, including standard dollars, subsidiary coin, silver certificates and treasury notes, now aggregates $631,133,639. Four years ago the total was figured out to be $558,524,447. The increase in circulation in four years is 32 percent, the gold circulation being also now larger than ever before, its increase in four years being 60 percent. In other words, the country is now richer than it was in 1896 by nearly five hundred million.
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An athletic tournament that is being arranged for by the high school departments of Suffolk County’s schools will be held on the fairgrounds at Riverhead sometime in May. It is expected that this meeting will be well attended, as it is known that many of the school principals, as well as the elder scholars, are heartily in favor of the athletic tournament. Indeed Principal Armstrong of the Sag Harbor School is so thoroughly imbued with the idea that athletics are such an important part of a scholar’s education that he has started athletic associations among his pupils at Sag Harbor — both for the boys and the girls.
100 Years Ago 1925
From The East Hampton Star, April 17
Simon R. Sands, superintendent of the fourth coast guard district, with headquarters in Bay Shore, this week announced the establishment of the Fire Island Inlet Area, and the complete blockade of both the Fire Island and the Oak Island inlets. The newly established area includes both these inlets and the two coast guard stations overlooking them.
Boatswain H.B. Tuttle has been placed in command of this area and will have charge of the two stations and all boats of every description operating in the Fire Island and Oak Island inlets. His orders, Superintendent Sands announced, are “to stop, board and search every vessel of every description entering the waters of Great South Bay through either of the above-mentioned inlets.”
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In spite of a setback in farming operations last season, due to the unusually dry weather at just the wrong time, eastern Long Island farmers are this year planting practically the same acreage in potatoes as they have in the past — somewhere between 25,000 and 30,000 acres, it is estimated.
To plant this big acreage they have invested over $1,000,000 in fertilizer and over $800,000 in seed, to say nothing about the cover crop, the labor, the overhead and a lot of other incidentals, running into another $500,000, it is believed. All of this must be done as a gamble, hoping that the investment in cold cash and the season’s labor may produce a crop.
75 Years Ago 1950
From The East Hampton Star, April 20
After undergoing two serious intestinal operations, George C. Terry, a 65-year-old lawyer and member of the Suffolk County Civil Service Commission, is returning home in Southold this week, having made medical history during his ten-week stay in St. John’s Hospital, Brooklyn.
Twice declared medically dead, the Southold attorney was brought back to life each time through the use of a new and revolutionary resuscitative technique, it was disclosed yesterday. According to medical authorities, his is the only known case of “recurrent cardiac arrest with recovery.”
On each occasion, after respiration and heartbeat has ceased, life was restored by direct massage of the heart through an incision in the chest wall, supplemented by blood transfusion and injection of adrenaline.
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Town Police Officer Earl Finch was called to Walker’s Cafe on Three Mile Harbor Road Saturday night when the proprietor told Town Police Headquarters that some of the patrons were disorderly. While Officer Finch was making an arrest, he was struck, according to police charges, by Warren Nelson. Nelson was arrested that evening for assault in the second degree, and, taken before Justice of the Peace William H. Strong, he waived examination. He was remanded under $1,500 bail to await action of the grand jury.
On Monday town police arrested William E. Goodale and Harry Reichart on a charge of disorderly conduct as a result of the brawling on Saturday night. Taken before Justice Strong, they pleaded guilty and were sentenced to sixty days in the county jail.
50 Years Ago 1975
From The East Hampton Star, April 17
“Physicians for Action Now,” an ad hoc committee that comprises the 55-member Southampton Hospital medical staff, threatened this week to treat only emergency patients as of late May or early June and to stop practicing medicine entirely after June 30 if the malpractice insurance muddle is not resolved by then.
The present uproar was precipitated last December when Argonaut Insurance Company, which provides malpractice insurance for most of New York State’s doctors, announced that it was raising premium rates by 186 to 600 percent, and it would end coverage on June 1 if the new rates weren’t paid.
Yesterday it was announced that Argonaut had agreed with the Association of New York Hospitals to extend coverage to July 1, and reduce to 62 percent the increase it wants in premiums.
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The “balancing act” of promoting tourism was pondered Friday evening when the County Executive, two Town Supervisors, an environmentalist, an Assemblyman’s lawyer, and about 80 spectators gathered in the Bridgehampton Community House to philosophize on the South Fork’s economy. Grapes and crafts were also mentioned.
The speakers had been asked to consider the consequences of expanding these industries: tourism, fishing and agriculture, home construction, light manufacture, and “any alternative enterprise” — as well as the consequences of higher gasoline prices and offshore oil drilling.
25 Years Ago 2000
From The East Hampton Star, April 20
The Peconic Health Corporation’s three hospitals stand to collect millions of dollars if they, and nearly 150 other state hospitals, and the Healthcare Association of New York State, their professional organization, are successful in the $3.4 billion suit they filed against the country’s tobacco manufacturers on March 30 in New York State Supreme Court.
The hospital group, thought to be the largest in the country to file such an action, is seeking to recuperate what they spent in charity care for patients with tobacco-related illnesses in the past six years, and what they anticipate such care will cost them over the next 20 years, as patients addicted to nicotine fall ill.
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The Shinnecock Indians’ attempt to stop development of a 38-lot subdivision off Tuckahoe and St. Andrew’s Roads in Southampton was dismissed in State Supreme Court Monday.
Supreme Court Justice James A. Gowan denied the Shinnecocks’ application for a preliminary injunction against the Parrish Pond subdivision and lifted a temporary stop-work order on the project, saying that the statute of limitations to bring the suit had expired almost 10 months ago.
“We lost our case on a technicality,” said Elizabeth Haile, a member of the Shinnecock Tribal Council. “We’re totally disappointed.”
The Shinnecocks “have many strings to their bow,” Justice Gowan wrote in his decision.
