Villages

Once upon a time in The Star . . .

Sag Harbor’s John Jermain Memorial Library announced that Kelly Harris, for many years the director of the Hampton Library in Bridgehampton, would take over as its new executive director, effective Jan. 3.

From pediatric vaccine clinics to booster shots for everyone 18 and up to information sessions held in people’s homes, efforts are ongoing on the East End to increase vaccination rates locally and across the state.

The page will be turned in another chapter in old-time Bonacker history soon, when Capt. Harvey Bennett, who has spent a good part of the past 70 years on the water catching fish and shellfish and in the field pursuing deer, turkey, ducks, and other fowl, closes his popular bait and tackle store in Amagansett.

Many residents of East Hampton Town know, or know of, Lenny Ackerman. A successful attorney and longtime principal of the Ackerman, Pachman, Brown, & Goldstein firm on Pantigo Road, he is often seen representing a client before one of the town or village planning or zoning boards. But Mr. Ackerman is a man of many talents, and interests.

The supply chain, like the Matrix, is everywhere. It’s the Baldor truck stuck at the light, the double-parked UPS guy, the trade parade streaming eastward toward the rising morning sun, and then westward toward the setting sun. How are the recent supply chain woes affecting business on the South Fork? In conversations with local retailers and tradespeople, a few cross-industry themes stood out.

One of our best resources for traditional local recipes is our collection of cookbooks compiled by the Ladies Village Improvement Society, something its members have been doing for 125 years now.

Having spent most of my life in small towns, I’m used to hearing gossip almost anywhere I go. Since the pandemic started, and particularly because most folks in my town know that I’m a doctor, much of what people talk to me about has touched on Covid-19.

While the headlines about the miserable state of American retail continued to mount postsummer, something extraordinary was happening at the Bridgehampton Commons. The Retreat Boutique, the thrift store offshoot of the Retreat, an East Hampton domestic violence shelter, posted end-of-summer takings of over $200,000 — its largest to date.

Notes from the Star's archives

An anonymous donor has stepped forward with a $30,000 grant for Organizacion Latino-Americana of Eastern Long Island to continue its education and advocacy efforts to prevent homelessness and illegal evictions.

Testing for Covid-19 has resumed at the East Hampton Town Hall campus, now provided by CareONE Concierge. Appointments are not required. Testing is no longer being offered at the former Child Development Center of the Hamptons on Stephen Hand's Path.

A Stony Brook University Ph.D. student studying triploid oysters in Napeague Harbor and Great South Bay was disappointed to learn that someone had raided both study areas and waded away with thousands of mature triploid oysters over the last several months.

As the weather grows colder, Covid-19 is once again on the upswing in New York, including in East Hampton Town and across Suffolk County, and health care professionals are pleading with the public to remain vigilant and, yes, get vaccinated if they have not yet done so.

The Sag Harbor group East End YIMBY is ramping up its advocacy efforts to create more affordable housing close to home, and last week asked the Sag Harbor Village Board to consider five recommendation for inclusionary zoning that would help pave the way for more housing opportunities in the village.

The National Weather Service has said that a record-breaking six tornadoes touched down on Long Island during Saturday’s powerful storm, hitting with force as far east as Hampton Bays and North Sea, and though East Hampton was spared the worst of it, one family in Springs had huge trees fall on their house and car. The house was intact, but the car was totaled.

Sag Harbor’s First Presbyterian Church, often called the Old Whalers Church, has experienced many evolutions since its first building was constructed in 1766. In 1816 that building, known as the Old Barn Church, was replaced with a larger meeting place for a growing congregation.

From the past pages of The Star . . .

When she was young, Shannon Cecilia Whelan was a crew member aboard a steel barge owned by her parents' marine construction business. A lover of all things water — sailing, fishing, surfing — Ms. Whelan, formerly of Sag Harbor, was the namesake for the barge. A mother of three children, she died in 2019 at the age of 38.

Joseph DeCristofaro was just 17 when he enlisted in the Navy in 1943, too young to join up without his parents’ permission but determined to do his part. “I had to get my folks to sign for me,” he said on Friday in his living room in East Hampton. “My father signed; my mother didn’t like it.”

The East Hampton Library unveiled a new online Long Island Collection research system that includes not only the impressive collection of historical records that the library holds but also an additional 23 collections, including the town and East Hampton Village's historic records and high school yearbooks dating to the 1950s. “I think this is one of the most important projects this library has been involved with,” Dennis Fabiszak, the library's executive director, said.

This etching, one of a number of works titled “The Much Resounding Sea” by the artist Thomas Moran of East Hampton (1837-1926), was completed in 1886, two years after his similar but less detailed oil painting of the same name. The etching is a newer acquisition for the Long Island Collection, bought at auction in May.

I remember the underscore of terror in the early days of the pandemic, wondering if my working in an I.C.U. and taking care of some of the first patients with Covid-19 in our region was going to endanger my family. Eighteen months later, I can hardly believe that I am watching a friend and colleague deftly vaccinate all four of my children against Covid-19.

Now that children 5 to 11 are eligible to receive Pfizer's Covid-19 vaccine — the first that has been approved for pediatric administration in the United States — medical professionals and government officials here and across Long Island are quickly putting plans in place to meet families' needs.

As it turns out, the get-outta-town narrative, explored in last week's East Hampton Star by several prominent community members who recently moved away, is far from the only story there is to tell.

125 Years Ago1896

From The East Hampton Star, November 13

With a new effort to operate year round, a recently launched virtual store, and a decision to provide housing for some of its employees, Share the Harvest Farm is hoping to make a greater connection with the community it serves.

Is there life after East Hampton? The answer is a slightly bittersweet "yes," according to several longtime residents -- and very active community members -- who have moved away over the last couple of months.

Nia Dawson, 22, Black, and a third-generation Bridgehampton native, found herself in the midst of what she believed was a racially-fueled incident outside the Sag Harbor Launderette in August. Angered, upset, but not shocked, it led her to galvanize family members, friends, and notable figures in the community to form an organization called Exposing Inequities in the Hamptons.

A postcard from the Harvey Ginsberg Postcard Collection shows the house known as "the Chalet" off James Lane in East Hampton.