September 1, 1994
“Yes, I probably do know hundreds of kids, but not just to say hi to,” William Hartwell, a South Fork coach and peer mediator, said during a conversation the other day. “I tell them to tell their mother they love her, to tell their brother, their sister, their father, their grandmother that they love them. I ask them what they did that day — it’s not just basketball.”
. . . “I try to encourage kids to start reading,” he continued. “You can go anywhere you want in a book. I was in Portsmouth, Va., the other day. I’m in Arkansas now. Pick up a book and you can go.”
Through reading one could get in touch with one’s history, as a member of humankind, as a nation, as a culture, he said. . . . “I don’t think the African-American kids here really know their history. Not that some isn’t taught, but not in as much depth as it should be.”
. . . “We have a community that cares a lot about the people who live in it,” he continued. “People who grew up here.” He remained close, he said, to a number of former East Hampton High School football, basketball, and baseball teammates, and recalled that “blacks and whites always got along here. I would go to the McKees’ and play basketball and eat dinner there, and afterwards Mr. McKee would drive me home. The McKees are not just great athletes — they’re great people. The hoop is still nailed on their garage — it’s still there.”
September 8, 1994
Fred’s Big Guns repeated as the East Hampton Town men’s slow-pitch softball league champion Tuesday night, defeating Riverhead Building Supply 15-10, to wind up a three-game sweep that began with 8-4 and 16-7 wins last Thursday and Friday.
The Guns thus finished the season at 27-0, the best single-season record in the league’s history, though Montauk Improvement, which went 25-0 in 1976, at one point during its five-year reign between ’75 and ’79 was said to have been 90-2.
Inspired to some extent by his recent struggle to keep the Great Bonac 10K afloat, and more generally by “the chaos” he sees in the country at large, Howard Lebwith inscribed on this year’s T-shirt the following: “Honor and mourn the dead, but fight like hell for the living.”
. . . “We’re in a state of chaos. Congress is a club, and meanwhile everything is falling apart. We’ve got to instill in kids that part of their duty is to serve the community. The Mormons give 10 percent of their income to the church. I think 10 percent of our efforts should be turned back into society.”
September 22, 1994
Once wasn’t enough for Steve Graham. The bowler, one of the top ones in the Tuesday night businessmen’s and Monday mixed leagues, whose seasons began recently, became the first ever to spin a perfect game at the East Hampton Bowl last spring. He did it again on Sept. 12, the opening night of the Monday league. Graham, with a 769 series, averaged 256 that night. He should be wearing a second “300” ring soon.