On the 20th anniversary of a fiery drunken-driving crash in Springs that left a 25-year-old man dead, his best friend, who was a fugitive for 20 years, was sentenced to two to six years in state prison.

Wilson Pantosin, a 45-year-old from Ecuador who was found living in Texas early last year, will be deported after he serves his sentence, Suffolk County Acting Supreme Court Justice Fernando Camacho said in his Central Islip courtroom on Monday.

The partner and daughters of the victim, Wilson Illaisaca, had one message for the man responsible for his death: They forgive him.

Holding back tears, Andrea Illaisaca, who is 25, the same age as her father when he died, told Mr. Pantosin that his reckless decision to drive drunk left her and her sister fatherless. She stood in the jury box in the small courtroom with her sister and mother, who were crying uncontrollably at times, next to her. She looked at Mr. Pantosin directly while he bowed his head.

Though he was arrested on the night of the crash and surrendered his passport, he fled the state a month later and remained a fugitive for nearly two decades before he was caught in Harris County, Tex., last year. The Suffolk County district attorney’s office said he had initiated a background check that tipped off authorities to his whereabouts. Why he wanted a background check was not clear.

He has been in custody since Feb. 28, when he was extradited to Suffolk County. He pleaded guilty in December to manslaughter in the second degree, a felony, two counts of vehicular manslaughter in the second degree, also a felony, and two counts of driving while intoxicated.

“We were too young to understand what happened,” Andrea Illaisaca said of how they struggled. “We needed his love and protection.”

On Jan. 28, 1999, Mr. Pantosin was driving a 1995 Dodge Neon on Hog Creek Road when he lost control of the car, which then headed across the oncoming lane of traffic and onto the southbound shoulder, hitting a tree, a utility pole, and a guy wire before overturning and catching fire.

Erika Illaisaca, who was just 4 when her father died, said that for many years she was mad that Mr. Pantosin was the last person her father got to see before he died. She spoke of how first responders asked Mr. Pantosin, who got out of the burning car after it crashed, multiple times if there was anyone else inside.

“How come you just couldn’t say yes?” she asked. “It was a horrible way to die. I wouldn’t want that for you or anybody else.”

Mr. Illaisaca’s body was discovered in the passenger seat after the flames had been extinguished. The medical examiner ruled that the cause of death was thermal injury and smoke inhalation, with blunt-force trauma as a contributing factor.

Mr. Pantosin’s blood alcohol level about 55 minutes after the crash was .22 percent, a toxicology report showed. He admitted to the probation department, according to Maggie Bopp, the assistant district attorney handling the case, that he had consumed half a bottle of vodka, half a bottle of wine, and six beers before the crash. She noted how he later tried to blame the victim for being intoxicated as well.

Mr. Illaisaca’s children, however, have compassion for his family. Erika Illaisaca spoke of Mr. Pantosin’s children, two of whom are the same age as she and her sister. “I just want you to know that I forgive you.”

Andrea Illaisaca mentioned her own daughter, who would never get to meet her grandfather, and how in May, when she gets married, she will do so without a father to walk her down the aisle.

“If you seek forgiveness, God will have mercy on you,” she told him. “I pray that you and your family get through this.”

“My dad was a very humble, loving, responsible, and hard-working man,” Wilson Illaisaca’s daughter Andrea Illaisaca said. He is seen here with the mother of his children, Narcisa Chumbi, who also appeared in court on Monday at the sentencing of his best friend.  Illaisaca Family

Narcisa Chumbi, the victim’s partner, addressed Mr. Pantosin last. She began to cry as she spoke in Spanish.

“Please look at her,” Justice Camacho instructed Mr. Pantosin, who had held his head down as Mr. Illaisaca’s children gave statements. Tears rolled down his face.

“May God bless your children, your parents, and your brothers and sisters,” Ms. Chumbi said to him. “If you hadn’t decided to drink and drive. . . .” She added that the accident was a lesson about the consequences of doing so.

When given an opportunity, Mr. Pantosin, speaking in Spanish, asked for forgiveness. “He was my brother,” he said. “The two of us never thought of the consequences.”

In handing down Mr. Pantosin’s sentence, Justice Camacho addressed the victim’s family first. “You are remarkable young women. Your mother is a terrific mother,” he said. “I think your father would have been very proud of you.”

The judge said he wanted Mr. Pantosin to look at them because it took a tremendous amount of courage to forgive him. Turning to the defendant, he said, “And you, you have no idea what courage means.”

Justice Camacho, who handles many vehicular cases, said that anytime someone causes an accident and flees, he feels they have “a serious moral flaw.”

“How do you claim he is your bother? ‘We were best friends’? How do you walk away from that burning car and leave him and then try to blame him?” Justice Camacho said. “You’re not his brother.”

The judge said he hoped the 20 years Mr. Pantosin spent on the lam were torturous for him.

“The one word for them was courage,” Justice Camacho said of the victim’s family. “The one word for you is coward. You are a coward. I hope you learn something from them.”

Mr. Pantosin had faced 5 to 15 years maximum, but took a plea deal in December with the promise of two to six years. “I wish the sentence could be more. But it can’t,” Justice Camacho said.

Martin Lorenzotti of Central Islip, who represented Mr. Pantosin, said his client was remorseful. Afterward, he said, “Hopefully, now all parties involved can put this horrible incident behind them.”

After the sentencing, Andrea Illaisaca shared two photographs of her father. Her family does not have many photos of him.

“My dad was a very humble, loving, responsible, and hard-working man,” she said. “He worked hard to provide for us.” He worked as a painter and a houseman at Gurney’s Resort in Montauk. He came from Cuenca in Ecuador and had been in East Hampton, where his family still lives, for about six years before his death.

While they were both from Ecuador, the two men met in East Hampton and had been friends for about five years, Ms. Illaisaca said.

“I am at peace and so is my family because we were able to forgive and not keep any grudge in our hearts,” Ms. Illaisaca added. “God has helped us in this process and I am no one to condemn or even agree or disagree with the prison sentence. No matter how much time he is in jail for it, it isn’t bringing my dad back,” she said. “I only hope that he repents from the bottom of his heart and God will do his justice.”

This article was updated with the version that appeared in print on Jan. 31, 2019. 

Astute attendees of an Aug. 17, 2018, appearance by Howard Schultz at the East Hampton Library may have detected more than a hint of presidential ambitions when the former chief executive officer of Starbucks was interviewed by Andrew Ross Sorkin of The New York Times as part of the library's Tom Twomey Series of conversations.

Mr. Schultz, who, with his wife, Sheri Kersch-Schultz, owns a nearly five-acre property on Gracie Lane in East Hampton Village, took a large step toward a 2020 bid for the presidency over the weekend when he appeared on the CBS newsmagazine program "60 Minutes" and again in The Times, where Mr. Sorkin, The Times's financial columnist, wrote that he is preparing to run as an independent "and had already begun the groundwork required to be on the ballot in all 50 states."

Other than his August appearance at the library and the popular Starbucks store on Main Street, Mr. Schultz's footprint in the village has mostly been in a protracted struggle with officials over what he can and cannot have on his oceanfront property. Via legal representatives, most often Leonard Ackerman of the East Hampton firm Ackerman, O'Brien, Pachman & Brown, he and Ms. Kersch-Schultz have appeared before the village's zoning board of appeals numerous times seeking permission to build or maintain various structures on their property at 14 Gracie Lane.

Mr. Schultz, whose book "From the Ground Up: A Journey to Reimagine the Promise of America" was published on Monday, was unsparing in his assessment of both major political parties, and particularly of President Trump. "We're living at a most fragile time," he told CBS's Scott Pelley. "Not only the fact that this president is not qualified to be the president, but the fact that both parties are consistently not doing what's necessary on behalf on the American people, and are engaged every single day in revenge politics."

He told The Times that he would travel the country for three months as part of a tour to promote "From the Ground Up" before making a decision as to whether or not to seek the presidency.

Describing himself as "a lifelong Democrat," Mr. Schultz, 65 and with a net worth in excess of $3 billion, said in the interview that the ideological extremes have gained outsized influence over both major political parties. "We are sitting today with approximately $21 and a half trillion of debt," he told The Times, "which is a reckless example, not only of Republicans but Democrats as well . . . a reckless failure of their constitutional responsibility." He pledged to embrace good ideas from any corner "because I am not in any way in bed with a party."

He told "60 Minutes" that undocumented immigrants should have a "fair and equitable way" to become citizens. He criticized both parties in saying that, while "every American deserves the right to have access to quality health care," Democrats are proposing "something that is as false as a wall" in promising free health care for all, "which the country cannot afford." He criticized the Republicans' tax overhaul -- "I would not have given a free ride to business . . . but I would have significantly addressed the people who need tax relief the most" -- and said that President Trump made a "tremendous mistake" in withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

"Is it in our national interest to have a fight with Mexico, Canada, the [European Union], China, NATO?" he asked on "60 Minutes." "Give me a break! No, it's not in our interest. These are our friends, these are our allies. We are much better as a country being part of the world order."

Mr. Schultz spoke of "a long history of recognizing I'm not the smartest person in the room, that in order to make great decisions about complex problems I have to recruit and attract people who are smarter than me, more experienced, more skilled."

Ms. Kersch-Schultz oversees the Schultz Family Foundation, which links disadvantaged youth and veterans to jobs.

Mr. and Ms. Schultz's Gracie Lane property has been before the village's zoning board many times in recent years. In one lengthy hearing, the Z.B.A. ruled that a 650-square-foot caretaker's apartment attached to a four-car garage on the property contained habitable floor area in excess of what a prior board had allowed, denying a request that the apartment be allowed to remain in that condition.

The Schultzes bought the property in 1995, nine years after the board had approved the single-story garage and apartment. Subsequently, the prior owner converted three garage bays into three additional bedrooms, more than doubling the size of the apartment. In 2012, the Schultzes were granted a variance and coastal erosion hazard permit to add two bedrooms and two bathrooms to their main house. The building inspector, however, noted that the accessory structure did not match the description in the certificate of occupancy, and the zoning board asked that the caretaker's apartment be reduced to its original size, a condition to which the applicant agreed but did not honor.

Ultimately, the board ruled, in August 2014, that the apartment must be restored to its original 650 square feet and that the additional bedrooms be reconverted to garage bays and storage areas.

During deliberations, Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. was among the attorneys arguing on the Schultzes' behalf. The hearing also reignited a years-long legal action by a neighbor, Donald Kostin of Lily Pond Lane, who has right-of-way access to the Atlantic Ocean over the eastern edge of the Schultzes' property and argued that improvements made on that part of the lot over the years were detrimental to his access.

More recently, the Schultzes have been before the Z.B.A. seeking variance relief and coastal erosion hazard area permits for matters including construction of a beach storage shed, outdoor shower, brick patio and walkway, reflecting pool, and garden bench; installation of a sculpture; relocation of a liquid propane tank, and lot coverage greater than the maximum permitted under code. In September, the Schultzes were granted a coastal erosion hazard area variance to allow reconstruction of a swimming pool and spa with alterations, as well as a variance allowing the pool to fall within the side-yard setback.

A traffic stop on Dec. 30 led to the biggest drug bust in recent memory in Sag Harbor Village. The defendants, who remain in jail due to the serious charges against them, allegedly had large amounts of heroin, hydrocodone pills, and marijuana in their car. 

They are facing 8 to 24 years in prison, depending on their prior convictions, on the top charge of criminal possession of a controlled substance in the first degree, an A-1 felony, because, police said, the narcotics weighed eight or more ounces. 

A Sag Harbor officer spotted an expired inspection sticker on a 2004 GMC Yukon that was heading north on Main Street at about 5:25 p.m. The driver, Veronica M. Zill, 23, of East Hampton, had also failed to signal as she turned right onto Jermain Avenue, police said. When the officer approached the car, which he had stopped across from 93 Suffolk Street Extension, he noticed a strong odor of marijuana. The officer also found the inspection certificate was for a 2005 Jeep, not the Yukon.

Questioned about whether there was marijuana or any other illegal substance in the car, Ms. Zill and her passenger, Bernard Kulick, 28, who is originally from East Hampton but gave an address in San Diego, denied it at first, although Mr. Kulick eventually admitted having smoked marijuana earlier in the day in the car.

Police took his admission as an opening to search the vehicle. They found one large plastic bag inside a black duffel bag that contained narcotics behind the front passenger seat. Also found were four small plastic bags with a green leafy substance under the dashboard in front of the passenger seat.

As police continued to search, a strong burning smell came from the engine compartment and they shut the engine off. Under the hood, they found no fire but a large plastic bag with a green leafy substance and a black Apache 1800 camera case “smoking,” according to the arrest report. Inside the camera case the officer found “a large amount of narcotics.” Police did not release specific amounts, pending testing. “I think the lab report is going to change the face of the case substentially,” said Carl Irace, who is representing Mr. Kulick.

Mr. Kulick and Ms. Zill were arrested and taken to Sag Harbor Village police headquarters. Police asked Ms. Zill if she had any other illegal substances on her person. At that point, the arrest report said, “she did produce of her own will, from her vagina, two plastic bags containing empty glassine envelopes. She also stated that she had marijuana within her vagina, but was unable to retrieve it.” 

At her arraignment on New Year’s Eve, Ms. Zill told her attorney that she is 17 weeks pregnant. Police took her to Stony Brook Southampton Hospital, where hospital staff, according to police, removed a plastic bag containing a green leafy substance. She was released and taken to East Hampton Village police headquarters, since her co-defendant was by then occupying the small Sag Harbor Village police holding cell.

At about 7 p.m., Mr. Kulick complained of drug withdrawal symptoms and police took him to Stony Brook Southampton Hospital for evaluation. He was released a short time later and taken back to police headquarters, where he was held overnight for morning arraignment.

In additional to criminal possession of a controlled substance in the first degree, Mr. Kulick and Ms. Zill were charged with two counts of possession in the third degree, one count of possession in the fifth degree, criminal possession of marijuana in the third degree, all felonies, and criminally using drug paraphernalia in the second degree, a misdemeanor. Mr. Irace said his client denies the charges and intends to fight them in court. Ms. Zill’s Legal Aid attorney could not be reached for comment.

Justice Janine M. Rayano ordered them held without bail. At press time, they had not yet been indicted. 

In other arrests reported this week, a Hampton Bays man, Joey S. Mejia-Cruz, 21, was arrested on a misdemeanor marijuana charge on New Year’s Eve. Police, who stopped his 2015 Audi on Harbor View Drive, near Three Mile Harbor-Hog Creek Road in Springs at about 10:30 a.m., said he was found in possession of an aggregate weight of two ounces or more of a green leafy substance that later tested positive for marijuana. He was charged with criminal possession of marijuana in the fourth degree, and was released on $100 bail with an appearance ticket. He is due in court today. 

With Reporting by Isabella Harford

East Hampton fire officials went to the CVS store on Pantigo Road twice last week due to a faulty heating system. 

On New Year’s Eve, employees reported smelling gas at about 4:50 p.m. Fire officials found slightly elevated carbon monoxide levels in some areas of the store. The manager was advised to have the system checked.  

Carbon monoxide is an odorless, colorless, toxic gas. It can come from furnaces or chimneys with leaks, gas ranges, generators, appliances and space heaters fueled by gasoline, and fireplaces that aren’t vented properly. 

Officials were back at CVS last Thursday morning around 8:40 for what was reported as “a smell of fuel.” East Hampton Fire Department Chief Gerard Turza Jr.’s CO meter detected a reading of 28 parts per million in the pharmacy area, where the ceiling is lowest. Carbon monoxide is slightly less dense than air so it rises. At other parts of the store, where the ceiling is higher, there were no readings.  

“This time we had CO readings that necessitated us evacuating the store and ventilating the building,” Chief Turza said. The levels were below what would activate the CO alarms, which were about 14 feet off the floor of the building, he said.

The heating system was turned off. Despite a technician’s inspection of the system after the call on New Year’s Eve, “We found that the vent on the heating unit was completely packed with soot and it was back-feeding into the building,” the chief said. 

An ambulance stood by as a precaution. No one was taken to the hospital. 

Michael Forst was named the East Hampton Volunteer Ocean Rescue 2018 member of the year at the group’s annual year-end dinner party at the Harvest in Montauk on Sunday. 

In announcing the award, the rescue swimmers’ chief, T.J. Calabrese, said that Mr. Forst “is always there when you need him, trains year round, and is a great Jet Ski operator.” He praised Mr. Forst’s work creating a memorandum of understanding with both East Hampton Town and East Hampton Village and getting a new emergency response vehicle for the rescue organization. 

In addition, Mr. Calabrese said, Mr. Forst “spent endless hours on administrative issues and created insurance for our rescue swimmers, who risk their lives to respond to all water-related emergency calls.”

Making a quick stay at the Kathryn Markel space in Bridgehampton (and open Thursday through Sunday) is the Neoteric Project’s group show “In the Cloud,” featuring work selected by Scott Bluedorn. Once placed in a brick-and-mortar space in Amagansett, Neoteric now lives “in the cloud,” as Mr. Bluedorn puts it, which inspired him to bring together “several wide-ranging artists in a spectrum of media.”

The list of artists and works is quite staggering when you consider that the Markel space, a small but striking set of white walls and alcoves, is no bigger than a small apartment with a sleeping loft. They are Darlene Charneco, Rosario Varela, Dalton Portella, Paton Miller, Aurelio Torres, Roisin Bateman, Hiroyuki Hamada, Janet Jennings, Charles Ly, Daniel Cabrera, Sara Tallet, Ria Anasagasti, Aaron Warkov, Jane Martin, Insuh Yoon, Jackie Dandelion, Rowan Hausman, Linh Vivace, Kurt Giehl, Kym Fulmer, Saskia Friedrich, Leslie Obrock, Thomas Halaczinsky, Christine McFall, Janet Culbertson, Janet Goleas, Will Ryan, Rossa Cole, Mark Wilson, Jodi Bentiveglia, Mark Perry, Colin Goldberg, Monica Banks, and Mr. Bluedorn.

What unites such a disparate and prodigious group is — as should be inferred — references to clouds or cloudiness, both direct and less obvious. Sometimes they are the subject and sometimes they are the background or theme. It might be an aura around the portrait heads of Ms. Bentiveglia and the thick hair in Mr. Ly’s “Wild,” or Ms. McFall’s glossy and light-catching painting that is actually titled “Cloud” or Ms. Banks’s “Cloud Nest,” a small wire sculpture hanging from the ceiling with tiny found trinkets adorning it, like an approaching weather pattern gathering over the gallery desk.

There are a number of landscapes and some very abstract compositions, and more figurative references than might be expected. This is all to its credit. The cloudlike pillows of human buttocks as taken through the lens of Ms. Yoon, Mr. Ly’s references to a head and other body parts, Paton Miller’s group of three figures in a threatening landscape, Mark Wilson’s floating surrealistic facial features, Ms. Bentivegila’s touching portraits of her family members who have passed on, Ms. Anasagasti’s “Becoming Nephele” with images of women against a compact universe, and Ms. Tallett’s floating face in the sky in “Bodhi (In the Waters of Sleep)” use the body and its parts as metaphors or launching points to explore physicality’s relationship to the cosmos. 

One thing that becomes clear in this context is that despite the breadth of human artistic expression, the geometric forms of nature — be they from landscape, sea, sky, plant, or animal — are finite. This allows for the crossover of so many of these images into themes that would be completely unrelated once removed from these walls.

But there are direct references to the sky as well. Through Ms. Martin’s dreamy clouds in her “Isle of Sky II,” Mr. Portella’s lyrical watercolor “Montauk Sky,” Mr. Ryan’s tangerine dream of a sky in “Flying Over,” Mr. Warkov’s “Clouds and Fog Shroud the Mountain,” and, more loosely, Mr. Goldberg’s “Go,” all placed near each other demonstrate together a mostly literal relationship with the theme of the show. In the back alcove, Ms. Jennings’s “Storm Series IV” with painting over a print and upstairs Mr. Halaczinsky’s photographic print, and even Ms. Culbertson’s more abstract painting, take on landscape and sky.

The other pieces in the front room, including those by Ms. Hausman and Mr. Torres, also use direct references to clouds. In “Tempest in a Teacup,” Ms. Hausman places a tiny cardboard house on a mound of moss emerging from a teacup anchored to its saucer with a shiny layer of resin, with a cotton cloud hanging directly overhead. “Barco e Nuvola,” one of Mr. Torres’s series of boat-themed sculptures using stacked scraps of wood, means “Boat and Cloud.” Ms. Varela’s composition of wood festooned with rope, paint, and stoneware called “Ancestors” could be a cloud catcher, or the three stoneware cuffs she has placed around the rope’s loops could stand in for clouds themselves. 

The abstracted work, such as Mr. Perry’s four-paneled oil on canvas called “Abstracts,” Mr. Giehl’s “Blue Winter,” Ms. Vivace’s “Sentinel Ridge,” Ms. Goleas’s “Black Treble II,” Ms. Bateman’s pastels “Turning I and II,” and Daniel Cabrera’s untitled oil painting, all relate to some kind of cloud or similar metaphorical theme.

The exhibition is decidedly mixed media, but the number of monoprints is worth noting. Ms. Obrock’s geometric approach to a skyline, Ms. Fulmer’s “Thunderhead” storm, and Mr. Bluedorn’s own “Solitary Cloud” are small in format but each make a strong impression.

Unusual materials or a less rigid interpretation of the theme are highlights of the work of Mr. Cole and his gun formed of wood scraps and speaker bunting. Ms. Charneco’s “Epic Tale of an Idea” uses her signature nails, resin, enamel, and toy pieces. Ms. Friedrich’s piece is constructed of stitched felt, fabric, and paper. Finally, Ms. Dandelion’s fanciful illustration and Mr. Hamada’s “B19-03” print may pose a challenge for the literal minded. Yet, somehow it all works.

The exhibition hours are Thursday through Sunday, 1 to 5 p.m.

The effort that Tony and Bob Ganga have led for the Sons of the American Legion Squadron 419 in Amagansett to construct a 9/11 memorial has been a six-year process filled with highs and low and plenty of red tape. But what continues to power the project is the legion members themselves, the generosity of the local community, and — just when things seemed stalled again — a chance meeting with a notable sculptor that still seems too serendipitous to believe.

Now, the memorial project needs a bit more financial help for completion, said Tony Ganga, but at least everyone can clearly see the finish line from here.

“Our budget is $32,000 and we need about $8,000 more to finish,” Mr. Ganga said last week, a few days after the Stephen Talkhouse held a Dec. 22 benefit for the memorial. “A lot of people have donated goods and labor. If we had the rest of the money we would have the memorial built. Everything else is done. It’s the remaining money that’s the tough part now.”

It took three years for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to grant the Sons of the American Legion’s application for a piece of the Twin Towers from its store of salvaged debris. In 2015, the squadron was finally awarded Artifact No. 1042 — a 1,000 pound, 14-foot-long steel beam that twisted under the weight and heat of the towers’ collapse — and the members made sure its pickup and arrival was treated with proper dignity.

Tom Milne, a retired New York Fire Department lieutenant and owner of the Surfside Inn in Montauk, Jim Grimes of Fort Pond Native Plants, and Tom Snow, one of Mr. Grimes’s employees, left Montauk at 5 a.m. and drove through a heavy storm to a hangar at Kennedy Airport to pick up the beam on a flatbed truck, then navigated the many road closings they encountered on the journey back. 

They were met in Manorville by an honor guard of two East Hampton Village policemen, the Ganga brothers, and members of the Legion Riders and Red Knights motorcycle clubs. In Wainscott they were joined by an escort of two East Hampton Town police cruisers as well. Upon arrival at the Amagansett American Legion post at 15 Montauk Highway, a ceremony was held in which the Most Rev. Steven Howarth, then of the Amagansett Presbyterian Church, gave a blessing and a bagpiper provided poignant music.

“I’ll remember that day the rest of my life,” Mr. Ganga said.

To finish the project, the Sons of the American Legion is still seeking donations. It is also selling 4-by-8-inch commemorative bricks for a minimum $100 contribution apiece that can be engraved with a three-line message. The bricks will pave the walkway and surrounding areas near the memorial. They’re available at thatsmybrick.com.

Mr. Ganga said numerous local businesspeople have already donated materials and labor. But he’s continuing to solicit gifts or discounted deals for other elements of the site. Fred Overton, current treasurer of the Amagansett Legion post, has helped navigate procedural matters. 

After the first designer of the memorial died, the project fell into uncertainty again until Mr. Ganga’s brother, who was then working for Ted’s Taxi, picked up a fare and began talking to the man. 

The passenger turned out to be Gustavo Bonevardi, who owns a house in East Hampton and was among the artists who came up with the epic public art installation “Tribute in Light,” the twin beams of light that were first projected into the sky near the site of the World Trade Center towers six months after Sept. 11, 2001, and on every anniversary of the attacks since.

The “Tribute in Light” website says the installation is meant to honor those killed that day and celebrate “the unbreakable spirit of New York.”

Mr. Bonevardi’s design for the far more intimate Amagansett memorial, which will be surrounded by a viewing area and benches, features two staggered sections of the beam that are tilted vertically and connected. It looks as if the bottom piece, which is embedded in a concrete base, is reaching up to catch or prevent the other from freefall. 

Mr. Bonevardi has said the design is meant to honor those who perished, survived, or served at the site and to symbolize the human instinct to reach out and help one another.

Once completed, Mr. Ganga says, the memorial will sit on the American Legion post’s grounds, and “residents and visitors of East Hampton will have a place within our town to reflect and remember.” 

Mr. Ganga, who is also a member of the East Hampton Fire Department and an organizer of the Hamptons Soldier Ride to benefit the Wounded Warrior Project, has served as the Amagansett Sons of the American Legion commander for 16 of the 30 years he’s been a member. His brother was a past local commander, and county and state officer in the Sons of the American Legion, which is for sons and grandsons of American Legion members. Tony says the two of them trace their devotion to public service to their father Antonio Ganga Jr., an Army first lieutenant who served in the Korean War and died in 2017.

“He taught us to volunteer,” Tony said.

Finishing the 9/11 memorial will be a testament to that ethos, too.

Police are looking for the public's help to identify and find a man who is wanted for questioning about the theft of $60,000 from a car that was parked behind the Candy Kitchen in Bridgehampton several months ago.

The money was stolen from the car in the early morning hours of Oct. 15, according to Suffolk County police, who just issued a Suffolk County Crime Stoppers alert on Thursday morning. It was not clear when the theft was reported.

Crime Stoppers and Southampton Town police detectives said an unknown person or people stole the cash, however, they stressed that the person in the photograph released on Thursday was wanted only for questioning at this time. 

Suffolk County Crime Stoppers offers a cash reward of up to $5,000 for information that leads to an arrest. Anyone with information about these incidents can contact Suffolk County Crime Stoppers to submit an anonymous tip by calling 800-220-TIPS, texting “SCPD” and your message to “CRIMES” (274637) or by email at tipsubmit.com. All calls, text messages and emails will be kept confidential.  

The East Hampton Arts Council has chosen works by Kenneth Bonar Walsh, who lived and worked in Montauk in the 1960s and ’70s, for an exhibition at Town Hall. 

Works not seen by the public in nearly a half-century will be prominent in the exhibition, the fourth on the South Fork to feature Walsh’s work over the last 18 months. The works included, all from the early and mid-1960s, are mostly watercolors, all created in Montauk. Along with seascapes and the iconic lighthouse, subjects include buildings, boats, and fishermen at Gosman’s Dock, where the artist painted and exhibited work at his Bonart Gallery. 

Walsh’s soft-realist style is evocative. When a selection of his watercolor paintings were on display at the Amagansett Public Library in May 2017, one visitor wrote that she felt herself “transported back through time, standing before the subjects themselves.”

Born in Medford, Mass., the World War II veteran attended art school on the G.I. Bill before moving to New York City, where he worked in the art department at Lever Brothers. He later established a commercial art studio, finding success with clients including RCA Records, Transogram Toys, and the Schrafft’s candy and chocolate company. 

The artist, who loved fishing as a youth, discovered Montauk in the 1950s and eventually built a house in Hither Hills. During this time he also developed as a painter. The realism of his works depicting Manhattan and Montauk — St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, the Old Hook Mill in East Hampton, the lighthouse — evolved into stylized, impressionist portraits of self, a boy on the Central Park Carousel, and fishermen at work. A more curvaceous, softer realism developed, accentuating the muscular hands and forearms of the fishermen. 

Along with paintings, Walsh also produced works such as an antique-style map of Montauk (to be featured at Town Hall), a children’s book (“The Littlest Fishing Boat”), and other Montauk-related merchandise. 

Later, in the 1970s, his work evolved again, now a modernist, abstract style in which nearly all the lines were curves running the breadth of one or more figures, defining several features of a figure, as well as the boundaries between and interpenetrations of figures, often in a yin-yang symmetry of opposites. An example of this period — “Jonathan,” depicting one of the artist’s sons fishing at Montauk Harbor — is included in the exhibition. 

Another son, Christopher Walsh, a senior writer at The Star, curated the exhibition and is the archivist of his father’s work.

Detectives are investigating a “suspicious” fire that broke out in an office building in the East Hampton Indoor Tennis complex on Saturday morning — the second one at the complex this year — during a weekend in which several other strange incidents occurred there.

Though he stopped short of characterizing the fire as arson until hearing what town police and Suffolk County Arson squad detectives had found over the holiday, East Hampton Town Police Sgt. Daniel Roman said yesterday that it appeared “some sort of accelerant” was used. “Everything points toward there was something used to get the fire going,” he said.

Around 5 a.m. on Saturday morning, the East Hampton Fire Department was called to respond to an automatic fire alarm inside a building that houses the complex’s office at 174 Daniel’s Hole Road, near East Hampton Airport. Brian Stanis, the second assistant fire chief, arrived to find “heavy smoke” coming from the building, according to Chief Gerard Turza. He called for the rest of the Fire Department to respond.

“Firefighters found the remnants of a fire inside one of the structures that had been contained by the building’s fire sprinkler system,” Chief Turza said. The sprinkler system did most of the work putting out the fire but also caused damage.

The fire chief would not comment about the extent of the damage. There were signs of minor exterior damage to the building during a visit to the complex later that morning, including darkened siding, a broken window, and damage to the door.

The East Hampton Town fire marshal’s office was called to investigate the cause and origin of the fire, and quickly handed the matter over to the East Hampton Town Police Department. Detectives with the Suffolk County Police Department’s arson squad were called in to assist in the investigation, which included collecting evidence. Police were still interviewing people and developing suspects as of yesterday, Sergeant Roman said.

The Suffolk arson squad deferred comment to the town police, as did Thomas Baker, an East Hampton Town fire marshal who initially responded to the fire.

The East Hampton Village Ambulance Association was also called to the fire, but no injuries were reported. 

In January, East Hampton firefighters responded to a fire in a different building in the East Hampton Indoor Tennis complex. A corroded pipe leaked gas into a wooden building and, at the time, investigators said that it appeared that when a heater went on, it ignited the gas. There was extensive damage to that building. The other buildings, including the Clubhouse, which has a bowling alley, arcade, and sports bar and was under construction at the time, were not damaged.

Despite the fire, it was business as usual at East Hampton Indoor Tennis and the Clubhouse Saturday morning. Scott Rubenstein, the managing partner, said yesterday that he was already cleaning up the damage and was eager to get back inside the space, which he described as a reception area for the tennis club.

“I’m very happy with how my police department and my fire marshal and fire department are handling everything,” he said.

“What I’m told is they are going through a standard investigation, which they would do for any commercial venture,” he said. Asked if he was concerned it might be arson, or at the very least a suspicious fire, he said, “I’d be kidding if I said I wasn’t. Of course, it’s unsettling. I know we live in a strange world,” he said, adding that there is a great income disparity on the South Fork. “The gap is definitely getting wider.”

Just hours before the fire, police had been at the complex dealing with a drunken driver who hit several parked cars, drove onto a grassy area, and damaged a fire pit.

Antonio A. Cabrera of East Hampton circled the parking lot erratically in a 2016 Ford pickup truck on Friday, the day he turned 33, at around 7 p.m., Sergeant Roman said.

According to an accident report, Mr. Rubenstein was putting his 2015 Jeep, which is registered to the club, in park when Mr. Cabrera hit the front end of it. Mr. Rubenstein said yesterday that he put his car purposefully in Mr. Cabrera’s path to prevent him from re-entering the bigger parking lot and possibly causing more damage or hurting someone.

Mr. Cabrera had already driven onto a grassy area, leaving tire tracks on the grass and striking a gas fire pit by the outdoor bar and mini golf area at the Clubhouse, the sergeant said. The outside bar is not open this time of year.

After the accident, Mr. Cabrera got out of the car and fled on foot into the woods, but security detained him until police arrived.

Mr. Rubenstein said Mr. Cabrera had been a guest at one of nine holiday parties, this one with 30 people, and that others in his party were surprised by the way he was acting. He also said Mr. Cabrera seemed apologetic afterward.

Mr. Cabrera was charged with driving while intoxicated, a misdemeanor, criminal mischief in the fourth degree, also a misdemeanor, and fleeing the scene of an accident, a violation. While he has a history of drunken driving, drug, and traffic-related arrests, this arrest was not elevated to a felony because he has no prior conviction for misdemeanor D.W.I. (He pleaded guilty twice to driving while ability impaired in 2003 and 2011, court records show.) According to Sergeant Roman, he was charged with misdemeanor criminal mischief, even though the damage to the fire pit alone was said to be worth $1,000, because the damage was considered reckless, not purposeful.

Mr. Cabrera was in police custody all Friday night and into Saturday morning when the fire broke out around 5 a.m., as he was being held for arraignment at East Hampton Town Justice Court (he was released on $2,000 bail later). Sergeant Roman said he was not aware of any connection between Mr. Cabrera’s arrest and the fire.

Police were back at the Clubhouse on Sunday morning, this time to arrest a different man for trespass and violating an order of protection.

Sergeant Roman said Scott McKallip, 55, of East Hampton Village had been ordered to stay away from the Rubensteins’ home and businesses, but he went onto the Daniel’s Hole Road property at about 8:30 that morning. He had previously sent Mr. Rubenstein’s adult daughter, who works at the businesses, threatening messages on Facebook and was arrested on Dec. 7 on a charge of aggravated harassment, a misdemeanor. An order of protection was put in place, the sergeant said. He was free on $300 bail following arraignment.

Mr. McKallip reportedly told police that he did a loop in the parking lot at the Clubhouse to see if a band was going to be playing there. When police were called, he was arrested in the parking lot.

During his arrest, it came to light that he had also violated the court order on Dec. 21 at about 6 p.m., according to court documents.

He was arraigned on two counts of criminal contempt in the second degree, a misdemeanor, and two counts of trespass, a violation, on Monday. He posted $500 bail and was released.

“I think this is a terrible, terrible situation and that he’s not getting the help that he needs,” Mr. Rubenstein said when asked about Mr. McKallip’s arrest. He and his wife knew Mr. McKallip as a former Marine who was honorably discharged. “The person we knew growing up would not want to do these things,” he said.