Blessed with a perfect day, the East Hampton Town Recreation Department and John Keeshan Real Estate Thanksgiving Day road races in Montauk attracted another record-smashing turnout.

    “We registered 639,” said the races’ timer, Bob Beattie. “Last year we had 500.”

    John Keeshan, who founded the event 35 years ago, said, “What better family day could there be? We made up 400 T-shirts and we ran out of them, and we ran out of numbers too. It’s not about longevity, though, it’s about these young people, the first-timers with their fathers and mothers. That’s what makes it so heartwarming and exciting — to see how people have taken to it. We don’t advertise this beyond Southampton, though I know we could get even more to come. But this has always been a local race, and I want to keep it that way. It’s a Montauk run.”

    The inaugural group, which ran “from the flagpole in town out to Third House and back — about five miles all told,” in 1976, said Keeshan, had included himself, John Conner, Ray Charron, the late Bob Aaron, Richie Shea, Andy Neidnig, Billy O’Donnell, George Watson, and Burke Koncelik.

    Four of the founders — Keeshan, Watson, O’Donnell, and Conner, who was a spectator — were at the Circle last Thursday.

    Watson, who used to preside over a series of October races to his Dock bar and restaurant, races in which he often competed, recently revived his road race, from the Shagwong to the Dock, a last-minute kind of thing that drew 40 competitors. Asked if he ran, the wry restaurateur, who placed fourth that day among the three-miler’s 60 to 69-year-old males, in 30 minutes and 21 seconds, said, “No, I didn’t run, I officiated. I’ve got a lot of excuses now.”

    O’Donnell, who placed sixth among the 50 to 59-year-old males in the six-miler — a division that was topped by Montauk’s Dan Farnham in 42:12 — said that he was “the only one who has run this 35 times out of 35.”

    That’s including the snow year, 1989, in which, said Keeshan, “We had nine inches of snow and all these people standing around in shorts.”

    O’Donnell, who plans on making it “50 out of 50,” had to admit that his 24-year-old daughter, Caitlyn, had beaten him. “That’s what happens when you teach them,” he said.

    When Watson excused himself because he was getting cold, a commiserator said, “By all means — you don’t want to get pneumonia.”

    Speaking of pneumonia, Kevin Barry, East Hampton High’s boys cross-country coach, said he had come down with it recently, after contracting bronchitis and plantar fasciitis.

    “How did the little guys do?” asked Barry, referring to Erik Engstrom and Randy Santiago, both of Springs, who are expected to make an impact on next year’s team even though they’ll be ninth graders. Santiago and Engstrom, it turned out, crossed the line together in 18:49, good for second and third place among the three-miler’s 11 to 13-year-old boys division. Jackson Rafferty, another eighth grader from Springs, who’s also expected to move up to the varsity next fall, was fourth, in 19:39. 

    A protégé of Barry’s at Mercy High School some years ago, Kiernan Kelly, 33, of Bridgehampton, won the three-miler, in 17:11. The women’s winner was Tina Frey, also 37, of New York City, in 19:05.

    The names of the six-miler’s winners, John Schilkowsky, 20, of Morganton, N.C., and Kira Garry, 18, of Montauk, did not appear on the initial list posted on Beattie’s van. Schilkowsky, who runs for Cornell, crossed the line in 32:35, and Garry, who runs for Yale (who thought she was fifth over all) finished in 36:06, a time that impressed Diane O’Donnell, East Hampton High’s girls cross-country coach. The runner-up was Schilkowsky’s Cornell teammate, Will Weinlandt of Amagansett.

    “It was the usual chaos,” Beattie said later. “We’re always bouncing back and forth here — chasing people with the wrong numbers, or people who say they’re running the three, then run the six, or vice versa. We’re hoping to have it straightened out on our Web site [island-timing.com] by Monday night.”

    On Saturday, Beattie was to time another Turkey Trot, a 5K in Sag Harbor that benefited the Old Whalers Community House Fund, a race with a field of “180-something” that apparently was more manageable. Chris Koegel, 28, of Malverne, won it, in 17:15. Sinead FitzGibbon, who was fifth over all, in 19:30, was the women’s winner.

    Thanks to Keeshan, the overall winners and age-group winners were presented after last Thursday’s race with frozen turkeys.

    Kyle Cashin, an ultra athlete for whom a six-miler is a walk in the park, and who topped the men’s 40 to 49 division, in 35:55, said, “One of us had to run because Caroline, my brother Ed’s wife, forgot to buy a turkey.”

    As it turned out, the Cashins wound up with two turkeys because Caroline Cashin topped the women’s 30 to 39-year-old group in the three-miler.    

    “You couldn’t ask for a better day — it’s so much fun,” said Kyle Cashin, who was a first-timer.

    Asked if he’d been in any ultra races or triathlons lately, he said, with a smile, “We have a 17-month-old son who’s taking up the time. I thought the Ironman was hard until I started to take care of J.T.!”

    Did he think his son would follow in his footsteps? “Well, Nicole was all state in track, so I think he’s got pretty good genes. . . . He’ll probably wind up playing the piano.”

    Cashin does have his sights set on a 200-mile relay race in Oregon, “from Mount Hood down to the ocean. You’re doing like 25-minute 10Ks in the beginning. It’s an epic thing to do. Eight people do it. I’d love it if Ed could do it, though it’s in August, his busy time of the year. Maybe I’ll do it with J.T. in a stroller.”

    It was downright balmy on Saturday when an estimated 5,000 people gathered on the grounds of the Montauk Lighthouse for the fourth annual Lighting of the Light.

    Joe Gaviola, the master of ceremonies, credited the windless night to Msgr. Peter Anthony Libasci, the guest of honor and former pastor of St. Therese of Lisieux Catholic Church in Montauk, who will officially be named the bishop of the Diocese of Manchester, N.H., at a ceremony next Thursday.

    Father Peter, as he was known in the hamlet, was chosen to flick the big red switch that turned on the 3,770 white lights that Looks Good Services used to cover the Lighthouse building, windows, and tower.

    The grounds opened at 4:30 p.m., and the ceremony started an hour later. Children rolled down the hills, couples gazed out at the sea, and dogs romped through the crowd as Sarah Conway and the Revelers performed Christmas tunes.

    Locals may have been scarce, perhaps deterred by the traffic, but they made up for it the following day at Christmas at the Lighthouse. Santa sat in the Lighthouse parlor listening to holiday wishes, surrounded by a Christmas tree and holiday poinsettias, while cookies, hot chocolate, and cider were served in the museum rooms.

    Vehicles filled both lots and were parked out on the highway about a quarter-mile west. Bicycles wove through cars as the great exit began. East Hampton Town and state park police officers helped control the traffic.

    Late at night, visitors were still standing at the gates, gaping at the splendid site that will be lit from dawn to dusk though Jan. 1.

    “It was a great night,” Mr. Gaviola said.

    A complex application challenging the authenticity of a certificate of occupancy for the property at 148 North Main Street in East Hampton, home now to an Empire gas station, and other businesses, was the subject of a lengthy discussion at an East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals meeting on Nov. 22.

    The certificate of occupancy, issued in March by Tom Preiato, the senior building inspector, allows for a convenience store to share the gas station property. The owners of the property, Ali Yuzbasioglu and S&A Petroleum Group Inc., received town planning board approval for a new convenience store there in October 2010.

    Jeffrey Slonim, who lives at 152 North Main Street, has appealed Mr. Preiato’s decision on the grounds that East Hampton Town Code prohibits a “retail store,” defined as place where “goods are offered for sale to the general public as takeout items,” on the same premises as a filling station. He also questions the validity of a certificate of occupancy that includes previous retail uses on the property that have since been abandoned. Additionally, the new certificate of occupancy includes a change of permitted uses from the original, he said.

    Mr. Preiato based his determination in August 2009, which led to the March  certificate of occupancy, on pre-existing and nonconforming buildings at 148 North Main Street.

    Don Cirillo, vice chairman of the zoning board, led the discussion on Nov. 22, as Philip Gamble, the board’s chairman, had been absent during the hearing on Sept. 20. “I see this as two separate items that have to be looked at,” Mr. Cirillo said. “These involve the technicalities behind the rationale of issuing the C of O, and the legalities of a pre-existing business. Should we, as a board, overrule our building inspector — which was a clarification, in my opinion, of the C.O. — whether or not he was fundamentally changing the C.O. or correcting an oversight by a previous building inspector?” Mr. Cirillo asked.

    “It appears as though, from the record, Mr. Sharkey [former chief building inspector] had used some state criteria, and it was clarified by Mr. Preiato to reflect the town code. Attorney [Michael] Walsh [Mr. Slonim’s counsel] asks whether or not a basis for a C.O. was there. Was a retail business there? It was questionable. Was the property abandoned, was it a previous use, was it a retail use, or pre-existing?”

    The board focused its attention on attempting to trace the history of businesses on the property. While the first certificate of occupancy was issued in 1987, several different businesses have been in the two buildings over the years. The current certificate modified the language from the original “Group B business uses” to “central business uses,” which would allow for retail uses not permitted under the Group B classification. Carl Irace, the town attorney, asked the board to ponder whether this change to “two central business uses” was right or wrong.

    In a memo from Mr. Preiato to John Lycke, chairman of the planning board, erroneously dated Aug. 21, 2009, but actually filed on May 5, 2010, Mr. Preiato wrote that “after reviewing our files and records it is currently evident in the code . . . that ‘filling stations’ and ‘retail’ are not permitted on the same lot. However, such is not the case on this particular lot as retail has been a pre-existing use and is reflected on the existing certificate of occupancy . . . dated April 2, 2003, as ‘business uses.’ ”

    He also pointed out that the certificate of occupancy at the time made “no mention of an actual ‘filling station’ exisiting on the lot. He acknowledged “the accessory gasoline dispensing pump island could possibly constitute a filling station, but is a moot point in light of the fact that the retail use is pre-existing.”

    On Dec. 2, 1994, the town code was amended to prohibit a retail use at the same location as a filling station. Board members devoted most of their discussion last week to what business occupied the premises that year. “I see this more as upholding the C.O. that was done as a correction in 2011, but then going back to see what was on the property in 1994 so you could say or not say there was a pre-existing use,” said Alex Walter, a board member. If there were a pre-existing use that would not be allowed under the current code, would it be affected by the new law, he asked.

    “What was on site in ’94, those are the critical facts,” Mr. Irace said.

    “At the time, there was no retail store where you take out goods in 1994, I don’t believe,” Mr. Walter said.

    Sharon McCobb, another board member, was absent from the work session, but Mr. Gamble read her written opinion aloud. “The correction of language ‘Group B’ business use does not make a difference, it’s purely an administrative change in language,” she wrote. “I do believe Tom Preiato’s memo to the planning board was incorrect. There is no paper trail that retail existed after the 1990s.” The adopted law that prohibited retail on the same property as a filling station “to me, that supersedes whether or not retail is allowed on the property,” said Ms. McCobb.

    The board then discussed a barbershop that is on the property today, and whether or not it constitutes a retail use.

    “I don’t know. If the beauty salon is selling combs, is that retail use? Maybe something so slim would qualify as retail,” said Mr. Irace.

    Mr. Walter said it sounds like “retail use and retail store are two different things.” However, in the town code, a beauty salon falls under the definition of a “personal service shop” and not a “retail store.”

    Reading from a Building Department list of violations on the property dated Aug. 21, 2002, board members noted that what had been a garden shop had changed to a personal service shop — the barber shop. “Sounds like it swung right in,” said Mr. Cirillo.

    “It also sounds like it wasn’t legal,” said Lee White, another board member. They tried to piece together the chronology, but the information was not clear. “If it was pre-existing, why was it going through site plans?” Mr. White asked.

     Mr. Irace speculated that maybe the applicant received bad advice. “There are violations,” said Mr. White, “They don’t come out of thin air. My guess is there wasn’t a C.O.”

    Mr. Walter said the board needed clarification of what businesses were there in 1994, and what happened after the violations in 2002. “Then I think we have enough information to make a determination of the validity of the building inspector’s memo to the planning board.”

    The board hopes to have more information in time for its next work session on Tuesday. 

    Following the public hearing on Sept. 20, the record was kept open for 30 days so that Tiffany Scarlatto, the attorney for the property’s owners, could submit a written response to Mr. Walsh’s argument. He was then allowed to offer his written rebuttal.

     In her response, Ms. Scarlatto stated the original certificate of occupancy from 1987 was for “one service station and two structures containing central business uses.” Although there are gasoline pumps on site, she said the primary use of the property is as a service station.” Also, “the northernmost building and its use, known in the past as Pam’s Car Rental and Sales, still exists on the premises today.” Ms. Scarlatto asserts that a convenience store is a permitted use that conforms with current zoning rules and that a retail use was never “abandoned,” because only nonconforming uses can be abandoned.

    She agreed with Mr. Preiato that the property now has a motor vehicle repair garage with accessory gasoline pumps, and two business uses: one a personal service shop, the other a retail store. While the retail use has changed over the years, Ms. Scarlatto said the changes are permitted without site plan approval unless there is a need. Finally, she argued that the 2003 and 2011 certificates of occupancy should be upheld as there were no substantial changes to the uses.

    Mr. Walsh responded on Oct. 20, that the car rental office closed about three years ago, and said that the owner of Empire gas station leases out the service bays in the repair garage building on their lot to an auto repair business, Cars East.

    “The building inspector’s determination is based on two legal mistakes,” Mr. Walsh wrote. “First, he overlooked the code’s clear definition of a ‘retail store’ and applied instead his own undefined notion of ‘retail.’ Second, he improperly relied on prior uses that have been abandoned as a matter of law.” In 2010, when the determination was filed, the pre-existing retail store uses had been discontinued for at least eight years, Mr. Walsh said. He pointed out that town code does not permit abandoned non-conforming uses to continue.

    The town’s property records show that no businesses other than the barber shop and car rental office have operated in the two buildings since at least 2002, he said. “The barber shop is a personal service shop and a car rental is not a ‘retail store’ or even a ‘retail use.’ ”

    With help from private donors, deer hunters are offering up their bounty to local food pantries, turning a surplus of deer into a supplemental source of food for people in need.

    “We’re grateful for it,” said Gabrielle Scarpaci, the executive director of the East Hampton Food Pantry, which she said will serve about 400 families between Thanksgiving and Christmas at its Accabonac Road location and a satellite in Amagansett. “We used to buy chicken every week, we can’t afford to do that any more,” she said, adding that the pantry always welcomes any kind of food or financial donation.

    “We were approached by a few groups. They can cull the herds, and then donate the venison to the pantries. If people are against that, they’re a little more supportive because it’s going to feed people in the area,” she said. Meat is dropped off at the East Hampton Food Pantry on Tuesday mornings. “The small amounts we get each week go out, and people are happy to take it, especially if they have children. It goes a little further than what we’re giving them each week, which is only two or three days’ worth of food.”

    Over the past few years, private donors have helped sustain the program, which arranges for a butcher to prepare the meat, which is then packaged into three-pound sealed bags and frozen for delivery to the pantries.

    According to Russ Calemmo, the organizer of the venison program and a member of the East Hampton Food Pantry’s board of directors, 2,829 people received fresh ground venison from this program last year. “I’m getting more and more people involved. They’re getting the message out, I get the product, and we process it. A lot of professionals are involved in the process.”

    Mr. Calemmo said that the local deer population, which has no natural predators here, increases by 30 percent a year. “We can solve two problems, overpopulation [of deer] and hunger. We have this program to a science,” he said. “I’m taking thousands of pounds. Nothing gets wasted if I can help it.”

    The East Hampton Sportsmen’s Alliance, a new organization of hunters and fishermen, is also in on the effort. Part of the group’s mission is to protect traditional hunting and fishing rights, but its members are concerned, too, about the negative impacts of the large deer population.

    According to Terry O’Riordan, the group’s treasurer, the average deer eats 40 salads a day. Multiplied by 10 deer, that statistic grows to 2,800 salads in a week. “The herd is just out of control. The floor and forest of the woods in East Hampton Town, the biodiversity has been so altered and destroyed by the deer,” he said.

    East Hampton Town’s deer management working group has been developing a comprehensive deer management program; a preliminary report is anticipated by mid-December, according to Councilman Dominick Stanzione.

    “We help the herd-control problem and get food in people’s houses through personal connections or the food pantry,” Mr. O’Riordan said.

    A private donor pays to have the deer meat butchered and distributed to local pantries.

    Hunters who wish to donate a deer can get in touch with Mr. O’Riordan, who will arrange for the deer to be transported to the butcher, where it will be processed into ground meat. “The deer has to be field-dressed and eviscerated,” he said.

    The butcher who prepares the venison wishes to remain anonymous, but Mr. O’Riordan said he told him this week that he had processed about 700 pounds of venison since Oct. 1, when bow hunting season opened on the South Fork. The season runs through Dec. 31. Shotgun season is in January on weekdays only.

    The East Hampton Food Pantry “is the only facility with freezers, and we need lots of them,” Mr. Calemmo said, adding that the Lions Club also provides its refrigerators. “We’re hoping to solicit some organizations to get vehicles so that we can deliver our product,” he added.

    On Oct. 28, after attending the funeral of his mother, Kevin Mulligan, a custodian at the Montauk School, learned that his family’s house in Montauk, a rental on Fairview Avenue, had burned down. Besides some trinkets and sentimental artwork, the only thing saved was his family’s recently adopted puppy, Mouse.

    The night before the fire, 14 people had been staying in the house, all relatives in town for the funeral. They left early in the morning for the service, and a neighbor reported the fire at 3:15 p.m., Alyssa Mulligan, Mr. Mulligan’s wife, said.

    Montauk is rallying around the family to help and to replace their possessions. At the school, the Sunshine Club, the Teachers Association, and various individuals are all helping in some way, Jack Perna, the district superintendent, said.

    Fourteen years ago, Mr. Mulligan donated one of his kidneys to his mother, who died of renal failure on Oct. 25.

    A bartender at the Sail Inn in Montauk, Ms. Mulligan has taken some time off. “I don’t need to be behind a bar. I need to be a mom right now,” she said on Tuesday.

    After living at Camp Hero for several years, in April the couple moved into the Fairview Avenue house that is owned by Matt Schechter of Florida. They have three children, Kayla, 10, Ocean, 9, and Tellulah, 6, all of whom attend the Montauk School.

    After the funeral, Ms. Mulligan and Ocean returned to Montauk to gather up some belongings for a longer stay with Mr. Mulligan’s father. When she turned toward the house on Fairview Avenue, the road was blocked by fire trucks. She said she was almost speechless when she learned it was their house that was being doused. The roof was destroyed. The following day, there was a rainstorm on the East End, and their belongings were further damaged by the rain that poured in.

    The East Hampton Town fire marshal’s office has determined that the cause of the fire was electrical, a short circuit that probably started behind a wall.

    Immediately after the fire, Denise Hamilton, who also works at the Montauk School, called the owners of the Briney Breezes Motel in Montauk for a room for the Mulligans. The motel owners, the Hartman family, put them up for free until they moved into a family member’s house in Amagansett.

    After returning to Mr. Mulligan’s father’s house on Nov. 9, Ms. Mulligan was doing some cleaning and slipped on a staircase. She fractured ribs and is finding it hard to breathe. “I think it’s my third,” she said of the superstition that bad luck runs in threes.

    They are searching without much luck for an affordable rental in Montauk. “We’re hoping to find someone without a big mortgage, but with a big heart, who could take a bit less in rent,” Ms. Mulligan said, adding that she doesn’t want to move her family into a winter rental. “I don’t want to keep moving my kids. I want to make a home for them,” she said.

    About the possibility of living elsewhere, she said, “I’d be a little bit heartbroken about moving from Montauk, especially after what the community has just done for us, but it might be healthier for my kids.” She said that one house that’s available in the hamlet is too close to the one that they just lost, and she doesn’t want to subject her children to the constant reminder.

    The East End Foundation has begun a collection and is accepting checks at P.O. Box 1746, Montauk 11954. Contributors should write Mulligan on the check’s memo line. Mr. Mulligan is a member of the Montauk Friends of Erin. Joe Bloecker, the group’s president, said they, too, would be working with the foundation to help the family.

    It was early when Army Sgt. Antonio De Petris made his way into his mom’s kitchen in East Hampton for an interview Monday, and he looked tired after a weekend of activities for Veterans Day.

    Home from a recent one-year deployment in Afghanistan — his first was in Baghdad from 2007 to 2009 — the 24-year-old East Hampton native has been catching up on much-needed sleep.

    Sergeant De Petris, part of the elite infantry unit — Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment — was in the Logar Province in southeastern Afghanistan along with 20,000 soldiers in his brigade. Now, he is stateside until his unit is required elsewhere.

    The seargent, who has been commended four times for his leadership under enemy fire and dexterity in combat situations, has a polite determination, a straightforward demeanor, and a steely calm that is slightly unnerving. If you were headed to battle, this is the man you would want in charge.

    Recruited by West Point to play lacrosse, Sergeant De Petris declined the opportunity due to the military requirement. “I asked the obligation, and they said five years in the military,” he said. “I wouldn’t have fit in there.” Instead, he attended a year of college before deciding to join the Army along with his younger brother, Spc. William De Petris III. They enlisted on the same day.

    After a 12-month deployment to Iraq, his brother is now in college and hopes hat when he returns to active duty, it will be as an officer.

    In Logar Province, Sergeant De Petris helped disrupt enemy forces by restricting freedom of movement, stopping propaganda, and persuading civilians not to side with the Taliban. “My job is to enforce rules and regulations, and train soldiers. There is a regulation for everything in the military. When I’m deployed, it’s more keeping people alive,” he said. He was a team leader, with three soldiers under him.

    “They strip you down, and teach you rules and regulations,” his mother, Carolann De Petris, said. “But he hasn’t changed. He’s allowed to be himself.”

    “I think we set a record for the four months in finding improvised explosive devices, I.E.D.s. We found over 60 in the Tangi Valley. Four in the bad way, we lost six people,” he said.

    “It’s the worst place in Afghanistan,” Ms. De Petris interjected, but her son stopped her. “It wasn’t that bad though,” he said. “I don’t know why they think it’s that bad.”

    However modest he may be, Sergeant De Petris does admit some difficulties with the job. “We’re trained in land navigation here in the woods. Over there it’s mountains and valleys. There’s a lot that comes into play,” he said.

    While hiking on difficult terrain with maps where “nothing is in order the way it’s supposed to be,” soldiers wear a vest that weighs 30 pounds, and carry a backpack with extra equipment in it, Sergeant De Petris said. “All of this amounts to close to 150 pounds of stuff, where we’re making two to three-mile movements at a time, walking through the mountains,” he said.

    In Iraq, his language skills served him better — he speaks Arabic — but in Afghanistan “there are seven different dialects. Interpreters in Iraq are amazing, not in Afghanistan. Not impressive, since we’ve been there for over 10 years.”

    But advanced technology, a given in the military, helps foster missions that stem from actual intelligence. “Low-level helicopters pick up voices, and we have a list of cellphones with bad guys’ voices. We set a mission up where we hear their voices, and raid the houses when they’re out. For high-value targets, we try to find the guys themselves,” he explained. “Part of a day’s work involves looking for caches, stock-piled weapons, and I.E.D. materials.”

    Two days before leaving Logar Province, the battalion went on a raid “down this mountain through a valley to a village where no one had been in four years. We left at 10 the night before, and wanted to start the raid at 5 a.m. just as the sun came up.” Their job was to search the entire village and cordon it off.

    The real motivation behind these raids “is to restrict the mobility of the Taliban. They’re very patient and organized. And good at what they do.”

    In that raid, his battalion discovered rockets, I.E.D. materials, and a couple of AK-47s, he said, and he found paperwork, propaganda materials, and a man who ran away from them.

    Soldiers are also searching on raids for vehicles and suspects on a special list. “We have pictures of people we’re looking for. We have a hidden system, and a camera takes a fingerprint scan. We’ve found a lot of people just random checking,” he said.

    There are more humanitarian aspects of the job, too, like bridge building and visiting schools.

    Sergeant De Petris’s bravery on the field has earned him a number of accolades. A two-star general gave him a coin as a token of his outstanding performance during a firefight. “Actually, it was for getting in an argument with a lieutenant,” he joked. “We were behind a building, and I had 30 guys getting shot at. I had a rocket on my back, and I wanted the lieutenant to put me on the roof, and the guy wouldn’t. I flipped out. My commander heard about it, and gave me a coin,” he said.

    During his combat experience, Sergeant De Petris said he has never lost any of his men, but “in Afghanistan I lost four friends in the first six months. All together, I’ve lost 15 people I’ve known of.”

    When he was a specialist with the battalion, Sergeant De Petris was given the Army Commendation Medal for maneuvering a squad under direct fire to help another squad that could not move and had been cut off from the platoon. His efforts enabled the squad to reach safety.

    This year, on Sept. 10, his combat post was attacked by a car bomb, the second time in four months that a car bomb had exploded in the vicinity. “An 18-wheeler filled with wood and explosives got in. Everyone got injured. We were in buildings and they collapsed on top of us,” he said. Dressed in shorts and flip-flops, Sergeant De Petris ran outside to the site of the blast. “I yelled at my men to get their weapons and get outside. I ran out, and I was the first one there, along with two other men. We were waiting for people to come to secure the hole.” Sergeant De Petris engaged in a firefight with the Taliban for 10 minutes before assessing who had been hurt. The welfare of the soldiers is always secondary to eliminating the threat, he said.

    There were over 110 injuries and 3 casualties including 2 Afghan security people and a 2-year-old Afghan girl. “They took away 50 percent of our strength, 90 percent were medevacked. My girlfriend, Haley Jones, a mechanic, had a collapsed lung,” he said. After he helped secure the hole, Sergeant De Petris helped restore the communications unit and initiated a makeshift triage area with another soldier.

    He got shrapnel in his left leg and sustained a traumatic brain injury, something he said happens to everyone who has been through an explosive blast.

    “More than $2 billion of stuff was damaged. We had a balloon as big as a house with cameras in it that was destroyed. They took away everything we had: Internet, TV, laptops,” he said.

    For his actions during the attack, Sergeant De Petris was nominated for a Purple Heart. In Iraq, he was awarded a Purple Heart but turned it down. He had broken a finger while chasing down a man who took refuge in a house and didn’t think his injury was worthy of the honor.

    “My platoon leader told me, don’t turn down an award again,” he said. This time around, “I had to get blown up by a car,” he joked. “I just cut my hand and I could have had one.”

    “Next time I deploy, I hope it’s Special Operations. If I don’t make it the first time, I’m going to go back until I get selected,” he said.

    “We call him Superman,” his mother said. “He does his job and doesn’t think twice about the heroism.”

    A razor-thin margin separated the two candidates for East Hampton Town supervisor on Tuesday afternoon as the Suffolk County Board of Elections and representatives of Bill Wilkinson’s and Zachary Cohen’s campaigns continued their review of absentee ballots. “It looks like Wilkinson is going to win by 12 votes,” Mr. Cohen said late that afternoon.

    On election night, the board’s unofficial tally of ballots put Mr. Wilkinson, the Republican incumbent, ahead of his challenger by just 177 votes, with over 1,000 absentee ballots having been sent to East Hampton voters.

    The Board of Elections had received about 800 of those ballots in the mail by Nov. 15, the final day it would accept them from non-military voters. A district-by-district count in the supervisor’s race began on Friday and continued Monday.

    By day’s end Monday, absentee, affidavit, and unscanned ballots in all 19 East Hampton election districts had been counted, said Jesse Garcia of the office of Republican Election Commissioner Wayne T. Rogers. Representatives from both campaigns and their election attorneys returned to the Board of Elections Tuesday afternoon to resume review of the 70 or so challenged ballots that remained unopened.

    According to Christopher Kelley, an attorney and the Democrats’ campaign manager, Mr. Wilkinson was ahead by about 45 votes at the end of the day on Monday, with the majority of challenges coming from the Republicans. Neither the Republican chairwoman, Trace Duryea, nor Mr. Wilkinson had returned calls for comment as of press time Tuesday.

    “We’re going back this afternoon to see if we can whittle down some of those challenges,” Mr. Kelley said Tuesday morning.

    Mr. Kelley and Mr. Garcia both said that many of the challenges stem from dual registration questions in which a voter may be registered in East Hampton, for instance, but may also have been registered at some point in New York City. A challenge is lodged, and after some research it may be dropped or upheld by the Republican and Democratic commissioners. “If both commissioners agree on a residential issue, the objection is upheld,” Mr. Garcia said. “If they disagree, the ballot is opened and counted.”

    Either campaign has the option of going to court to stop the opening of challenged ballots. Regardless of whether the court becomes involved, the outcome of the race may not be known until after the Thanksgiving holiday.

    Commissioners were to review the final remaining unopened ballots by noon on Wednesday, and at that point, Mr. Cohen said Tuesday evening, the results could be clear.

    In the Shelter Island supervisor’s race, absentee ballots shifted the tally from a slim election night lead for the Republican challenger, Glenn Waddington, to a 23-vote victory for the Democratic incumbent, James Dougherty.

    In East Hampton Town, it seems the victor will most likely win by a similar margin. Mr. Wilkinson lost his first bid for town supervisor to Bill McGintee in 2007 by just 104 votes in an election in which 6,528 people cast ballots. He won by a landslide in 2009 with 7,118 people voting. This year, including absentee ballots, about 6,750 people voted.

    “It’s going to be very tight,” Mr. Kelley said.

    Absentee ballots may also change the makeup of the nine-member East Hampton Town Trustees. Just 44 votes separated Deborah Klughers and Raymond Hartjen, both Democrats. As of Tuesday, the Board of Elections had not begun to count absentee votes in that race.

    This weekend, Christmas at the Lighthouse will be celebrated, with the lighting of the Montauk Lighthouse on Saturday. Looks Good Services has adorned the structure with thousands of twinkling white lights that will be switched on at dusk by Bishop Peter Anthony Libasci, the former pastor of St. Therese of Lisieux Catholic Church in the hamlet. He was named the bishop of the Diocese of Manchester, N.H., in September.

    The party, which is held on the grounds outside, will take place from 4:30 to 7 p.m. Saturday and include a visit from Santa. Sarah Conway and the Revelers will lead the crowd in caroling. The gift shop will be open for shopping, but the Lighthouse museum will be closed. Parking and admission is free.

    On Sunday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Santa will be on hand for pictures and to hear wishes. Ms. Conway will lead more caroling from 2 to 3 p.m., and there will be pony rides, hot chocolate, cider, and cookies. The rain date is Dec. 3 and 4.

    November is offering up some hopeful news in the closely-related worlds of both commercial and recreational fisheries.

    The scallop season in state waters began on Nov. 7, and while scallopers say their harvests have not been quite as robust as they were last year, it might not follow that the scallop population has dwindled because there are considerably more scallopers working this year. It could be the pie is even bigger, but the slices are smaller. Town waters open to scallopers on Monday.

    The population of Peconic Bay scallops has yet to recover from the brown algae blooms that decimated it beginning in the mid-1980s, but it has become clear that spawner sanctuaries created by Long Island University, in cooperation with Cornell Cooperative Extension, Stony Brook University at Southampton, and Suffolk County, have spurred overall growth.

    “Cooperative Extension grows them and we do the science,” said Steven Tettlebach of Long Island University. “The sanctuaries have added unequivocally to the populations. It’s making a big difference.”

    While the delicious bivalves no longer carpet the bottoms of local bays and harbors, there are enough to support a “derby” fishery, the name for a short, gold-rush type of harvest. This puts a strain on shuckers and can glut the market, but retail prices were holding steady this week at about $25 per pound.

    Mr. Tettlebach noted that the scallop meats seemed to be bigger this year. “Usually there’s between 50 and 52 meats per pound. This year its 40 per pound.”

    The promising news, according to Greg Rivara, a shellfish specialist with the Cornell Cooperative Extension, is the nearly 10 to 1 ratio of bug (juvenile) scallops to adults. “Don’t count your scallops too soon, of course; a lot can happen in a year, but some of the bugs are big enough to harvest now.”

    He explained that the presence of bigger bugs was important for a few reasons. If left alone, they have a better chance of surviving the winter. Mr. Rivara said it was a counterintuitive fact that if the currently warm Peconic Estuary should remain unseasonably warm through the winter, scallops will have a harder time. “You want cold, even ice, on the bays because you get more hibernation,” the marine biologist said. Warm water makes them use energy reserves only the bigger scallops may have.

    Bigger bugs also have the potential to help the overall stock due to their greater fecundity. “The bigger the animal the more eggs he/she has, in the case of scallops. And, bigger bugs are known to spawn twice in a year,” Mr. Rivara said. 

    In other fisheries news, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, the federally empowered body that oversees migratory stocks along the coast, voted to postpone any change in the striped bass management plan despite calls by New England states for a harvest reduction.

    The A.S.M.F.C. also voted to delay until Jan. 1, 2013, a 10-percent reduction in the southern New England lobster harvest, a position the East Hampton town Baymen’s Association advocated. It was a far better outcome than the 75-percent reduction or even a total fishing moratorium, which was threatened earlier in the year.

    “Commercial guys are not against management when a stock is in trouble, but wiping out a whole gear type with one stroke so that a fishery becomes valueless is not good management. This was a good-as-can-be outcome,” said Arnold Leo, secretary of the East Hampton Town Baymen’s Association. Mr. Leo traveled to Boston for the commission meeting on Nov. 7.

    As for striped bass, the annual young-of-the-year index surveys conducted by the states bordering the coast’s bass nurseries have found close to record-breaking levels of baby bass. Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina report numbers well above average in the Chesapeake Bay. Delaware’s survey met the average mark, as did New York’s Hudson River survey.

    Mr. Leo said news of the great numbers of baby bass had only just been reported and was not included in a coastwide striped bass stock assessment announced during last week’s commission meeting. Without the good tidings figured in, managers had concluded that by 2017 — assuming average “recuitment” (juvenile fish entering harvestable age) — the number of bass aged 8 years and older would sink close to a threshold below which reductions in catch would be needed.

    “The record young-of-the-year projection has thrown those concerns into irrevelence. By 2017 there should be a huge number of fish from the 2011 year class,” Mr. Leo said. 

    He said the current assessment put the total stock of striped bass at 168 percent above the action threshold even without adding the 2011 young-of-the-year data. The commission’s striped bass committee decided that any further action to amend the striped bass management plan would be postponed until after completion of a benchmark stock assessment due out in June of 2013. 

    Michael Hartner, the Springs School superintendent since 2009, has tendered his resignation to the school board, effective June 30, 2012.

    Mr. Hartner, who has spent the last 38 years in education, according to Kathee Burke Gonzalez, the school board president, gave the board his letter of resignation on Nov. 7. The public announcement of his decision came at Monday’s school board meeting.

    According to Ms. Gonzalez, Mr. Hartner had informed the board at the beginning of the year of his possible plans to retire before the end of his contract in 2013. Mr. Hartner’s wife, Ann Marie Hartner, a registered nurse, has recently retired, and his youngest son, Daniel, graduates from high school in June.

    Although Mr. Hartner took heat early last year from teachers angry about his $20,000 raise while they were working without a contract, he was credited just a few months later with saving taxpayers $3.2 million over the life of the district’s newly-negotiated high school tuition contract with the East Hampton School District.

    Among other accomplishments mentioned at Monday’s meeting, Mr. Hartner instituted an initiative for pre-kindergarten at Springs, lengthened the school day, and expanded the campus to include the former Most Holy Trinity Elementary School building in East Hampton and the town-owned youth building on school property off Old Stone Highway.

    “He will be sorely missed,” Ms. Gonzalez said. “Mike set the bar incredibly high.”

    The next step, she said, is interviewing executive search firms to find one that will aid in the process of finding his successor.

    “We will also listen to input from parents, the community, and staff,” Ms. Gonzalez said. “But it will be the board that ultimately makes the decision.”

    Mr. Hartner recalled sitting in his car in the school parking lot during his first year, “next to a lopsided generator and a green trailer up on blocks, and thinking to myself, ‘If I do nothing else during my time here. . . .’ “ The board and audience laughed.

    Mr. Hartner also praised the school’s staff, educators, and board. “This board is like no board I have ever seen,” he said on Monday night. “They deserve your gratitude.”

    Springs will mount its superintendent search at the same time that the East Hampton School District is conducting its own search for a permanent superintendent. Richard Burns has been acting as interim superintendent there since Raymond Gualtieri departed this summer.

    Also at Monday’s meeting, Eric Casale, the school’s principal, and Adam Osterweil, an English teacher, offered a presentation on the Renaissance Learning Star Reader program, a computerized model that allows teachers and parents to track the reading habits of individual students from grades four through eight through a series of quizzes that the students answer based on books they have read.

    “I’m always amazed to see how far ahead we are at collecting data, something we’ve been doing for the past six or seven years,” Mr. Casale said. The program is state and federally approved, and in line with the soon-to-be-mandated Common Core Learning Standards.

    “We can graph a student’s progress over one year or over several years, from pre-K to eighth grade,” Mr. Osterweil said. The program is different than the one used at East Hampton High School, which is not state approved, according to Mr. Casale. “We can send them off to high school with a convenient folder,” he said.

    The district’s traffic safety committee is taking another look at parking around the school, and is studying the possibility of moving the fence on the back side of the gym in order to accommodate as many as 25 cars.

    “Obviously we would go to an architect or engineer,” Mr. Hartner said, “but in the meantime John Gibbons’s class [computer lab] has been submitting designs with ideas.”