125 Years Ago 1901
From The East Hampton Star, October 11
The New York and New Jersey Telephone Company has a large number of telephone poles piled on the ground near the freight station, which would seem to indicate that an extensive telephone system is to be put up in East Hampton.
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At the regular meeting of the Ladies’ Village Improvement Society held at the home of Mrs. Hallock on Monday evening there were seventeen members present and two new names were added to the role of membership, Mrs. LeRoy Edwards and Mrs. Samuel Jacoby.
The treasurer reported that the society has $390 in the bank and over $13 on hand.
The committee on street sprinkling reported that the sum of $1,186 had been collected, and about $65 remained to be collected, making a total of $1,251.
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The large moose head owned by Christopher Columbus Coburn, which has been on exhibition at Felix Dominy’s store, has been purchased by H.A. James for $75.
100 Years Ago 1926
From The East Hampton Star, October 8
Patchogue Lodge of B.P.O. Elks, is planning for a big outing at Montauk on Sunday, October 17. The affair will be a monster shore dinner at the new Fort Pond Bay Restaurant, and an inspection of the work being done at the Fisher Development. Every effort is being made to give all a genuine good time, and there will no doubt be hundreds of members of the order who will attend.
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The Third Annual Field Trials of the Long Island Field Trials Association will be held next Friday and Saturday, October 15 and 16, on the old racetrack site between Cedar Street and Long Lane. The first and second annual trials of this association were held at Hicksville and it is due to the efforts of E.F. Warner, publisher of Field & Stream and Arts & Decoration, a summer resident who is interested, with William Hand, in Cash-Box Kennels, that East Hampton was chosen for the 1926 trials.
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All parents are invited to attend a moving picture program in the high school auditorium next Monday evening at 8 o’clock. The program has been arranged by the teachers of the school for the purpose of interesting parents to come and to give them some information in regard to the school. Arrangements are being made to take care of the capacity crowd in the auditorium. The teachers want every parent who has any interest in his school children, or the school that they attend, to come out on Monday night.
75 Years Ago 1951
From The East Hampton Star, October 11
Agent William “Bill” Vorpahl retired on October 1 after 46 years of service with the Railway Express and finds taking it easy is the hardest job he ever tackled.
After serving the company for 11 years as a railway express man on trains he settled down “on shore” to work at Montauk and East Hampton. He was with the local office from 1916 to 1920 and again from 1928 until October 1, 1951. In between 1920 and 1928 he was agent at Montauk.
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East Hampton women voters have been invited to attend a short meeting tonight at 7:30 o’clock in the Town offices. A committee is being formed to assist Mrs. Willie Mae Moore, first woman candidate for one of the major offices in our Town government — that of Town Clerk.
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The Town Board has completed a tentative budget for the coming year and has announced that a public hearing will be held at the Town Hall on Wednesday, Oct. 17, to hear any person in favor of or opposed to any items therein.
The budget proposed for the support of the general town government for the coming year calls for $44,400 to be raised by taxation, which is approximately $4,500 less than the amount shown in last year’s tentative budget. The proposed tax levy for support of the town highway program is $123,590, which is $2,840 higher than last year’s request of the Town Superintendent.
50 Years Ago 1976
From The East Hampton Star, October 7
The debate over the Long Island Lighting Company’s plan to build two nuclear power plants at Jamesport continued over the past week with a scientist testifying that a battery of wind machines at sea could replace the proposed plants and an artist arguing that a proposed overhead power-line corridor would violate the landscape.
William E. Heronemus, professor of civil engineering at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and an expert on wind power, told members of the Public Service Commission last week that the equipment and the technology to supply Long Island’s power needs using the wind as a source of energy are available now and could replace the proposed LILCO nuclear plants at a lower capital cost.
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Rocky Mountain spotted fever, which took the lives of three Suffolk residents last summer and has been on the increase in the County over the past few years, can be wiped out within three to five years with proper tick-control measures, a State Department of Public Health scientist predicted Tuesday.
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A group of South Fork residents who feel that the Suffolk farmlands program is fine, but does not go far enough, will participate in a “Day of Shame” silent demonstration Saturday from 10 a.m. to noon at Southampton Town Hall. The Farm Crisis Committee hopes to persuade the Southampton and East Hampton Town Boards to impose a six-month moratorium on all building on farmland.
25 Years Ago 2001
From The East Hampton Star, October 11
Federal Bureau of Investigation agents have come to the South Fork at least three times since Sept. 11, following leads they hoped would shed light on the World Trade Center attacks.
About a week after the attacks, an agent paid a visit to the Montauk Airport, a private airfield. He asked Helen Gili, the airport manager, whether any crop-dusting aircraft were stored there, Ms. Gili said last week, and also if she had seen any suspicious people loitering or any “abnormal aircraft.”
That was the day, she recalled, that the federal government grounded the nation’s crop-dusters, fearing a potential attack with biological or chemical weapons.
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What’s more pleasing: an unobstructed water view or a highway clogged with cars? It may be a rhetorical question, but a two-year inventory and analysis of East Hampton’s scenic resources, presented in final form to the town board on Sept. 28, found a clear consensus among 200 residents polled on exactly what is most attractive, even among numerous images considered pretty.
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Sitting on a bench at the bus stop next to Herrick Park in East Hampton, 18-year-old Brendon and his friends looked on Friday as if they were waiting for a bus. But the truth was that they were not waiting for anything.
“This is just what we do,” said Brendon, who did not want to say what his last name is. Looking up from his Tom Clancy novel, “The Bear and the Dragon,” he denied that he and his friends were homeless and living in Herrick Park. “We only hang out in the park,” he said.
