125 Years Ago 1901
From The East Hampton Star, April 19
Old Sol has become so bashful that he will not expose himself to public view but a few hours at a time, and then only once a week, and as a consequence Mother Nature is having a hard time getting on her summer apparel, and the farmers are going about their planting with overcoats and mittens on.
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Every day marks the approach of summer and shows increased activity among the cottages of the South End. Lawns and shrubs are being trimmed, the gloomy winter garb of the cottages is being removed, new vines and plants set out here and there, and nature herself has already pushed forth buds on the trees and bushes, transformed the lawns from winter gray to spring green and sprinkled them here and there with the welcome blossoms of the crocuses.
A few days of continuous sunshine will bring out the lawn mowers, and soon after the cottagers themselves will appear, and surely they should be happy in their summer homes, for they would have to go far to find more pleasant ones.
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The moving picture show, of which the public never seems to tire, drew another large audience on Tuesday evening at Clinton Hall. The entertainment is said to have been first class.
100 Years Ago 1926
From The East Hampton Star, April 16
All rumors lately afloat concerning the possible sale of Gardiner’s Island were stilled this week by an agreement entered into between Jonathan T. Gardiner and Lion Gardiner, thirteenth proprietor of the Island, whereby upon the death of Lion Gardiner he will be succeeded by Winthrop Jr., the thirteen-year-old son of his younger brother.
Thus the island will be kept in the family name, as it has been, without a break, since its grant to the first Lion Gardiner by the English crown in 1639.
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This week the village officials have had parking stalls painted on the sides of Main street, in the business section, and on Newtown lane. The paint was hardly dry when automobile drivers began parking their cars head to the curb, as the new ordinance, which becomes effective on April 20, commands.
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Harry Easer, who left East Hampton in December 1924, expecting to spend two or three months abroad with Mr. and Mrs. Albert Herter, returned to his home here last week, and Mr. and Mrs. Herter are still in Paris, probably not to return before June.
Mr. Easer came back on the Paris, was met in New York by his wife and daughter, Margaret, and arrived here late Saturday evening. Mr. and Mrs. Willard Livingston are giving a homecoming party at their Buell’s lane home in his honor, this evening.
75 Years Ago 1951
From The East Hampton Star, April 19
East Hampton participated, Tuesday night, in the nation-wide welcome for General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, dismissed last week by President Truman from his duties as Commander in Chief of United Nations forces in the Far East and governor of occupied Japan.
His appearance at noon today before a joint session of both houses in Washington was televised. Time and again his audience broke in to cheer the general, who said in closing, “Old soldiers never die.”
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The New York Times reported recently on plans for our Guild Hall theater this summer: Steeped in the lore of the stage, Philip Barry Jr., son of the late playwright, is acquiring additional experience to fit him eventually for the post of a Broadway producer. A levelheaded young man who will be 28 years old on Aug. 8, Mr. Barry is planning to lease East Hampton’s swanky John Drew Memorial Theatre for an eight-week season, beginning July 9.
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The hostesses for the Silver Tea to be given on Friday afternoon from 3 to 5 by the Women’s Auxiliary of St. Luke’s Church are Mrs. R.F. Collum, Miss Elizabeth Ford, Mrs. Fred Rhodes, Miss Adaline Sherrill and Mrs. Walter West. The public is invited.
50 Years Ago 1976
From The East Hampton Star, April 15
Environmentalists and representatives of the Brookhaven National Laboratory and the Long Island Lighting Company squared off in debate over the hazards of transporting nuclear waste on Suffolk roads and by public ferry last week at the first of three hearings by the County’s Board of Health into proposed regulation of such shipments.
At the Hauppauge meeting last Wednesday, representatives of Friends of the Earth and the Lloyd Harbor Study Group, two environmental organizations, and the Town of Southold, through which the atomic waste shipments are being routed, called for immediate and stringent County controls over a future shipment of such materials and the use of private barge rather than the Orient Point passenger ferry.
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The movies will be coming back to Montauk this summer. A new theater, now under construction, is due to open behind the Montauk Improvement Company building off South Edgemere Road at the beginning of June, Leon J. Lefkowitz, the President of the Montauk Mini Cinema, said last week.
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“We just sit here and talk talk talk!” exclaimed an exasperated Town Trustee, James McCourt, midway through the Trustees’ three-hour meeting Tuesday night. “I’m getting tired of talking. If you’re not going to act, forget it.”
The Trustees had been talking about asking the Town Board to increase the residency requirement for shellfish permits to 90 days. “We keep talking about changing that shellfish ordinance,” said their chairman, Kenneth Yardley, “but we never seem to get around to it.”
25 Years Ago 2001
From The East Hampton Star, April 19
As hard as it is now to travel to, from, and on the East End, folks in its five towns and nine villages agree that getting around these parts can only get worse.
The question is whether they can agree on what to do about it.
Tomorrow morning, a group of municipal, state, county, and transportation agency officials will gather at the North Ferry Company building on Shelter Island to announce that they will spend $700,000 in federal money to try to improve the situation.
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It’s not just the garbage, but sometimes the trash dumped in the woods, the coffee cups and beer cans strewn along the roadside, and the discarded household appliances left to rust where no one is expected to see them are enough to make Jim Hackett think about picking up and moving away from East Hampton altogether.
With his street abandoned by the organization that adopted it and his complaints to town officials seeming to fall on deaf ears, the Wainscott Northwest Road resident took it upon himself to do something about all the litter along the road.
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In a step toward creating one big “global family,” East Hampton Town Board members on Tuesday approved the idea of the town’s becoming a sister city with Playa, a municipality of Havana, Cuba. Supervisor Jay Schneiderman and Councilwoman Diana Weir spent a week in Cuba in February on a self-funded working vacation to explore the idea.
“We had a tremendous trip; the people welcomed us with open arms,” Mr. Schneiderman told the town board on Tuesday.
