125 Years Ago 1901
From The East Hampton Star, September 6
W.H. Barnes is busily engaged completing plans for East Hampton’s sewer system. Perhaps few people realize the amount of detail work involved in drawing a set of working plans for a sewerage system for a village.
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A summer resident was seen on the beach Wednesday fishing with a hook and line. He succeeded in pulling in three or four flounders.
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The Block Island season of the Montauk Steamboat Company comes to a close with the trip of the steamer Shinnecock next Sunday. After Sunday night the Shinnecock will be withdrawn from the route, the Montauk continuing with three trips per week.
100 Years Ago 1926
From The East Hampton Star, September 3
At Clinton Hall last Tuesday the Garden Club of East Hampton held a delightful exhibition, to which the entire village was cordially invited. The response showed the interest the event aroused, for there was a continuous stream of visitors from the opening till the close, at 9 o’clock.
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Rather an unbelievable incident occurred here last week-end. In these days of prosperity one would hardly believe that it was possible for a young man to reach the point of starvation after being unsuccessful in obtaining employment for which search had been made. But such was the case. A young man from a southern city came north a month or two ago planning to get work at Montauk. He was unable to do so and so came to East Hampton. He went into nearly every place of business and asked for employment but the answer was always the same — “We do not need any extra help now.”
The climax occurred last week-end when without food and the necessary money to buy any he fell to the ground on the park at the north end of the village. Some good Samaritans, who noticed his predicament, went to his aid and took him to Cline’s restaurant where he was given a good meal.
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Princess Rospigliosi of Southampton spent the early part of the week here as the guest of Mrs. Sidney Fish.
75 Years Ago 1951
From The East Hampton Star, September 6
The tragic capsizing of the 45-foot fishing excursion boat Pelican, crowded with 54 holiday fishermen within sight of the Montauk Lighthouse Saturday, September 1, took the lives of 37 persons, including the owner and skipper of the capsized craft, Captain Edward Carroll of Great Kills, S.I.
The Pelican put off that morning from the Fishangri-la docks and about 10 a.m. ran into a heavy northeast wind and heavy seas. According to Robert Scanlon, 23-year-old mate, the captain decided about 11 a.m. to cancel the fishing and start back to the docks. Between then and 2:15, when it capsized within sight of the Lighthouse, the Pelican had a rough time.
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The Montauk Yacht Club looked far different than Roland McCann, manager, had planned last Saturday evening. Mr. McCann was all set for the big Labor Day Dance customarily held at the club. Instead at dance time the room looked like an annex of the hospital. All but one of the survivors of the Pelican tragedy were brought there and treated by local doctors and nurses.
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The tragedy at Montauk Point last Saturday is the worst disaster that ever occurred near that rocky, stormy point where the Lighthouse was built in 1796. It recalls the last great loss of life in the water off Montauk, nearly 100 years ago — also on a Saturday — in February 1858. The John Milton of New Bedford, a 1,445-ton ship, had sailed from New York on December 6, 1856, bound around Cape Horn for San Francisco.
50 Years Ago 1976
From The East Hampton Star, September 2
A local citizens’ group, Eastern Suffolk for Safe Energy, charged this week that the Federal hearings now underway in Riverhead on the Long Island Lighting Company’s application to build two nuclear plants in Jamesport are “a farce” and a “rubber-stamp” operation.
In a release issued this Monday, ESSE said it was basing its charge on a recent study by a national citizens’ group, Common Cause, which was said to have revealed that a high percentage of nuclear regulatory officials and employees in government had strong ties to the nuclear industry and that there existed a potential serious conflict of interest.
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Support for quick implementation of the County’s farmlands preservation program, tabled this past May by the Legislature because of the brewing fiscal crisis over the Southwest Sewer District, appears to be growing among western Suffolk residents and civic leaders, much to the surprise of some of its proponents.
“We’ve succeeded beyond our expectations,” declares Thomas Twomey of East Hampton, counsel for the Long Island Farm Bureau and, in what he says is a private capacity, co-chairman with East Hampton’s Debra Foster of the Save Our Farms committee.
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John Hall Wheelock, the distinguished American poet, will celebrate his 90th birthday next Thursday here in East Hampton, where he has spent most of the summers of his life and where he continues to write and publish new poems.
Mr. Wheelock has published ten collections of poetry and hopes to have a new collection ready for publication on his 91st birthday. He was born on Long Island, and his first published poem appeared in a Morristown, N.J., school paper in 1900, the beginning of an extraordinary career.
25 Years Ago 2001
From The East Hampton Star, September 6
Rousing applause from more than 150 local Democrats greeted New York Senator Charles E. Schumer on Sunday, when he urged them to fight the “corrosive cynicism and apathy that pervades Washington and East Hampton and every place in between.”
Speaking under a tent on the grounds of Ina and Jeffrey Garten’s Buell Lane, East Hampton, residence, Mr. Schumer drew parallels between the Bush White House and Supervisor Jay Schneiderman’s East Hampton Town administration, saying, “You have to connect what you say with what you do.”
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The Southampton Town Transportation Advisory Task Force supports the idea of widening County Road 39 to four lanes from the Lobster Inn to the Princess Diner, one of six pages of ideas, all of which it has approved, that were recently recommended by the task force’s land committee.
The Southampton Town Board is expected to consider the recommendations at its 10 a.m. meeting on Friday, September 14, or shortly afterward, at which point they will be forwarded to the County Department of Public Works and the State Department of Transportation.
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With any luck, Donna and Richard Neu will soon find a buyer for their house on Bow Oarsman’s Road in East Hampton and head to Fort Myers, Fla., where a new business awaits them as owners of a horse stable. “I love East Hampton,” said Mrs. Neu, a part-time dance instructor whose husband worked for several years as the production manager for Sag Harbor’s Bay Street Theater, but “this will be less of a financial struggle.”
The family, with three children, 4, 11, and 15, has lived here for 20 years and represents either the gravest problem facing East Hampton or business as usual.
