Villages

In a year marked as much by social upheaval and a nationwide reckoning over race as it was by unprecedented public health challenges, Willie Jenkins stands out not only for demanding change but for creating it.

In the spring, when Stony Brook Southampton Hospital began to fill up with patients who were "all so sick at the same time with the same thing, that's when it really got hard . . . and everything we were doing felt like it wasn't helping," recalled Samantha Jiudice, an intensive care unit nurse there. "Now, when the patients come . . . we have a checklist. It's not easier, it just comes more comfortably because we've experienced it already."

As the year comes to a close and a new one begins we celebrate people who went above and beyond to make their communities a better place in 2020's darkest of days. These are but a few of the many who inspired us this year through their strength, kindness, resilience, and bravery. 

Andrew M. Cuomo announced updated quarantine guidelines for New York State on Tuesday, aligning them with those of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Oh, what a year it was. If you had written a movie pitch for 2020, few people would have bought it. Too far-fetched, they'd say. Not possible. After a sunny New Year's Day when thousands gathered at East Hampton's Main Beach to dive into the ocean or watch others do so at the annual polar plunge, the year took a decidedly different turn.

Despite the pandemic's impact to business, the nonprofit South Fork Bakery is striving to continue its core mission: to offer meaningful employment to adults with disabilities.

George Dempsey, medical director of East Hampton Family Medicine, told The Star on Wednesday that a suite dedicated to testing for the novel coronavirus will open shortly after Christmas at the health care provider’s office at 200 Pantigo Place in East Hampton.

Hidden within a subset of LTV's video collection, are recordings of local fishermen, bygone and not, reminiscing about simpler times from the 1980s onward. Over 100 shows in the LTV archives document this moment of change, when the State Department of Environmental Conservation began imposing strict sanctions, in the form of quotas, on what had been a relatively unfettered way of life.

The battles we fight, from the surge here in New York in the spring to the bigger surge in spots across the country this summer, to the cresting wave from coast to coast that we are struggling against right now, are all battering down our defenses. But the vaccines offer hope, and every health care worker I know is sprinting like mad to get one.

East Hampton Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc read a proclamation acknowledging the skills and contributions of Pat DeRosa, a Montauk musician, at the town board's meeting last Thursday. Mr. DeRosa recently celebrated his 99th birthday.

Christmas was Kathy Surrey's favorite holiday. Each year, Ms. Surrey, a longtime night manager at the Montauk Manor, would begin preparing for the holiday around Thanksgiving, turning out a dozen or more glorious gingerbread houses to display in the Manor's lobby.

"Living room" spread of Covid-19 now accounts for about 75 percent of the virus’s transmission, New York State Governor Andrew M. Cuomo said on Monday afternoon as he announced fine-tuned vaccination programs and precautions against the threat of a new Covid-19 strain spreading overseas. “Everything else is relatively de minimis” in terms of the risk of spreading the virus, he said, “and we’re in the heat of the holiday season.”