Villages

In my medical career there are few things that I am as grateful for as the fact that I spent several years teaching college writing and literature before going to medical school.

In honor of Indigenous Peoples' Day this week, the East Hampton Library is showcasing a photo from an exhibit titled “The Montauks: Native Americans of Eastern Long Island.”

125 Years Ago1896
From The East Hampton Star, October 16

It may not be generally known that an effort is being made to establish a public circulating library in this village. Several ladies among our summer residents have talked over the matter with some of the members of the Village Improvement society, and have also contributed books, which Mrs. John D. Hedges has kindly consented to care for and circulate during the winter.

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Free P.C.R. saliva testing for Covid-19 is now offered on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the East Hampton Town Center for Humanity, the former Child Development Center of the Hamptons, at 110 Stephen Hand's Path.

Perfect weather greeted the large crowd attending the East Hampton Town Trustees' 31st annual Largest Clam Contest on Sunday, a sharp rebound to the early-autumn tradition from last year's pared-down, pandemic-afflicted event. 

While driving through the South Fork, many of us have taken the Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor Turnpike, which was once known as the Bull's Head and Sag Harbor Turnpike. This road was a simple path frequently used by merchants with their carts carrying goods.

All you parents who wonder if it's just you who needs to cajole, bribe, and beg your children to get them to comply medical advice should take comfort in knowing that even physicians have to contort themselves into a thousand pretzel-like caricatures of parenting in order to get their kids to follow the doctor's orders.

East Hampton Village celebrated the 100th anniversary of the its incorporation on Friday by adding mementos to a time capsule that will remain buried on Village Hall's front lawn well into the next century.

The composer John Howard Payne used this diplomatic purse during his appointment as ambassador to Tunisia, a position he first received under President John Tyler (husband of Julia Gardiner) in 1841. After President James Polk's election in 1844, Payne was recalled. However, in 1851 Secretary of State Daniel Webster helped Payne regain the appointment, which Payne held until his death on April 9, 1852, in Tunis.

Jack Graves usually sits down to write his East Hampton Star column, “Point of View,” each Wednesday without a predetermined subject in mind.

“Was it de Kooning who said, ‘I see the canvas and I begin’? I do think it’s an advantage to not have anything definite in mind,” Mr. Graves, a fixture at this newspaper since Oct. 15, 1967, said in an interview this week. “Then you become too focused.”

The Bay Area Lyme Disease Foundation has honored George Dempsey, the medical director of East Hampton Family Medicine, for his work in assisting with the foundation’s Lyme Disease Biobank.

Sixteen full-time health care workers at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital who had not received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine by Monday have been suspended without pay and will be fired if they don’t get vaccinated within 30 days, hospital officials said on Tuesday.

Over the weekend, East Hampton Village celebrated the 100th anniversary of its incorporation, albeit a year late due to the pandemic. The festivities included a parade, a black-tie gala, a carnival, a classic car show, and a community softball game. Here are some scenes from the long-anticipated weekend.

When East Hampton celebrates the 100th anniversary of the village's incorporation this weekend -- with a black-tie party, fireworks, parade, music festival, and more -- it should raise a toast to summer visitors, without whom the milestone would not have been reached, said the village historian and parade grand marshal, Hugh King.

Despite a high vaccination rate in the town and statewide, the positive infection rate reported by the testing sites at Town Hall and in Montauk more than tripled in August, from 4 to 13 percent of those tested receiving a positive diagnosis. Between Sept. 14 and 19, the positive rate was 12.2 percent among 1,263 tests in East Hampton and 13.5 percent among 370 tests in Montauk.

The East Hampton Historical Society has hired Stephen Long, the president of the Children's Museum of the East End in Bridgehampton, to be its new executive director.

The facility regularly harvested an average of 10 tons of ice daily and relied on a ground-cork-insulated ice box to maintain the product. With increasing trouble from warming winters, Duryea's updates included the purchase of an Atlas-Imperial engine for $4,500, in order to produce ice when it could not be harvested.

The big question on everyone's lips this month seems to be whether or not they should receive a third (in the case of the Pfizer or Moderna mRNA vaccines) or second (if they opted for the Johnson and Johnson vaccine) "booster" dose against Covid-19.

A group of investors has purchased 2 Main Street in Sag Harbor Village, home to the K Pasa restaurant and other businesses, and is seeking to have Southampton Town purchase the building with community preservation fund money.

A proposal to name the Amagansett Youth Park for Lee A. Hayes, a Tuskegee Airman during World War II and a resident of East Hampton Town for most of his life, gathered strength on Tuesday. 

Stony Brook Southampton Hospital remains convinced that a 4.5-acre parcel on Pantigo Place in East Hampton is the most appropriate site for its proposed emergency room annex, and it hopes to break ground on the project by the end of the year, according to Robert Chaloner, the hospital's chief administrative officer.

As it marks its 100th anniversary, the Amagansett Village Improvement Society demonstrates a remarkable continuity. Now, as then, the society constitutes a committed group that cares deeply about its unassuming hamlet and wishes to preserve its inimitable charm and beauty. It maintains the hamlet's triangles, planters, benches, trees, flagpole, and flower boxes, lines Main Street with flags at the appropriate holidays, and helps to decorate the tree on the green at Christmas and organize caroling up and down Main Street.

The Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee had to make do Monday without its expected speaker, Katy Casey, executive director of the East Hampton Housing Authority, who couldn't make it to the Zoom meeting at the last minute, leaving the committee with a number of questions but few answers.

Next week, East Hampton Village begins its belated centennial celebration of the village's incorporation. Inspired by the 1920s while planning the events for this anniversary, the village also looked at many of the Town of East Hampton's large anniversary events, such as the 350th anniversary celebration in 1998. One of the earliest town anniversaries we have photographs from is the August 1924 pageant for the 275th anniversary of the town.

Much to the chagrin of her legions of loyal customers, Mary Schoenlein announced this week that her retail bakery and takeout spot Mary's Marvelous on East Hampton's Newtown Lane will be shutting its doors for good at the close of business on Sunday.

East Hampton Village will hold a celebration of the 100th anniversary of its incorporation next weekend, and to mark the occasion, Rose Brown, a trustee, Ray Harden, an owner of Ben Krupinski Builder and a former trustee, and James McMullan, an architect and vice chairman of the village's zoning board of appeals, joined forces to create a keepsake for posterity: a model of Village Hall that will be on display in the parade down Main Street on Sept. 25, and then stored at Mulford Farm. 

In so many ways, the fact that we are still having to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic feels like a kick to the gut, but here we are. At this juncture in the pandemic, it is worthwhile to once again review some of the current public health guidelines aimed at stopping the spread and protecting yourself and your community.

Children with special needs and their families got a chance to experience the healing power of the ocean on Saturday at A Walk on Water's surf therapy event at Ditch Plain in Montauk.

A deputy commissioner in former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's office, Bradford Billet of East Hampton helped oversee a program to locate people who had been injured, killed, or had gone missing after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in Manhattan. "At one point we had a list of over 20,000 missing people that we had to pare down," he said. "We had a solemn obligation to give the families closure."

The events of Sept. 11, 2001, made an indelible mark on New York City and the rest of the United States, which mourned 2,977 victims of terrorism that day. Some of East Hampton's first responders paused this week to reflect on the impact the terrorist attacks had on them personally.