Villages

Having spent most of my life in small towns, I’m used to hearing gossip almost anywhere I go. Since the pandemic started, and particularly because most folks in my town know that I’m a doctor, much of what people talk to me about has touched on Covid-19.

While the headlines about the miserable state of American retail continued to mount postsummer, something extraordinary was happening at the Bridgehampton Commons. The Retreat Boutique, the thrift store offshoot of the Retreat, an East Hampton domestic violence shelter, posted end-of-summer takings of over $200,000 — its largest to date.

Notes from the Star's archives

An anonymous donor has stepped forward with a $30,000 grant for Organizacion Latino-Americana of Eastern Long Island to continue its education and advocacy efforts to prevent homelessness and illegal evictions.

Testing for Covid-19 has resumed at the East Hampton Town Hall campus, now provided by CareONE Concierge. Appointments are not required. Testing is no longer being offered at the former Child Development Center of the Hamptons on Stephen Hand's Path.

A Stony Brook University Ph.D. student studying triploid oysters in Napeague Harbor and Great South Bay was disappointed to learn that someone had raided both study areas and waded away with thousands of mature triploid oysters over the last several months.

As the weather grows colder, Covid-19 is once again on the upswing in New York, including in East Hampton Town and across Suffolk County, and health care professionals are pleading with the public to remain vigilant and, yes, get vaccinated if they have not yet done so.

The Sag Harbor group East End YIMBY is ramping up its advocacy efforts to create more affordable housing close to home, and last week asked the Sag Harbor Village Board to consider five recommendation for inclusionary zoning that would help pave the way for more housing opportunities in the village.

The National Weather Service has said that a record-breaking six tornadoes touched down on Long Island during Saturday’s powerful storm, hitting with force as far east as Hampton Bays and North Sea, and though East Hampton was spared the worst of it, one family in Springs had huge trees fall on their house and car. The house was intact, but the car was totaled.

Sag Harbor’s First Presbyterian Church, often called the Old Whalers Church, has experienced many evolutions since its first building was constructed in 1766. In 1816 that building, known as the Old Barn Church, was replaced with a larger meeting place for a growing congregation.

From the past pages of The Star . . .

When she was young, Shannon Cecilia Whelan was a crew member aboard a steel barge owned by her parents' marine construction business. A lover of all things water — sailing, fishing, surfing — Ms. Whelan, formerly of Sag Harbor, was the namesake for the barge. A mother of three children, she died in 2019 at the age of 38.

Joseph DeCristofaro was just 17 when he enlisted in the Navy in 1943, too young to join up without his parents’ permission but determined to do his part. “I had to get my folks to sign for me,” he said on Friday in his living room in East Hampton. “My father signed; my mother didn’t like it.”

The East Hampton Library unveiled a new online Long Island Collection research system that includes not only the impressive collection of historical records that the library holds but also an additional 23 collections, including the town and East Hampton Village's historic records and high school yearbooks dating to the 1950s. “I think this is one of the most important projects this library has been involved with,” Dennis Fabiszak, the library's executive director, said.

This etching, one of a number of works titled “The Much Resounding Sea” by the artist Thomas Moran of East Hampton (1837-1926), was completed in 1886, two years after his similar but less detailed oil painting of the same name. The etching is a newer acquisition for the Long Island Collection, bought at auction in May.

I remember the underscore of terror in the early days of the pandemic, wondering if my working in an I.C.U. and taking care of some of the first patients with Covid-19 in our region was going to endanger my family. Eighteen months later, I can hardly believe that I am watching a friend and colleague deftly vaccinate all four of my children against Covid-19.

Now that children 5 to 11 are eligible to receive Pfizer's Covid-19 vaccine — the first that has been approved for pediatric administration in the United States — medical professionals and government officials here and across Long Island are quickly putting plans in place to meet families' needs.

As it turns out, the get-outta-town narrative, explored in last week's East Hampton Star by several prominent community members who recently moved away, is far from the only story there is to tell.

125 Years Ago1896

From The East Hampton Star, November 13

With a new effort to operate year round, a recently launched virtual store, and a decision to provide housing for some of its employees, Share the Harvest Farm is hoping to make a greater connection with the community it serves.

Is there life after East Hampton? The answer is a slightly bittersweet "yes," according to several longtime residents -- and very active community members -- who have moved away over the last couple of months.

Nia Dawson, 22, Black, and a third-generation Bridgehampton native, found herself in the midst of what she believed was a racially-fueled incident outside the Sag Harbor Launderette in August. Angered, upset, but not shocked, it led her to galvanize family members, friends, and notable figures in the community to form an organization called Exposing Inequities in the Hamptons.

A postcard from the Harvey Ginsberg Postcard Collection shows the house known as "the Chalet" off James Lane in East Hampton.

125 Years Ago 1896

From The East Hampton Star, November 6

When he began donating such Tapovana Lunch Box offerings as vegetarian curries, soups, chutneys, coconut quinoa rice, and hydrating elixirs to the Bridgehampton Child Care Center's food pantry in January, Corey De Rosa, who has been working out of a fully-remodeled kitchen at the Bridgehampton Community House since January, wondered how the South Indian food would be received.

St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in East Hampton welcomed a new curate last month. The Rev. Joseph L. Cundiff IV has been assisting the Very Rev. Denis C. Brunelle for almost eight weeks now in an apprentice position.

Kimberly Quarty and Damon A. Hagan of East Quogue were married on Sept. 25 at the East Hampton Presbyterian Church.

While new recommendations released last week on Covid-19 booster shots for at-risk populations are not a broad suggestion that all vaccinated people get a booster, they do extend the recommendation to a great many people.

A proposal to replace the WLNG radio tower in Sag Harbor Village with a cellphone tower is facing fierce opposition from neighbors.

From The East Hampton Star this week in 1896, 1921, 1946, 1971, and 1996