A Southold man was charged with driving while intoxicated early Saturday morning, Southold Town police said.
Fredy Palencia, 34, was arrested for driving while intoxicated, a misdemeanor, after he was observed crossing the solid double yellow line while driving eastbound on Route 25 near Highland Road in Cutchogue at about 12:52 a.m., police said.
He was arrested and held for a morning arraignment, police said.
Here are some of today’s top stories across the North Fork. To stay on top of local news, follow the The Suffolk Times on Facebook.
The sun rising over Orient Harbor in Orient. (Credit: Tim Kelly, file)
It all began with my brother Jean’s crazy idea to get on his old Peugeot bike and pedal away from New York City to Eastern Long Island. Decision in Riverhead: North Fork? South Fork? It would be North. Arrived in Orient Village — it was love at first sight. Jean called the family, mother, grandmother, sister, brother. “A beautiful village. I’m taking the train back to get you. You must come to Orient.”
And so we rode in my brother’s 1960 Plymouth gray sedan, all of us, after reserving rooms at The Bay House and Cottages. Fifty years later, my brother, sister and I are part of the Orient community.
In 1968, we bought the first house we ever owned. It was and still is on King Street, Orient village. Yes, some houses do move in this land. But this one will not unless the sea takes it away. Could have happened in the 1938 hurricane.
In summer 1968 the family was traveling in Europe but I was here spending time at the Bay House or perhaps with Mrs. Tuthill, who rented rooms and offered a simple breakfast in her immaculate home on Village Lane with floors painted beige. Mrs. Tuthill made you feel like a friend on a visit. She could be your aunt, warm and even-tempered. She was elegant the way people are at church on Sunday. So many years have passed but I still remember her with affection. She personified the best in American hospitality.
These were the good old days. The happiest days in my life.
While the family was in Europe that summer, Marilyn Norkelun, a broker at Floyd King Jr. Realty, was showing me available property. Owning a house was still a dream. There was the historic house of Henry Dyer, a mariner, from 1850. It was now the Cooper House and had been in the same family for 93 years.
(Houses changed hands so rarely, then, that the owner’s name was attached to them like a brand. The first house I bought without family was the Bay House. We expected that it would never be on the market. We had been guests there for several seasons. The owner, Betty King, a wonderful hostess, had become a friend. My sister and I were lying in the sand on the Bay House beach one day when we heard the unthinkable: Betty King was selling and moving to Florida. The Bay House and its cottages, Sunset, Edgewater, Revolutionary, Bayside, the whole bundle, for not even 130,000 dollars. We read it in The New York Times. In the ’60s, it was far more money than we had. A German couple, Eric Schmidt and his wife, took over. We were stunned by Betty King leaving Orient. Along with her brother, Floyd, she was such an important and endearing presence in the community. We felt nothing would ever change in Orient and Betty and Floyd and everyone here would live forever and never leave town.
Years later, the Schmidts decided to sell. Here was my chance to get hold of The Bay House and to devote myself to its restoration. It was never a matter of profit but of rescue. To give new life to an old house. To bring back its beauty.)
Back to the 1850 Cooper house. When the family returned from Europe I had them look at it in a hurry. Although a house could sit for months, sometimes years, at the time, with a fading For Sale sign, I was worried. You never knew. I didn’t want to lose the Cooper house. My brother liked it but the idea of a mortgage troubled him. Either you had the money and you bought or you didn’t have it and abstained. He convinced himself to go ahead by calling it “an investment in health.” A house by the sea was a promise of good living. Never mind the mortgage. It was a very small mortgage, actually.
The house was sold to us with beds, tables, chairs included and a bright pink upright piano. Everything is still here just the way it was when we moved in. Some of the beds have open box springs. They do rattle and grind. Country charm to compete with the song of crickets.
My brother never looked at another house. This was it for good, like a happy marriage. I had looked. There was a brick house in Southold, quite imposing, not expensive (this was 1968), a white elephant, with silver sterling door knobs. My mother, brother and sister would have nothing of it. The old 1850 Henry Dyer’s house in Orient would become home. Forever. Ah, forever.
My mother spent many hours playing the pink piano. Oh, it was never well-tuned. Years near the sea gave it permanent odd sounds. But we loved it. My good friend Patty Latham, a gifted music student at the Juilliard School, made music out of the pink piano. It’s still in the house, pink and out of tune, the heart of the old Cooper house. It’s my sister’s and brother’s house now but for us will remain the Cooper House, the first house we ever owned.
On the day we moved in, Betty King came with a crystal bowl that had belonged to her family to wish us good luck in our new house. That same day, Eleanor Harris, our neighbor from across the street, came to greet us and became a close friend. A few doors away my mother met Mrs. Muriel Brown as she was raising the American flag in front of her house. She and her husband, Dr. Kenneth Brown, opened their home to us. This was the beginning of our love story with the village of Orient, first discovered at the end of a long bicycle trip by my brother, Jean.
In a future column I’ll write about the many other friends we’ve had in Orient.
Pierre Gazarian is a poet and a writer of one-act plays. Email: npgazarian.dc@gmail.com
Southold High School’s Class of 2004 will host a reunion Saturday, Oct. 4, from 6 to 10 p.m. at Soundview Restaurant in Greenport.
The cost is $40 per person and includes unlimited food and soda. A cash bar will be available. Attendees must pay in advance or at the door.
Email Kim Haeg, blondeb0mber21@aim.com to RSVP.
Tiffany Marsolek and David Dunning.
Tiffany Marsolek, daughter of Michael and Lynda Marsolek of Malibu, Calif., was married June 21 in Santa Barbara, Calif., to David Dunning, son of Patricia Boyle of New York City, James Dunning Jr. of New York City and Orient and stepson of Susan Magrino Dunning. The couple was married at All Saints-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church in Montecito, Calif.
Tiffany, 28, graduated from Louisville High School in Woodland Hills, Calif., in 2004. She attended Southern Methodist University’s Cox School of Business and received a bachelor’s degree in business administration in 2008. Currently, she is a digital media supervisor at Universal McCann Los Angeles.
David, 29, graduated from Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts in 2004, and previously, attended the Eaglebrook School. He received a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Pennsylvania in 2008. Currently, he is a research analyst at Kayne Anderson Capital and a second-year MBA student at Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California.
The couple resides in Santa Monica, Calif.
A yard in the making. (Credit: Joseph Pinciaro)
When I started with the News-Review about a year ago, one of the newer concepts I had to get used to was writing a regular column.
“Nice!” I thought. “Columns are great. I can take a look at something, make it hilarious and/or insightful, and I can have a grand old time writing, just like I imagined when I got into journalism years ago.”
Get a fresh cup of coffee as the sun rises … or a cold beer as the sun is going down (or maybe whiskey — was that what Breslin drank?) … and a magic column miraculously comes forth, right?
Not so much.
Writing a column is much harder than it seems. What I find funny, zany or generally worth knowing doesn’t necessarily translate to something you might care about, be able to learn something from or is worth your time to read.
With that in mind, I figured I’d run through a few column ideas that I’ve dropped in the past year. You be the judge on whether or not they’d translate well to a full 800 words.
My obsession with fantasy sports: I’ve been playing fantasy sports since I was probably 13 years old. It was actually the first thing I ever wrote about for my college newspaper. And I’d say in the past five years the whole phenomenon has really taken off — to the point where ESPN devotes hour-long segments to fantasy sports.
But my wife is quick to remind me that, by its very definition, my fantasy baseball and football teams are not real. Still, the prizes I’ve won have been real! My name is actually engraved on our trophies, which provide me a real sense of accomplishment over my college buddies. And I’ve already won first place in the regular season of my baseball league. If I win this week, I’m in the finals.
Fantasy sports raise an interesting concept though. Historically, most people root for teams: Red Sox, Yankees, Mets, you name it. That kind of gets flipped on its head when I decide to pass on Mike Napoli because I don’t think there’s any way he’ll repeat what he did last season. And he hasn’t. Good for me, bad for my beloved Red Sox.
What it’s like being a redhead: I’m not a minority in the politically correct sense of the word and it’s not like I know what it’s like not to be a redhead. But it’s different. It has to be, right?
Redheads have an innate respect for one another based just on the fact that they share the same hair color. I don’t think that can be said about any other hair color — natural hair color, that is (although Larry David might argue bald people share a similar bond).
I like the beach, but I had to spend most of my honeymoon under a tree on the beach , otherwise I would have come home looking like a lobster. And at home, I generally won’t go to the beach for kicks unless it’s past 5 o’clock generally. Why fight nature?
My experience as a first-time homeowner: For the past 15 months, I’ve been in a constant battle with the house and yard my wife and I bought last May in Wading River. And it really has been a battle …
I’ve been attacked by a nest of yellow jackets, had half my body covered in poison ivy and sworn at myself — actually, it’s my tools — more times than I can count.
A yard that was neglected for at least the past 20 years still looks like nobody takes care of it — and it will look that way for some time to come, just because of the amount of work to be done. Retro bathroom tiles — we’re talking pink and sea green — make you think you’re stepping onto the set of “The Wonder Years.” And until last week, when we finally had a new retaining wall and steps put in, crumbling front stairs offered guests an agility test as they approached the front door.
And call me crazy, but I love it. Watching the progress we’ve made since we moved in has been very rewarding. I just hope the real estate market doesn’t crash again when we ever sell our home and I can make at least a little bit of cash off the investments we’ve been making.
Those people you see on the side of the road occasionally who draw a Hitler moustache on the president and think he should be impeached: Think President Obama should be impeached? No problem, think away. But you lost me at the comparison with Adolf Hitler. I hesitate to give them the space in this or any column, just because comparing the president with the man responsible for the Holocaust deserves a word that goes beyond “ignorant.”
I’ve considered talking to them and trying to find out what really goes on in minds like that. But then I think about it, and I’m not so sure I want to know.
So those are few of the outtakes, if you will. Maybe if the well runs dry one of these weeks you’ll see a full-sized version of one of them. But I’m talking, really dry. Like a redhead’s skin after a full day at the beach.
Joseph Pinciaro is the managing editor of the News-Review, and is curious what you think about his columns that didn’t make the full cut. Let him know at jpinciaro@timesreview.com
The Kaisers check measurements near the barn’s cow box. The elder Mr. Kaiser said he’s waiting for the arrival of custom beams that will be used to reinforce the building’s structure. (Credit: Barbaraellen Koch)
The dirt that forms the floor of the large oak barn on Sound Avenue in Northville seems to have lain undisturbed for more than 250 years. The property itself, which includes an 18th-century farmhouse and second barn, has also remained largely intact throughout its history, with barely a handful of owners tending to it.
In fact, local historian Richard Wines said, for most of its existence the homestead has belonged to just two families: the Terrys, who built it around 1760, and the Tuthills, who acquired it in 1837.
That all changed in February, when Larry and Margaret Kaiser of Jamesport purchased the 4.2-acre property for $365,500 from Anne Tuthill with the vision of restoring it to its former glory. Now, the Kaisers, who own landscape company Kaiser Maintenance, and their 23-year-old son, Travis, have immersed themselves in the project.
Currently, they’re focusing on renovating the property’s aforementioned 3,200-square-foot oak barn, which needs structural work. Once finished, the family will likely use the five-bay building and its lean-to as dry storage or workspace.
“It’s overwhelming at times,” Ms. Kaiser said recently. “But we’ve come a long way, just since February.”
Considering the property’s age, it’s no surprise the Kaisers have a lot on their plate. And they wasted no time getting started: Work began the same day they closed on the sale, Mr. Kaiser said.
“No grass grows under our feet,” he said with a laugh.
Built around 1760, this 3,200-square-foot barn in Northville may be the second-oldest on Long Island, according to local historian Richard Wines.
The yard was overgrown, Mr. Kaiser said, so he immediately recruited a tree-trimming crew to clean up the property. Then, he and his family set to work emptying out the old barn, which contained everything from boxes of moldy blankets and rotted books to some canned ham Mr. Kaiser estimates must have been at least 30 years old.
“Just a lifetime of junk,” he said.
The barn, which Mr. Wines believes may be the second-oldest on Long Island after the 1721 Mulford Barn in East Hampton, contains many original features.
“To my knowledge, nothing else like this barn — its age, its size and its remarkable state of preservation — survives on Long Island,” Mr. Wines said.
Built in the English style, with doors on the broad sides, the barn is made of hand-hewn timbers and still has its original rafters, he said. In addition, original Roman numeral “marriage marks” — the spot where two planks of wood meet — are easily visible throughout the structure and indicate that the timbers are still in their original positions, Mr. Wines said.
The building also contains two second-floor haylofts at opposite ends and a “cow box,” a small, insulated room where a sick or pregnant cow could have been cared for. This room also features a small circular door for the barn cat, who would have been essential in controlling mice, Mr. Wines said.
Soon, Mr. Kaiser said, work will commence to fix a cracked main structural beam and level the barn’s vertical posts. The structure’s entire north side also needs to be resheathed and reshingled. He estimated the work will take around six weeks.
Mr. Kaiser doesn’t hesitate when asked about the biggest challenge of restoring such an old structure.
“Termites,” he said. “And powder-post beetles and rotted wood.”
It’s a happy mystery, Mr. Kaiser said, that termites haven’t devoured the entire barn.
“Somebody smiled on this place,” he said. “It’s pretty impressive. You don’t see craftsmanship like this anymore.”
See more photos:
Looking for work, or know someone who is?
Times/Review classifieds offers local companies a place to advertise their job openings each week, and this week close to 60 positions are available from a carpenter, to a horse handler, to a farm stand worker.
And for anyone interested in submitting a classified ad, email: classifieds@timesreview.com.
Check out the listings below:
ACCOUNTS PAYABLE CLERK: P/T, flexible hours will require additional time in the summer, no nights/ weekends. Private country club on the North Fork is looking for an experienced accounts payable clerk. Strong computer skills are required. Experience with Jonas software a plus. Light accounts receivable work is required. Please send resume, nfccjobposting@gmail.com
ADMINISTRATOR: On duty for our residential treatment center. Responsible for planning, directing/co-ordinating the oversight of operations within the residential treatment center. B.A., plus work-related experience required. Little Flower Children and Family Services in Wading River, NY. Fax resume, 631-929-6203 or email wadingriver-jobs@lfchild.org EOE
ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT: F/T, Monday-Friday. For high-end construction company. QuickBooks, Outlook and Excel experience required. Email resume with salary requirements to: resumes@owenconstructioncorp.com
APPLIED BEHAVIOR SPECIALIST: P/T, for our intermediate care facility. Experience in writing/ reviewing behavior plans. Experience with mental retardation/developmental disabilities population. Master’s in psychology required. Little Flower Children and Family Services in Wading River, NY. Send resume, wadingriver-jobs@lfchild.org or fax 631-929-6203. EOE
AUTO SALESPERSON: Lexus of Southampton is looking for the right individual to help handle our busy showroom. Automotive experience necessary. For a confidential interview contact Matt, 631-259-0300. (S)
BEER ENTHUSIAST: for selling local craft beers. Saturday, Sunday. September-October. 631-835-8484.
CARPENTER/HELPER: F/T. Skills must include, spackling, tiling, residential work. Must have valid driver’s license. 631-765-1747.
CARPENTER/HELPER: F/T. Minimum of 5 years’ experience preferred. Own tools/transportation. 631-672-0273.
CLERICAL: P/T. Riverhead office. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, from 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Duties include filing, copying, front desk phones, errands, general typing and data entry, excellent verbal commu- nication skills, must have own car. Fax resume, attention HR, 631-727- 1767.
CNA: per diem. All shifts. www.sansimeonbythesound.org
COUNTER HELP: Year-round. Flexible day hours. Will train. Day, 631-765-1642. Night, 631-722-7889.
CUSTOMER SERVICE ASSOCIATE: P/T for fast-paced, growing business. Responsibilities will include communication with customers, presenting products and processing orders. Candidate must possess effective communication skills and telephone etiquette, must have knowledge of QuickBooks and Excel. Please email resume to info@saturfarms.com
DELI/MARKET POSITIONS: F/ T, P/T. To begin immediately. Experience a plus. Call 631-323-2580 or email orientcountrystore@gmail.com
DELI/MARKET POSITION: F/T, P/T, year round. Food service experience a plus: Kitchen prep, sandwiches, register, stocking. East Marion location. 631-477-3277, email info@forkandanchor.com
DELIVERY DRIVER: F/T. For NYC/Long Island. 516-807-5011.
Community Action Southold Town is sponsoring a school supply drive to help children in need.
Items needed include backpacks, pens, pencils, crayons, markers, glue sticks, scissors, notebooks, folders, protractors, graph paper, calculators and other supplies.
Donations can be dropped off at the CAST office, Bridgehampton National Bank in Greenport or Mattituck, Capital One Bank in Southold or Greenport, Hudson City Savings Bank in Southold or Greenport, Suffolk County National Bank in Cutchogue or any local libraries.
Call CAST at 631-477-1717 for more information.
Here are 10 Suffolk Times stories you may have missed over the past week. To make sure you stay on top of breaking North Fork news, follow @thesuffolktimes on Twitter.
Fishing boat captain says #Greenport Village is out to get him — http://t.co/RVaOfeN5Ww
— Suffolk Times (@thesuffolktimes) September 5, 2014
East End supervisors meet feds on chopper noise in #Riverhead: http://t.co/a99fpDlbFv
— Suffolk Times (@thesuffolktimes) September 2, 2014
Frustrated residents suggest South Fork-style restrictions on rentals — http://t.co/fzwhWXq7zn
— Suffolk Times (@thesuffolktimes) September 2, 2014
Mediator suggests 1 to 2 percent raises for Southold workers — http://t.co/gM18oSjhJa
— Suffolk Times (@thesuffolktimes) September 2, 2014
Laughing Waters in Southold is where street names smile on the North Fork: http://t.co/zc9iL4M89q
— Suffolk Times (@thesuffolktimes) September 1, 2014
A slew of changes in tiny New Suffolk district — http://t.co/Fv1S0wugZB
— Suffolk Times (@thesuffolktimes) September 4, 2014
Obituary: Joseph Snyder Wickham maintained a keen interest in agriculture which he developed on the North Fork — http://t.co/wsQyvpvxmx
— Suffolk Times (@thesuffolktimes) September 3, 2014
This Week in #NorthFork History: Wine Country signs, hurricane and more — http://t.co/DPL3w6TvVT
— Suffolk Times (@thesuffolktimes) September 2, 2014
Baseball: For @StevenAscher, this baseball card’s a keeper — http://t.co/rDN7Cm9qgA
— Suffolk Times (@thesuffolktimes) September 2, 2014
After deer cull flopped, USDA calls for 'regional, integrated' approach — http://t.co/WZOiFyC7Xp
— Suffolk Times (@thesuffolktimes) September 4, 2014
A view of a river and mountain in Wyoming. (Credit: Microsoft Images)
Why do we go on vacation?
That thought goes through the head of anyone who lives, contented most of the time, anywhere with a lot of outdoor opportunities. We’re not talking “stay-cation” here, i.e. taking a week or two off work to catch up on painting the house, dining locally, and enjoying the bay or Long Island Sound intermittently. No, here we mean truly “getting away” — to the mountains, to distant lands, to an unfamiliar lake or seashore.
The reason for going should be clear as soon as one gets on the road for an hour or as soon as one boards a train or bus. (Airline travel is another story, especially if you have to pass through security on a bad day, removing shoes, being patted down and facing metal detectors.) No more lawns to mow; no shopping lists; no pets. Maybe you park the dogs and cats in a good boarding facility. We do the same with our horses, hauling them to a boarding stable.
In summary, the petty day-to-day routine is suspended and, once the last items are checked off your list, the weight should come off your shoulders! I follow a simple practice with emails and voice mails, checking emails only sporadically and voice mails every couple of days. In remote locations you have a perfect excuse — much of the outdoor world doesn’t have Wi-Fi! As one Amtrak conductor often puts it: “Enjoy the scenery; it’s a lot better than your iPhone or laptop. Never mind the 21st century, think 19th!”
Plan on surprises, some pleasant, others not, and delays. If you’re in the right frame of mind, it won’t matter. So what if a paving crew delays your arrival at the next destination? So what if the fishing is lousy or the mountaintops are wreathed in clouds on the day you want to go to the tops?
On a trip to New Hampshire two weeks ago our most spectacular views didn’t come atop Mount Washington (which is clouded over or simply shut off due to awful conditions about 85 percent of the time, according to our guide) but on a day of pouring rain in Franconia Notch when we had the Flume practically all to ourselves. The best part of a “moose tour” we took one evening in the far north of New Hampshire wasn’t the one lone moose that finally emerged in a swamp after a thunderstorm, but the stories from the guide who drove the tour van.
There are certain activities like fishing, where you shouldn’t expect to find paradise. After all, on the North Fork, for example, you know where and when to find your bass, blues, fluke, whatever; there are few mysteries of time and tide, and you can pick your times to go fishing when fish are actually there. Book a trip to a distant lake or river well ahead and the conditions may stink; frontal systems, floods, warming waters or a poor run of migratory fish may give you no shot at all at getting any action. In such cases, you make the acquaintance of other outdoors persons, befriend guides, learn new techniques with new lures and try to enjoy the new surroundings. Note to middle-aged anglers: this is easy to say, but hard to do when you’ve just blown five grand, aiming for the fish of a lifetime!
At a certain time in our lives, we often vacationed with an eye to finding the perfect spot for permanent retirement, ideally some place that was rural with magnificent outdoor possibilities, a four-season climate, and access to some cultural opportunities if one traveled a bit. We never found it!
The north country has a wicked winter to get used to. The DelMarVa Peninsula has a summer that can be brutally hot and humid. And however tempting the Margaree Valley of Cape Breton seems, it’s just too hard to reach until one settles there for good! The last two places made us realize that the Paumanok of 1920 (Cape Breton?) or even 1950 (the DelMarVa?) at their best can only live once again through time travel. Maybe you just have to admit that. As a philosopher said, one never sets foot in the same river twice.
Returning from a good vacation can be difficult, however. Seems that the number of days it takes to dig out — mail, bills, appointments, etc., — is roughly equal to the time you were away. The letdown on the final day can be tough, especially if you have made the mistake of traveling too far to get home in the big push to squeeze the last things in. Beware of empty refrigerators, misplaced keys, and the evil blinking lights of the answering machine. Hopefully you get a good shower and a good night’s sleep and start digging out in bright sunshine after a decent breakfast. Then you can look back on a week (or on weeks) well spent!
Over the last 30 years, I have reviewed hundreds of development applications as an environmental analyst with the Suffolk County health department and as president of Group for the East End.
In doing so, I have supported numerous community groups and members of the public who have rightly opposed irresponsible development throughout the region.
So when the efforts to redevelop the New Suffolk waterfront were met with skepticism, I wasn’t too surprised. In fact, good questions and a little suspicion can be a very healthy thing.
But as the project has come into sharper focus, it is now undeniably clear that the New Suffolk waterfront project will guarantee a massive and permanent reduction of the site’s legally allowable development potential — and that is something we should all get behind.
No private developer would ever volunteer to abandon the sweeping construction and commercial use potential that is fully allowed in the site’s all too generous “MII” zoning category. But, thankfully, because the New Suffolk Waterfront Fund is a community-based organization, it has focused on making the project a community asset and not just a financial asset, and that makes a world of difference.
In addition to substantially reducing the project’s potential size and scale, eliminating a range of potentially obnoxious and polluting commercial uses, restoring the community marina, renovating and moving the Galley Ho building and pulling it back from the shoreline, addressing site runoff and installing a new septic system (which will reduce bacterial loads and provide improved attenuation of nitrogen before it reaches surface waters), the waterfront fund has also made extensive efforts to secure additional community input and incorporate that input into the final plan.
As result of this community feedback, specific changes have been made to further improve the site plan in an effort to address reasonable concerns about the location of structures and the protection of visual resources and to expand open space protection. The sponsors have also agreed to set specified limits on events to reduce the overall activity at the site.
Despite these measures, it’s clear that some folks will surely feel that no effort is sufficient to address their concerns and that the dilapidated waterfront should somehow just always remain as it is, and that is their right. However, having dealt with the real consequences of land use decisions left to chance for three decades, I am far more hopeful about the future of the New Suffolk waterfront in the hands of a community-based organization than I am counting on luck or miraculous fortune to determine the future of this valuable commercial property.
So let the review of this project proceed, and let the Town Planning Board do its diligence to assure that all the mitigation offered by the New Suffolk Waterfront Fund is incorporated into the final plan. And then, let us all make the effort to help this project live up to its full potential as a community asset for the people of New Suffolk, as it was always intended.
Bob DeLuca is an East Marion resident and president of Group for the East End, an environmental advocacy organization.
A Cutchogue teen was arrested in connection with the death of her newborn 25 years ago this week.
Amy Ellwood, the 18-year-old daughter of then-Greenport High School principal William Ellwood, concealed her pregnancy before giving birth to the baby boy in the bathtub of her parents’ home while alone on the morning of Sept. 8, 1989. She then wrapped the body in plastic, causing his death, and placed the body in a styrofoam cooler, police said. That night she dropped the body into the water at Laurel Lake, where it was discovered the next day.
Ms. Ellwood was arrested Sept. 12 and she confessed to police, we reported. Eighteen months later, she was convicted of second-degree manslaughter. After losing a pair of appeals in 1994, she was sentenced to 2 1/2 to 7 years in prison.
She was paroled in 1997 after serving the minimum sentence.
10 years ago this week
Big bucks to settle spill case
The Southold Town Board voted Sept. 7, 2004 to pay $825,000 to the state to settle a legal fight over a gas spill at a former service station in Peconic.
The spill had occurred in the late 1980s, but the state found the town responsible due to state law that left a town responsible for spills detected at closed businesses.
The town and state battled in court for a dozen years, before the settlement was reached, we reported.
Wine region gets new name
Governor George Pataki announced the official designation of the “Long Island Wine Region” 10 years ago this week.
At the time of the designation, the region included 36 wineries and 3,000 acres of grapes, we reported.
20 years ago this week
21 arrested in Greenport sweep
Twenty-one people were arrested by the Greenport Village Police Department in the largest mass arrest in the history of the department Sept. 3, 1994.
The arrests were a response to “numerous complaints” the village received over alleged gambling and drug activities in the vicinity of the Community Action Southold Town building, where neighbors complained teens were exposed to “unacceptable activities” on a daily basis.
Each of the arrested was charged with loitering, gambling or both, according to a report in the Sept. 8, 1994 issue of The Suffolk Times.
Two months later, residents of the village voted to disband the police department.
Bayview Fire Station’s going up
The first bricks were laid for the construction of the Southold Fire Department’s Bay Water Avenue substation on Sept. 6, 1994.
The project cost $800,000, half of which was paid through bonds approved earlier that year, we reported.
25 years ago this week
Blass knocked off November ballot
After 10 years in office, Suffolk County Legislator Greg Blass was defeated in a Republican primary on Sept. 12, 1989. The South Jamesport resident lost by fewer than 300 votes to challenger Michael Caracciolo of Wading River, who would go on to win the general election.
Mr. Blass reclaimed the seat four years later.
45 years ago this week
Conservatives favor Peconic County
The Southold Town Conservative Party made its platform public for the local 1969 election and it involved the creation of Peconic County at the earliest possible date, we reported in the Sept. 12, 1969 issue of The Suffolk Times.
The platform was similar to the Southold Democrats, we wrote.
70 years ago this week
Greenport participates in Blackout test
Greenport Village joined Suffolk, Nassau and Westchester counties as well as New York City in performing a blackout test on Sept. 5, 1944.
The blackout test was the most successful of any the village had performed at any previous point during World War II, we reported.
Coincidentally, the largest earthquake in New York State occurred earlier that day. The quake, which measured a 5.8 on the Richter Scale, was reported shortly after midnight in Massena, N.Y., near the Canadian border.
100 years ago this week
Four Greenport streets to be made public
Four roads in Greenport were dedicated to Southold Town for the purpose of converting them to public highways on Sept. 8, 1914, according to that week’s issue of The Suffolk Times.
The streets were given the names of Wiggins, Corwin, Seventh and Eighth. Community opposition was withdrawn at the meeting and the property owners signed releases, we reported.
The four roads still connect today.
102 years ago this week
Railroad station packed at end of summer
About 800 summer visitors returned to their city homes via the Greenport train station on Sept. 2, 1912, we reported in that week’s issue of The Suffolk Times.
About 75 percent of those visitors had been staying on Shelter Island, we wrote.
105 years ago this week
Watermelon thieves should watch out
Two unnamed Orient farmers went to extremes to keep local watermelon thieves from stealing their crops, we reported in the Sept. 11, 1909 issue of The Suffolk Times.
After a rash of thefts were reported in the area, one farmer set up a bear trap hoping to catch a thief. That was nothing compared to what the other guy did.
The other farmer rigged a gun to a string, in case an “unwary foot pulls the strings.”
“Don’t get into any patch and your own boys and you will be safe,” we wrote.
From left, Melanie Pfennig, Kaylee Bergen and Audrey Hoeg are among 10 returning runners for defending county champion Mattituck. (Credit: Garret Meade)
PREVIEW
Before the Class C race in last year’s Section XI girls cross country championships, Audrey Hoeg pointed to the finish line at Sunken Meadow State Park and told her Mattituck teammates: “The championship is right over there. It’s right at the finish line. We can go get it.”
She was right.
For the second year in a row, the Tuckers (4-1) won a county championship. Three Tuckers were among the top eight places and six were among the first 18 as Mattituck, without a single senior, beat out the runner-up, Center Moriches, by 6 points.
“They did great,” said Julie Milliman, who after four years coaching Mattituck’s boys team takes over the girls team.
Melanie Pfennig, who is in her sophomore year, was the second Class C runner to complete the 3.1-mile distance in the county meet in 21 minutes 2.99 seconds.
Mia Vasile-Cozzo was seventh in 22:54.39, Hoeg was eighth in 22:55.33, Kaylee Bergen was 11th in 23:18.96, Tiana Baker was 15th in 24:17.89 and Sascha Rosin was 18th in 24:31.67. All of those runners, except Baker, are back.
Pfennig was 48th in the New York State Public High School Athletic Association Championships in 20:01.6 at Queensbury High School’s 3.1-mile course. The Tuckers were 10th in the team scoring at the state meet with 260 points.
Do the Tuckers have what it takes to grab another county crown?
“To be honest, I don’t even think about that,” Milliman said. “I know that we accomplished that last year. Every year is a new year. It would be nice to replicate.”
A bunch of returning runners help. Among them are Briana Perino, Sarah Goerler, Taylor Berkoski, Katie Stumpf and Tina Impriano.
The Tuckers look like they will be a force for at least a couple of years. Bergen is the only returner who is a senior.
Tori Ireland, Megan Dinizio, Grace Pellegrino and Charley Claudio are new additions.
“They just have a very good work ethic,” Milliman said. “They work hard every practice and you go home feeling good, like you got better that day.”
Being a defending county champion brings with it a degree of pressure and high expectations, but each season is its own entity. The Tuckers are back at the starting line, with their eyes glued to the finish line.
Said Milliman, “Nothing’s given to you, it’s all earned.”
The rebuilding process continues at Southold (0-6).
Last year the First Settlers started the season with only three runners, had to forfeit their first four dual meets, and finished the season with five runners.
That is the same number they start this season with. Three of the runners — junior Katie Hunstein, senior Heather Koscinch and sophomore Julia McAllister — are returning veterans. Ashley Alexander, a senior, and Jhiemy Uguna, a sophomore, are new to the team.
Coach Karl Himmelmann said Hunstein “has a fire in her eyes for running. There’s no quit in that girl. She’ll be tired and she’ll be exhausted, but she never quits. She has a really gutsy determination to push herself.”
Himmelmann said he is hopeful that a second-year junior high school team, coached by John Palmeri, will act as a feeder to the varsity team in years to come.
As for his current varsity team, Himmelmann said: “My main focus for the girls this year is to develop them as runners, help them improve their times over last year. For the girls, it’s really going to be about pushing themselves to new prs [personal records].”
He added, “The nice thing about being in this kind of a phase where you’re doing some rebuilding and developing young runners is that it gives you an opportunity for surprises.”
RIVERHEAD RACEWAY ROUNDUP
Jason Agugliaro of Islip notched his second win of the season, winning a 40-lap NASCAR Modified race after a spirited early-race duel with Ryan Preece of Berlin, Conn. It was Agugliaro’s third career win, with Preece collecting runner-up money.
After starting ninth, Tom Rogers Jr. of Riverhead raced his way to a third-place payday and in the process trimmed Howie Brode’s championship lead to 15 points. Kyle Ellwood of Riverhead and Ron Silk of Norwalk, Conn. completed the top five.
In other races:
For the fourth time this year, Mike Bologna of Melville won a 25-lap Late Model feature and, in the process, all but wrapped up his third career championship. It was his 13th career victory. Jeremy McDermott of Riverhead was second and Chris LaSpisa of Shirley was third. With one race left, Bologna holds a hefty 34-point lead over McDermott, who would need a field of no less than 18 cars to show up for a 50-lap race on September 20 in order to have any hope, which is not likely.
One race after losing a comfortable points lead because of a broken axle, Roger Maynor of Bay Shore rebounded in grand fashion to win a 20-lap Figure Eight feature for career win No. 113 and, more importantly, regained the division lead in the process. Vinny Biondolillo of Farmingville, after starting the race eighth, finished second. Scott Pedersen of Shirley grabbed third. With one race to go, Maynor leads Tom Rogers Jr. by 4 points heading into the Sept. 20 final.
John Baker of Brookhaven collected his second career win, taking a 30-lap Charger race for his first win since opening night of the 2012 season. Baker drove a flawless race to better the defending Charger champion, Eric Zeh of Selden, who was second. Ray Minieri of Bay Shore roared back from a tangle with Chris Turbush to claim third. With two races remaining, Zeh has a slim 8-point advantage over Turbush.
En route to his second career 20-lap Blunderbust win, Brian Brown of Baiting Hollow made some bold and daring moves along the way to secure the victory. Jimmy White of Southampton was second, and third went to Bill Wegmann Jr. of Patchogue. With two races to go, Jack Handley Jr. enjoys a 26-point bulge over Tom Pickerell at the top of the standings.
Roger Turbush of Riverhead won his 20th Super Pro Truck feature in a 20-lap affair. The former two time Super Pro Truck champion beat the second-place Lou Maestri of Deer Park and the third-place Brian McElearney of North Babylon to the finish line. Erin Solomito leads the division by 2 points over Maestri. The title will come down to the final race September 20.
In the National Demolition Derby Championship, Brian Savoy of Lake Panamoka outlasted a solid field for the second year in a row to claim the title. Savoy has been sidelined for most of the season with a kidney illness, but that did not slow him down on Saturday.
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Linda Sylvia Baker of Cutchogue died at her home Sept. 5, 2014. She was 55.
The family will receive visitors Wednesday and Thursday, Sept. 10 and 11 from 7 to 9 p.m. at DeFriest-Grattan Funeral Home in Southold. The Rite of Committal will be private.
Memorial donations made to Stony Brook Children’s Hospital, 100 Nichols Road, Stony Brook, NY 11794 would be appreciated.
A complete obituary will follow.
A Jamesport woman was arrested Sunday in Laurel on a drunken driving charge, Southold Town police said.
Jaime Asklund, 34, was pulled over after she was observed crossing the solid double yellow line while driving on Route 25 near Bray Avenue at around 11:30 p.m., police said.
Ms. Asklund’s breath “smelled of an alcoholic beverage and she failed standardized field sobriety tests,” officials said.
Ms. Asklund was charged with driving while intoxicated, a misdemeanor, and held for an arraignment, police said.
A Mattituck man was arrested Sunday in Cutchogue on drunken driving charges, Southold Town police said.
Marco Gregorio, 30, was pulled over after failing to drive within his lane while heading south on Depot Lane at around 12:20 a.m., police said.
Mr. Gregorio was charged with driving while intoxicated, having an expired registration, failing to maintain a lane and failing to submit a roadside breath test, officials said.
He was held at police headquarters for an arraignment, police said.
On June 1, Mr. Gregorio was also arrested on DWI charges in Cutchogue.
