EAST Magazine June 2021

T H E E A S T H A M P TO N S TA R M A G A Z I N E • June 2021

BY THE SEA

T H E E A S T H A M P TO N S TA R M AG A Z I N E

• June 2021 •

Vo l u m e 5 , I s s u e 1

M O N TA U K , 1 9 7 2

We’re part of a system that treats all of your body’s systems.

THE LATEST REPORT CARD IS IN. AND THE GRADES ARE OUTSTANDING. Stony Brook University Hospital, and Stony Brook Southampton Hospital, a campus of SBUH, are at the head of the class.

Our clinical outcomes are in the top 2 percent in the nation, according to Healthgrades® – the first organization in the country to rate hospitals based on actual clinical outcomes. That’s why we’ve been named one of “America’s 100 Best Hospitals™” for 2021.

It’s the third consecutive year we have received this award. So you can rest assured Stony Brook makes the grade in providing you with the highest quality care.

For more ideas, visit southampton stonybrookmedicine.edu or call (631) 726-8200

#"! !! " # " " ! !

! " " "! !

At Stony Brook Medicine, our Healthgrades are A+

STONY BROOK MEDICINE HEALTHCARE SYSTEM. WITH 14 LOCATIONS ON THE EAST END AND 230 LOCATIONS ON LONG ISLAND. As part of a system that brings world class care closer to you, Stony Brook Southampton Hospital works in harmony with the Stony Brook Medicine healthcare system, much the same way your body’s 11 systems work in harmony to keep you healthy. With four hospitals, 1,500 providers at over 200 locations and telehealth services, we’re transforming healthcare.

Call (631) 726-8383 to make an appointment or visit stonybrookmedicine.edu/locations to learn more.

Our Door is OPEN! Monday-Friday 10am-5pm

WAT E R F RO N T L I V I N G RECENTLY SOLD

Max 4 Customers at a time

macs@geekhampton.com 631.723.3660 geekhampton.com

65 Navy Road, Montauk 2 BED | 1 BATH | 1,000 SF | Sold over asking for $1,510,000 RECENTLY SOLD

Apple, the Apple logo, and iPhone are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.

21

GO OUTSIDE.

22 Maidstone Park Road South, East Hampton 3 BED | 2.5 BATH | 3,400 SF | Sold for $2,775,000

Burns Team Graphic Design + Marketing Print + Digital Solutions Branding + Logo Design Advertising + Signage

Publication + Book Design Website Design Fine Art Illustration + Lettering (631) 235-2809 bwdandc.com

631.514.5409 burnsteam@compass.com burns_compass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

12 / OUT HERE

OUT HERE / 13

CONDO EAST For years, the painter George Condo has kept a studio in East Hampton as an ancillary option, a backup for his main place of work in New York City.

That changed in March of 2020, with a deadly virus taking the city by storm and sending anyone with a second home fleeing to safety and comfort.

As days turned to weeks and months, a one-car garage and an empty guest house on his property were “completely turned upside down and look like a tornado went through -- flying papers ripped up everywhere, random tubes of new and old paint, brushes that should have been thrown out years ago,” as Condo told his gallery Hauser and Wirth for a video and text feature they made for the gallery’s website last summer. “It’s quite a mess. But I must say that’s how I like it.”

His style of painting and drawing, a mind meld of Pablo Picasso and Francis Bacon, is a perfect medium for expressing the emotional toll of the daily existential threat we faced during the worst days of the pandemic.

His drawings became a visual diary of the feelings of separation and distance from loved ones and friends.

Two figures may share a composition, but sharp delineations separate them and neither shares the other’s viewpoint. “They are figures who are distanced from one another or, in fact, even distanced from themselves.”

While Condo was taking a step back from the frenetic art world and art market, his work was still making waves in online and gallery exhibitions and in art sales, with a painting from 2010 setting a new personal auction record of $6.9 million in Hong Kong.

All of the works he made during this period may express hope on some level. Yet, he told one interviewer that Sunrise on Planet Earth imagines “a metaphorical sunrise on this planet that would bring to light all of what has been held in quarantine and darkness and open the world back up again . . . someday.”

That day he envisioned months ago might finally be on the horizon. — Jennifer L andes

George Condo photographed at his studio, with I Want My Brain Back, 2020. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth.

CONTENTS / 15

CONTENTS 16

BY THE SEA : PLEASURES

a nd

PERILS

OF OUR OCEANBOUND LIFE

35

55

CONTRIBUTORS

A prehistoric — and endangered — blueblood, in need of our help

Why is seafood so expensive? Some thoughts on afforable fish

19

39

61

21

Three new boutiques for those just jonesing to shop in person again

With a bit of patience, it’s easy to D.I.Y. (and it makes a great dad’s day gift)

ON THE COVER

17

MASTHEAD EDITOR’S NOTE Long Time Gone

23

EAST ILLUSTRATED

By Peter Spacek

25

DIVERSIONS Save the Horseshoe Crab

What’s in Store

43

Beach Quiz

New in town? Here for the weekend? A handy way to find your place in the sun

47

OVERHEARD

Chippendales Revealed: For Your Ears Only

26

49

Parking Wars Things get heated down at the beach

Bringing Up the Bodies

Delicate conversations about the realestate crunch in Hamptons cemeteries

30

The Strange Sojourn of Rev. Beecher’s Armchair A local artifact tours the States

Local podcaster turns attention to the torrid boys who dance without briefs

Object of Desire: The [RED] Vespa

51

“My God, It’s a Movie Theater!”

A joyous return to the Sag Harbor Cinema

BOUNTY Porgie to the People

How To: Make Sea Salt

64

FEATURES Meet the Sturdy Souls

A hardworking, hard-rocking local-legend band gets back in rhythm, post-lockdown

68

Baby, Take a Bow

For a most unusual town, a most unusual community theater: the John Drew. An excerpt from Guild Hall’s 90th Anniversary book

78

The Last Voyage

An excerpt from Amanda M. Fairbanks’s The Lost Boys of Montauk. The True Story of the Wind Blown, Four Men Who Vanished at Sea, and the Survivors They Left Behind.

16 / ON THE COVER

CONTRIBUTORS / 17

WHO WE ARE

TOM FORD / MONTAUK, 1972 It was an August lull in the early 1970s and all the surfers were restless. The summer folk lolled on the beaches, lifeguards half asleep in the lazy heat. The rocky break at Ditch Plain was still an adventure for the few East Coast surfers of the time, out at the end of a still-wild finger in the Atlantic a few miles past the sleepy hamlet of Montauk, where commercial fishing was king and hippies and surfers banged nails, waited tables, and slept on the beach. A few of them had opened surf shops. There was Ray Charron’s He’e Nalu and Tony Caramanico’s and Lee Bieler’s Albatross (later known as Bird on the Roof), which sold boards, wetsuits, and wax, along with omelettes and fresh O.J. “We are the bones of Montauk,” Thom Fleming, a carpenter, said of the locals of the era in the newly published book

by Amanda M. Fairbanks, The Lost Boys of Montauk, excerpted on Page 78. “The muscle and fat comes and goes but the bones stay behind. You could surf and go get laid, look at the stars, walk on the beach, get a six-pack and some hotdogs and go to Shagwong Point and have the time of your life.”

But there was no surfing on this day. The ocean was August flat. Tom Ford was at He’e Nalu with his camera when “Jeb Stuart pulls up his Volkswagen bus . . . with a box full of paints left over from painting his mother’s house and says: ‘Let’s paint her,’” Ford recalled. “That’s Stuart, on the roof of the van, and Bob Bolle holding the brush. . . . The afternoon,” Ford said, “was fruitful and fun.” Looks it.

B.D.

YUNG JAKE 2019

YUNG JAKE AT CLOSING PARTY FOR YUNG JAKE: CARTOONS, 2019. PHOTO: DAVID X PRUTTING/BFA.COM.

A F E W O F T H E C O O L P E O P L E W H O B R O U G H T YO U T H I S M AGA ZI N E

90 YEARS OF THE UNEXPECTED

@GUILD_HALL

GUILDHALL.ORG

#GUILDHALL90

JUDY D’MELLO A frequent contributor to The Star and East, Judy recently wrote and co-hosted Is Anybody Out There?, a podcast about loneliness, available on all platforms. Before making the leap to journalism in the early 2000s, she worked in advertising as a creative director at BBDO and Saatchi & Saatchi. Her writing — often about travel, books, or women’s issues — has appeared in The New York Times, Newsday, and the Daily News, among other papers.

J O N M . D I AT A resident of North Haven, Jon pens the On the Water column for The East Hampton Star, covering the commercial and recreational fishing beat. Before ditching the city for a life of bait and hooks, clam knives and high waders, he was head of external communications for AIG, the finance and insurance multinational, as well as a veteran of Citigroup, J.P. Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Standard & Poor’s.

PAUL GARTSIDE Having grown up in a boatyard on the Fal Estuary in Cornwall, England, in the 1960s, Paul picked up a hammer and started building watercraft when he was just a kid. In 1983, he emigrated to Canada, where he spent 25 years as a boat-builder and -designer in Sidney, British Columbia. In 2016, he moved to Nova Scotia. He currently works and lives (among a flock of unruly chickens) in Springs. He is an associate member of the Royal Institution of Naval Architects.

C A R I S S A K AT Z The managing editor of The Star, Carissa has written for East in the past about endangered ways of life: the Wesnofske family’s potato farm in Bridgehampton (one of the South Fork’s last) and how one of the East End’s few remaining commercial rod and reel fishermen has partnered with the Dock to Dish sustainable seafood initiative. She lives on the Nature Conservancy’s Mashomack Preserve on Shelter Island with her husband, who is the preserve director, and their two children.

During the pandemic she has become an accidental birder and taken up cycling.

HANNAH SELINGER A resident of East Hampton — where she shares the house with her husband, two sons, two dogs, and two tortoises — Hannah writes about lifestyles and cooking for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, The Cut, The Wall Street Journal, Hemispheres, Eater, CNNTravel, and Slate, among others. Her Beginner’s Guide to Champagne for Wine Enthusiasts was nominated for a 2020 International Association of Culinary Professionals award.

5 Tick Myths!

MASTHEAD / 19

[Debunked]

1

The only tick disease you need to worry about is Lyme disease.

One tick can carry multiple pathogens. It is entirely possible to be infected with more than one of these diseases all from the same tick bite! And, it’s important to know that not all of these diseases are treated with the same antibiotic.

2

3

The best way to remove a tick is with Vaseline and a lit match.

You will develop a rash if you’ve been infected by a tick.

Less than half of people who’ve been infected with Lyme Disease show the bull’seye rash. You could also be infected

that does not result in a rash.

The best way to remove a tick is to grab it as close to the head as possible, with very pointy tweezers, and pull up with a slow and steady motion. Even if part of the head stays embedded in the skin, that’s okay, it will eventually work its way out.

4

5

Ticks are still active in the winter!

Even if they freeze they are not dead. They become active again when the temperature is above 32ºF and there is no snow to insulate them.

You don’t have to worry about ticks after the first hard frost.

When I come in from outdoors I throw my clothes into the washing machine to kill the ticks.

Visit EastEndTickResource.org or call our help line at (631) 726-TICK. Stony Brook Southampton Hospital is an equal opportunity employer.

“The taste of summer is salt water. The salt water that drips down the back of my nose and into the back of my throat when I bend over to tie my shoes or pull some lettuce from the garden — after an afternoon of joyfully getting any ass kicked in the ocean waves” “Vaguely cherry-flavored wood after the entire Bomb Pop is gone, the ice-cream truck has pulled away, and all you have left is the stick between your teeth”

Publishers

David Rattray & Helen Rattray

Editors

Biddle Duke Bess Rattray Carissa Katz Jennifer Landes

Art Director Maria Lavezzo

Contributing Writers & Editors “Mexican corn outside at La Fondita, washed down with a grapefruit Jarritos soda”

“Charcoal-grilled hot dogs at the Maidstone Beach pavilion, which, like so many things, we had to forego last summer—for the first time in 20 years”

“Clams that I’ve dug myself, steamed open on the grill, dunked in butter, lemon, and garlic, a glass of sauvignon blanc to accompany them. It’s not just the taste, but the place — a low tide, a wind that will drive away biting flies but not stir up the water, the thrill of the hunt. It’s the way cooking and eating the clams caps an evening so perfect on a day so perfect you don’t want it to end. You can try to plan for it, but it’s the sort of thing that can really only just happen”

Richard Barons Jamie Buffalino Isabel Carmichael Jon Diat Judy D’Mello Paul Gartside David Gibbons Erica-Lynn Huberty Bella Lewis Christine Sampson Nower Mark Segal Hannah Sellinger Christopher Walsh

Illustrators

Durell Godfrey, Peter Spacek

Graphic Design

on high heat for about 15 minutes. Ticks can survive in the washing machine, and in the hamper. High heat causes ticks to dry up and that’s the best way to kill them.

Get the facts about ticks. Protect yourself and your family!

Regional Tick-Borne Disease Resource Center

WHAT IS THE TASTE OF SUMMER TO YOU?

Matthew Charron, Jordy Mark, Paul Friese

Advisers & Friends

“A BLT with turkey bacon, one of Marilee Foxter’s insane heirloom tomato varietals, Halsey Farm Stand lettuce, and Hellman’s on sprouted multigrain. In August, of course”

“For sure it’s the sweet, sweet cherry tomatoes from pretty much any local farm stand. Reminds me of my childhood, sitting under the kitchen table and eating cherry tomatoes while reading Nancy Drew mysteries”

Scott Bluedorn, Philippe Cheng, Doug Kuntz, Michael Halsband, Lang Phipps

Sales

“No one can argue with locally grown corn. Everyone has their farm-stand favorites — white, yellow, bicolor? It could start a fight! But I like stopping at Vicki’s Veggies or Amber Waves on the highway in Amagansett, or Round Swamp Farm in East Hampton”

Jane Bimson, Zach Zunis, Victoria Henry

Business Manager Robin Kuntz

Etc.

Russell Bennett East (2021, Volume 5, No. 1) is published four times a year, in June, July, August, and November

by The East Hampton Star, 153 Main Street, P.O. Box 5002, East Hampton, N.Y. 11937 Subscriptions and circulation: East is distributed as an insert in The East Hampton Star on the applicable publication dates and at select locations around the East End of Long Island.

To become a subscriber please call: 631-324-0002, reach us via email at classy@easthamptonstar.com, or go to www.easthamptonstar.com and click on subscriptions.

We welcome your letters, comments, queries, ideas. Send them to editor@ehstar.com or: East, P.O. Box 5002, East Hampton, N.Y. 11937

“I’ve been saying it for years: blackened yellowfin, baked stuffed clams, and a glass of sauvignon blanc at Gosman’s Restaurant. Like Van Morrison sang, ‘This must be what paradise is like’”

EDITORS NOTE / 21

LONG TIME GONE A H E A R T R E N D I N G TA L E O F T H E D R E A M S O F M E N , O F R E B E L L I O N , O F L I V E S T O R N A PA R T A N D T H E W O R K T O R E B U I L D T H E M

11,000 SF Oceanfront Estate Gary R. DePersia Licensed A s sociate Real E s tate Broker m 516.3 8 0.0 53 8 | g d p@corcor an.com

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The story of the Wind Blown, the four men who went down with it, and the families who live with their painful disappearance without a trace, has been rippling through this community since the fateful day in late March 1984 when the boat vanished somewhere between Montauk Point and Block Island.

Survivors — family, friends, fellow fishermen — have struggled with questions ever since: What exactly happened? Could we have done anything to prevent this? Where is the wreck?

More people die every year commercial fishing than any other profession, so it goes without saying that the men on the Wind Blown knew they were taking their lives in their hands every time they went to sea. Such is the sea’s terrible legacy.

The Wind Blown’s tale is more complicated. Ambition, financial need, stubborn rebelliousness, and youthful recklessness drew the men onto a boat that many knew was unsafe in a North Atlantic winter and into one of the fiercest northeasters in memory.

Every vessel that founders and the crew who perishes with it have stories that deserve telling. None more so than the Wind Blown. Such was the impetus for an article assignment for this magazine five summers ago. It was a germ of an idea. But when a key source for the piece demurred, the article never happened.

The writer, Amanda M. Fairbanks, who for a time was a reporter for The East Hampton Star, kept at it, however, and made a book. The Lost Boys of Montauk: The True Story of the Wind Blown,

published by Simon and Schuster, is out this month. An excerpt begins on page 78.

An outsider who knew nothing about commercial fishing, was a preschooler in Los Angeles when the Wind Blown went down and knows this community only in its contemporary “Hamptons” identity, Fairbanks was undaunted, and tireless in her reporting. She had to be. Even after four decades feelings about the Wind Blown and the men who were aboard remain so tender some refused to speak with her; others agreed, then cut her off. The result is a deeply personal exploration of the men, the wives and girlfriends, and the families behind the tragedy. It’s a heartrending tale of the dreams of men, of rebellion, of lives torn apart and the work to rebuild them.

Lost Boys also tells the story of a place we love at a very different time. When summer people all went away after Labor Day, locals still owned it here, and surfing, a running theme in the book, was primarily the domain of year-rounders.

Reliving the tragedy is painful for anyone old enough to have been around in 1984 — particularly the many Montauk locals and others who’ve held their pieces of this story close for so many years. It is undeniably unsettling to see it all unpacked, exposed, and packaged for sale in a book.

But the underlying message of The Lost Boys should resonate: That the Wind Blown’s crew, its captain, Michael Stedman, and the mates, David Connick, Scott Clarke, and Michael Vigilant, are never forgotten. — The Editors

Photographs: Courtesy of Chris Stedman; Morgan McGivern; Mary-Elizabeth Gifford/The East Hampton Star ,+*)(+'&*&+(*%+$&'(*#")!*&+ ( !& ( +( *$( (* +(!$ + +$ +$&( $& * & '(*$ (* +($ &(+ ) ++'( #( +( *$( ( *)( '!$%( & $!& ( +( *$( (!'(*()! +$'+ ( +*)(+'&*&+( + () *&+ (*&(

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Pristine and dazzling views

by Christopher Stewart

E A S T I L L U S T R AT E D B Y P E T E R S PA C E K

124 Old West Lake Dr, Montauk $2,750,000 | 4 Bed | 3 Bath | .98 Acre On the south end of Lake Montauk, a parcel of pristine waterfront land awaits potential homeowners with a creative spirit. With dazzling views of the lake through to the inlet, 0.98 acres of sprawling greenery rolls down to the water’s edge, opening up to an additional 1.18+ acres of underwater rights.

Christopher Stewart Licensed Real Estate Salesperson cstewart@compass.com 917.744.2450

Christopher Stewart, Licensed Real Estate Salesperson. Real estate agents affiliated with Compass are independent contractor sales associates and are not employees of Compass. Equal Housing Opportunity. Compass is a licensed real estate broker located at 90 Fifth Avenue, 3rd Fl. NY, NY 10011. All information furnished regarding property for sale or rent or regarding financing is from sources deemed reliable, but Compass makes no warranty or representation as to the accuracy thereof. All property information is presented subject to errors, omissions, price changes, changed property conditions, and withdrawal of the property from the market, without notice. To reach the Compass main office call 212.913.9058

OVERHEARD / 25

OVERHEARD C O N V E R S AT I O N S , C O N T R O V E R S I E S , C O C K TA I L C H AT T E R

Parking Wars It’s a sunny day in the first postCovid (fingers crossed) summer, and after having spent more than a year quarantining, the vaccinated masses are on their way to East Hampton and Sag Harbor Villages, ready to hit the beach, do a little shopping, and grab some dinner. Sunscreen is slathered on arms that have been injected with virus-thwarting messenger RNA,

balm is applied to freshly unmasked lips, and a carful of people gleefully intermingling their exhaled aerosols arrives to find a scarcity of one of the East End’s most precious commodities: free public parking spaces.

Over the last several months, while everyone was busy tracking the rise and fall of infection rates and reloading vaccination appointment websites, the parking landscape changed. Both villages are now charging for coveted

spots in the commercial districts, and harnessing the power of technology to make it happen. Those old-school ticket-dispensing machines in the downtown Reutershan and Schenck parking lots in East Hampton Village?

Defunct. Parking will now be tracked

by ParkMobile, a smartphone appbased payment service. Drivers will have to log into the app upon entering the Reutershan or Schenck lots (also known as Parking Zone P, according to

A busy day at Main Beach in 1914, when parking — judging by this postcard evidence — was already quite chaotic. East Hampton Star archive.

I N A D D I T I O N T O T H E R O U G H LY 3 , 4 0 0 V I L L A G E R E S I D E N T S W H O A R E I S S U E D P E R M I T S , A N D T H E 3 ,1 0 0 N O N - R E S I D E N T S WHO PURCHASED SEASON-LONG PERMITS THIS YEAR, AN-

Photograph by Durell Godfrey

O T H E R 5 0 0 P E O P L E C O U L D B E A N G L I N G F O R A PA R K I N G S P O T

the village’s paid parking law), the lots at Main and Two Mile Hollow Beaches (Parking Zone B), the longterm parking spaces in the lot off Lumber Lane and on Railroad Avenue (Parking Zone C), and the Long Wharf lot in Sag Harbor. And instead of solely relying on chalk-wielding humans to enforce regulations, East Hampton Village is using Vigilant PlateSearch, a license-plate-reading technology from Motorola Solutions.

Although free, app-less spaces still exist on the streets and in lots, for those seeking to spend a long leisurely day in either village, the cost of parking could add up. In the Long Wharf lot, the first hour of parking is free, but every additional hour costs $4 (a maximum of three hours of parking is allowed between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., and a maximum of five between 6 p.m. and midnight). In East Hampton Village’s Reutershan and Schenck lots, village residents can park for free for up to three hours between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., and all other visitors are given two

hours of free parking with an option to pay $10 for a third. Anyone who wants to park legally for more than three hours must exit the lot, re-enter, and log back into the ParkMobile app.

For East Hampton and Sag Harbor Villages, the road to paid parking was like westbound Route 27 circa 5 p.m., full of stops and starts. Both had initially proposed more far-reaching plans — ones that included higher fees, and charging for spaces on the street — but scaled things back after receiving complaints from residents and business owners. This summer will be a test case for how willing people are to pay for parking, or, alternatively, how eager they are to avoid it.

“We will see how it goes, both good and bad, and decide whether to expand it after the summer,” said Sag Harbor Mayor Kathleen Mulcahy. Some of the revenue the village raises from paid parking will be used to finance a parking study to figure out how to maximize the space it has, she said.

The most controversial parking

innovation is East Hampton Village’s new monthly beach-parking permit.

The village is selling 500 monthly permits that can be used at all village beaches. That means that in addition to the roughly 3,400 village residents who are issued permits, and the 3,100 nonresidents who bought season-long permits this year, another 500 people could be angling for a parking spot on any given day. Arthur Graham, a village trustee, who voted against the new permits, did a walking tour of the lots to count up the existing spaces, he said. The total came to 626, he said.

In a perfect world, the $300 monthly permits could bring a windfall of $450,000 to the village, and everyone who wants to park at the beach finds a space. The nightmare scenario is packed lots, historic side streets filled with cars, or, worst of all, people giving up on a beach day altogether. “I can envision a Saturday in July and August being a cluster . . . ,” said Mr. Graham, stopping before uttering an expletive.

“There may be traffic piling up, cars circling the beaches, and people are going to be calling Village Hall saying, ‘You issued me a permit I can’t use.’ “ — Jamie Buffalino

Bringing Up the Bodies Funerals, like weddings, can bring out the worst and the best in us, as well as some eccentricities we normally keep to ourselves. These can play out in Last Will disbursements, uncensored behavior at wakes, or in the manner of interment bestowed upon the beloved.

It’s no wonder that, in this last gloomy pandemic year, we turn our attention to the resting places of the dead, especially as there are few burial places left on the East End. It appears that real estate six feet under is as hard to acquire as real estate six feet from the beach.

In East Hampton Town, there are several private burial grounds, though

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a 1664 law — still in place — prohibits their existence. The Duke’s Law, as Harry Dering Sleight observed in The East Hampton Star back in 1930, “was not observed, or enforced, and many bodies were thereafter buried close to, or upon farmsteads.” Graves around town are both marked and unmarked.

As David Rattray recently wrote in The Star, Freetown, a section of East Hampton depicted in a 1916 Suffolk atlas, contains “a lost cemetery holding the remains of 20 or more formerly enslaved people who died in the early 1800s.”

Such graveyards are worthy of attention here because of their historical significance. Samuel Seabury recounts in his 1926 book Two Hundred and Seventy-Five Years of East Hampton

that the Right Rev. Thomas James had arrived in East Hampton in 1651 to become its first minister. He remained a respected and rebellious leader in the community, arguing for independence from England long before the Revolutionary War. Local historians such as Averill Geus will point out that Reverend James, in accordance with his wishes, was laid to rest in the Old South End Burial Ground, his body positioned in the opposite direction from his parishioners resting nearby. Why did he ask for such an odd and potentially blasphemous placement? Explains Ms. Geus: “So that on Judgment Day, he would rise and be facing his congregation.”

Once, when Ms. Geus was head of Home, Sweet Home Museum, she

received a letter from “an outfit that was hosting a national treasure hunt.”

One of their clues had been hidden in a part of the cemetery near where the Right Reverend lay. The clue was placed behind a monument to sailors drowned in February 1858 during the wreck of the John Milton. That ill-fated ship, on its way to New York in a blinding snowstorm, had mistaken the light at Shinnecock for Montauk’s, and crashed on rocks about five miles west of the Montauk Light. “They were hauling the bodies out of the water for forever, and buried them all together,” said Ms. Geus.

One wonders if the current cemetery crunch might lead to tighter placements, such as that of the sailors.

As noted in this magazine a few years

Top: The Green River Cemetery in Springs. Photograph by Carissa Katz

30 / OVERHEARD been known to bury its dead Victorian-plague style; that is, stacked more than six feet deep to accommodate more coffins.

Cedar Lawn Cemetery, off Cooper Lane in East Hampton Village, is the resting place of Joseph Heller, the author of Catch-22. Founded in 1894, it contains so many East Hampton families that three roads were recently removed to make more burial space. The head of Cedar Lawn’s board of directors, Tom Osborne, explains that since the only lots left are where the roads have been removed, only single sites, not larger family lots, are available. (One could, of course, put one’s family members together in a long, narrow row.)

As for that “other famous” cemetery, Green River (the forever home of Jackson Pollock, et al.), it took 85 years to fill its original two-acre lot with fishermen and farmers descended from the first settlers.

By 1987, however, when the cemetery acquired an extra acre, the entire acre was snapped up in aa mere 10 years. There are a few family plots as yet unfilled at Green River, but rest assured they have long been spoken for.

It makes one wonder whether the Dominy family (of windmill, furniture, and clockmaking fame) didn’t have the right idea in exhuming a few of their ancestors from hallowed ground to join the rest of the family at Lily Hill Burial Ground (Duke’s Laws notwithstanding).

Off Accabonac Road on an old Dominy farm, Lily Hill is one of those “private” graveyards that aren’t supposed to exist.

Over a dozen Dominy family members were interred there between 1891 and 1928.

One can always have one’s ashes scattered across the great Atlantic, which is owned by no one. You do, however, need a permit to do so.

The Strange Sojourn of Rev. Beecher’s Armchair The Turkish author Mehmet Murat ildan has said, “You cannot separate the old furniture from the memories and the memories from the old furniture.” So true.The East Hampton Historical Society is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year and their collection holds dozens of pieces of furniture saved by local families

because of their history of ownership.

Indeed, many of our thousands of artifacts are relics; anyway, that is what collectors in the 19th century called them. Victorians cherished relics because they saw them as tangible bits and pieces which held associations to people from the past. There was a great deal of sentimentality in America at the close of the Civil War. Objects were seen to possess a mystical key into bygone eras. These relics could be as substantial as Rev. Buell’s late-18thcentury continuous-arm Windsor chair, or as tiny as a button from his waistcoat, or as peculiar as a lock from his powdered wig. Possibly the most famous East End relic is a small 16th-century cutting from a Byzantine brocade.

Today, it sits in a vitrine at the East Hampton Library’s Long Island Collection. It is a scrap of fabric from the famous “cloth of gold” given by the notorious Captain Kidd to Mrs. John Gardiner in 1699.

Recently the Historical Society acquired what must be one of its most important relics (we call them artifacts) -- the chair that Rev. Lyman Beecher often sat on while writing his sermons. It was pure serendipity: We spotted an auction ad in The Arts & Antiques Weekly, published in Newton, Conn. It was a public relations posting illustrated with a single photograph, showing a wild-looking antique chair with drawers and two writing surfaces.

It looked more like an unsuccessful flying contraption, but the caption clearly stated “Lyman Beecher’s writing-arm Windsor chair, circa 1790.”

Who was Lyman Beecher? Well,

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back, Most most historians know him as an important figure in 19th-century American religion. Local historians know that Beecher’s first job as a minister was in East Hampton’s old 1717 church, from 1798 until he left in 1810.

Lyman Beecher was the son of a New Haven blacksmith. Lyman helped out in his dad’s shop. His Uncle Lot was a major influence on young Lyman. While they were picking apples one day, his uncle asked, “Should you like to go to college?”

“I don’t know, sir” answered Lyman.

The next day, as they were still picking apples, without a word said, Lyman looked Uncle Lot straight in the face and said “Yes, sir, I should.” He graduated Yale University in 1797.

A year after Rev. Beecher arrived in East Hampton Town, he married Roxana Foote of New Haven. When he brought Roxana to East Hampton, they stayed with Aunt Phebe Gardiner until their first of nine children was born. In 1800 they moved into an old house on Main Street that needed much attention, but included five acres. With the price of the house and renovations, the project cost $800. The house still stands at 84 Main Street, and is the East Hampton Village Hall.

His chair was likely bought new when he was a Yale student, sometime before 1797. They were a specialty of a renowned New England chairmaker, Ebenezer Tracey of Lisbon, Conn., whose shop turned out a number of these writingarm Windsor-style chairs. They were expensive items. They were, of course, a necessity, made to order for lawyers, professors, and preachers. This example has a storage drawer under the carved pine plank seat and another under the shaped writing shelf. Beecher needed more than one surface. He needed a reading stand to hold his Bible -- after all, he was writing sermons. This stand he constructed himself, using his blacksmithing background to create a swinging iron armature for the precious book.

In East Hampton, Beecher’s annual stipend was $400. He had gotten help

for moving costs and a special gift to help him buy his house. But Beecher was extravagant, and money always burned a hole in his pockets. To help out the family finances, Roxana and Lyman Beecher opened a girl’s finishing school in their home. Even with the additional tuitions and board, however, the family could not make ends meet. By 1810, the Beechers were in debt by $500. Beecher gave his parishioners fair warning that he would leave for the sake of supporting his family unless they could give at least $500 a year. Only after the Litchfield (Conn.) Congregational Church offered him $800, and he announced a departure date, was there any effort to retain his services.

The chair went everywhere that the Beecher family moved. When they left East Hampton for Litchfield, the chair was along. His daughter Harriet Beecher Stowe remembered sitting in the corner of her father’s study and watching him work on a sermon, with pen and paper on the desk shelf and the Bible swinging back and forth.

From Litchfield, the Beechers moved to Hanover Church in Boston. The chair must have been with them, because on the bottom of the seat is a shipping label to their next home in Cincinnati, where he was president of the Lane Theological Seminary. Next, the chair

went by freight to Brooklyn, where he lived with his son, Henry Ward Beecher.

Over the years after Lyman Beecher’s death at 87 years, in 1863, the chair was venerated. Lyman Beecher’s name was painted on the back of it, in three-inch letters. No one could pass the chair without seeing whose chair it was. How it left the family is a mystery. How it ended-up at a New Haven auction house is also a mystery. But, in reality, it really came home. Lyman Beecher was born in New Haven in 1775, and since his first parish was East Hampton, Lyman Beecher’s chair is also back home.

The last sermon Lyman Beeche wrote on his chair in his study at 84 Main Street was this sermon he gave his East Hampton congregants: “God is my witness that I have gravely desired and earnestly sought the salvation of your souls, and I had hoped before the close of my ministry to be able to present you as dear children of God, but I shall not. My ministry is ended, and you are not saved. I now leave you still in arms against God -still in the kingdom of darkness. Once again I proclaim to you all your guilt and ruin. Once again I call you to repent.” — R ichard Barons

DIVERSIONS / 35

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Long the Rodney Dangerfield of sea creatures (“I don’t get no respect”), the horseshoe crab, upon closer examination, reveals itself deserving of both our admiration and protection.

Though its appearance suggests some sort of menacing hybrid of a giant seagoing cockroach and a scorpion, there’s a lot to like about the humble horseshoe crab.

Literally a blue-blood, indigenous to only the east coasts of the Americas and Asia, it has been around in the same sturdy, troglodytic form for as long as any other animal — roughly 450 million years. Its English cognate is a misnomer: It’s actually an arthropod, more closely related to spiders and ticks than crustaceans.

Locally, the horseshoes spawn in shallow tidal waters — think Louse Point, Napeague and Northwest Harbors — around the full and new moons of May and June. Larger females can be seen crawling toward the beach with smaller males attached to their carapaces. Burrowing into the sand to the crest of their shells, they lay thousands of protein-rich peppercorn-sized eggs, to be fertilized by the males.

Once harvested by the boatload to become fertilizer, horseshoe crabs are still used in traps to lure eel and whelk, which in turn serve as bait for fin fish.

Excess eggs are a super-food for shorebirds, most notably the red knot, a threatened species whose annual migration from southernmost South America is among the world’s longest. For millennia, the red knot, which stops each spring along the Atlantic Coast, has relied on horseshoe crab eggs to reach its Arctic summer breeding grounds.

WHY IT MATTERS In his book The View From Lazy Point, the ecologist-author Carl Safina, a part-time Amagansett resident, recalls observing the crabs’ spawning ritual in 2010; he marvels at the interdependence of species and tries to reason with a young bayman he suspects of exceeding his horseshoe allotment. “If the red knot comes undone,” Safina writes, “it will be just the first in an ongoing chain of shorebirds derailed in the crab overfishing train wreck.” From the baymen’s viewpoint, the main threat is not their crab-gathering but rather destruction of maritime habitats and spawning grounds by shoreline development and concomitant chemical runoff.

Another major demand for horseshoe crabs comes from the medical industry: A clotting agent extracted from their blood, Limulus Amebocyte Lysate, is the most effective

test for human bacterial toxins and is required by the Food and Drug Administration to screen all intravenous drugs, vaccines, and implants.

The crabs are captured, bled and then released back into the wild, where not all survive.

Reached recently for an update, Safina was not entirely encouraged: “The numbers have never come back to anything like what I saw that night. It’s a dispiriting time.” Yet he was hopeful that conservation efforts could bring back the old-time swarms of crabs and attract more birds again, citing examples of rebounding species, including ospreys, peregrine falcons, and even bald eagles.

Since 1998, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission has monitored horseshoe crab abundance, issuing periodic stock assessments. In the New York region, which includes all of Long Island, they’ve steadily declined from “good” to “poor” over the past two decades. For the fisheries commission summary, go to asmfc.org/species/horseshoe-crab.

To help bolster local populations, in 2004 the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation established an annual harvest limit of 150,000 crabs. The comission’s recommended quota was more than double that, but the state decided to lower the number out of

a growing concern for shorebird populations. This year, the D.E.C. is closing the horseshoe crab fishery twice for five days around the crabs’ peak spawning periods.

HOW TO PITCH IN Matt Sclafani, a marine ecologist at the Cornell Cooperative Extension in Riverhead, coordinates a public horseshoe crab survey, which in the past two years has targeted three East Hampton town sites; to volunteer, go to NYhorseshoecrab.org. Sclafani is also raising money to launch an alternative bait study. (More info is at to backtothebays.org/hsc-fund.)

Because of their thick horny shells and pointy tails, there’s a common misconception that horseshoes are dangerous. Their tail doesn’t sting: In fact, it’s nothing more than a stabilizer for swimming; if you grab it, it’ll hurt the crab more than you. The best way to rescue an overturned beached crab is to grasp it carefully by the thick outer edge of its shell, turn it over and gently send it on its watery way, all the while reminding yourself why it’s an important player in our local marine ecology. Never pick a horseshoe crab up by its tail.

Not even for an Instagram op.

If you find a tagged crab, please report its number by calling 1-888546-8587.

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No one wants an eager anticipation for reopening to appear frivolous during a continuing health crisis, but let’s recall shopping for a moment. In a toast to our collective future health, wealth, and happiness, here are three new boutiques owned by local women that you are allowed to be excited about.

SUNSHINE sunshineamagansett.com 303 Main Street, Amagansett, NY 11930

Heidi Humes is radiating with joy over her new venture in Amagansett, where she has run and creatively developed Mandala Yoga Center over the past five years. Her new boutique Sunshine sells mainly women-owned and created businesses— local and “globally sourced products with a cause.” Featuring seasonal pop-up workshops that kicked off in May with a “new moon ceremony,” plus the store’s very own Little Free Food Pantry, Sunshine is

full of light as well as apothecary goods featuring CBD, hefty coffee table books, loungewear, quartz jewelry, pottery home-goods, kids toys, and treasures from the owner’s travels. One of the charitable collaborations that shoppers will find among her wares is jewelry from Kate Collins’s Plume Collection, sold in partnership with Art and Abolition, a nonprofit organization based in Kenya, whose mission is to heal and empower young survivors of sex slavery.

Top: Heidi Humes (right) and Hillary Star deRoy at a pop-up event this spring at Humes’s colorful new Amagansett lifestyle boutique, Sunshine.

Right: The “Amore” dress, made in Italy, is among the earthy offerings at Soviana, Lisa Curren’s new retail space in Montauk.

DIVERSIONS / 40

her daughter through a nature-driven, non-toxic lifestyle inspired her new boutique Sovrana. “It means sovereignty in Italian. The whole concept is representing mother earth and everything it has to offer.” Crucial ingredients to Ms. Curran’s intuitive lifestyle—herbs like oregano, sage, and thyme, as well as raw honey—are among the goods she will sell from all over the world. Pillows from Peru, bamboo lighting from Thailand, pottery from the United States, African olive oils, Mediterranean crystals, and Italian kaftans will make up her consciously sourced inventory. A small book section with literature on healing as well as some of her own design collaborations with others will also be featured.

contracts, Pink Lemonade also carries bigger Black-owned hair care brands like Curls. Ms. Wilson said she has just found a woman who will braid hair, too.

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Sovrana “means sovereignty in Italian,” says Curren, “the whole concept is representing Mother Earth and everything it has to offer.”

SAVONA 729C Montauk Highway, Montauk, NY 11954 After spending her entire career in fashion, Lisa Curran took a pause from her internationally known swimwear line in order to care for her sick daughter. Years of traditional medicine had not helped her child, so Ms. Curran said she turned to maternal instinct and the earth instead. Successfully healing

Dashh Wilson ties the birth of Pink Lemonade to her experience growing up in East Hampton and living in Washington D.C. “When you’re in a predominantly white space, beauty supply products for Black and ethnic women are an afterthought.” And so, she set to procuring brands, mostly small and Black-owned, in order to fill the need. “I dreamt up this idea: I’m a woman who loves to shop, and you know, I would want to shop in my own store.” Shampoo, conditioner, accessories, and hair tools for women of color will now be readily accessible this summer in Ms. Wilson’s Pink Lemonade pop-up truck, rolling through East Hampton and the Wainscott Square area. It was important to her that the location be central, since so often she had to go further than the local CVS to find what she needed. Satin pillow cases, satin scrunches, and satin lined beanies to “wake up with it on your head and walk out the door” are some of her favorite products. Finally having secured the vendor

Concierge counseling services for Long Island’s East End and beyond Dashh Wilson, the force behind Pink Lemonade, at her first pop-up held last August in her mother’s Springs backyard. Pink Lemonade carries the hairpiece she is wearing.

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DO YOU LIKE YOUR BEACH LOUD, BUZZY, AND FULL OF BIKINI-CLAD SINGLES? A. Point me to the party.

B. Not necessarily my scene, but I can see why you like it.

C. Fine for a one-day stand, but let’s not make a habit out of it.

D. Thank you, next.

DO YOU LOVE A BEACH WITH CALM WATERS FOR LOUNGING? A. What’s a beach without waves, anyway?

B. Flat water is just ok.

C. Sometimes, a calm-watered beach is just what I need!

D. Bring on the pool floats.

HOW GAME ARE YOU TO HIKE TO THE BEACH FROM YOUR PARKING SPOT? A. Happy to walk to the perfect beach, as long as it’s not a regular thing.

B. A little jaunt is ok, but let’s not get too crazy here C. Lace up. I’m here for the best beach, regardless of how hard it is to reach.

D. Nah, I’m lazy, but thanks for asking.

DO YOU HAVE KIDS? A. No, and I’m not planning to, either.

B. No, but we often have kids come to visit.

C. No, but all our friends do.

D. We definitely have kids.

DOES YOUR IDEAL BEACH INVOLVE CONCESSIONS OR FOOD TRUCKS? A. Do people actually answer no to this question?

B. It’s not required, but it’s always nice to be able to grab a bite at the beach.

C. I don’t care either way.

D. I prefer a less crowded beach with no concessions.

DO YOU LIKE TO SURF? A. Surfing is my entire life.

B. I can ride a one-foot wave on a foam board, so I’m definitely getting there.

C. No, but I like to watch the surfers sometimes.

D. The only thing worse than surfing is a beach dedicated to surfing.

Continued >

44 / DIVERSIONS

DO YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF A STRONG SWIMMER? A. I was a lifeguard in high school, ok?

B. I have a decent crawl stroke.

C. I’m a tentative-but-capable swimmer.

D. I can doggy paddle.

DO YOU LIVE IN THE TOWN OF SOUTHAMPTON? A. No. B. Yes. C. No. D. No. WHEN YOU GET TO THE BEACH, DO YOU LIKE AN ENDLESS EXPANSE OF SAND, OR DO YOU PREFER A SHORT BEACHFRONT? A. I like to get to the ocean as quickly as possible.

B. Some sand is nice, but I don’t need to walk a mile or anything.

C. I love long walks to the water, because they make me feel like I’m truly on vacation.

D. The sandier and more private the beach the better.

ARE YOU A BEACH SUNSET KIND OF BEACH-LOVER? A. Sunset is great, but I prefer to be at a bar with a view.

B. I don’t mind missing a sunset if the beach doesn’t happen to have a view.

C. Sunset isn’t important to me.

D. A beach with a great sunset is the most important thing ever.

Award yourself 1 point for every (a.), 2 points for every (b.), 3 points for every (c.), and 4 points for every (d.).

0-10 points: Ditch Plain. This Montauk beach is a scene-y, Town of East Hampton beach, with a few reliable food trucks, a short beachfront, and an active surfing scene. Walk a little bit off the main drag and you’ll find the cash-only Ditch Witch, the food truck that has made this beach its home for years and years. Ditch Plains is where the Montauk crowd goes to see and be seen. Expect music, a glamorous crowd, and a pumping surf.

11-20 points: Sagg Main Beach. In Sagaponack, you’ll find this Town of Southampton beach, which has concessions, a family-friendly vibe, and a bit of a rip. There’s enough sand for everyone here, and although the surf can be rough at times, it’s one of the calmer ocean beaches. With a big parking lot that can accommodate crowds, and plenty of amenities for those busy July and August weekends, Sagg is a favorite for a diverse spate of beach-goer.

21-30 points: Atlantic Avenue Beach. A beautiful Amagansett beach with fairly rough surf and a wide expanse of sand, this beach is a favorite among locals. The water can tend toward the rougher end of the spectrum, so this is definitely not a dip-in-the-shallow-end kind of beach. Atlantic almost never feels crowded, because the beach extends forever from the lot. And a comprehensive snack bar will keep you from worrying about where the next meal will come from.

31-40 points: Maidstone Beach. This bay beach is great for kids, water-loungers, and sunset-catchers. If you have an East Hampton permit, you can drive right on to the far end of the beach, which has a shallower spot for young swimmers.

In the channel, large boats passing out of Three Mile Harbor are fun for beachgoers of all ages. The water at Maidstone is a little warmer, the tide appreciably calmer. And Maidstone boasts one of the best sunsets on all of the East End, if you’re willing to wait it out.

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DIVERSIONS / 47

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Anyone launching a podcast these days needs serious muscles to push through the morass of some two million pods currently available.

Luckily for Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, a part-time Springs resident, historian, teacher, author, and host of the podcast Welcome to Your Fantasy, it was all about muscles. Well-oiled, hairless, beefcake muscles.

This nine-episode series from Pine-

apple Street Studios and Gimlet, and available exclusively on Spotify, tells the true story of Chippendales, the male strip club that began in Los Angeles in the 1970s and went on to unimagined success as a high-camp, slickly-choreographed theatrical event, that was a mainstay for bachelorette parties and hen nights around the world.

Add to all this a behind-the-scenes murder at Chippendales, hours of ar-

chival footage and interviews, sleazy characters, frothy women, a soft-porn vibe, as well as Petrzela’s energetic and probing commentary, and the result is a very unputdownable podcast.

Over a recent Zoom call, Petrzela’s enthusiasm for having struck audio gold was evident. She beamed through the details of her show, which she stumbled upon while commenting, as a historian, about sexuality in the 1980s.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

The Chippendales brand is a “crucial lens to understand big themes in American culture,” said Natalie Mehlman Petrzela, host of the podcast Welcome to Your Fantasy. Diana Lee Photography/Diana Balnis

“Welcome to Your Fantasy is the history of the brand Chippendales, which is an iconic, widely known American brand,” she said. “But what very few people know is the story that we tell behind it. That this kind of punchline, male strippers for bachelorette parties and various girls nights out is actually a really crucial lens to understand big themes in American culture: feminism, capitalism, immigration, race discrimination. But then it’s also a gripping true crime story.”

A murderous rivalry frames the narrative, between Chippendales’ partners

Somen (Steve) Banerjee, a Hugh Hefner-idolizing Indian immigrant, and Nick De Noia, an American who was the original choreographer of the Chippendales dance troupe, and, more remarkably, of Unicorn Tales, a children’s television show for which he won two Emmy Awards.

Listeners addicted to true crime podcasts, might be disappointed in the murder mystery component. It’s there but not in a gripping, edge-of-your-seat way.

What fuels this series is the colorful characters and the images they conjure: screaming women with big hair, equal-

ly-coiffed beefcakes in bow tie and cuffs, gyrating in G-strings, nightly orgies, sex-for-hire, the Chippendales calendars, a soft-porn exercise video featuring the hunks, and grannies shouting “I’m horny!” Each one is uproarious.

For the actual, steamy visuals, visit the podcast’s Instagram account.

Welcome to Your Fantasy, is a throughly enjoyable pop-culture trot through time, with a murder thrown in. But a bonus episode (number 9) offers a fascinating discussion between Petrzela and her co-producers and fellow historians, Nicole Hemmer and Neil J. Young, about female sexuality versus the commodification of female liberation for the monetary gains of men.

To this narrative, Petrzela added another perspective during our interview, when she summed up why podcasting was the perfect medium for the show, rather than a sordidly visual TV series.

“In speaking with these men, one of the things that I actually felt allowed them to open up to me a little bit more, and I think that created a really good dynamic for the stories that they told, was I’m here to listen to you and I care what’s in your head. And I want to know what you think. And yes, the fact that you were a professional hot guy is, of course, the reason why you were a Chippendale and why you’re here. And I want to hear about that, but I am interested in much more than just your physical appearance. I think ultimately that was very fruitful in the stories that we got to include in the show.”

With the podcast complete, sitting for weeks on the Spotify’s top 100 list, Petrzela is finishing a book titled, Fit Nation (she’s also a trained fitness instructor).

And she promised, “You will see some Chippendales cameos in there because they’re definitely part of a story of the mainstreaming of a fit male body.”

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DIVERSIONS / 51

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‘My God, it’s a movie theater!’

So exclaimed a woman as she entered the Sag Harbor Cinema’s main theater for a screening of Nomadland in April.

Who would have thought, 18 months ago, that of all the movie theaters on the East End, the Sag Harbor Cinema, which lay in ashes after the December 2016 fire, would be the only place to watch films on the big screen this spring? And not only watch them — thrill to them in theaters with state-ofthe-art projection and sound and popcorn that at least one aficionado called “the best popcorn I’ve ever had in a

movie theater.”

It was clear from a tour taken in the middle of the cinema’s construction that something special was taking shape. On a second visit just before the April 9 reopening, the building dazzled, and it was apparent from the welcoming lobby cafe to the sparkling Billie Joel Popcorn Stand to the lighting, the restrooms, and the public spaces, that no detail had been overlooked, no corners cut.

During that second visit, a trailer for the film Gravity was running in theater one, and the wide screen and unparal-

The cinema’s Art Deco neon sign has been the elegant symbol of the theater and the village itself since the 1930s. Photographs by Durell Godfrey

DIVERSIONS / 53 O B J E C T

leled sound left a viewer feeling he was floating through space with George Clooney and Sandra Bullock. The Imaxlike immediacy was such that Dramamine would have been welcomed.

And then, opening night, a screening of French Exit with Michelle Pfeiffer and Lucas Hedges, and the difference between streaming on your television, with incessant robocalls, pets clamoring for attention, and, perhaps worst of all, being in the same space you’ve been in almost 24/7 for more than a year, the difference between that and sitting in the dark with socially distanced friends and strangers, laughing together at jokes, drawing breath at sudden surprises, was palpable.

The old cinema had its charms, chiefly its celebration of independent films that were not usually available at area multiplexes. The public spaces were dark and dingy, and the vast theater had the musty aroma of a basement clamoring for a dehumidifier, but it served such a unique function on the East End as the only art house that its apparent demise in 2016 left not only the region’s cinephiles but the entire East End community in a state of shock, its shattered Art Deco sign a metaphor for the broken heart of Sag Harbor.

It took a little more than four years for that heart to be mended, thanks to the Sag Harbor Partnership, April Gornik, who chaired the campaign for

the cinema’s restoration, the generosity of community members, and the hard work of a dedicated staff. Indeed, prior to July 2019, the entire project, from its conception to fund-raising for the theater’s purchase to the planning of its construction to interim programming, was accomplished by people who volunteered their time, expertise, and passion.

The corridor leading to the theaters is lined with vintage posters of classic Hollywood movies such as Dark Passion with Bogart and Bacall, Sweet Bird of Youth with Newman and Page, and A Streetcar Named Desire with Brando and

Leigh, a nod to the old Hollywood studio system admired by Jamie Hook, the cinema’s executive director, and a suggestion that the scope of the cinema’s programming will be expansive.

“At its center it definitely is this triedand-true vision of a place where the past and the present and the future of cinema are exposed, digested, argued over, loved, but there’s a real cinephilic heart that beats at the center of this place,” said Mr. Hook.

One of the highlights of every screening at the new cinema is Our Own Main Street Fire, a five-and-a-halfminute film directed by Sam Hamilton, produced by Mr. Hook, and “starring” the firemen and first responders whose bravery saved the cinema. Filmed while sitting in the new theater, they recall the dramatic events of that day while photographs and film footage remind the audience of just how catastrophic the fire was and how remarkable the cinema’s rebirth has been.

Among the stylish interior touches are, clockwise from the top of the page, a dramatic wall of sconces outside theater one, a sinuous staircase that leads to the upper floors, and a neon sculpture by Ivan Chermayeff that was donated to the cinema by Wendy Keyes and Film at Lincoln Center. Photographs by Durell Godfrey

O F

D E S I R E

A P S d E V e r TH E S O M A N Y J U S T I F I CAT I O N S F O R B U Y I N G A S N A Z Z Y R E D S C O O T E R : I T ’ S E A S I E R T O PA R K . I T U S E S L E S S GA S . A N D T H I S O N E ’ S F O R A G O O D CAU S E This month’s object of desire — or, murmured softly with the wind in your hair, oggetto del desiderio — is a classic symbol of Italian elegance . . . and for a good cause. Piaggio Group and (RED) bring you the VESPA 946 RED, sales of which go toward initiatives fighting AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. The whole deal is a wagon very much worth hopping on. After endless days’ lockdown (going

on year four now, right?), we are angling to support good works as well as good moods. May we suggest a tonic for your languishing? We see blurred roadside views and singleminded determination to reach the happy destination ahead.

(And if you think we’re also alluring t0 herd immunity, you’re correct.)

The name 946 invokes the year of the Vespa’s birth, 1946, and celebrates it

with the very first all-red model.

This summer, parking is the East End’s red-hot problem and primary topic of conversation. This baby will help you navigate parking hassles with savoir-faire. Red helmet included. And, if we play our cards right and get more people vaccinated, the red mask won’t be necessary. —East

Vespa 946 Red, $10,499.

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BOUNTY / 55

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HOLY MACKEREL WHY HAS SEAFOOD BECOME SO EXPENSIVE? ONCE-HUMBLE DISHES OF STRIPED BASS AND FLUKE ARE NOW ALMOST THE EXCLUSIVE PRESERVE OF THE WELLHEELED (UNLESS YOU CATCH THEM YOURSELF). JON M. DIAT MAKES SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR MORE AFFORDABLE FISH. PORGIE TO THE PEOPLE!

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Mackerel — popular smoked but also good broiled, baked, or grilled — has a robust flavor at a very un-robust price, selling for just $4 to $8 per pound. Photograph

by Capt. Savio Mizzi

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R

ed snapper. Chilean sea bass. Halibut. Sushi-grade bluefin tuna. Sole. Lobster.

Even striped bass. They are just a few of the fish and crustaceans that can be found in our local fish markets. And yet, like many things here, they usually come with a hefty price tag.

Thankfully, there are a number of other options in the ice-laden display counters of these establishments that are not only much more affordable but are usually caught and landed on or

is higher in price, does not make it taste better. There are plenty of other items, especially local ones, that are incredibly fresh and taste delicious.”

Mather, who started working at the store when he was 17 in 1986, offers a number of tasty suggestions, including porgy, weakfish, blackfish, squid, bluefish, skate, tilefish, hake, clams, and blowfish, as just a few of the budget-conscious options that more people should learn to embrace.

“There are always going to be fluctua-

catch on light tackle, the silver-slabbed fish, which can reach up to four pounds, are a palate pleaser that too few people still don’t fully appreciate. Porgy has a taste and texture similar to red snapper, which comes from the Gulf of Mexico, and can cost five times as much. Love sashimi or a refreshing ceviche or crudo? Porgy is a perfect choice for many chefs and home cooks.

With its local abundance, porgy, sometimes also referred to as sea bream, has begun to make a periodic appear-

very close to the East End. You don’t need to empty your wallet to enjoy some fine, locally sourced seafood.

“Many of my customers are rather habitual on what they buy,” observed Colin Mather, the longtime owner of the Seafood Shop in Wainscott. “But more and more have begun to explore other options. Just because something

tions in price due to supply and demand, but many of the local fish we have are literally just hours out of the water,” he said.

“Blackfish and porgies, for example, are our local versions of red snapper,” but cheaper, and taste great prepared many ways. “Porgies especially are also very bountiful and very affordable.”

Ah, those plentiful porgies. Fun to

ance on the menus of some of the finest East End restaurants, including Nick and Toni’s in East Hampton. At last, there seems to be growing respect for our humble, home-grown porgy.

Even the lowly yet overly abundant sea robin possesses a firm white meat that’s dense enough to withstand a multitude of cooking methods, includ-

Right: Nets running perpendicular to the shoreline corral fish into a trap, or pound. where baymen scoop them up by hand. Photograph by Jon M. Diat.

Left: Pound trapping is an age-old fishing method with virtually zero bycatch. Photograph by Carissa Katz

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While prices will fluctuate on supply and demand, below are some locally sourced fish that not only won’t break the bank, but also taste great

A bayman with a haul of porgie, with a handful of striped bass and a handful blackfish. Photograph by Jon M. Diat

ing being deep fried or braised in a rich tasting bouillabaisse. Much as they did with blowfish 60 years ago, people have begun to ignore the sea robin’s rather unsightly exterior appearance to savor its clean, moist flesh at very little cost.

“Along with porgies, people really need to try sea robin,” agreed Danny Lester, a commercial bayman in Amagansett who tends to eight pound traps spanning from Gardiner’s Bay to Fort Pond Bay in Montauk. Lester, whose family has fished the East End for centuries, claims that sea robin, which is extremely popular in Europe, deserves more attention on our shores.

“They can be a pain to process in larger quantities, but sea robin is a better tasting fish than striped bass and many other higher priced options,” he said. “It’s the same with bluefish. They are fantastic.”

Out at Montauk, Capt. Wes Peterson knows his fish. As the former skipper of a commercial dragger and the owner of Peterson’s Seafood Market on South Etna Avenue in downtown Montauk, the fourth-generation Montauker is proud that his display case features a

wide assortment of affordable locally sourced seafood.

“I’m a big believer in offering a lot of local products,” said Peterson, who started working as a deckhand at the age of 10 with Capt. Vinny Damm on the Lady K, a Montauk lobster boat. “There are a number of items we sell that are low-priced and fresh off of the boats.”

His stainless-steel case recently featured freshly caught squid, porgies, bluefish, blowfish, hard-shelled clams raked up from the rich bottom of Lake Montauk, as well as white perch from Mecox Bay in Southampton. He even keeps a steady supply of Jonah crabs on hand.

“I call them our version of Dungeness crabs from the Northwest,” he said of the eerily similar looking crustaceans. They approach a pound in weight and are caught as a bycatch by offshore lobstermen. “They are cheap and more people are discovering how good they are.”

Porgy Method of Harvest: Pound trap, hook and line, trawler Flavor: Moderate Texture: Firm Flake: Small Fat Content: Low Cooking Methods: Very versatile. Grilled whole, baked, or fried; also popular as sashimi, crudo, and in ceviche dishes Availability/Price: Available all year. Mainly sold whole, $2 to $5 per pound Skate Wings Method of Harvest: Pounds traps or trawler Flavor: Mild Texture: Firm Flake: Ribbon-like Fat Content: Very low Cooking Methods: Usually sauteed or fried.

Famously used in brown butter and caper presentation Availability/Price: Available all year, $8 to $15 per pound Bluefish Method of Harvest: Hook and line, trawler, pound trap Flavor: Robust Texture: Soft Flake: Small Fat Content: High Cooking Methods: Best served fresh broiled, grilled, or baked. Excellent when smoked for dips and spreads Availability/Price: May until late November; sold whole and in fillet form, $5 to $15 per pound Continues >

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BOUNTY / 61 Blowfish Method of Harvest: Pound trap, hook and line Flavor: Mild Texture: Dense Flake: None Fat Content: Very low Cooking methods: Commonly known as “chicken of the sea,” this fish has a single bone runing through the middle; pan-sautéed or deep fried are most popular Availability/Price: May until October, $10 to $15 per pound

PORGY CEVICHE This recipe is based on the delicious shredded ceviche de sierra made in open-air restaurants along the Pacific coast of Mexico. Often this is made right before the customer’s eyes and served immediately. This will also work with small mackerel fillets.

1 1 ¼ ¼ 1

lb. very fresh porgy fillet, skin off medium garlic clove, minced cup red onion, minced cup small cherry tomatoes, cut into quarters or eighths small jalapeno pepper, seeded, and sliced into fine shreds Juice of 1 or 2 fresh limes Kosher or sea salt to taste (about 1/4 tsp.)

Rinse porgy fillets under cold water and pat dry. Place on cutting board and cut into half-inch dice. Put fish pieces in glass or ceramic bowl and cover with remaining ingredients. Stir to mix and refrigerate no more than an hour before serving on small plates or passed, scooped onto endive leaves.

SKATE SAUTÉED WITH OLIVE OIL AND BALSAMIC VINEGAR 2 1 1½ 1 ½

lbs. skate fillet large clove garlic, peeled and chopped Tbsp. olive oil Tbsp. balsamic vinegar tsp. sea salt Freshly ground black pepper to taste

Heat olive oil in heavy skillet until nearly smoking. Sprinkle skate fillets with salt and pepper, then place rosy side up in the hot pan. Cook for about one minute. Turn the fillets carefully with a thin spatula. Cook for no more than three minutes over medium-high heat then remove to a warm serving dish.

Reduce heat under the skillet to simmer. Add chopped garlic and cook for about two minutes. Add balsamic vinegar and stir well to loosen tiny bits of fish and oil stuck to surface off pan. Cook for one minute more, then drizzle over fish and serve. Serves four.

Preheat oven to 325. Arrange bread on baking sheets in single layer and bake 10 minutes or until starting to brown. Put bread into large bowl. Spread black walnuts in a single layer on baking sheet and toast for 8 minutes, then add to bowl.

Melt butter in heavy pan with a lid.

Sdish, as well as being a cold-season immune-system booster.

HOW TO: MAKE SALT PRECIOUS GIFTS FROM THE ATLANTIC, FREE FOR THE TAKING AND MAKING

Cod/Hake Method of Harvest: Trawler, hook and line, gill net Flavor: Bland/Mild Texture: Firm Flake: Large Fat Content: Low Cooking Methods: Very versatile in a wide variety of cooking modes — fried, broiled, baked, poached, and chowders Availability/Price: All year, $13-$19 per pound Sea Robin Method of Harvest: Hook and line, pound trap Flavor: Mild Texture: Dense Flake: Fine Fat Content: Low Cooking Methods: A very versatile, whitefleshed fish; fried, broiled, braised or baked.

Popular component for bouillabaisse in Europe Availability/Price: May until October. Rarely found in fish markets. Primarily a by-catch by anglers pursuing other inshore bottom fish Mackerel Method of Harvest: Trawler, pound trap, hook and line Flavor: Robust Texture: Soft Flake: Small Fat Content: High Cooking Methods: Popular in smoked form, also enjoyed broiled, baked or grilled Availability/Price: April-November. Usually sold whole, $4-$8 per pound

With a pail and some patience, you can create a terrifically personal gift. Label it with the name of the beach where it was gathered. Photograph by Fotandy / Shutterstock

We know that what Grandma really wantWe know that what Grandma really wanted for Christmas last December was a bottle of Scotch, but here’s the thing: A little box of pure sea salt — distilled from the surf pounding ashore on the November beaches, scooped out by her grandchildren and distilled on the wood stove over the weeks leading up to the holidays — delivers a different sort of warm-fuzzies than you get from a bottle of booze. This was the third winter that the kids and I delivered sea salt for assorted friends and relatives, and the gift is always met with whoops of surprise and delight. (React that way to a bottle of single malt and eyebrows get raised.)

The first time we ran this experiment we were living in Nova Scotia and the kids were just half the age they are now. They were curious then but singularly unimpressed by the alchemy of pulling a solid out of a liquid, and not terribly interested that we could sprinkle it on our morning eggs. This time my son, Teddy, is 11 and we worked on it together, pant legs rolled up, bailing seawater into milk jugs on Atlantic Avenue Beach, then driving home to warm up; filtering it through dish towels to remove the sand before heating it gently in the big orange Le Creuset on the wood stove.

We ran some eight gallons through the process before letting it evaporate all the way down to leave an ice cream container of pure salt to be dried and ground with a rolling pin to the proper grain size. This is

HOW-TO: Wood-Stove Sea Salt 101 1. Collect sea water from clean ocean beaches. Empty milk jugs — filled with the help of a saucepan bailer — work well. About eight gallons required.

When it comes to the East End, we know the lay of the land.

2. Filter water carefully to remove

sand by pouring it through dish towels into your largest pasta pot or a cast-iron Dutch oven. All eight gallons won’t go into the pot at once.

3. Place pot on wood stove. Use a

trivet to keep heat low. Do not boil or allow to go dry.

4. Keep topping up. Be patient. It

could take 10 days or more to evaporate all eight gallons.

5. Finally, on your last gallon, allow

Photograph by Chomplearn / Shutterstock

something you can do year round, not just in the wood-stove months. In a year of intermittent schooling, it seemed especially appropriate. STEM teachers would love this project, littered as it is with five-dollar words: solution, super-saturated, precipitation, sodium chloride.

They say Washington could not have fed his Continental Army without sea salt — not from here of course, but from the Turks and Caicos Islands, where the Caribbean sun does the work of our wood stove. For another century the same Caribbean source powered the fisheries of New England and Nova Scotia, where salt cod was king. The “salt islands” were the southern apex of

a triangular trade: salt fish to Europe, over to the Caribbean for more salt and rum, then home to Gloucester. Before refrigeration, before mineral salt, there was no more valuable commercial cargo than sea salt.

There was even a time in this crazy old world, they say, when you could rent the services of a Roman legionnaire with a bag of the stuff. See? We get a history lesson with our weekend craft project!

Whether you’re making salt with a girlfriend, a home-school class, or your offspring, the results will thoroughly impress Grandma as she enjoys a perfectly salted lamb chop and a tipple.

— Paul Gartside

all water to evaporate. It’s important to raise the pot a bit more off the top of the wood stove to avoid burning; you can do this with another trivet or an overturned baking tin, for example.

6. Spread salt precipitate onto baking trays for final drying. Set your oven to the lowest setting, and put the baking trays in; this could take many hours.

7. Once it’s properly dry, grind with mortar and pestle to desired grain size.

8. Pack in small wooden boxes with lids or in corked bottles.

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W H E N T H E L I G H T S W E N T O U T AT T H E S U R F L O D G E — A S AT C L U B S A N D R E S TA U R A N T S A C R O S S T H E G L O B E — A P A I R O F L O C A L M U S I C - S C E N E L E G E N D S - I N -T H E - M A KING WERE AMONG THOSE WHOSE AMPLIFIERS WERE SILENCED. THIS SUMMER, THEY’RE TURNING IT UP TO 11.

C H R I S T O P H E R WA L S H M E E T S T H E S T U R D Y S O U L S

When the lights went out at the Surf Lodge — as at clubs and restaurants across the globe — a pair of local music-scene legends-in-the-making were among those whose amplifiers were silenced. This summer, they’re turning it up to 11. Christopher Walsh meets the Sturdy Souls “I’m still wrapping my head around it,” Kate Usher said of the pandemic that brought the world, and the music performed throughout it, to a shrieking halt more than a year ago. “We went from being busy musicians to having no jobs.”

Weekly Residency at The Surf Lodge, Every Monday All Summer Starting June 7, 6-8 pm June 4, Dune Deck, Westhampton Beach, 5-8 pm June 13, Liars Saloon, Montauk, 4-7 pm June 19, Montauket, Montauk, 6-9 pm

It was a cruel and humbling blow for her and for Kevin Angiulo, collectively Kate Usher and the Sturdy Souls. Kindred spirits who’d found one another at Ditch Plain Beach in Montauk in 2015, they quickly came to personify its unique vibe. “I can speak for both of us,” said Kate, the group’s vocalist. “Beach culture, Montauk, the community are what shaped us as individuals. The vibe of it all resonates so much with us.”

She grew up in Manhasset; the multi-instrumentalist Angiulo in Babylon. Both families owned houses at Ditch, but “somehow we had never crossed paths, even though we fre-

Photographs by Ken Grille

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K E V I N WA S P L AY I N G S H O W S B Y H I M S E L F A S A O N E - M A N B A N D . J U S T F O R F U N I H A D J U M P E D O N S TA G E W I T H H I M O N E N I G H T AT A B A R . E V E R Y O N E R E A L LY E N J O Y E D I T. ’

quented the same beach every day,” Usher said. “Kevin was playing shows by himself as a one-man band. Just for fun I had jumped onstage with him one night at a bar. Everyone really enjoyed it, and we had the euphoric moment: ‘We could probably do this.’ That summer we booked some shows, made business cards, and in the first month or two it blew up.”

“It was cool,” Angiulo recalled, “to see how in a short time, jamming on the beach led to us being professional artists, gaining local and regional notoriety.”

Local gigs led to bigger ones farther afield, sometimes as a duo, sometimes with a full band. The Sturdy Souls are regulars at music festivals including Montauk’s and the Great South Bay Music Festival, as well as the Kaaboo Del Mar and Springboard West festivals, both in Southern California. “I teach surf lessons in the daytime,” Kevin said.

“A lot of winter trips to play coincide with coastline.” (“They always do!” Kate corrected him.)

Like the proverbial lightning in a bottle, the Sturdy Souls’ recordings capture the perfection of summer at The End -- check the irresistible Tiny Boat, the Shades of Blue and Circles EPs, and

Photographs by Sal Termini

their cover of Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams, which is somehow even dreamier than the real thing.

As the world collectively blinks in the new dawn of a world after Covid-19, maybe, Kate Usher and the Sturdy Souls are looking to pick up right where they left off. Look for new recordings to drop this summer, and catch them at venues including Liars’ Saloon, the Sandbar at the Royal Atlantic, the Montauket, and a Monday residency at the Surf Lodge, all in Montauk. “For me,” said Usher, “performance is a huge part of music.

The energy from the crowd — to have that taken away was so rough. I lost hope for a while.”

Hope has happily returned, and so has the steady march onward, perhaps all the way to Madison Square Garden, where she has dreamed of performing since childhood. “We got to open for Matisyahu, Paul Simon, Mumford & Sons, Sublime, and Wyclef and the Fugees,” Angiulo said. “We’re hoping to continue on that path, but maybe being the headliner.”

A chance meeting at Ditch Plain led Kate Usher and Kevin Angiulo to forge a musical journey that has taken them to stages from Montauk to California.

Baby Take aBow F O R A N U N U S U A L C O M M U N I T Y, A N U N U S U A L C O M M U N I T Y T H E AT E R : T H E J O H N D R E W. A S B E S S R AT T R AY W R I T E S I N T H I S E XC E R P T F R O M G U I L D H A L L’ S S M A S H I N G N E W 9 0 T H - A N N I V E R S A R Y B O O K , T H E W H O L E W O R L D H A S T R O D T H I S S TA N G E , F R O M TA P P I N G T O D D L E R S T O T O N Y W I N N E R S , R O C K S TA R S , A N D H O L LY W O O D K I N G S

Guild Hall for All!, by Andrea Grover and Helen Harrison — with a foreword by Alec Baldwin, preface by Martin Cohen, and contributions by Rattray and Phyllis Braff — is available for $55 (non-members) on GuildHall.org.

Here, a color slide from the 1950s captures the Village Vanities, an annual showcase of local talent.

Guild Hall archive.

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ollowing the usual dress-rehearsal despair on Thursday night, the curtain rose at the John Drew Theater for the first time on a Friday in August of 1931 with a variety show called The East Hampton Revels, with a cast of dozens that represented a startling range of ranks and social classes: debutantes and the sons of dairy farmers — and even a few Vanderbilts — capering and acting and singing as if their lives depended on it. Fanny Gardiner, the cowboy-loving daughter of an ancient East Hampton family, pulled a rickshaw in which Miss Judith Hamlin sang Mad Dogs and Englishmen while dressed as a tourist in a pith helmet; a chorus line of Maidstone Club girls tap-danced backward while wearing comical face masks on the backs of their heads, to the strains of the Embassy of London Orchestra.

The rather daring enterprise that was the John Drew Memorial Theatre (later, more simply the John Drew Theater) was off to a rip-roaring start. The theater as it shimmered into existence was the fulfilment of the highly laudable vision of its founders, who had gathered only the November before, on a cold day in the depths of the Great Depression, to vote Guild Hall into being and assert the egalitarian mission of its galleries and auditorium: This was not to be “a luxurious place for the use of summer residents,” agreed the inspired — some, even tearfully so — crowd of local worthies who had assembled that afternoon, according to a contemporary report in The East Hampton Star. Guild Hall was to be “especially for the use and pleasure of the permanent residents who will make use of it 75 percent of the time,” and the John Drew Theater, as it was that night named, would be not just a theater, but a hub of common creativity that would “bring together people in the most democratic way.”

And so it came to pass.

In those high-minded Depression

years of the 1930s and all the way up through the third administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the John Drew Theater was the constant setting for all manner of community revels.

Stepping forward to take their turn in the spotlight were elementary-age piano players picking nervously at starched organdy frocks at their very first recital, hillbilly bands in which grocers and policemen played on jugs and washboards, and endless high school musicals and amateur Hamlets.

But because John Drew was a community theater did not mean its offerings were lowbrow. East Hampton, after all, has always been a town with a high opinion of itself. (Where else would a municipality style itself “the most beautiful village in America”?)

East Hamptoners like to count their ancestral generations, and have over the centuries nurtured an impressive sense of self-importance. Indeed, the reason a few of Guild Hall’s founders had gotten all teared up at its inaugural meeting in 1930 was because they envisioned the new cultural center as representing a reconnection with the values of the town’s founding Calvinists, who, they imagined, possessed not just lofty ideals but an inborn love of the arts.

And so community musicales alternated with what was considered “more serious” theatrical fare. The Hampton Players and the South Shore Players, the house troupes, presented a steady stream of ambitious productions — a few of them tryouts that actually made it to Broadway. Observe the cover of a typical summer-season theater program from this period that survives in the archive: “Haitowitsch: Eminent Blind Violinist” appearing in recital with Lillian Moore, “Distinguished Solo Danseuse of the Metropolitan Opera Company,” one weekend in 1934.

The most beautiful village in America had at its geographical and metaphorical heart “America’s most beau-

tiful summer theater,” too (at least according to Katharine Cornell, the celebrated stage actress, and generations of civic boosters who would quote her thereafter). The auditorium was styled to look like a circus tent. Originally, the tent-striped ceiling was matched with candy-striped poles on the boxes and rose-pink-leather seats; the balloon chandelier, now white, was a clutch of glass globes in primary balloon colors.

But this was not a childish setting, however it might sound to modern ears, so much as a playful one that spoke to the sophisticates of the 1930s. It was the era when Schiaparelli — who collaborated with Salvador Dalí and Jean Cocteau — sold hats like lobster claws and brooches like eyeballs to the bon-ton. Lighthearted absurdities were in fashion.

On any given weekend, in any given decade, John Drew Theater attendees could — can — be expected to be worldly. This was even so in the World War II years, a time of rationing and sacrifice, when a few prominent families from Europe and Britain set up camp on their East End estates, remaining for the duration (or at least until the shipping lanes were safe from submarine attack).

Countess Atalanta Mercati of Greece, for example, took her houseguests to see a revival of The Yellow Jacket in late July of 1941. You never knew who might show up to see the Studio Players, under the direction of Mrs. Woodhouse’s protégé, Leighton Rollins, do The Cherry Orchard, or an all-female Antigone, or Thornton Wilder’s The Merchant of Yonkers. Ring Lardner or Irving Berlin or Dorothy Quick were among the throng.

Broadway has been coming to the beach since before the turn of the last century.

Today, John Drew is no longer a household name, but at one time he was one of the most lauded actors in the United States. He was also a cherished figure in East Hampton Village, an unforgettable presence — all chin and charm,

swinging a slender cane as he walked to the post office every morning from Lily Pond Lane. Drew, who in his prime was cited as the best-dressed man in America, was not just a representative of the Barrymore/Drew acting dynasty, but an early exemplar of a summer person who planted roots: He arrived in the 1890s, built his house near Georgica Beach, served on the volunteer fire department, and gave an oration on the Village Green every Fourth of July. He knew all the shopkeepers by name.

In addition to the boisterous bands

Guild Hall’s idealistic mission was not to be “a luxurious place for the use of summer residents,” as a founder said in a speech the in 1931, but instead a true community gathering space “especially for the use and pleasure of the permanent residents who will make use of it 75 percent of the time.” Here, a pair of mimes at the mirror in the mid-1960s. Guild Hall archive.

of Barrymores and colorful theatrical boarders at the lodging houses up and down Main Street, there had been an artists’ colony here since the 19th century, of course, as well as the summer colony of wealthy New York civilians, and this combination of assembled talent and discerning audience made the John Drew Theater then, and now, a very particular sort of community theater for a very uncommon community.

One night, a marionette show for sunburnt kids, the next, Thornton Wilder himself, starring in his own Our Town.

The party continued after the curtain fell. Perhaps surprisingly, post-theater night life on the South Fork percolated to a much hotter tempo in the 20th century than it does today. In mid-century, cast and audience alike would pile into a caravan of Studebakers and Fords and drive to the Silver Seahorse at the Maidstone Marina for “starlight suppers ’till midnight” (as the programs advertised); or to the Sea Spray, near Main Beach, to sip a Singapore Sling and gaze out over the dunes; or to Herb McCarthy’s Bowden Square in Southampton

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T H I S WA S T H E S T R AW - H AT, S U M M E R - S T O C K W O R L D , A N O W L O S T C U LT U R E T H AT, L O O K I N G B A C K , W E C A N O N LY I M A G I N E — W I T H N O S TA L G I C C O N S T E L L AT I O N S I N O U R E Y E S — F R O M W H AT W E M I G H T H AV E S E E N I N O L D M O V I E S .

THE B OYS AND GIRLS OF THE CHORUS ROOMED WITHIN BIC Y C L I N G D I S TA N C E O F G U I L D H A L L , A N D N E A R LY E V E R Y W E E K S O M E S L I G H T LY FA D E D S TA R O F S TA G E O R S C R E E N WOULD ARRIVE WITH A TOURING PRODUCTION

to catch Lester Lannin and his band, appearing “nitely.”

This was the straw-hat, summer-stock world, a now-lost culture that, looking back, we can only imagine — with nostalgic constellations in our eyes — from what we might have seen in old movies. The boys and girls of the chorus roomed within bicycling distance of Guild Hall, and nearly every week some slightly faded star of stage or screen would arrive with a touring production: Estelle Winwood in The Royal Family, Cornelia Otis Skinner doing a dramatic solo presentation on the wives of Henry the Eighth, the former Paramount starlet Ann Sheridan on tour in a comedy called Kind Sir. World War II brought an end to this idyll, sweeping away most of the upcoming male thespians who had launched their careers at Rollins’s daring theater school on Huntting Lane. The Rollins Studio, remembered by those who knew it in their youth as a magical place, was shuttered. Singing policemen and society-page chorines no longer stepped into the footlights at the height of July and August.

Needs must, amateur Shakespeare plays didn’t pay Guild Hall’s electricity bill, and by the end of the war in Europe, a new theatrical formula had been settled on. It was less high minded than the egalitarian dream that had carried the John Drew Theater through the Depression, but also less financially risky: Instead of domestic productions, bigger-time producers rented out the

John Drew for $1,000 to $3,000 for the season, according to Enez Whipple, who wrote about the this chapter of its history in Guild Hall of East Hampton: An Adventure in the Arts (1993).

In 1946, the theater’s managers announced an “all-professional summer season,” with “a different top guest star each week.” Over the next several years these headliners included Olivia de Havilland, Helen Hayes, Lillian Gish, Edward Everett Horton, a young Gwen Verdon and Bob Fosse, Christopher Plummer, and Bela Lugosi as Dracula.

A pinch of homegrown flavor remained: Locals frequently were cast in small parts, finding themselves as ghosts among the gravestones in Our Town.

Things rollicked along like that in the 1950s under the direction of Philip Barry Jr., who became the impresario of the little theater that could. It was Bye Bye Birdie at 8:40 on Saturday night, and Bergman’s film Wild Strawberries for the Sunday matinee. For a time in the mid1950s, theater life in East Hampton became so commercially successful that a civic committee called the East Hampton Protection Society was formed to protest the crowds and the ticky-tacky that some felt were spoiling the serenity of Main Street. Too many screaming-bright playbills in shop windows!

Too many chorus boys shouting to one another from the open windows of cars!

It was the McCarthy era, and accusatory committees were in vogue; still, art won out over small-mindedness, the committee dried up, and the scene only got more and more lively.

Each show that blew into town carried with it as many as two dozen actors and musicians, all of whom needed to be housed, fed, and shown the sights.

Joe Dunn, the general manager of the John Drew in those years, described that merry milieu. “We had a ‘Welcome Aboard’ newsletter that we gave to everyone when they arrived,” Dunn told Whipple, “[informing them about] where they could rent a bike, how to get to the beach, where to get breakfast. . . . ” The apogee of this traveling circus came in 1960, when the John Drew — and its new artistic director, Conrad Thibault, the noted baritone, who was well known to radio listeners at the time — saved The Fantasticks from an early demise. The future longest-running show in Broadway and Off-Broadway history had only recently debuted at the Sullivan Street Playhouse in Manhattan, but it was already on its knees, crawling along the road to flopsville after a run of less than three months.

Thibault invited the producers to take a break from Sullivan Street and bring The Fantasticks out east for a week’s respite. To general surprise, it was a smash hit. Elia Kazan and Jerome Robbins loved it. The Fantasticks returned to New York bathed in the aura of greatness, and began its legendary run.

The mood at John Drew gradually grew more sober and a bit more — for want of a less pretentious word — intellectual in the late 1960s. Audiences were tiring of stale Broadway fare. Change was blowing a gale. Programmers, watusi-ing to the beat of this new era, invited Hans Namuth to inaugurate a series of experimental films in 1967. In 1969, “Negro History Week” showcased the Mighty Gospel Keys and James Baldwin on the silver screen. Red, White, and Maddox, a “sacrilegious” sendup of Southern segregation, also appeared in 1969.

Then came 1970 and the Yale Repertory. With a concept they called Story

Theater, Yale Rep’s graduate-student actors, under the direction of Larry Arrick, introduced audiences to something new, fast, and fun. Stage dialogue was intermingled with spoken narrative borrowed from passages of a work of literature, be it Philip Roth or Flaubert or Dashiell Hammett. While it didn’t exactly make for a box-office bonanza, the critics understood Story Theater to be “a valuable gift to the American stage,” as a reviewer for Time magazine put it.

Performing without sets or props, the actors had to “work extra hard, miming, jumping from hot dialogue to cool comment, dashing from scene to scene on a curtainless stage.” Story Theater, Time

said, “helped crack the calcium off the old theater’s stiff joints.” Henry Winkler, who would in a couple of years become a television megastar as the Fonz on Happy Days, was among the Yale Rep kids.

There was a new sense of urgency to make over the world anew in the early 1970s, and that spirit of upheaval and striving for something better reverberated across American culture, from television (Archie Bunker as the proto-MAGA man in All in the Family) and the movies (see: Johnny Got His Gun) to the quaint little stage by the flagpole at the Village Green.

Edward Albee and Richard Barr, both summer residents of Montauk, felt

that the John Drew — Story Theater aside — had not quite been rising to the cultural occasion, and they put their heads together to create “the kind of theater that’s on a level with the intelligence of this community,” as Albee said to a reporter in 1972. It was the spring of the Watergate break-in. The Black Audiences became accustomed to seeing film stars on Main Street: Olivia de Havilland, Helen Hayes, Lillian Gish, Edward Everett Horton, Gwen Verdon and Bob Fosse, Christopher Plummer, and Bela Lugosi as Dracula — a never-ending parade in the early decades. Above: In the summer of 1958, Norman Krasna’s Kind Sir was directed by Gus Schirmer and starred McKay and Sheridan. Guild Hall archive.

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74 Panthers had been arrested following a over the John Drew for decades, like the free concert of music from Hair in Cen- faint but lingering odor of a house fire. tral Park, and things had gone to hell in Vietnam. Albee was then, in the wake of For any arts institution, the search is alWho’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, probably ways on for the right balance between the most famous working playwright innovation and income. That sounds in America. Barr, the president of the dreary, but it’s the brutal truth. Over the League of American Theaters, was best next 10 years or so, from disco days into known for having produced The Boys in the Greed Is Good decade, a new prothe Band, the first major play — and then gramming formula was devised to keep major motion picture — to feature a cast the broad lights and floodlights blazing of unapologetically gay characters. on the aging stage — which, if we can What Albee and Barr, as artistic di- anthropomorphize it, was by then like rectors of the John Drew, wanted to do a Golden Age of Hollywood star itself, was anything but the usual summer rather past its physical prime. stock. “Not packaged shows,” they inAnthony Stimac, who had debuted at sisted, but “plays of the quality we do the John Drew in the Bicentennial Sumin New York.” Guild Hall’s board of mer of 1976 as the director of America, the trustees backed them with a budget of Musical (an “effusive family entertain$20,000, and permission to mount a ment” in red, white, and blue, according slate of mostly experimental plays for to The New York Times) came aboard as the 1972 season. its year-round managing director at the Things did not go according to script. end of the ’70s. By the early ’80s, he’d The hoped-for audiences did not ma- found his groove with a programming terialize, and the trustee board came formula that focused on touring shows apart at the seams over one Albee-Barr and Broadway tryouts in summer — production, Dudes. Obscenity-laced Ain’t Misbehavin’ and Vanities were stand(and ahead of its time), Dudes was a col- ing room only — with staged readings lection of three one-acts by Martin Du- of new material and the resident Comberman, one of which — to give you the munity Theater Company taking over flavor — involved sex, college admis- the auditorium in the off-season. Stimac sions, and a box of human feces. “I see also championed the Young People’s no reason why ‘smut’ should be foisted Theater Workshop, which gave a generaon the audience!” complained one out- tion of middle school students their first raged theatergoer in a letter to the editor chance to join the tap-dancing chorus of of The Star.

Anything Goes.

The financial debacles of those ideStimac was adept at drawing crowds alistic 1970s years, as creative and vital with movie-marquee names: Dougas the work may have been, would hover las Fairbanks Jr., Carrie Fisher, Dick I T WA S A S Y S T E M D E S I G N E D T O L U R E A C E R TA I N K I N D B Y T H E T U R N O F T H E M I L L E N N I U M , T H E S T R U C T U R E WA S FA L L I N G D O W N A R O U N D T H E S TA G E M A N A G E R ’ S E A R S .

A C C O R D I N G T O J O S H G L A D S T O N E , W H O WA S B R O U G H T O N B O A R D I N 2 0 0 0 T O B L O W AWAY T H E C O B W E B S , PA I L S H A D T O B E P L A C E D I N T H E W I N G S W H E N I T R A I N E D , T H E R E WA S A SHOCKING AMOUNT OF MOLD IN THE BASEMENT DRESSING ROOMS, AND YOU COULD PUT YOUR HAND THROUGH T H E U P H O L S T E R Y O F T H E A U D I T O R I U M S E AT I N G

Cavett, Comden and Green, Dina Merrill, and George C. Scott played the John Drew in quick succession. Celebrity was, and still is, good for ticket sales, and under Stimac and his successor, Wilson Stone, audiences could expect a regular round of stardusted variety shows (A Night of Stars, to mark Guild Hall’s 50th anniversary), musicals (Tallulah!), and cabaret evenings (the Great Ladies of Song series).

Still, by the late 1980s there was palpable tension between the board of trustees’ desire that the theater make money and the desires of its creative leaders to strive toward innovation. (“But no small theater makes money,” lamented one of the Community Theater Company’s directors, stating the obvious, in 1989.)

By the 1990s, community theater and cabaret had become the John Drew’s meat and potatoes; but, like a steady diet of traditional steak and baked, they perhaps weren’t the most scintillating fare.

True, a bit of spice had been added to the lineup with the introduction of the Hot Topics series, Sherrye Henry’s popular weekly panel discussions on subjects such as “Movies and Morality,” but new work was not being commissioned, and, on some nights, it felt as if the audience were being lulled into a state of drowsy, cozy stasis. Ticket-buyers certainly appreciated the beauty — indeed, the glory — of being able to hear extraordinary classical guitar or ballads from the American songbook, right here, in what was still a relatively small town, but the theater hadn’t delivered a revolutionary broadside or creative big bang in quite some time. The John Drew had entered middle age.

And, by the turn of the new millennium, the structure itself was falling down around the stage manager’s ears.

According to Josh Gladstone, who was brought on board by Ruth Appelhof, Guild Hall’s director, in 2000 to blow away the cobwebs, pails had to be placed

Some locals will recall this scene from The Gay Divorce, which starred Carol Stone, in 1950. Maintaining links with the past — restoring the beloved circus-tent interior — was paramount when the theater was closed in 2007 for a massive overhaul under the supervision of Randy M. Correll of Robert A.M. Stern Architects;. Guild Hall archives

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76 at strategic spots in the wings when it rained, there was a shocking amount of mold in the basement dressing rooms, and you could put your hand through the upholstery of the auditorium seating if you thrust into it with conviction.

Appelhof’s charge to Gladstone was daunting: to reclaim the John Drew’s place as a producing theater.

The theater was closed in 2007 and 2008 for a massive overhaul, under the supervision of Randy M. Correll, a senior partner at Robert A.M. Stern Architects of New York; this was part of an overall renovation of Guild Hall that took five years and $13 million to complete. The theater’s revamp stretched from the basement — under which groundwater from the dreen that runs from Town Pond to Hook Mill was discovered, rising and falling with the water table — to the air vents. “The air-conditioning system was so loud, they had to turn it on full blast before a show and at intermission, so they could turn it off during the performance,” Correll told The Times. The seats, which had faded from rose-pink to bone-white, were replaced, the dressing rooms entirely rebuilt, and the archaic operating systems, some of which dated back to the 1930s, modernized.

Liza Minnelli sang at the gala reopening in 2009. But even more razzle-dazzling was news that the board now fully supported a return to producing plays.

Harris Yulin had been invited to direct The Glass Menagerie, starring Amy Irving, with sets by Beowulf Boritt. The production that reopened the theater that July was, by all accounts, breathtaking. “It just sparkled,” Gladstone said. “It showed people what the Drew could be. This was the juncture point, to me, between the early years and what I think of as the contemporary era.”

Alec Baldwin of Amagansett, who had seen The Glass Menagerie, wanted to get involved, too, and he offered to pair with Tony Walton to do Equus in 2010.

Peter Shaffer, the playwright, joined Baldwin and Walton to do rewrites right there, in the auditorium, during rehearsals. It was a thrilling moment for all who were part of it. “And because of Alec’s involvement,” Gladstone said, “and maybe because of the famous nude scene, which was very tantalizing, it was a huge hit, setting a high-water mark for attendance.”

Baldwin’s involvement went a long way toward legitimizing the John Drew as a place where important theater could be created. Soon, Baldwin had gotten involved with the Summer Docs documentary film series, too, and joined Guild Hall’s board of trustees.

The old problem of profitability was always present, of course. In 2012, a circa 1964 absurdist comedy by Murray Schisgal called Luv was resurrected, and while everyone said the set was stunning — with the Manhattan skyline, circa Mad Men, illuminated behind the players — Guild Hall took a bath. Like The Glass Menagerie, Arthur Miller’s All My Sons in 2015 was a phenomenon with audiences and critics, with a midcentury Midwestern house constructed on the stage, Alec Baldwin as Joe, the grieving father of a lost soldier, and Laurie Metcalf as his wife, Kate, but the expenses for such magnificence were, frankly and to quote Gladstone, “rather steep.”

It did not escape the notice of those minding the books that years when plays were not mounted produced better bottom lines. “Plays have a 10-day loading period, when the theater is dark,” Gladstone explained, “and summer is not that long.” And so, for a time, the focus was by necessity shifted back to concert staging. It was undeniable: Ben Folds and Mavis Staples brought down the house . . . and kept the theater in the black.

In 2016, Appelhof retired, and Andrea Grover took the helm of Guild Hall.

Grover inherited a well-oiled machine:

a sizable staff, an extended theatrical season, and audiences eager for forward-leaning acts of a high caliber. Grover’s mandate was quite different from that of her most recent predecessors — even as her ambitious, skyward vision, in some ways, reflected that of the organization’s Depression-era founders.

The year 2018 brought a “Summer of Stories,” with programming that was several degrees more adventurous and inclusive, with Hasan Minhaj and Tig Notaro as headliners, Questlove’s Midsummer Night Conversations on Creativity, and an experimental theater piece called The Summit, about the “techno elite” of the year 2081 departing their bodies to live in virtual reality.

A “Summer of Song” followed in 2019: It was the most eclectic programming the theater had ever seen, and it was its most successful year, in terms of attendance and income. Not a single play was presented, but, instead, a dense calendar that packed in as many events as possible into the short, sweet weeks of July and August. Any given night might bring the Kronos Quartet or Philip Glass — big names, yes, but big in the avant-garde.

A hand of welcome was extended to the Latino and African-American communities via partnerships with OLA (the Organización Latino-Americana of Eastern Long Island) and the Bridgehampton Community Center. “It’s been a wonderful rebirth. It’s jazz, and the Guitar Masters series, and a concert by the Avett Brothers, and then a topical comedian,” said Gladstone, adding: “And we do still have maybe two or three cabaret shows, too.”

Grover and Gladstone were dreaming big for the summer of 2020. The success of the preceding two summers was snowballing. John Waters — the Sultan of Sleaze, the Pope of Trash — was coming, as were Alan Cumming, Melissa Etheridge, and the stars of Hadestown. . . . But all these best-laid plans were

gone with the wind when Covid-19 blew in, clearing streets like a cyclone and plummeting businesses into ruin. The theater went dark.

Without exaggeration, the pandemic has been the greatest challenge that Guild Hall and the John Drew Theater have ever faced. But the community is rallying around its beloved institutions, raising money, donating artwork, and

dreaming up new ways to bridge the financial, emotional, and cultural gap between before and after.

The economic blow of 2020 was faced as a challenge to rise above, with a resourceful pivot during lockdown to online programming and the John Drew Backyard Theater — as Gladstone put it, “home runs in the face of adversity. ” As surely as dress rehearsals are disasters

and show-chorus geeks gotta sing, the John Drew Theater was not be lost. The community wouldn’t stand for it, and what East Hampton wants, East Hampton gets.

The auditoreum of the John Dtew Theater has not yet reopened to live performaance.

Details on outdoor plays, screenings, and virtual events can be found at guildhall.org.

Clockwise from bottom left: Eddie Dowling, director, and the actress Claire Luce rehearse The Time of Your Life by William Saroyan, 1962. Photograph by David Workman. The John Drew ceiling in 2009. Photograph by Gordon M. Grant. Selling refreshments in the lobby, 1960s. Guild Hall archive. A marquee features The Beatles Yellow Submarine, A Night With Sheldon Harnick, and a Goldilocks matinee, 1971.

Photograph by J. Williams.

The Last Voyage A N E XC E R P T F R O M A M A N DA M . FA I R B A N KS ’ S T H E LO S T B OYS O F M O N TAU K .

T H E T R U E S T O RY O F T H E W I N D B LOW N A N D T H E F O U R M E N W H O VA N I S H E D AT S E A A N D T H E S U R V I VO R S T H E Y L E F T B E H I N D.

On March 22, 1984, the Wind Blown, a commercial fishing boat, departed from Montauk Harbor on eastern Long Island around dusk to begin its first trip of the early-spring season. The four-man crew planned a weeklong trip to catch tilefish about 120 miles offshore.

It was a gray, frigid, 40-degree afternoon. A light easterly wind indicated the possibility of a brewing storm, but it was nothing that Capt. Michael Stedman thought his 65-foot, steel-hulled boat couldn't handle.

Back then, even vaguely reliable longterm weather forecasting didn't exist.

Offshore fishermen received twice-daily weather updates on single-side-band radios. And if you weren't standing in your wheelhouse at five o'clock in the morning

and eleven o'clock at night, your radio tuned to channel 2670, you missed it. For commercial fishermen, as Mike knew firsthand, a little weather was nothing to fear — an occupational hazard if ever there was one. Besides, if things got really bad, he could always run back to the harbor and ride out the storm.

It was Mike's fourth or fifth offshore trip aboard the Wind Blown, and the young, relatively inexperienced crew hadn't yet jelled. The foursome was still figuring out how best to work together.

Mike had purchased the Wind Blown only months prior, after years spent working on other men's boats. At long last, he was the captain of his own vessel and in control of his own destiny — financial and otherwise. Captain Mike

answered to no one but himself.

The year 1984 was the height of the commercial tilefishing boom — right in the sweet spot of a decade-long East Coast fishing gold rush that spanned from the late 1970s to the late 1980s. Historic numbers of golden tilefish flooded the North Atlantic. It was pretty much a guaranteed bonanza for anyone who geared up, went out, and did it. Back in those days, baited circle hooks pulled in 30-to-40-pound tilefish. It was like plucking money from the sea: soaking-wet dollar bills that reeked of rotten fish guts.

Depending on the going price and grade of tilefish, a successful offshore trip promised a longlining crew anywhere from $15,000 to $30,000. Once

The Wind Blown was launched in 1966 as a head boat for paying anglers. There were concerns from the day it arrived in Montauk that it was not constructed to withstand heavy seas. Photograph by Morgan McGivern

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E V E RY O F F S H O R E T R I P WA S A B I T L I K E GA M B L I N G , A L B E I T W I T H T H E A DVA N TAG E O F A S TAC K E D D E C K . E AC H C R E WMEMBER STOOD TO MAKE BETWEEN $2,500 AND $5,000 F O R A W E E K O F WO R K .

they pulled back into the docks, the crew filled cardboard cartons like bakers frosting a layer cake: ice, tilefish, ice, tilefish.

Whatever landed in Montauk traveled the length of fish-shaped Long Island by truck to the Fulton Fish Market in Lower Manhattan, where it was sold through brokers, mostly to Chinese and Korean buyers. What the commercial fisherman gained in freedom, he lost in transparency, since the pricing structure, like the catch, fluctuated according to supply and quality and freshness — to say nothing of the weather and proximity to holidays and school vacations. Though the Fulton Fish Market has since moved to the Bronx, nearly all of Long Island's annual catch still ends up there. Haggling was the name of the game; the difference of 30 cents a pound could make or break a 20,000-pound haul. Decades prior, the Mafia had taken control of the Fulton Fish Market, seeing it as an ideal, all-cash business for laundering money.

The truck driver eventually returned to Montauk carrying thick wads of cash.

Receipts in hand, each boat owner first subtracted the cost of the trip. In 1984, a typical week offshore ran about $5,000 for food, fuel, and ice. No one got paid until the crew had hosed their vessel clean of blood, dirt, and rusted fishhooks. Cash was king. Some years, owners pulled in upwards of a quarter of a million dollars.

Then as now, commercial fishermen weren't salaried employees. Deckhands worked for a share of the catch — less the owner's and captain's slices of the pie (typically an equal split). Any fish that wasn't the target species (in this case, golden tilefish) went into a sep-

arate cardboard box the crew labeled shack money. The deckhands kept the profits from whatever they caught that wasn't the target species. (A 75-pound swordfish, at $5 a pound, netted a sizable chunk of change.)

Two of the four men on the Wind Blown — Michael Stedman and David Connick — were an improbable pair to have joined forces on an offshore commercial fishing boat. Most Montauk fishermen come from working-class families. Few attend private schools.

Blue-blooded pedigrees are rarer still.

Mike was the 32-year-old son of a Harvard-educated United Nations civil servant. Dave, his 22-year-old mate, was the son of an affluent New York family who belonged to the Maidstone Club and owned a weekend house south of the highway in East Hampton.

Though separated by nearly a decade, Mike and Dave were like brothers, the privileged sons of powerful, domineering fathers. It was a different era, and their fathers had a lot in common.

Both were white-collar men who liked to drink and had wandering eyes. For Mike and Dave, nothing was less appealing than the dry-cleaned suits and suspenders their fathers wore to the office every morning. Social climbing and cocktail-party banter made their skin crawl. The decision to become commercial fishermen was an act of defiance, a discarding of their inheritance.

Mike and Dave showed their rebellion by growing chin-length hair, streaked by the sun. Unlike their fathers, their athletic, sinewy bodies were the result not of playing regular games of tennis or golf but years of riding waves.

Most Montauk fishermen don't surf.

Some don't even know how to swim. In that regard, Mike and Dave were outliers too. If they weren't offshore fishing and the surf was breaking, they could be found at Georgica Beach in East Hampton or Ditch Plain in Montauk — out in the water, straddling their surfboards, their torsos facing the horizon, waiting for another set to roll in — part of a small, insular tribe of eastern Long Island surfers.

The two other men on the Wind Blown's final voyage, Michael Vigilant and Scott Clarke, were young, enthusiastic deckhands from scrappy, hardscrabble families. They were busy sharpening their skills and putting in their time, eager to someday become captains of their own vessels.

Michael Vigilant, the 19-year-old son of a commercial fisherman, was a familiar face around the docks but new to the Wind Blown crew. He was filling in until Tom McGivern, one of the original Wind Blown crewmembers, returned from a surfing trip to the Canary Islands. At 18, Scott Clarke was the fourth and youngest crewmember. A relative newcomer to Montauk, Scott was already well on his way to cementing his reputation as a young man with an ironclad work ethic who wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty.

As lowly deckhands, Michael and Scott were enticed by the cash they might make. Every offshore trip was a bit like gambling, albeit with the advantage of a stacked deck. Each crewmember stood to make between $2,500 and $5,000 for a week of work. With three to four trips each month, the money added up. Even so, the three youngest members of the Wind Blown crew (lacking mortgages and young mouths to feed) could easily drink through it in a week's time. Already the father of three sons, Captain Mike didn't have the luxury of pissing away a week's worth of wages.

He occupied a separate tier of the hierarchy altogether. As owner and boss,

Mary and Mike Stedman and their first child, Chris, in about 1974.

Photograph courtesy Albert N. Cavagnaro

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82 his rank entitled him to an additional percentage of whatever he and his crew hauled back to shore.

But the pull wasn't only about the money. It was about the spirit of the thing. Hundreds of miles offshore, different rules applied. Aboard the Wind Blown, no matter the foursome's divergent social classes, a brotherhood had started to form. And not by accident, but on purpose: Their very lives depended on it.

Commercial fishing has always been a young man's game. Few fishermen work past the age of 50. For some, the older they get, the more the close calls accumulate. And the baton eventually gets passed from one generation to the next. Every offshore trip is an endurance test. Each crew works to the brink of exhaustion — and often well past that.

Commercial fishing is all about pushing boundaries. It becomes a point of pride, the ability to ignore all indications that your body needs to stop and sleep.

Offshore, the mentality is to fish until you simply cannot fish any longer. With a fatality rate 20 to 30 times higher than that of other occupations, commercial fishing is among the most dangerous jobs in the nation. Sinking vessels cause the greatest number of fatalities, followed by fishermen falling overboard.

After tabulating annual fatal workplace injuries, the Bureau of Labor Statistics consistently ranks commercial fishermen above timber cutters (second) and airline pilots (third). For purposes of survival, fishermen (and deckhands especially) develop a remarkable sense of timing and balance. But the danger of the work rarely registers for young men, whose whole lives are stretched out ahead of them, like so many miles of monofilament fishing line.

"A fisherman is like a good cheese," Hilda Stern, the wife of Richard Stern, a legendary character among the Montauk fleet, said in a profile about captains' wives that appeared in 1976 in The East

Hampton Star. "He just goes on forever."

Mike Stedman was one such fisherman who was sure to get better with age. Longevity coursed through his bloodline. A confident man in the prime of his life, Mike had a smile that radiated contentment. As captain, he relished the healing solitude of being out on the water, the quiet hours alone in his wheelhouse to sit and think, with only the natural world to keep him company, and nobody to bother him. Mike probably never said as much out loud, but he was driven to prove something. It was time to make something of himself.

Deep in the recesses of his mind, though, it's possible that Mike had started to second-guess himself. The rumors

then, many starter boats were made of wood. In fact, given the Wind Blown's steel-hulled underside, Mike was doing better than many of his peers. But with a mortgage, three children, and a $7,000 insurance payment due in a week's time, any repairs or modifications to Mike's brand-new acquisition would have to wait until he owned more of the Wind Blown than the bank did.

Mike was easy to love. He was the cool guy. Everyone wanted to be around him, whether as his friend, as a fisherman, or as a surfer. But his steely will was as strong as his body, and people innately sensed that it was better not to cross him.

Early Wednesday, the day before

FROM THE CAROLINAS TO NEW ENGLAND, WARM, MOIST AIR FROM THE ATLANTIC COLLIDED WITH COLD AIR DESCENDING FROM CANADA TO CREATE A DEGREE OF ATMOSPHERIC INSTABILITY AND INTENSITY FEW, IF ANY, WEATHE R F O R E CA S T E R S H A D P R E D I C T E D. swirled around the docks. Originally a Long Island party boat with a plywood pilothouse and four fish boxes cemented to its deck, the Wind Blown wasn't built for the fierceness of the North Atlantic. The 15 feet added onto her stern by a previous owner had created a destabilizing weakness. Cruder still: Several members of the fleet said she was an unseaworthy piece of shit.

"I remember when Mike brought that boat into the harbor, and seeing that it was a steel hull with a plywood structure," Rick Etzel, a Montauk commercial fisherman who now owns the Breakaway, told me. He remembered thinking: Man, that's not a good combination. For Rick, the addition of the longline drum, which Mike and a friend had bolted onto the roof of the Wind Blown's wooden pilothouse, was but "another head-scratcher."

At the time, the Wind Blown was all that Mike could afford. She was a starter boat, a common first purchase among members of the Montauk fleet. Back

their March 22 departure, the crew began cleaning and refueling the boat at Montauk Harbor, just off West Lake Drive. Dave and one of the younger men went "grub shopping" at the North Main Street I.G.A. in East Hampton.

They filled three or four shopping carts with $800 worth of calorie-dense groceries — enough food to fuel four men working 18-to-20-hour shifts for the next five to seven days.

Six dozen eggs. Loaves of wheat bread. Gallons of orange juice. Packages of English muffins. Containers of oatmeal. Boxes of spaghetti. Jars of Rag£ tomato sauce. Strong coffee. Everything except for three things: fish, bananas, and alcohol. Fish you can always catch.

Bananas are bad luck on fishing boats, a long-held superstition dating back to the slave trade when banana boats were struck by tropical hurricanes — and sank. (Another story goes that a boat carrying a shipload of bacteria-laden bananas killed everyone aboard.) As

Captain Mike Stedman aboard the Marlin IV. Photograph by Morgan McGivern

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for alcohol? Once offshore, even beer is technically forbidden.

Most offshore fishermen, the Wind Blown foursome included, more than made up for weeklong periods of forced sobriety back on dry land. The air would smell sweetly of freshly rolled joints.

Miller High Life, "the champagne of beers," flowed like water. Silver cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon did too.

On Thursday afternoon, Mike kissed and hugged his wife, Mary, and their sons goodbye. His departure that day was nothing out of the ordinary. There was nothing romantic about it. Mike was the provider. It was time to get back out on the water so he could feed his family.

For the three months she called Montauk home, the Wind Blown docked in a slip behind what was then Christman's Restaurant and Bar. Once Mike made his way to the boat, he brought onboard the broccoli and tuna-fish casserole Mary had topped with bread crumbs and freshly grated cheddar cheese.

By afternoon, Dave and Scott were already on the Wind Blown, readying supplies, loading ice, and tossing pieces of squid and mackerel into a plastic bucket to use as bait. Once offshore, they'd supplant it with any eel or trash fish they caught. Mike stood watch from inside his wooden wheelhouse, double-checking gear and stowing away an extra fullbody survival suit a fisherman friend had loaned him, just in case.

Fueled up and ready to go, the Wind Blown was prepared for just about anything that came her way. She had a VHF radio, a single-side-band radio, radar of at least 25 miles, a Loran-C (a hyperbolic radio navigation system), paper charts, and a magnetic compass. A United States Coast Guard inspection from Star Island, Montauk, on February 23, 1984, had confirmed the "presence of proper lifesaving equipment" on the boat.

In 1984, most Atlantic fishermen, Captain Mike included, had yet to invest in weather-fax machines, which, at the time,

measured a little larger than briefcases.

Michael Vigilant was the last to board the Wind Blown that Thursday afternoon. He wore black rubber boots, jeans, a blue flannel button-down shirt, and a denim jacket. Although no one knew it at the time, he had just proposed to his girlfriend.

Young and in love, Michael and Kim Bowman, an 18-year-old senior at East Hampton High School, kissed passionately on the docks that afternoon, their bodies pressed tightly together. Moments earlier, hoping to repair a recent argument, Michael had impulsively offered his hand in marriage. Kim didn't give Michael an answer to his proposal. She promised him they'd talk more about getting married in a week's time, when he got back.

Finally Michael disentangled himself.

Kim and her younger brother, Frankie, waved goodbye from the docks. They watched as the Wind Blown steamed down the narrow, rocky inlet, past Gosman's Restaurant. The boat turned right, out toward the Montauk Lighthouse, and headed southeast into the vast Atlantic.

Minutes later, the Wind Blown reached the edge of the violet-streaked horizon, and quickly motored out of sight.

On Friday, March 23, the sun was not yet an hour high when the men, dressed in foul-weather gear (typically chest-high rubber waders held up with suspenders), went about the tricky task of setting their lines amid the rolling, churning seas. Fish usually bite best at first light, dusk, and high tide. When fishing with a drum, the hooks are typically set over the stern and hauled in at either port or starboard. (When facing toward the bow, or front, of a boat, port and starboard refer to the left and right sides, respectively.)

The Wind Blown crew was longlining for tilefish at the edge of the continental shelf, near Veatch and Atlantis Canyons.

Down below, hundreds of fathoms beneath the inky-blue, rumpled surface,

vast underwater mountain ranges were fertile with marine life.

The crew set out dozens of miles of galvanized steel cable, which fed out from the longline drum fixed to the roof of the Wind Blown's plywood deckhouse. About 30 feet separated each pre-baited circle hook. After the snap-on gear had soaked in the water for a few hours, or overnight, it was time to test it out — and if the fish were biting, to start pulling it back in. The first mate worked the rail, hauling in the yellow-speckled tilefish, alive and squirming, from the ocean floor. The second mate removed the hooks and then, knife in hand, slit the throat of each fish; when they had bled out enough, the third mate would gut them and pack them on ice. It was teamwork, and the Wind Blown's foursome would not yet have been wedded to their particular roles in the way that some more seasoned crews are; the men willingly alternated roles until they found their groove, until they found the rhythm of the sea. If the fish were biting, the crew easily cycled through thousands of baited hooks each day.

Longlines can be set near the surface to catch swordfish or tuna — or near the bottom to catch monkfish or tilefish. The Wind Blown crew, hunting golden tilefish, sank the heavy lines near the ocean floor, marked off by aluminum poles with radar reflectors, strobe lights, and flame-orange, inflatable high-flyers (a type of buoy) at either end. With thousands of dollars of gear soaking in the water, the foursome shared a meal Dave had prepared in the galley using a propane stove.

The men needed food that stuck to Opposite, the crew of the Wind Blown in March 1984 were, clockwise from bottom left, Scott Clarke, Michael Vigilant, and David Connick— with Will Stedman sharing the banana-seat bike. Catherine Cederquist, bottom right, was Connick’s girlfriend when the crew was lost.

Photographs by Donna Llewellyn, courtesy of Linda Vigilant-Holderman, Morgan McGivern, Dave Connick

From top: Dummy Dummy Dummy Dummy Dummy Dummy Dummy Dummy

86 their ribs. Dave might fry up a steak with baked potatoes. Other nights, dinner looked like grab-and-go sandwiches, piled high with deli meat and generous dollops of mayonnaise, or plate-size squares of Mary's tuna-fish casserole.

After dinner, they'd take turns getting a few hours' sleep, interspersed with twohour shifts in the wheelhouse. The men learned to tell time based on the phases of the moon and the height of the sun at noon. On clear nights, constellations illuminated the night sky. Once dawn came, the smell of freshly brewed coffee stood in for alarm clocks. Day after day, the pattern repeated itself. Though monotonous, a repetitive, predictable routine was what the men needed to transform steel fishing lines into a paycheck substantial enough to be split four ways.

The Wind Blown's first few days offshore on this March trip weren't especially fruitful. Fish aren't dispersed in equal numbers throughout the ocean.

The act of catching them is both an art and a science, requiring that fishermen be acutely attuned to the present moment. A quarter-degree change in water temperature can shift their migratory patterns — as can shifting tides, wind, the time of day, and a whole host of unpredictable factors. It's often a game of luck and instinct, predicting where exactly they'll congregate next.

All that week, the crew persevered.

Captain Mike eventually hit the jackpot. He transformed the Wind Blown into a fish-catching machine. His crew started hauling in thousands of pounds.

Tilefish were coming up on every hook.

Fishermen describe such conditions as "boiling hot."

As the week wore on, the weather worsened. Late March in the North Atlantic is unpredictable and often brutal. Storms can well up overnight. The wind rarely stops blowing. The air is bone-cracking cold, the kind of chill you can't shake, no matter how many cups of coffee you've drunk. Though

technically springtime, late March on the East End of Long Island can feel as bitter and raw as January.

On Wednesday, March 28, at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, the National Weather Service in New York City posted a gale warning. Back in Montauk, Chuck Weimer was out day-fishing for flounder on his 40-two-foot boat, the Zeda, in Block Island Sound. He noted in his red leather logbook: "Really pretty rough in the late afternoon," and observed that winds were blowing easterly at 20 to 30 miles per hour. "All boats on their way in."

Later that evening, the National Weather Service upped the ante, issuing a winter storm warning. But the forecasters gravely missed the mark.

As the mass headed north, it formed an eye, around which the wind flowed east to west, with the northwest quadrant headed straight for eastern Long Island. Winds picked up from 30 to 50 to 75 miles per hour. The Montauk Point Lighthouse eventually reported wind gusts of over 100 miles per hour.

Any Montauk-based fishing vessels that were still out had started making their way back toward land. Each captain adopted a different strategy for navigating the pitch-black, angry seas.

Some docked to the north in Stonington, Connecticut, for the night. There are worse ways to spend a stormy, early-spring evening than saddled up to a bar, a few drinks in.

Kevin Maguire had been out fishing for yellowtail flounder aboard his boat, the Pontos, a 55-foot steel-hulled vessel with a plywood wheelhouse, before taking shelter in Stonington.

That night, when he and a group of his buddies walked toward the Portuguese Holy Ghost Society, a popular watering hole among Connecticut fishermen, the wind was blowing at 80 to 90 miles per hour and kept pushing him backward.

Kevin felt weightless. "It was like you were flying," he recalled. With his arms

outstretched, only the tips of his toes clung to the pavement. All these years and hurricanes later, try as he might, Kevin has never been able to replicate that feeling of weightlessness.

Richie Rade, the captain of the Marlin IV, had been out in Atlantis Canyon, near the Wind Blown, longlining for tilefish. Atlantis Canyon is about 120 miles southeast of Montauk Point.

Richie and Mike made radio contact around nightfall. High winds made the rain blow sideways. Richie's men couldn't see a thing. Mike informed Richie that he was heading back. Richie took the long way home. Rather than risk the treacherous sliver of ocean that divides Montauk Point and Block Island, he headed north around Block Island. With the inlet into Montauk Harbor impassable because the water was so high, a dozen other vessels dropped anchor in Fort Pond Bay a few miles west of the Montauk Point Lighthouse.

Low and slow was the name of the game. In theory, if a vessel stays low in the water, crashing waves break over rather than overturn it. No captains I interviewed panicked enough to dump their catch. One vessel, caught in a rip current, sent out a Mayday alert; the Coast Guard (the nearest headquarters were in New Haven, Connecticut) sped to its rescue. Sensing danger, some captains headed in the exact opposite direction — farther offshore. It's the counterintuitive notion some seamen believe carries the greatest likelihood of survival: pointing the bow of a boat toward oncoming waves is a safer bet than if the vessel's stern (or rear) is the first point of contact.

With thousands of pounds of sweet, buttery tilefish stored inside wooden boxes packed on ice, the Wind Blown careened up the East Coast; the eastern tip of Long Island was square in her path. The Wind Blown soon confronted not just a storm, but a dreaded nor'easter. The National Weather Service later

Clockwise from upper right, March 29, 1984, the Lady Alice beat back into Montauk Harbor, while in Springs, rescuers evacuated residents by boat.

Mahoneyville, with a peace sign painted on a barn roof, was at the center of the summer surfing world in East Hampton and was where Mike Stedman and Dave Connick’s converging paths came together. The Marlin IV, a Montauk party boat. Photographs by The East Hampton Star and Morgan McGivern

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described it as "one of the most severe general cyclonic storms in recent history."

From the Carolinas to New England, warm, moist air from the Atlantic collided with cold air descending from Canada to create a degree of atmospheric instability and intensity few, if any, weather forecasters had predicted.

Thirty-six thousand Long Island residents lost power that evening, as surging tides flooded basements and hurricane-force winds downed trees.

Out east, as the far end of Long Island is known to locals, duneland and beach grass didn't stand a chance. The sea swallowed half a dozen homes along Dune Road in Westhampton Beach, and residents of low-lying areas, such as Gerard Drive in Springs and Lazy Point in Amagansett, evacuated their homes because of rising water. In Sag Harbor, the water went all the way up to the front door of the American Legion. The Dory Rescue Squad, experienced ocean fishermen wearing bright-orange life vests, evacuated nine Cape Gardiner residents using the same type of plywood boat made popular by prior generations of whalers and haul-seiners (a type of fisherman who used a dory to haul nets out to sea and a truck to pull the nets back to shore). It was the worst squall to hit eastern Long Island since the notorious Ash Wednesday Storm of 1962.

In New Jersey, powerful gales buckled the Atlantic City boardwalk and torrential rains flooded casino lobbies.

Blizzard-like conditions blanketed Connecticut in 18 inches of fresh snowfall.

Farther north, two Massachusetts residents lost their lives as the weather made landfall. A fallen electrical wire and a tree falling on a van were to blame.

On Cape Cod, 80-mile-per-hour winds blew the Eldia, a 473-foot steel freighter, ashore; the Coast Guard evacuated its 23 crewmen via helicopter. The savage, unnamed storm, which meteorologists described as a "springtime freak," toppled the Great Point Light on the north-

ernmost tip of Nantucket Island. The force of the 1984 gale reduced the stone lighthouse, built in 1818 on the site of the original 1784 light, to a pile of rubble.

Once morning dawned and President Ronald Reagan assessed the damage, he pledged federal disaster relief. But the boys aboard the Wind Blown were still out. They were in the fight of their lives.

On Thursday, March 29, Chuck Weimer was safely back home in Montauk. He noted in his logbook that hurricane-force winds had picked up, blowing east to northeast at 50 to 75 miles per hour. Offshore, the sea's surface became unreadable through blowing spray and foam. "Did not sail," Chuck wrote in allcaps of the fateful day that he, and so many others on the East End, have since committed to memory. "Wind blown went down or is lost. Really bad news."

Richard Stern, the captain of the Donna Lee, a dragger, last spoke with Mike Stedman on a VHF radio early Thursday, around seven o'clock in the morning, from the comfort of his Montauk living room. Mike sounded relatively okay, despite the horrific winds and 30-foot waves. He conveyed a sense of optimism. Richard expected the Wind Blown to roll into Montauk no later than 11 o'clock that morning.

Standing six-foot-seven, Richard was a legendary fisherman. His hands were the size of baseball gloves. He predicted the weather using two techniques: looking up at the sky and reading his barometer. Over the years, Richard had lost two trawlers to weather-related incidents. Earlier in the week, he had rightly forewarned members of the Montauk fleet that a storm coming up from the Carolinas spelled trouble: "I don't give a fuck what the weatherman says. It's a major storm. People are going to die."

Mike's call to Richard around 7 a.m. placed him 12 nautical miles south of the Midway Buoy, the marker dividing the 14 miles of ocean between Montauk Point and Block Island. Richard

assumed the Wind Blown was navigating the deep water south of the buoy.

"Deep water is safer in bad weather because there is less chance a boat will be hit by large or unexpected waves," The East Hampton Star wrote in one of its two front-page, above-the-fold stories, which ran the following week. The boldface headlines read: "Fishermen Feared Lost in Storm Off Montauk" and "The Town Is Battered."

Kevin Maguire, captain of the Pontos, spoke with Mike on channel 67 of a two-way VHF radio late Wednesday night and again early Thursday morning. Mike had just hung up with Richard Stern. Gale-force winds and crashing waves were hammering the Wind Blown from all directions.

Depending on sea conditions, tilefishermen usually made it back from the canyons in 12 to 18 hours. By Thursday morning, the Wind Blown crew had surpassed 24 hours in transit, finally approaching Montauk when the northeast wind and rising tide were perilously at their highest. At the time, Mike told Kevin that the Wind Blown was about a dozen miles southeast of Montauk Point. A natural-born stoic, Mike was letting Mother Nature run her course.

What other choice did he have?

Captain Mike possessed the hardwon bravado of a man who had successfully charted the exact same course dozens of times before. The trick was staying steady and calm. Panic was for amateurs. Once he made it home to East Hampton, sitting on his couch with a cold pint of beer in hand, the whole thing would make for an epic story. It was a tale as old as time: a young, heroic captain had faced the inhumanity of the sea — and persevered.

But early Thursday, Kevin heard something in his friend's voice he had never heard before. Mike's voice trembled when he spoke.

"Please tell my wife I love her," Mike said.

"Mike, you're going to come in and

tell her yourself," Kevin responded.

It was the last time anyone heard Mike Stedman's voice.

When Mike Stedman went off to sea, he left behind his wife, Mary, and their three sons: Christopher, William, and Shane. The past few years of the couple's marriage had been rocky ones — the arrival of three boys in nine years, the emotional and financial strain that raising young children places on even the strongest relationships. The relentlessness of his work, and his frequent absences, had driven an undeniable wedge between husband and wife. Of the pair, Mike was the anchor, the stable, reliable parent.

Dave Connick's last few conversations with his mother, Alice, had been strained. She had frequently expressed her disapproval of the dangerous work her son had chosen. But life at sea fed his restless, fearless soul, and he refused to back down. Upon his return, he also had plans to meet up with his girlfriend, Catherine Cederquist.

Scott Clarke had been raised by a single mother. For years it had been Donna and Scott against the world.

Scott had left home at 14, and a pack of commercial fishermen had become the father figures he never had. Scott needed to test out his sea legs. He'd promised his mother that he'd be careful.

Michael Vigilant, too, had a single mother waiting for him back at home.

Maude had been widowed six years earlier: her fisherman husband drowned in November of 1978 in the Gulf of Mexico. Like his father, Michael had never learned to swim. After Michael proposed to Kim, he had asked her to wait for him until he came back. It was impossible to imagine that Michael would never pull into the docks again, his jean jacket smelling sweetly of fish scales.

Mourners unable to fit in the packed Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church in East Hampton stood outside to listen to a Mass for Mike Stedman and Dave Connick through open doors. Photograph by Mary-Elizabeth Gifford/The East Hampton Star

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Call (631) 638-BONE (2663)

or visit stonybrookmedicine.edu/CMH

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Practice Locations Close to You: East Hampton Greenport Hampton Bays Mattituck Shelter Island Southampton Wading River Wainscott Westhampton Coming Soon: Peconic Landing Riverhead

Manor Lane South - East Hampton 5 BR/4 BA on .95 acres.

Last Ask - $1,349,000

27 Edwards Lane - East Hampton Classic 19th Century - modernised 6 BR. Last Ask - $4,475,000

39 Egypt Close - East Hampton 4 BR/4 BA on 1.1 Acre. Prime South of Highway Last Ask - $5,495,000

Bull Path - East Hampton 4 BR/2.5 BA on 2.5 acres.

Last Ask - $1,795,000

Church Lane - Bridgehampton 2 BR/2 BA on a hidden .45 acre flag lot Last Ask - $2,200,000

Arbor Path - Amagansett 7 contiguous building lots offered as a package.

Last Ask - $8,000,000

Edwards Hole Road - East Hampton 3 BR/2.5 BA on .51 acres.

Last Ask - $1,395,000

6th Street - East Hampton 3 BR/2.5 BA w/pool on .36 acres.

Last Ask - $725,000 - Under Contract

Cove Hollow Road - East Hampton 3 BR/2.5 BA on .6 acres.

Last Ask $1,995,000 - Under Contract

ROSEHIP PARTNERS REAL ESTATE 3 Railroad Avenue - East Hampton 631-324-0009 www.rosehippartners.com www.hamptonsrentals.com www.hamptonsrealty.com

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