Reporter Letters to the Editor

Volunteers needed
To the Editor:
The Dering family owned Sylvester Manor for over 60 years  through economically trying times, two wars and the birth of a nation. Letters from those decades have been  mostly untouched, waiting for transcription for nearly 100 years. Using a computer program, Dragon Dictate by Nuance, I spent this past winter transcribing all 762 of the letters. It has been a thrilling and challenging experience.

I want to share the thrills and challenges with a few volunteers this summer, who will help me compare those transcriptions with the original letters to correct inaccuracies and prepare them for publication for future scholars and friends of Shelter Island.

What I am asking of each of five volunteers is to spend one morning or one afternoon a week with me reading the letters and the transcriptions to make sure that one is a fair representation of the other.

The process will be fun with daily peeks into both small and large windows of a time and place in this nation’s life and the people who inhabited it during turbulent and life-changing events. Through their letters you will meet three generations of Derings, plus people like Hepzibah Small and Charles Storer, Benjamin Talmadge and William Smith, Sarah Thomas and Frances Sage Lawton, John Scholfield and Eliza Gardiner, Frances Huntington and Mary Catherine Havens L’Hommedieu … and many, many more.

And, you will get Historical Society credit for volunteer activity.

High school students and summer mothers, fathers and college-aged workers are welcome to join the team to get this job done.

To sign up, call me at 749-3028.
PATRICiA SHILLINGBURG
Shelter Island

Scoreboard update
To the Editor:
Just to keep everyone up to date on the larger scoreboard project — the scoreboard, dedicated to Coach Ken Lewis, as you all know, is up and running. The plan for the scoreboard area itself includes the installation of a new flagpole, which will be dedicated to Joey Theinert, the mounting of the plaque thanking major donors and a garden area. The plaque remembering Chris Tehan, already in the area, will be moved closer when the flagpole is erected, making the area a sort of “Place of Remembrance.” All the money has already been donated and the necessary services promised.

So, if you notice activity out there over the summer, you’ll know what it’s all about. It’s been wonderful to see the community pull together to make this project happen. Well done, Shelter Island!
CAROL GALLIGAN
Former Scoreboard Committee member

Straining
To the Editor:
I know I’m getting older, senile and my vision is failing. Since this description fits half of the Island, it makes  perfect sense to put out a new phone book with apparently smaller print or a different font that makes it harder to read.

If this is not true, then add “delusional” to my bio.

If this was a financial move, then let me send the $1.76 (or whatever it would be) that would be lost if they return to the previous print. (Who is they?)
DICK BEHRKE
Shelter Island