This week in Shelter Island history
This week in Shelter Island history
50 YEARS AGO IN HISTORY
Representative Adam Clayton Powell Jr. was seated by Congress after being excluded in 1967.
Australian media baron Rupert Murdoch purchased the largest-selling British Sunday newspaper, The News of the World, and would go on to expand his media empire in the United States.
John Lennon’s “2 Virgins” album was declared pornographic in New Jersey.
Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” was the most popular song among listeners in the United States.
Creedence Clearwater Revival released its second album, “Bayou Country,” featuring singles “Good Golly, Miss Molly” and “Proud Mary.”
And on Shelter Island . . .
50 YEARS AGO
School wants no part of ice rink
An effort to create an ice rink on school property became entangled in red tape.
Councilman and Youth Commission member Antonio Labrozzi told his colleagues there was no movement on the effort and the Board of Education rejected establishing a rink that would require weekend supervision, something the school staff was unprepared to offer.
POSTSCRIPT: If the Board of Education had no appetite then or now for an ice rink, the FIT Center has served both students and the wider community with exercise and rehabilitation programs.
Meanwhile, the existence of an ice rink at Mitchell Park in nearby Greenport within walking distance of North Ferry affords Islanders opportunities to skate at reasonable fees with none of the liabilities or costs of operation that a town and/or school rink on the Island would cost.
30 YEARS AGO
DuVivier named to ‘Leaders Program’
Roxanne Switzer DuVivier, a part-time Islander, the Dean of students at Hocking Technical College and chief executive officer of the Gittinger Assessment Center in Ohio, was chosen among top women in management positions from throughout the nation to be named to participate in an international panel of educational leaders.
POSTSCRIPT: Ms. DuVivier is the mother of Anya DuVivier, the daughter she and her husband John adopted from Russia when Anya was 5 years old — an age considered then as too old for adoption.
Anya is currently studying for a law degree at Capital University Law School in Columbus, Ohio, and hopes someday to adopt a Russian child from an orphanage and provide the same types of opportunities for that child she was afforded when the DuViviers brought her to the United States.
20 YEARS AGO
New Justice appointed
Katherine Z. Pope was appointed to the Shelter Island Justice Court bench. She was sworn in for a four-year term at the beginning of January 1999 where she served until 2002.
POSTSCRIPT: Judge Pope and her husband Wane were charged in August 2009 with stealing more than $1 million fom an elderly East End resident who suffered from dementia.
Both were charged with grand larceny after prosecutors said they stole the money from Mary Abbott Estabrook’s fortune. The alleged scheme started in February 2005 and ran through April 2009, during which time the victim suffered from diminished mental capacity, according to the district attorney.
Mrs. Pope was also charged in the grand jury indictment with two counts of identity theft. She presented herself as Ms. Estabrook during telephone stock transactions in 2006 during which more than 12,000 shares of the victim’s stocks were liquidated, according to the district attorney.
Initially, the two pleaded not guilty at their arraignment in Suffolk County Court in Riverhead and bail was set at $100,000 cash or $300,000 bond for Mr. Pope and $100,000 cash or $250,000 bond for Ms. Pope.
In early January 2012, the former justice pleaded guilty to fourth-degree identity theft, a misdemeanor, and her husband, Wayne, pleaded guilty to fourth-degree grand larceny, a felony. Ms. Pope was placed on probation for three years and her husband was placed on probation for five years.
10 YEARS AGO
Rosenblum sworn in for bench
Helen Rosenblum took the oath of office for a second term on the bench of the Shelter Island Justice Court. Justice Rosenblum, running uncontested, was re-elected in November 2008.
POSTSCRIPT: Although first appointed to the bench to fill the seat of Judge Edward “Pete” Hannabury, who died on December 31, 2003, Judge Rosenblum ran for her first full four-year term the following November, and has been re-elected to four-year terms ever since.
