REPORTER FILE PHOTO
Glynis Berry, executive director of Peconic Green Growth, a small non-profit concerned with water quality, gave a PowerPoint presentation on the Island’s septic systems to the Town Board work session Tuesday.
A crisis is in the making and we’re at a tipping point because of antiquated systems, Ms. Berry said, and the discharge of nitrogen into our ground water, creeks, ponds and bays. (more…)
AMBROSE CLANCY PHOTO | The Town Board in work session Tuesday afternoon. From left, Councilman Paul Shepherd, Deputy Supervisor Chris Lewis, Councilman Peter Reich and Councilman Ed Brown. Supervisor Jim Dougherty is on vacation.
The Town Board took up the issue of hiring a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) consultant for the town at its work session Tuesday. (more…)
PETER BOODY PHOTO | Everest conqueror Melina Wein is perfectly at home at her house on Ram Island.
Building a business on Shelter Island has been a little like climbing Mount Everest for Melina Wein, who founded her own real estate brokerage here in 1998, seven years after she and her husband Marc made their climb to the 18,000-foot base camp on their honeymoon.
“I didn’t start out really planning to be here or there or at some point in five years,” she said of her first days after hanging out her shingle as a broker. “It was really like climbing Everest. You take every step and see where the next one will get you.”
The business trajectory has been ever higher, she said. The mountain ascent, on the other hand, got her a case of altitude sickness. “Above 16,000 feet, my body went into shock,” she said, but she made it with Marc’s help. Her firm has made it, too, in a way she believes might not have been possible in the Hamptons, where big regional firms dominate the real estate business.
Four years after their marriage, when she and Marc decided to move here from Manhattan in 1996, she had no thoughts of going into real estate — but she knew she had to do something, “not only financially, but because I like to work.” He suggested real estate as a business that can be conducted outside the big city infrastructure. She agreed to give it a try, earning her license and going to work for Griffing & Collins.
By then, she’d long since fallen in love with Shelter Island, to which Marc had introduced her as soon as they started dating. It reminded her in many ways of her grandparents’ place on Mount Desert Island in Maine, where she’d happily spent some of her childhood summers.
She’d also spent time in Europe, where her family had its roots. Her Dutch mother lost members of her family to the Nazis before she’d been able to make it to the United States after the war. Her maternal grandmother, a Christian who’d married an Orthodox Jew, worked in the Dutch resistance during the occupation.
Her adopted father, Victor Wyler, whom Melina’s mother married when Melina was two, is Swiss. He had come to the States before the war. An attorney, he ran family corporations that included a watch manufacturer.
Melina, born in Manhattan in 1962, was one of five kids. After the family moved to Westchester, she attended Rye Country Day, graduating in 1980. She was a jock. “I loved sports,” she said, excelling in field hockey and tennis.
Then on to Skidmore College, where she majored in English history and minored in art history, graduating in 1984. From there, “I did what I think everybody tried to do: go to New York and get an apartment.”
She started work as a secretary at an advertising firm and soon advanced to assistant account executive, working with Johnson & Johnson on feminine products for a while, “not the most exciting topic.” But she “went on to dealing with the liquor market at that time, which was in a funk. And all of a sudden wine coolers hit the market.”
She took a job at McAdams Group, travelling across Canada and later Europe before moving on to “educational special products,” which involved advising doctors.
Melina wasn’t into blind dates, but a physician on staff asked if she’d meet a friend of his for a date, a man who owned an independent TV studio in Manhattan. It took a while for them to meet. When they finally did, “We had a great date, got engaged three months later and married six months after that,” Melina said.
“Marc had a dream to climb to the base camp at Everest and I agreed to go with him; that was our honeymoon.” They trained by entering stair-climbing competitions in the city, wearing hiking boots and backpacks loaded down with books, and running in marathons, including the 10K on Shelter Island, where Marc had the Ram Island harborside home in which the couple would later move and raise their two kids.
Son Everest, born within the year after the big climb, and daughter Shelter, born one year later on the same day, are now 21 and 20, Everest entering his senior year at Hobart and Shelter her junior year at Connecticut College.
Their daughter’s name is proof enough the Weins love the Island. For a better environment in which to raise their kids, they decided to move here in 1996, before the kids were old enough to be too involved in school, sports and other activities. They still have their place in the city.
Marc, busy with his TV studio, until recent years went into town at least four or five days a week. He’s cut back on city trips and now puts in time as president of the Ram Island Association and a member of the town’s Waterways Management Advisory Council.
Melina served for 13 years on the board of the Shelter Island Public Library. Before knees became an issue, the Weins always ran in the 10K, making it the centerpiece of a 50th birthday party for Marc soon after they moved here. They invited 100 friends who had to run (or at least walk), “with no excuses.”
Rowing, sailing, motor boating and ice boating when Coecles Harbor freezes have all been important parts of their lives here. So has conservation. Melina cited the Group for the East End as well as the Mashomack Preserve, Sylvester Manor and the Peconic Land Trust as vitally important organizations she and Marc support.
Real estate was “not something I thought I’d ever do” but she loves it, she said, because it allows her to meet interesting people and gives her some flexibility: “It’s very much full-time but it’s not necessarily 9 to 5.” Another plus was having her office right across the street from school when her kids were there.
“It was hard and it still is hard to some extent,” she said of her business, especially in the years after the 2008 downturn. “Like anything else, you have to work hard to reap the benefits and I’m extremely fortunate because I’ve got great people working for me and wonderful people who’ve been our clients as well as customers.” Once a one-woman operation, the office now includes six full-time agents and two part-timers, plus a full-time administrative assistant.
Speaking of starting up years ago, she said, “If you were responsive and got back to people, and you were honest with them and you learned your stuff, about the Island, the houses, the zoning rules and all the rest, you couldn’t go wrong if you were committed time-wise.”
To her customers, Melina always tries to send a message: “If you want to come to Shelter Island because you love it so much, understand what you love and find a way to give back and be part of it.”
MATHIEU ASSELIN PHOTO | The Sylvester Manor House and grounds will fall under the Sylvester Manor Educational Farm’s umbrella by the end of the year, a gift from owner Eben Fiske Ostby.
With the opening of the Sylvester Manor archives exhibit at New York University’s Bobst Library in New York City has come word that Eben Fiske Ostby, the manor’s owner, is donating the historic house and grounds to the nonprofit Sylvester Manor Educational Farm. Plans call for transferring the deed by the end of the year.
“This is an especially exciting time for me and for the organization as we put in place the next chapter in the Manor’s history,” Mr. Ostby told those who attended last week’s exhibit opening. The exhibit will run through July 15.
Last year, Mr. Ostby donated more than 83 acres of land to the educational farm organized by his nephew, Bennett Konesni. That transfer enabled the educational farm to receive community preservation funds to protect the fields as farmland. This latest gift, representing the bulk of the remaining property, adds more than 140 acres to the previously gifted land. It includes all the historic structures — the 1737 Georgian Manor House and the 1810 windmill and barns.
The family will retain only a small plot that won’t be fully subdivided from the manor lands to continue the 360-year legacy of Sylvester descendants on the property.
Sara Gordon, formerly of the Peconic Land Trust, joins the Sylvester Manor staff as strategic director to work with executive director Cara Loriz in handling the property transfer and preparing for the demands the new gift will create.
“Since I inherited Sylvester Manor several years ago, we have established a nonprofit to take on the mission of the farm, the manor, house and its role in the community,” Mr. Ostby said in announcing the gift. “I believe that the nonprofit is now strong enough to handle ownership of the property, so our next priority is to transfer the manor and its land to this organization” he said.
The Reporter will be visiting the New York University exhibit Friday and providing an overview of it on its website and in the paper.
JULIE LANE PHOTO | Michael Coles reflects on his career, community involvement on Shelter Island and his selection as the Lions Club Man of the Year.
Michael Coles isn’t a man who just throws money at a project and then turns his back. His long involvement supporting projects on Shelter Island, especially those that benefit children, comes from an unshakable belief: “You can have a house in a place, but you don’t really live there until you get involved.”
Because he has lived that creed on Shelter Island, he has been chosen the Lions Club Citizen of the Year and will be honored at a dinner on Thursday, May 23 at a place to be determined.
“Michael Coles’ contributions bridge the gap between those in financial need and organizations in need of his relentless diplomacy,” said Dr. Frank Adipietro, Lions Club president.
A modest man, Mr. Coles is loathe to talk about his efforts that have benefitted Shelter Island. In response to being asked about the honor the Lions are bestowing, he said the organization is an organization known for its many good works and if his selection can boost their work, he was willing to accept the honor.
He credits his late wife, Joan Collins, with spurring him to do good works on the Island, and his second wife, Edie Landeck, with demonstrating the same commitment to supporting important activities here. When Mike Laspia at Mashomack Preserve first asked Mr. Coles to serve on that organization’s Board of Directors, he was quick to recommend his wife Joan for the post, saying her commitment to the preserve would make her right for the board. Later, Mr. Coles did serve nine years on that board, including six as its president.
He acknowledged Edie, who he married in 2000, for the work she’s doing to restore Sylvester Manor. She, in turn, thanks him for help in making her fund raising efforts on behalf of the Manor smoother and more effective.
Born in Britain, Mr. Coles joined the Royal Navy at 18 where he piloted single-engine fighter bombers from an aircraft carrier during the Korean War. But when he left the service after eight years, he lacked a college education and thought his job prospects in England were bleak. That prompted him to seek a graduate degree from Harvard University, despite his lack of an undergraduate degree.
When Harvard said “yes,” he moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he met and married his first wife, Joan.
Upon graduation in 1961, he got a job with Goldman Sachs, working in the firm’s corporate finance department. Named a partner in 1968, he took over the company’s international business department, spending 18 years opening offices in, among other places, London, Zurich, Tokyo and Hong Kong.
By the mid 1980s, Mr. Coles decided it was time to leave that part of his business career behind and, at 55, became a limited partner while he pursued further education.
Fascinated by and wanting to write about history, he applied to Columbia University, hoping to enroll in a master’s degree program in history.
“I needed an education,” he said simply about his desire to earn a second master’s degree.
But his passage wasn’t so easy without that undergraduate degree, despite his success at Harvard.
“Even Harvard makes mistakes,” a Columbia admissions officer told him. Eventually, he did win a place in the Columbia University history graduate program, securing a second master’s degree in the early 1990s. He has subsequently sold a number of magazine articles, primarily dealing with naval history.
It was his first marriage that brought him to Shelter Island, first as a part-timer, and eventually as a resident. Joan, who was from Cambridge, Massachusetts, was related to the Scudder family on the Island. The Coles’ initial rental here back in 1962 was in a Scudder cottage. In 1978, the couple purchased a house on Gardiners Bay Drive and in 1992, built a residence, also on Gardiners Bay Drive.
Mr. Coles is quick to say his involvement here is “not so much,” but despite his protestations, he has had a long commitment to Mashomack Preserve; been a member of the Maritime Committee for the Shelter Island Yacht Club and was instrumental in building a link between the club and Shelter Island School; is a past chairman of the Shelter Island Preservation Committee; has been involved with the Peconic Land Trust in preservation decisions for the Shelter Island nursery property; chaired the fund raising effort for the FIT Center; worked with Judy Card to create the Island Climbers Tot Lot playground; and guided various fund raising efforts to benefit the Island.
He also played a significant role in the effort to move the town’s youth center away from the recycling center where it was operating temporarily and to bring about an agreement for use of the American Legion Post for youth activities. If that’s not enough, he’s been a significant donor to the Shelter Island Public Library and Shelter Island Friends of Music.
Now in his 80s, he hasn’t slowed, and forges ahead with community involvement. Mr. Coles said he’s following the advice of a Goldman Sachs mentor: “If you get involved, you can’t get uninvolved.”
