Charity Robey

The Baymen’s Nightmare: All the Scallops Are Dead - The New York Times

There have been lean years in Peconic Bay, on Long Island. But fishermen have never seen a failed harvest like this one.

via www.nytimes.com

My first reported piece for the New York Times.

Glowing worms, spider webs-all in a day's work for this Shelter Island graduate.

COURTESY PHOTO

Emily Hyatt, in Boston’s Kendall Square near BGI Genomics where she worked this past summer.

Emily Hyatt, Shelter Island Class of 2016, is a biochemistry major at one of the best science and engineering colleges in the country, but her love of science started when teacher Dan Williams told her she could do a project on some proteins she had seen online that caught her eye.

The project gave her an idea of what real scientific research is all about when she was still in high school. “He was my enabler,” she said recently. “I just took it and ran.”

Now a senior at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), Emily decided to major in biochemistry and has sharpened her focus on genomics. She’s also working part-time for BGI Americas, part of an international company that provides genome sequencing services, and plans to make a career in the fast-growing area after graduation.

She said she’s been fortunate to find great teachers at RPI, including Donna Crone, Ph.D. “She is my absolute favorite,” said Emily. “She reminds me of a finch, she wakes up really early every day. She’s absolutely the best prof in the bio department.”

Emily has already taken Ms. Crone’s courses in molecular biology and genetic engineering and is about to take the second part of molecular biology, a course known to be extremely tough.

Alongside coursework, Emily has participated in research, including a project last semester that had her working with a type of worm called C. elegans. No ordinary worm, the C. elegans she worked with were engineered with a characteristic that could be considered a benefit only on Halloween, a gene that made them glow green in the dark.

Emily designed and edited the DNA of an E. coli and when the glowing worms ate the E. coli they stopped glowing because her edit interfered with the gene that made them glow.

Her current research project involves figuring out how to engineer E. coli to make spider silk proteins; substances that have applications as medical sutures, coatings, and gels. This metabolic engineering research is the Ph.D project of a graduate student whom she calls “spider man.”

This past summer, Emily had an internship in Boston with BGI Genomics, the largest genetic research center in the world, headquartered in China. The company does genomic sequencing. Emily’s current job with BGI Americas involves contacting scientists at research facilities in North, Central and South America using a National Institute of Health grant list to find people who might need BGI’s services. Although Emily knew that biotechnology and pharmaceuticals were growth areas of industry, she had no idea of the size and competitiveness of the genomics sequencing business.

Emily’s boyfriend went to a large technology-oriented high school in New York City with plenty of college level classes available, and seemingly limitless resources. “By contrast, I went to Shelter Island with 19 kids in a grade.

And yet they did so much. At SIHS, they want kids to see all the things that they can do.”

She and her current roommate have lived together since freshman year, and this year they were joined by her roommate’s boyfriend in a house off campus with a front porch. “It’s cozy,” said Emily. “We’re renting an apartment just like normal people.”

She loves Troy, the small city in upstate New York where RPI is located. “It’s beautiful, and there’s a farmers’ market every weekend.”

She’s still trying to adjust to the sounds of sirens. “I still notice it, especially at night, when I was thinking — ‘Really? Another siren? Can we please stop setting our houses on fire?’”

Learning to love scientific research was just one of the important lessons Emily took away from her experience at the Shelter Island School. In a discipline where strong writers are scarce, and the need to explain complex ideas to a non-scientific public of the utmost importance, Emily is that rare thing in science, a strong writer. “Ms. Colligan taught me how to write, and I try to focus on writing in my humanities courses,” she said.

These days, Emily’s trips to Shelter Island are holiday visits. She has no plans to move back because her work is centered around Boston and the Bay area and Seattle. She’d like to live in a rural area near water, but it has to have a biotech industry so she can continue what she started years ago at a small school where her teachers cared about her, and wanted to give her the world.

She has a giraffe in her office and it's all good.

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO Mary Kanarvogel

A stuffed giraffe named Melvin, completely swathed in toilet paper, stood by the window of Mary Kanarvogel’s office in the Shelter Island School on Halloween as a stream of students came to see him.

But the students, from every grade, shy and soft-voiced, bold and booming, dropped by ostensibly to see Melvin’s costume (the hypochondriacal giraffe went as a mummy) but really to check in with Nurse Mary.

She’s a multi-tasker. While dispensing a mint to a sixth-grader for a sour tummy — “Maybe you had some candy today?” — she tallied the carbohydrates in a high school student’s lunch so he could adjust his dose of insulin accordingly.

Mary Fikslin grew up in Kearny, N.J., a Scots/Irish town with a view across the Meadowlands of the New York City skyline. She and her identical twin Jane were the youngest of six children. Jane, born an hour after Mary, was a complete surprise to everyone except, perhaps, infant Mary.

Mary’s mother worked as a secretary and her father was chief of maintenance for a chemical company. At 4 feet, 10 inches, Mary was “the eighth tallest cheerleader” in the high school squad. “Kearny is still my favorite place,” she said. “I have strong ties.”

Mary’s older sisters and brothers all went to college, but with resources running low by the time Mary and Jane graduated from high school, Mary took a full scholarship at Upsala College, a place she might not otherwise have gone. After two years at Upsala, she changed course, starting over at Rutgers in a nursing program.

In 1981, after six years of college, she had her nursing degree and went to work at Columbia Presbyterian, where she excelled, handling a large and needy patient population, and starting an orthopedic nurse practitioner program. One day, she caught the eye of an HVAC-installer named Mark Kanarvogel, who was renovating rooms in her ward.

Soon he came to her with a splinter in his finger. One of Mary’s colleagues pointed out that he always wore the same shirt. “Just find out if he’s actually wearing the same shirt every day,” she was told. “If so, you can’t go out with him, but if he’s wearing the same style, different shirt every day, then it’s O.K.”

That test, Mark passed.

He told her he lived in Centerport and asked where Mary was from. “I said New Jersey, and he said, ‘On purpose?’” They married in 1985.

Their first child Ian was born in 1986 and Hope came along in 1991. Ian is recently married, and working as a teacher in Oysterponds, and Hope, who is also married, lives in Rutland, Vt.

When Mary met Mark, she had never heard of Shelter Island. “I thought Long Island was a place where rich people went on vacation,” she said. But Mark had spent time at Camp Quinipet as a child, and dreamed of coming back with his own family. “Mark said to me, ‘You get on the ferry and you lose all your bones, you just relax.’”

They found a non-winterized trailer in the Center, and began spending weekends and summers with their growing family. Mary worked as the Camp Nurse at Quinipet in the late 1980s through the early 1990s, and Ian and Hope were campers. In 1997, the family left Centerport for Shelter Island.

“I always thought it was a nice place, I just didn’t want to move here,” she said. “But it turned out to be fabulous.”

On Memorial Day weekend 1998, Pat and Steve Lenox opened a diner that today is known as The Islander. Mary, who had recently moved to the Island, and was working at Eastern Long Island Hospital, went to work there, and loved it, staying until 2001. The stress of nursing had been getting to her. “Waiting tables is serving people, but you can’t kill anyone,” she said.

She also started a business in 1999 called Friendship Quilting, providing machine quilting services to the quilting community, which was vast and growing. Her business was so successful that she found herself with a two-year waiting list, and nervous customers in line to have their quilt finished in time for a birth or wedding.

Working long hours in her basement alone, she realized that her passion for quilting was partly her love of the society of other quilters, and decided to start quilting with friends only.

In 2001, Ruth Mattson was the school nurse for Shelter Island, and when an episode of head lice broke out, Ruth called on Mary, who was working at Eastern Long Island Hospital, to lend a hand. When Ruth decided to leave the position, Mary stepped up, and has been known as Nurse Mary ever since.

Like any community, Shelter Island has problems, and those problems show up in the health and well-being of children. “Some kids here have no health insurance,” Mary said. “In the dead of winter, it gets rough. I do a lot of field work with the Lions Club to distribute IGA food cards, to help families with heat and coats, or help kids who don’t have money for a school trip.”

Mary is not a fan of short-term rentals, which she believes have reduced the number of year-round rentals, and put more pressure on Island families. “I’ve seen so many families have to leave the Island because of the rising cost of living here,” she said.

“There used to be a very small number of reasonable rentals. Now there are none. People can make more money renting weekends. The school enrollments tell the story. People have come to me desperate that their housing is going to short-term rental and they have no place to live. I know a family living on a boat. It affects young people, families that probably shouldn’t live together anymore, have to stay together.”

Though she loves her work, Nurse Mary said there may come a time when she will be ready to see the country. “My sister is already retired, and when I’m ready,” she said, “when it’s not fun anymore, I’m going to rent a drivable Airstream and we’ll go — Women on Wheels.”

Lightning round — Mary Kanarvogel

What do you always have with you? My twin sister and I have gold baseball charms from our dad. He played baseball in the Navy when he was in Okinawa.

Favorite place on Shelter Island? Daniel Lord Road.

Favorite place not on Shelter Island? Kearny, N.J.

What exasperates you? Inefficiency.

When was the last time you were afraid? Yesterday. I heard a BAM! at 6 a.m., and thought the wind blew a tree on the house. It was the pole in my walk-in closet — fell right off the wall.

What is the best day of the year on Shelter Island? The Snapper Derby.

Favorite movie or book? ‘Atlas Shrugged’ by Ayn Rand.

Favorite food? Coffee.

Favorite person, living or dead, who is not a member of the family? Jack Monaghan. A kind and gentle soul.

Favorite elected official? Jimmy Carter.

Veteran Island

SHELTER ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY PHOTO A May 1944 letter from Ignatius Avona, US Navy, to his brother Charles Avona, US Army.

There is an affinity between veterans and haircuts, and Louis Cicero understands both.

He’s been cutting hair at his barbershop in the Heights since 1959. “I had an old-timer in here who fought at Iwo Jima,” Louis said. “Saw a lot of action at a young age. They open up in the barber chair and tell me their secrets and problems. They know I won’t tell anyone.”

Bill Dickerson, 95,  served in WWII, and weighed 113 pounds when he entered the Army in his prime at 19. He operated the 155-millimeter gun, a weapon with 96-pound shells, and a range of about twelve miles. “You could get off about five rounds in a minute if you worked really hard at it,” he said. “We could wipe out Riverhead from Shelter Island.”

Bill operated the gun at the Battle of the Bulge. When it malfunctioned,  he was struck in the head. Six months of recovery left him with no hearing in one ear, dents on one side of his head, and memories of his service that he’s shared with family and friends ever since.

In the last census, 2,392 people called Shelter Island home, and 381 of them were veterans. Add to that number the Islanders who are not themselves vets, but have a father, mother, brother or sister who served this country and you see the powerful influence of military service on Shelter Island, an influence that becomes obvious when veterans and their families tell the stories of their lives.

Although Betsy Durkin Mathes never knew her grandfather, who died at the battle of the Somme in World War I, or her father, a paratrooper in World War II who died at the Battle of the Bulge when she was three, their lives inspired her. “They were both officers who died while defending their men,” she said.

After a career as an actor and lyricist, Betsy, still haunted by the life of a father she never knew, wrote a book, “Forever is Not for Everyone,” to try and find meaning in her father’s story.

Town Councilman-elect Mike Bebon’s Air Force service gave him life and work experience that helped him become Director of Operations at Brookhaven National Lab years later, but it also kept him from his father’s side in his dad’s final days.

In 1975, Mike had been assigned to inspect a base in Texas built in World War II  to modernize it for the era of terrorism. “My dad had a heart attack and he was doing OK, and then he had another one and passed,” said Mike. “At least he knew we were coming back [to Long Island].”

Military service runs strong in Sara Mundy’s family, and its influence on her is evident, even though she chose a different kind of service — she works at the Senior Center. Her father and her brother Michael served in the Marines, brother Nathan is still in the Marines, and her sister Melissa is on the board of the Theinert Foundation, a charity established to support veterans and their families in memory of Joseph Theinert, who grew up on Shelter Island, became an officer in the Army, and died in Afghanistan protecting his men.

“Joe Theinert was very close to my father and my sister, and my brother Michael left for boot camp a month after Joe was killed,” said Sara. “I don’t think any of us slept the whole time Michael was there.”

Town Supervisor Gary Gerth’s father was in the army medical corps during WWII, and Gary enlisted in the Navy in the late 60s, when he was about to be drafted into the Vietnam War.

The first time Gary saw Shelter Island, he was in an Army helicopter, flying over the East End in late 1970s on his way from the Naval War College, to a base on Long Island. He said he’ll never forget the view from above of the emerald-green Island between the North and South forks of Long Island.

Gary later became Director of Veterans Services Agency of Nassau County, and worked to resolve cases for veterans who had been denied benefits, sometimes because of missing records. His agency was able to reconstitute many of those records, and get benefits to veterans and their families.

Dave Clark, the son and father of veterans, served with the Marines in Beirut and narrowly missed getting blown up in 1983, when a truck bomb destroyed the Marine barracks and killed 220 men. It wasn’t until his own son was deployed to Afghanistan that he understood how the family of a soldier feels.

“You don’t even think about it when you are over there. But the parents think about it every day,” he said.

He remembered when the barracks blew up it took about five days for his family to find out he was still alive.  “It took a few years off their lives.”

Sea change-Inside Montauk's commercial fishing industry

Published in the Summer 2019 issue of Newsday's Feed Me magazine.

By Charity Robey Special to Newsday Updated July 21, 2019 5:00 AM

 

When Gosman’s Dock, 14 acres of restaurants and shops at Montauk Harbor, went on the market for $52.5 million in 2015, it signaled the latest evolution in a "discovered" coastal town that used to be all about surfing, fishing and dive bars. But walk past the dumpster and ice machine onto the dock that stretches into the harbor, and you’re in another world. You will typically see a forklift operator removing boxes of fish from a boat’s hold, or two guys hefting lobsters into the back of a pickup truck. Welcome to Montauk—past its heyday, perhaps, but alive and still bringing fresh local seafood to people who know enough to buy it up while they still can.

Montauk is not only the biggest commercial fishing hub in New York, it’s one of the largest in the Northeast. But that’s not saying much. In the United States, about 80 percent of the seafood we eat is imported, and most of it has been frozen, thawed and refrozen multiple times while being shipped and processed. Prices for local wild seafood, the stuff landed at the town dock or a dock on the east side of the harbor, hit a high of $21.2 million in 2012. By 2017, this figure had slid to $14.8 million.  

Unlike Gurneys’ or the iconic Shagwong Tavern, Montauk’s commercial fishing boats don’t attract investors eager to keep their businesses afloat, and their property (boats, gear and permits) is not easily transferable from one person to another. Fishers are foragers of wild food in an industry that is heavily regulated, with quotas, licenses and practices dictated by state and federal governments. And unlike farmers, they have no federally subsidized crop insurance to tide them over when their harvest is threatened by wild weather.

John Nolan, his wife, Laurie, and their son John Nolan III are owner-operators of the F/V Seacapture (“F/V” stands for “ fishing vessel”), a boat that hauls in 25 percent of the tilefish caught in the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council’s region, which stretches from New York to North Carolina. John Nolan III, 32, has been captaining the boat since he was 21, fishing 100 miles off Montauk year-round with a crew of five. They are at sea for 6 to 10 days at a stretch.

Robert Aaronson, John Nolan, Tom Eshenfelder, Armaan Gretarsson, Marty Senkus and Steven Doyles on the Seacapture in Montauk with a load of Golden Tilefish. Credit: David Handschuh

 

On a brilliant October day last fall, the 82-foot Seacapture arrived in Montauk Harbor with 20,000 pounds of tilefish in the hold. It had been a longer trip than usual: While a nor’easter pounded the coast, Seacapture had stayed far offshore, out of harm’s way. The entire crew was on deck in a celebratory state, including one young salt wearing a bunny outfit (Halloween was a few days away), who helped secure the boat as Nolan III stepped onto the dock to an emotional welcome from his mom, his sister Molly and his sister Jean’s baby, a cherub named Bodie. His father was picking up a large order of bacon-and-cheese sandwiches to feed everyone. Cousin and former crewmate Robert Aaronson, who had gone out to the jetty to take in Seacapture’s safe return, was on hand to help unload. Nolan III pointed proudly to the hold, packed full of cleaned, iced fish, and said, “Oh yeah.”

The crew—Tom Eshenfelder, Stephen Doyle, Al Ellis, Mark Semkus and Armann Grettarsson—were ebullient. “We had a little bit of weather,” Nolan III said. “But we fished every day. We have a good boat for it. We were getting beaten up pretty good, good-sized waves one day. Stuck it out and caught some fish.”

Extreme weather, the sprawling thicket of regulations and quotas, and reproduction and migration changes in fish species are existential threats to today’s commercial fishing business. The key to survival is to grow and maintain a sustainable fishery, and the story of how the Nolan family developed the market for Atlantic golden tilefish out of Montauk is worthy of a Harvard Business School case study.

The Nolans catch tilefish on a longline, a 40-mile length of wire rope with 4,000 baited hooks that snap on, an innovation John Nolan introduced to the Montauk fishery in the 1980s, after he and Laurie saw it used to catch tilefish during a fishing sojourn in Florida. Prior to that, most Montauk fishers used nets for tilefish, but the Nolans’ new gear began to outperform the traditional method.

Left: Unloading Golden Tilefish from the Seacapture on the dock in Montauk. Top: Captain John Nolan III on the Seacapture. Bottom: Steven Doyles sorts Golden Tilefish by size in the hold of the Seacapture. Photo credit: David Handschuh

Although it takes a skilled crew to bait and then remove fish from the line without being gouged by the business end of a hook, line-caught fish are never damaged by a net, and the method, when properly managed, results in less bycatch.

It was Laurie Nolan, who shed for five years alongside her husband, that spearheaded another important change in the Atlantic golden tilefish industry in 2004, when she decided the fish was getting a bad rap. Since the 1970s, the FDA had put tilefish in the same category as swordfish, tuna and king mackerel—fish that contain elevated mercury levels and should not be consumed by pregnant women or small children.

Knowing that the warning was based on samples taken in 1976 from the Gulf of Mexico in the vicinity of oil drilling (which can produce mercury pollution), she wanted to see if the local tilefish, which live in deep, clean water and do not migrate, had elevated mercury levels as well. She followed testing protocols and sent samples of fish caught by her family to a lab for analysis. The results showed no danger from elevated mercury levels, the FDA amended the warning and Atlantic golden tilefish became recognized as one of the most sustainable and healthy fish around.

It’s also one of the most delicious. Most of the Nolans’ catch goes to Hunts Point, the vast wholesale market in the Bronx, where restaurants and seafood shops from all over the Northeast go to buy fish. A few thousand pounds is distributed through Dock to Dish, a community-supported fishery program that supplies Montauk seafood to restaurants and consumers, and another 1,000 pounds of whole tilefish from every load goes to Gosman’s to be filleted and sold to East End restaurants. With a firm texture, white flesh and flavor similar to lobster (because of their habit of eating crustaceans), tilefish is a favorite of chef Dan Barber at Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills and makes a regular appearance on the menu at Nick & Toni’s in East Hampton. The Nolans’ tilefish is a mainstay at the New York Google cafeteria, where 5,000 employees not only enjoy eating it, they know who caught it.

The same goes for the Jonah crab claws from Montauk’s John Aldridge and Anthony Sosinki. They are fishing partners who have been instrumental in establishing the viability of this meaty- clawed creature, usually considered a bycatch of lobstering. Sean Bennett of Dock to Dish said the Google employees are particularly enthusiastic when steamed Jonah crab claws are on the menu at the company cafeteria.

Googlers may not realize, however, that they’re eating the catch of bonafide media figures, ones who can tell you in harrowing detail about the dangers of the job. Aldridge and Sosinski, longtime partners on the F/V Anna Mary, fish for lobster, and in the middle of one July night in 2013, Aldridge, alone on deck, fell off the boat. He spent 12 hours in the ocean without a flotation device or GPS personal locator beacon before he was pulled out by the Coast Guard. The story of the resourcefulness and resilience he called on to survive long enough to be rescued became a book and movie, “A Speck in the Sea.”

“It’s a job for somebody who has something to prove.”

John Nolan III

Even if you don’t fall overboard, fishing is not for the faint of heart. “It’s a job for somebody who has something to prove,” said Nolan III. “For me, it was my dad, I guess. You got to dig deep some days. You wonder, ‘What am I doing?’ And you just do it anyway.”

Family plays a part even for someone like Dave Aripotch, who happens to be one of the few commercial fishers in Montauk who did not grow up in the business. At 63, Aripotch is “the oldest full-time offshore guy” in the area, and he’s been at it for enough years to prove he’s not just being rebellious. “I’ve been doing this since I was 18,” he said. “Some nights I wake up in a mad panic thinking, ‘I’m going to have to get a real job someday.’ ” Like so many baby boomers born on Long Island, Aripotch went clamming in the Great South Bay as a child, but unlike most, he graduated quickly to working on a commercial trawler, going for swordfish, tuna and tilefish on trips that would have him at sea for weeks. Today he works from the 73-foot FV Caitlin & Mairead.

Aripotch’s wife, Bonnie Brady, is his advocate and shore-side support, as well as a vital voice for commercial fishers at sea, who can’t attend the endless rounds of hearings around issues of licensing, fishing regulations and quotas. “It requires 15 plates spinning,” she said. “If you do it right, you have this great harvest of fish and you get to feed people.”

So far, none of Aripotch’s children has shown an interest in following him into commercial fishing. His first mate, Jackson Urgilez, has been working with Aripotch for more than a decade. Aripotch hopes to work out a deal to pass the boat and his fishing permits to Urgilez when he retires in a few years. “I would like to see him do it. I would like to see fishing stay in this town.”

Montauk’s fishing families have mixed feelings about government regulations and quotas, which can hurt their short-term bottom line but help keep species sustainable in the long run. A prime example is the sea scallop fishery. “Scallops made a big recovery,” Aripotch said. “You had to rotate the areas, which makes sense. They came back. So did fluke, sea bass, striped bass. They put all these regulations in place, and fishing got better.” That is not to say that Aripotch approves of government intervention in his business. A recent proposal, to allow a Danish company to build a wind farm in the middle of a prime fishing area 35 miles offshore, is one that Aripotch and most other commercial owner-operators out of Montauk consider a serious impediment to their business.

Hank Lackner, owner-operator of the trawler Jason and Danielle—at about 90 feet, the largest commercial fishing boat out of Montauk—thinks the threat the proposed wind farm poses can’t be fully appreciated by people who don’t understand how much space in the ocean fishers need to operate. When the nets of a trawler open up, they are like a huge sail moving through the water, herding schools of fish before them.

“Those windmills, you can’t tow a net around them,” Lackner said. “They become closed areas, even if they are a mile apart.”

Lackner’s main cash crop is squid, and for the past two years the cephalopods have been unusually plentiful. The handful of commercial fishers who have permits to take squid caught their quota so early, they had to stop fishing by midsummer. Lackner fishes with two of his children and is hopeful that they will continue the family business.

“We’re some of the last hunter-gatherers on Earth,” Aripotch said, as his crew unloaded 50,000 pounds of porgy—equal to the biomass of about five mastodons. The fish were iced, boxed and bound for Hunts Point. “It’s money, but I never lose sight of producing food. Like a farmer ... harvesting fish.” 

By Charity Robey Special to Newsday

Gerry Siller. Always have a rag in your hand.

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO
Gerry and Roni Siller on the front porch of their Shelter Island home.

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on August 29, 2019

Gerry Siller was in high school when he decided to apply for a job at a new restaurant near home in Massapequa. He’d worked at his father’s deli in Bellmore, so knew how to make a sandwich, and when the hiring manager came out to see if anyone in the around-the-block line of applicants was a short-order cook, Gerry raised his hand. He was hired, and just before his first day on the job, a friend told him the secret of success for any job: “Just have a rag in your hand and always be cleaning things.”

This multi-tasking, continuously-improving way of life has been good for Gerry, from running bars and a restaurant in his early years to a successful landscaping business on Shelter Island, to his time as Town Supervisor from 1998 to 2001.

Gerry has decided to run for another term as supervisor in the November election. “When I did it, I loved it,” he said of his time leading Island government. “It was the best job in the world.”

Eighteen years later, Gerry said some of the same issues he worked on then are still front and center on the town’s agenda, including water quantity and quality, deer overpopulation/tick-borne disease and affordable housing, and he’s ready to take them on.

At his side is Roni Siller, his wife of 43 years. Roni and Gerry both went to Massapequa High School, where they met at a Friday-night party 50 years ago, and have been together ever since. He was president of the Key Club, and a schmoozer. “He would talk to anybody,” Roni said. “He just knocked me off my feet.”

After graduation, Gerry went to the School of Visual Arts to study photography, and Roni studied at Marywood University and became a school teacher. They lived in Massapequa where she taught, and Gerry ran bars and opened a seafood restaurant in Copiague, which resulted in his worst work experience ever. The chef he hired to design and execute the menu suddenly quit a month after they opened, and Gerry had to learn to cook every dish on the menu.

“I was the chief cook and bottle washer,” Gerry said. “In a hot kitchen, with stress.”

Roni introduced Gerry to Shelter Island. Her grandmother was one of the original homeowners in Hilo Shores, on land that had previously been a poultry farm, across from another chicken-producer, Cackle Hill. Roni had been going out to her grandmother’s place for many years when she brought Gerry in the early 1970s. He was impressed. “At the time, there were cows on Menantic Road, and I remember going rowing right off of Hilo and seeing scallops coming up in the water all around us,” he said.

The birth of their daughters persuaded Gerry and Roni to move the family from Massapequa to Shelter Island, where all four girls went to the Shelter Island School K-12 and were active in horseback riding. Kristen studied business in college, She lives and works in Kentucky, and has two children, Grace, 8 and Riley, 13. Meghan, who was valedictorian of her class, went to Connecticut College. She works as an administrator at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York city and has a child, J.D. (James Douglas).

Molly was the best horseback rider of the family (according to Gerry), and went to the National Horseback competition. She lives in Cutchogue with her spouse and two children, Wyatt and Austin. Katie went to Catholic University of America and is a nurse at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

Four children with an intense interest in riding meant the Siller family kept horses in the back yard, and sometimes they got out. Gerry got a call one night informing him that his horses were over by Hampshire Farms, almost a mile away. By the time he arrived, the Police Department was there, too, and the officer suggested instead of walking the horses home in the middle of the night, they’d use the squad car. He drove slowly as Gerry sat in the open trunk and the horses walked home behind the car.

When the family first moved to the Island, Gerry remembers people told him that if he was willing to work, he might not get rich, but he’d never go hungry, and he considered that good advice. Gerry worked in landscaping and owns a garden center, and Roni taught home economics at the Shelter Island School.

He was active with the PTSA and then on the Board of Education for 10 years, starting in 1988, during an exciting time in school history. He served on the Board of Ed that removed the superintendent/principal and replaced them with Lydia Axelrod, who would go on to be one of the most popular and successful school superintendents the town has ever known.

“We knew we needed someone who could mend things,” Gerry said, referring to the trouble and controversy that surrounded the previous superintendent/principal. “Lydia was great — she’s still paying attention, and may be reading this — she was a healer.”

The school needed additional classrooms, and the Board of Ed got funding approved for building a new wing with classrooms and an auditorium in late 1980s. It was a bare-bones budget, with Board member Cliff Clark working with an estimator to keep track of costs, and using seats recycled from another auditorium.

Gerry’s work on the Board of Ed only ended when he decided to run for supervisor in the fall of 1987, beating Hal McGee, a popular and well-respected member of the town council.

He set to work implementing and extending the good work of his predecessor in the job, Hoot Sherman. “Hoot got the affordable housing on Bowditch Road and started the Ram Island Causeway from the Army Corps and we followed through on it. We petitioned LIPA and they buried the power lines. We wrote the zoning code and created the near shore overlay district to protect the fragile areas.”

He turned the Recycling Center around from a money drain to a money maker with the help of Brian Sherman’s skill for finding markets for the town’s recyclables. When a funeral home in the center came on the market, Gerry oversaw the purchase of the building as a new Town Hall, allowing the Police Department to emerge from the basement of their current headquarters.

When the time came to run for a third term in 2001, Gerry was the driving force behind a referendum on the ballot to expand the Highway Department property by buying some adjacent acreage. People who liked the idea thought it would provide a site for industrial infrastructure on the Island, but those who opposed it thought it was too high a price to pay.

“To this day, I believe it was the right thing to do,” Gerry said. “The referendum was defeated, and so was I.”

Gerry and Roni have remained involved in the community. They’ve had their share of health crises, including Gerry’s esophageal sarcoma in remission, and more recent serious health problems that Roni is dealing with.

“We lean on each other, and the family,” Gerry said, “and we’re more appreciative of Shelter Island than ever. When we’ve had problems, people have rallied to help us.”

As he enters another election cycle, he’s reminding Islanders that he has always been a strong advocate for affordable housing. What’s new are the models he’s proposing for town and private development of homes for Island workers.

“Darrin Binder bought the A-frames and he is fixing them up for year-round rentals,” he said. “It’s serving a purpose. It’s not a drain on the neighborhood, it’s not a drain on the aquifer.”

He’s also satisfied with the four-apartment house a few doors down from his home that was developed by Janalyn Travis Messer, and is now fully-rented.

“My plan would entail using town-owned land and the homeowners would own their houses. If they sold, they would have equity in the house,” he said. “Start with two houses, and then you can show this is what we are capable of, it’s a good start.”

Not for a minute has he taken the rag out of his hand.

Lightning Round

What do you always have with you? A pocket knife.

Favorite place on Shelter Island? The North Ferry, coming to Shelter Island.

Favorite place not on Shelter Island? Anywhere with my grandkids.

What exasperates you? When kids tell me they’re bored.

When was the last time you were afraid? When Roni had a health issue lately.

Favorite movie or book? ‘The Power Broker,’ by Robert Caro.

Favorite food? A good hot dog. It should be a little crunchy.

Favorite person, living or dead, who is not a member of the family? Our neighbor, Eleanor Oakley — upbeat, a real role model.

Most respected elected official? Daniel Patrick Moynihan, he worked across party lines.

Julia Weisenberg: asking to be your interpreter

Julia Weisenberg

 

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter, September 19, 2019

Julia Weisenberg likes big dogs, and Rita, at 93 pounds, certainly qualifies.

When Julia and her family stopped in a pet store a few years back to “let the kids touch the dogs” and left with a Labrador retriever puppy with the largest paws she’d ever seen, Julia said she knew what she was getting into.

She worked in the corporate world, earned a Ph.D and traveled extensively. Now she’s running for Town Council in the November election. Although it’s her first time running for office, Julia said she knows what she is getting into there as well. Politics, like raising a puppy, requires a special kind of fortitude.

Julia’s father, Bill Romanchuk, made unsuccessful runs for Town Council and Town Justice in the 1980s, and went on to lead a group of local activists who lobbied successfully for decommission of the Shoreham nuclear plant near Riverhead. Julia, who was in kindergarten when her father ran for office, was at his side during his vocal opposition to Shoreham.

After a career in the NYPD, Julia’s father discovered Shelter Island in the 1950s, fell in love, and came upon a man named Hamilton selling property in Silver Beach under an umbrella erected next to his convertible. The contract was scribbled on a piece of paper, and sealed with a handshake. In 1974, Bill and his second wife, Regina, began building a home on the property with the help of Islanders Ed Kramek and Peder Larsen. Romanchuk family photos document the fact that Regina was pregnant with Julia when she helped install sheetrock in the home.

Julia is still enjoying that sheetrock today.

She has two sisters from her father’s first marriage, Lynn who lives in South Carolina, and Lori who lives in Manhattan. Her youngest sister died as an infant of SIDS and her older sister Corinne who lived on Shelter Island, died at 29 after a long illness. Julia graduated in 1992 from the Shelter Island High School.

In elementary school, Julia had speech therapy to help her overcome a stutter, an experience that gave her a glimpse of the vulnerability that disabled people can experience. It motivated her to learn American Sign Language (ASL) in her teens, and go on to formal education in ASL in her 20s.

She earned a B.A. and M.A. in the teaching of English as a Second Language (ASL) at Stony Brook University, and was awarded a Ph.D. in Linguistics. She taught ASL, then went to work for a company that provides telephone services for the deaf using interpreters, eventually becoming the manager of the company’s largest call center in Manhattan.

She said the work brought her in contact with the full range of human experience, from interpreting for Hillary Clinton at a graduation address, to translating and interpreting in the investigation of an operation that virtually enslaved deaf Mexican immigrants in Queens in the late 1990s, forcing them through violence and intimidation to sell trinkets and live in dangerous conditions.

“Deaf people are a cultural minority,” Julia said. “I’m always sensitive to equality and civil rights.”

She thinks Shelter Island town government needs to be more inclusive. “As a town we have to be careful not to exclude working families, or exclude seniors on a fixed income. I’ve also heard people say second home owners shouldn’t vote here. But if you go talk to your [second-home-owning] neighbor, you might be pleasantly surprised to see they really are invested in the community.”

In 2008 Julia was in Moscow working as an interpreter for a group of deaf visitors, when she met Dmitri Kolmogorov. They married and have raised three daughters, Anne, 17, Daria, 15, and Regina, 8.  Although their marriage ended in divorce, they are friendly and Julia said that Dmitri, who recently became a U.S. citizen, told her he’s looking forward to voting for her in his first election.

She got a real estate license last year, and works for Compass Realty of Shelter Island, putting her in touch with realities of renting, buying and building on the East End. She thinks real estate brokers are an underutilized resource, a source of information about a market that’s the foundation of the town’s tax base. “There’s so much money tied up in real estate here, you have to pay attention,” she said. “We don’t want people to build; they want the home that they want. But we have to be really careful.”

She also works for the town FIT Center, Goat Hill Country Club, North Fork Wellness of Cutchogue, and Mill Neck Interpreting Services. She has served on the PTSA board since 2016, now serves on the Water Quality Advisory Board, and attends meetings of the Deer & Tick Committee. She said her volunteer service is motivated by her father’s example.

Julia isn’t satisfied with the way town government currently functions. “How do they come to their decisions?” she asked. “There’s a lack of transparency and they don’t always communicate the values that are leading them to a decision.”

Julia feels the council is not as approachable as it once was, and she’d like to see significant changes that would make work sessions more of a team activity and allow a better balance of evening and daytime town meetings. “It’s not the people [on the board] it’s the accountability,” she said. “So many working Islanders can’t come on Tuesday. If someone comes to the mic, all the town board members should make them feel they are welcome.”

She’s proud of her role in organizing the effort to persuade the North Ferry to add an early boat to help Islanders make train and airport connections, and especially satisfied with the civil and respectful way all sides handled the discussion and resolution in the meeting that decided the matter.

“If only every Town Council meeting could be like that,” she said. “They came to a decision, and they implemented it. Everyone hugged and clapped. It was epic.”

Although Julia is not on the Deer & Tick Committee, she’s responsible for one of the more innovative proposals that group has considered — creating incentives for female hunters.

Twenty-six women attended a DEC-sponsored hunter education class this summer at Mashomack, and while the overall number of hunters continues to decline, the number of female hunters is increasing.

“I’m a licensed hunter, and I’d like to do bow hunting,” said Julia. “My intention is to contribute to culling because I feel that is the best way to control ticks.”

She believes that when it comes to solving problems, Shelter Island has size on its side. She described a recent one-on-one with a person of differing views on the short-term-rental question. “I said to her, ‘Just talk to me, I really want to understand, to hear what you think.’”

They decided to set some ground rules for their conversation — one would speak first, then the other. There would be civility.

“She brought up thoughts I had not considered,” Julia said. “When people are afraid, you can’t mock that. Feelings just are. We concluded that there are other points of view, and there is leeway. We found some sway.”

Aterahme Charisma Lawrence– Still she rises

 

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on September 5, 2019, entitled, 'A long way travelled in a very short time'

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO
Aterahme Lawrence at The Islander.

Growing up in Greenport and Shelter Island, Aterahme Lawrence dreamed of beauty pageants, acting and singing, but had little reason to think those dreams could come true. When she describes the poverty, drug use, violence and abuse of her chaotic home life, and the fact that no one in her immediate family had ever been to college, her life today seems incredible.

Aterahme graduated last May from SUNY Fredonia with a BFA in Acting, and has already had a nibble from a New York agent. Athletic, outgoing and voluble with a smile that knocks you over, she was heavily involved in charitable work throughout her college years, which she thinks is one reason she was chosen to participate in the Miss New York Pageant in January 2020. Her well-deserved middle name is Charisma.

Aterahme’s mother, Latricia Lawrence-Hazell, moved the family from Greenport to Shelter Island when Aterahme was 5 years old. “I thought Shelter Island would be a safer place,” Latricia said. “I think it was one of the best decisions, even though we went through a lot.”

Aterahme’s father had left the family, and had never been an active presence in her life. When her mother met and married Boris Hazell, who worked in high-end boat maintenance in Greenport and Shelter Island, she found a father figure.

By the time Latricia moved the family from Greenport to Shelter Island, Aterahme had four siblings, Tiearza, Semaj, Amira and Sincere, each born about a year apart. Three more siblings, Nasir, Shia, and Aniya were born over the next few years. A single mother with eight children, Latricia struggled to keep the family together and there was never enough money.

“I come from practically nothing,” Aterahme said. “I wasn’t even the oldest or youngest … just one in the middle of a family of eight kids.”

Aterahme knew there was a way of living that was less chaotic and more stable than the life she found at home. She saw it in movies and films, and every day in the people around town. “Shelter Island was a dream world and everyone had a bubble they lived in,” she said. “When I went home it was very different. Sometimes the electricity was off. My mother is very hardworking, but we did not always have the financial means to support ourselves.”

At the Shelter Island School, Aterahme was a good student, and a strong athlete, involved in basketball, cheerleading and volleyball. Cindy Belt, who coached Aterahme in volleyball and became a mentor, called her a fighter. “She was a survivor and she carried that love of sports and volleyball forward in her life,” Ms. Belt said

Aterahme participated in the school musicals every year and sang in select choir. Her mother remembers Aterahme’s voice as “a gift.” On Latricia’s birthday one year, when there wasn’t any money for gifts, Aterahme surprised her mom in the middle of bathing her younger siblings, with a serenade of her favorite Miley Cyrus song, “The Climb.” “I cried like a little baby,” Latricia said.

Aterahme was part of a notorious class at school. Large and unruly, it started with 35, and in the end 26 students graduated in the class of 2014. “We are pretty good friends now, but when I was younger I had a really tough time,” Aterahme said. “We had a big, crazy class and we tended to get in trouble.”

A fighter, who would not endure the bullying she got from other girls in middle school, Aterahme lashed out. “I was very angry at everyone. I would get violent. The only thing that kept me occupied was sports and singing. I had an altercation with an older girl who hit me on the bus and I ended up dropping out of school in middle of 10th grade. I sucked it up and went back at the end of the year.”

The Shelter Island school administration has gotten better, she said, at handling conflicts, and so has she. “For a long time, I hated the school. The individuals I liked. The institution and the things they let people get away with I did not like,” she said. “It made me stronger, and it taught me to try and treat people with kindness. I realized that people can change because I’ve changed. I was not innocent. It’s always a two-way thing.”

When Aterahme showed up at SUNY Fredonia in upstate New York in the fall of 2014, one of a handful of black students at the school, she’d already missed freshman orientation because of money problems back home. She arrived determined to make it work, and ready to reinvent herself. When Cindy Belt and Aterahme’s sister Amira visited her a few years later, they found her fully engaged in campus life.

“She was like the mayor of Fredonia,” said Ms. Belt.

In the spring of her junior year, Aterahme developed a bacterial infection and landed in the hospital for a month, unable to eat while doctors tried to figure out how to treat her. Latricia was frantic, trying to help her daughter who was so far away. Aterahme’s sorority sisters, and some of their mothers, made sure Aterahme wasn’t alone during her diagnosis and treatment, and helped reassure Latricia who couldn’t leave the rest of the family and travel to Fredonia.

Stuck in the hospital around the time of the Parkland school shooting, Aterahme watched the coverage of the shooting, and was outraged. Back at school, she decided to speak at a march and protest about gun control. It was a good match for her skills. “I realized this was something I could do,” she said.

By the time she graduated in May 2019, Aterahme was president of the sorority Pan-Hellenic council and active in fund-raising to fight lupus, cystic fibrosis and eating disorders. In her senior year, she was cast in the lead role in a main stage production of “Antigone.”

As part of her theater training, she became a certified sword-fighter, which involves learning to make the fighting look real without contact. She loved it, and like so many things she set her mind to, she was good at it.

“When she was little, I always saw that she was a star,” Latricia said. “She always had a sparkle in her eye.”

“She went in knowing nothing, knowing nobody and she shone,” said Ms. Belt, who visited Aterahme at school again with Latricia to see Aterahme in “Antigone.”

On graduation day from Fredonia, Latricia called her daughter to say she’d been unable to rent a car to make the trip upstate and they both cried. “Graduation was one of the best days of my life and one of the saddest,” she said “I had decorated my graduation cap and I completely redecorated it when I heard she couldn’t come. On it I wrote, ‘Still I rise.’”

Aterahme is acutely conscious that she is an example to her siblings. “I don’t want them to see me fail. I feel like I’m starting to get up to that peak in my life,” she said. “I can’t be lower, not ever.”

Back on Shelter Island for now, she’s earning as much as she can working at SALT and preparing for the Miss New York Pageant in January. She hopes to use that experience as a springboard to professional acting, public speaking and service. Scholarship money and educational opportunities also come with participation in a pageant, as does the expectation of continuing her work for charitable organizations.

It’s a beauty pageant of a particular kind, she said, adding, “The flower that blooms in adversity is the most beautiful of all.”

Lightning Round — Aterahme Lawrence

What do you always have with you?

Chapstick.

Favorite place on Shelter Island?

Fresh Pond.

Favorite place not on Shelter Island?

Fredonia.

When was the last time you were elated? 

July 18, when I found out I got into the pageant.

What exasperates you?

Mean people. Treat everybody with kindness. You don’t know what they are going through.

When was the last time you were afraid?

When my grandma was in the hospital recently.

What is the best day of the year on Shelter Island?

Tumbleweed Tuesday when the restaurants close. It’s our staff party.

Favorite movie or book?

“Small Great Things” by Jodi Picoult.

Favorite food?

 Chili.

Favorite person, living or dead, who is not a member of the family? 

Michelle Obama.

Most respected elected official?

Barack Obama.

Mood swings

A quiet Crescent Beach one late afternoon this week.

 

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on September 12, 2019

Last Wednesday, two women paused on their evening walk, and leaned on the whitewashed fence that runs along Crescent Beach to admire the sunset. “I haven’t been down here all summer,” said one. They were there for some quiet enjoyment.

Quiet enjoyment has been hard to find in many of Shelter Island’s public places for the past six weeks, but on Labor Day Monday, things changed. My hound Mabel and I had Volunteer Park all to ourselves on Wednesday morning, after weeks of sharing it with people having a picnic breakfast on the benches, and enjoying the view of Dering Harbor from the gazebo. If a muffin-eating child dropped a hunk, Mabel was on clean-up. She misses that.

September is the hinge, the time when the mood swings from warm nights that seem like they go on forever to shorter days full of showing up on time and responsibility.

At Marie Eiffel Market, Jason Penney had a latte ready for me before I was aware of having asked for it, partly because I was the only one in line at that moment, and partly because for the past six weeks, he’s made so many he could do it in his sleep. He said sleep is what he needs now that the official end of the high season has come. “We’re just trying to catch up, getting home a little earlier, and getting to bed a little earlier,” Jason said. He estimates he’ll need a couple of weeks of that to recuperate.

If Tumbleweed Tuesday was a day to rest and recuperate, Wednesday was a day of reckoning. Mike Anglin was on the sidewalk outside his store, Jack’s Marine, a little wistful, and thinking about assembling a fire pit for display. He’s been selling them at a steady rate that picks up come the cool days of fall.

“It’s kind of sad,” he said. “You were seeing these people all the time, every day and then all of a sudden they’re gone. Some people say they’re glad when the summer people go, but everyone knows you can’t make it here in the winter. You need the summer. It’d be nice if it was just a little bit longer.”

He said the Bridge Street area is becoming more of a destination for day trippers who just want to shop, have lunch and walk around a little. The reputation of the store for creative, high quality things to keep children of all ages busy has spread, “People come here from off the Island by boat, or on foot across on the ferry just to shop for toys,” Mike said.

A post-mortem of the summer of 2019 should include notes on the natural world. Most notable to me was that I did not see a single jellyfish, not even washed up on the beach. As for pests, around my house, there was a bumper crop of ants, fewer stink bugs, and a ridiculous number of rabbits. The wasp population on the porch was pretty much the same as last year.

Farmers got off to a slow, wet start, so the strawberries and peaches this year were not memorable, but the melons and the corn were as good as I’ve ever tasted. As for figs, I don’t want to talk about it. Too soon.

A staple of back-to-school time is the question: What did you do on summer vacation? The beautiful warm days of summer allowed me two memorable activities during the part of summer vacation when I wasn’t working. I attended my son’s wedding, and I shucked a lot of corn. Both involved attending outdoor events at which food was served.

The corn-shucking was part of a volunteer effort that began years ago when Amy Zavatto organized her sisters and friends to shuck corn on the morning of the Fire Department’s August Chicken Barbecue. Today, when the truckload of corn is unloaded, a team of volunteers — some wearing “Mother-shucker” T-shirts indicating years of experience — line both sides of a long table and go at it.

At this year’s shuck, Linda Zavatto, Vivy Ganter and George Goodleaf — among the original volunteers more than a decade ago — were going through bags of corn like an Iowa thresher.

This was my first time, so when Keith Clark examined an ear that I had just tossed into the pile, and pointed out that there were quite a few strands of silk still attached, I loudly denied knowing anything about that ear of corn, and quietly resolved to be more careful. Less than an hour later, upwards of 3,000 ears were ready to be cooked and the volunteers had told some great stories. It was a highlight of my summer.

Now it’s back to reality. For the next 10 months we get to be a place where children go to school, where parents work, where snow could fall, and where a few lucky people will finally have time to take a good look at someone they know, and fall in love.

Last Wednesday was also the day I smelled a fragrant white flower blooming all over the Island, a vine with small white star-shaped flowers. It’s an autumn clematis that grows wild as well as in gardens. If it was blooming before Labor Day, I was too distracted to notice. Last week, it was everywhere, in yards and vacant lots, mounds of white blossoms and perfume.

Thank goodness I slowed down enough to see it.

True grit.The story behind Commander Cody's Seafood on Shelter Island

Published in the Summer 2019 issue of Feed Me magazine.

 

There was a time when an East End fisherman who caught a lot more than he could sell would buy a fryer, set up some picnic tables and open a restaurant. A few of those joints, such as Commander Cody’s Seafood on Shelter Island, are still around because they have the most devoted customers and the freshest fish. Jim Hayward, who started a restaurant named for his dog Cody in 1993, says his success has more to do with simple food rooted in his raising. “If you don’t want the real deal, don’t come here, because I don’t use substitutes. I do home cooking.”

Hayward grew up in Ridgeland, heart of the South Carolina Lowcountry. He was the oldest of nine siblings, and his mother expected him to shoulder the cooking responsibilities from the age of 10. “She’d sit back and point that stick in case I’d burn the food,” he said. “I was cooking for the whole family.” He grew up cooking hearty fare in large quantities: crab boil, fried chicken, pulled pork and ribs — the foundations of his menu today.

Jim Hayward weighs out clams and muscles at Commander Cody's Seafood on Shelter Island. Photo Credit: Raychel Brightman

On a recent weekday afternoon, 84-year-old Hayward was unloading boxes of porgy, squid and clams from the back of his pickup truck, his dog Frankie (Cody passed in 1995) staying close enough to snag anything that might drop. Hayward is a big man and easily carried large boxes full of iced fish across the gravel yard to the restaurant on Smith Street, which is also the home where he raised his daughters, Chloe (39) and Amanda (35). Inside, Amanda, pastry bag in hand, was putting the finishing touches on 35 chocolate-frosted birthday cupcakes for a catering order.

The gravel yard turned into a parking lot a few hours after Hayward unloaded the seafood. Customers came in for takeout orders, to buy fresh fish or to eat fried chicken and ribs at picnic tables on the patio. To enter Commander Cody’s, they stepped past the fish-smoker still redolent of hickory, squeezed by the drinks cooler, stood next to the blue whiskery waters of the lobster tank and evaluated the vivacity of the clams before they placed their orders for locally caught, home-cooked delectables, whether smoked, steamed, grilled or fried.

Commander Cody's Seafood on Shelter Island. Photo credit: Raychel Brightman

The restaurant’s reputation extends far beyond Shelter Island — a notable accomplishment, considering a ferry ride and sophisticated navigation aids are required to find it. On a weekday in May, the Mascucchinis from Philadelphia were on their way to Montauk when a little research convinced them to detour to Commander Cody’s. Ron Mascucchini said they had to drive around and come back a few times since the hours of operation here are like the fish: subject to availability. After lunch, Mascucchini, seeing Hayward at the lobster pot on the patio, came over to thank him for the freshly prepared food, including fries with a coating of a peppery spice mix Hayward swears by. He told Mascucchini, “It won’t give you a headache, but it will make you sneeze.”

Hayward came to Shelter Island in the ’50s to farm and fish, selling his catch first from his truck and then from the seafood market in his home, and he has always kept South Carolina culture, family and food close. Hayward’s nephew Gene works with him. Eight of his nine siblings are living, and living well, several in New York. Hayward said, “If you invite the Haywards over, you better have a lot of food because this family will eat everything.”

For many years, Hayward made his living as a commercial fisher, dragging for flounder, but these days he buys most of the fish he sells. “I buy from all the guys who fish. That’s why you got cellphones. You call around and see who has fish. I usually buy striped bass from guys on the South Fork.”

Although he no longer takes a trawler out for flounder, Hayward still dredges for bay scallops, as he did this past fall after the installation of a pacemaker drew a warning from his cardiologist to avoid scalloping for at least six months. Hayward thought the doctor must have meant six weeks, because the season for bay scallops is only five months long. “I don’t know how I got it wrong. I must have seen some dollar signs,” he said. “For the time I could go out there, I felt fine.”

Decades of commercial fishing taught him where to get great fish, and also what to do with it, including preparing the notoriously bony porgy. Porgy is delicious if you can figure out how to remove the rows of short, sharp bones. Hayward stood next to a 10-gallon tub of pristine porgy fillets and said, “When I cut it, it has no bone in it. I filleted those this morning.” You could make sushi from it.

Left: The lobster roll at Commander Cody’s Seafood on Shelter Island. Top: The clam bake filled with lobster, little neck clams, shrimp and muscles. Bottom: Fried chicken. Photo credit: Raychel Brightman

The menu at Commander Cody’s is a combination of New England seaside cooking (lobster rolls, lobster dinners, clam bakes) with the coastal South Carolina dishes of Hayward’s youth, including a Lowcountry boil — a steaming, spicy pot of crab, corn, sausage and potatoes that hits all the major food groups. Hayward learned to make ribs by watching his uncle use a barbecue pit dug in the ground, a technique that virtually guarantees a stupendous quantity of food, as well as quality.

Hayward makes no accommodation to the contemporary food scene at Commander Cody’s. If tiny bits of parsley have been scattered over your clam bake, it’s not for decorative purposes, it’s food. The posted business hours are loosely observed, and the vibe is fast-casual without the fast. “I tell people, if you are in a hurry, don’t come here to eat. We cook everything to order. If you can’t wait, I’m still going to do it the way it’s supposed to be done. I believe in feeding people and giving them enough to eat. Not putting some rabbit food out.”

Amanda Hayward does all the baking and desserts, including an outstanding blueberry bread pudding served with homemade ice cream — available in very un-Lowcountry flavors such as blueberry-basil and Guinness. And although her dad swears he doesn’t eat ice cream (“I eat yogurt. I don’t like much sweet stuff.”), he is still proud of her exuberant use of dairy products, in line with family tradition, “If you don’t like butter and the real deal don’t come here.”

Blueberry basil bread pudding is served with homemade coconut ice cream at Commander Cody's Seafood on Shelter Island. Photo Credit: Raychel Brightman

Amanda and Chloe grew up on Shelter Island, graduated from the Shelter Island school and went to college, unlike their dad who left school in the fourth grade. Amanda, who, in addition to the baking, does much of the cooking at Commander Cody’s, worked in the restaurant business in Las Vegas after graduating from The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park. Chloe went to Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and is manager of education programs at the Studio Museum in Harlem, to the delight (and chagrin) of her father, who would like her to live closer. “She says there is not enough culture out here for her.”

When Hayward’s marriage to Chloe and Amanda’s mother ended, he marked the transition with a celebration. “I do what I do and I do my best. I’ve got a lot of haters but I’m like a steamroller. I roll them over.” He invited 100 people, dug a pit, and roasted an 88-pound hog on an old bedspring in a ring of fire stoked with charcoal and cherry and hickory wood for flavor. “We partied down. When Jim Hayward gives a party, it’s a party.”

Hayward is known on Shelter Island for the big family events he has catered over the years, including celebrations at the Shelter Island home of Gov. Hugh Carey, who was a friend as well as a customer.

Shelter Islander Esther Hunt, 95, is old enough to have babysat for Jim Hayward (she didn’t) and is a devoted customer. She recently described herself as elated when she heard that Hayward had returned from his annual spring stay in South Carolina and would soon be serving up her favorites at Commander Cody’s. “The salmon is very good, and I love his scallops,” she said. “And the servings are so generous, they can last for two meals.”

It’s tricky to ask an octogenarian to articulate his vision for the future, but for Hayward, well into his eighth decade of cooking, an afterlife with food seems like a foregone conclusion. As a child, Hayward said, “I had to learn to cook in big pots,” a life skill that proved valuable. “For a wedding on Ram Island, I cooked 100 lobsters,” Hayward said. “When I go, [the lobsters] are going to be at the Gate.”

Zac Posen Q&A

Zac Posen at his parent's farm in Bucks Country, PA. Photo Credit: Vanina Sorrenti

 

Published in the Summer 2019 issue of Feed Me magazine.

 

Zac Posen grew up in a creative household in New York City, with a father who cooked every day. The 38-year-old designer dresses the best, from fashion royalty to more than 60,000 Delta employees reaching into overhead bins all over the world. His 2017 book, “Cooking With Zac,” extends his lifelong affinity for creating beauty to luscious ingredients. He spends as much time as he can shopping and cooking with friends on Long Island.

In “Cooking With Zac,” you draw connections between designing a new collection and cooking. How are they similar?

When I’m designing clothing, I drape fabric onto a form or human body and I start building expressively. Good material is the starting point, as good ingredients are the starting point for a dish. I let the ingredient or material sing and [take] the lead.

Your recipes seem solid and tested, and they include a lot of technique. How did you come by so many good practices?

I was told, ‘Don’t worry, in most cookbooks the recipes don’t test out.’ I said, ‘I can’t have that — it would be like making a piece of clothing with an armhole that’s closed.’ Food is like storytelling. When you cook with great chefs, you learn different parts of that story. I’m self-taught, but I’ve cooked with the greatest — Marcus [Samuelsson], Giada De Laurentiis, Martha [Stewart], Eric Ripert.

What do you wear when you cook?

When I’m doing cooking demos, I wear aprons. When I’m in my kitchen, I’m in my t-shirt, Brooks Brothers pajama bottoms and bare feet. If I do wear an apron, I like to do a fold so I can put a white cloth on the tie.

Some cooks meticulously measure, dice and peel ahead of time, and some throw carrots all over the kitchen. Where do you fall on that spectrum?

I’m a messy creator! If I have to time to prep, then I can be neat and organized.

Are there foods you’d rather get on Long Island than anywhere else?

Mother Nature is our greatest designer and creator, and produce is the greatest luxury item possible. I love the hunt for good ingredients. I make all the clothing I wear, but there are two things I shop for, jewelry and ingredients [for cooking]. Long Island has incredible small farms and produce. I love the Green Thumb [Water Mill]. I get my seafood — ideally, you get it on the dock [or at] The Seafood Shop [Wainscott].

Where do you go out to eat on Long Island?

I rarely go out, even though I know there is incredible food. I grill. It’s my time off. It’s important to me to have private, quiet time, not having to interact with the world.

How would you describe your approach to cooking and eating?

It’s generous, it’s eclectic, with a real respect for the ingredients. Family style with air. Rustic to refined ... enjoying the right balance of decadence to refined simplicity ... I don’t believe in suffering, in trying to not eat—I think it’s all in moderation.

The Delta Air Lines uniforms you designed made their debut last year. What did you do and how did you do it? And how does one of the uniforms hold up if a passenger spills a Bloody Mary all over a flight attendant?

Delta was a real once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It took over three years. I job-shadowed from entering JFK to landing on the plane, from ticketing to baggage to service. We worked with stain-resistant fibers woven into the fabric. That’s where the technology came onboard. It was great to bring this into the process.