Charity Robey

Michael Payano- a great family, a great education and nice sneakers

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO Michael Payano

Michael Payano will graduate from Shelter Island High School in a few weeks, and plans to attend SUNY New Paltz in the fall, the first in his family to attend college.

When his clan gathers at the Southold Legion to recognize his achievements, it should be a great party. With one side of the family first-generation immigrants from the Dominican Republic, and the other potato and hay farmers with deep roots on the East End, it will be a bilingual, multicultural celebration.

His parents, Carlos Payano and Aimee Mejia knew each other in the Dominican Republic where they grew up, and when they met again after coming to New York separately in the late 1990s, they married and had Mike in 2001, and his younger brother Brandon two years later.

They moved to Shelter Island and Carlos began working for the town. Now, Carlos is a captain with North Ferry.

Mike’s parents split up eight years ago, his father remarried, and he now lives with his father, his step-mother Kristin Steele, two half-brothers, Carter, 3, and Jordyn, 1, as well as Mike’s grandmother, Carmen. His uncle Manny (Jose) also lives on Shelter Island, and is a deck-hand with North Ferry.

When Mike was about 8-years-old, he was waiting for his dad to come out of the hardware store when he decided to take the car out of park, and it rolled into a van parked downhill. Mike demonstrated remarkable composure for a 2nd grader who had just damaged two cars. “I just waited until my dad got back,” he said. “That’s all I did.”

But he kept a connection — when he was old enough, he worked at the hardware store for three years. This summer he’ll work with North Ferry.

At the Shelter Island School, Mike discovered an aptitude for math. He owes special thanks to his teacher Mr. Brigham for helping him, he said. “He’s always been there for me,” Mike added. “He has a nice sense of humor, and he knows many things.”

Mike collects basketball sneakers and his interest goes beyond the sartorial to the scholarly. He said of his personal collection: “Anyone who plays basketball and is really into sneakers probably has as many as I do. But I don’t play basketball.”

Last year he attended “Sneaker Con,” an international conference held in New York for people who buy and sell collectible basketball sneakers. He also wrote his senior thesis on sneakers and their influence on history through fashion and sports.

Participating in the school musical, “The Addams Family,” was a great experience that he recommends to everyone. “I was one of the tall people in the group. That’s why I was cast as Lurch,” he said. “It’s a great way to interact with others outside of your class and find out about the theater business.”

He is one of the beneficiaries of the rebirth of the Shelter Island School running program.  Coaches Toby Green and Bryan Gallagher started the program in time for Mike to participate throughout his high school years.

In last year’s Invitational Tournament, Mike ran with Joshua Green, Jonas Kinsey, and Kal Lewis to break the school’s record in the 4-by-400-meter relay, a record dating back to 1994, with a time of 3:45.03. On May 11, Mike placed first in the East End Classic open 800-meter run, with a personal record of 2:14.32.

He was one of just 110 students in Suffolk County awarded a Suffolk Zone Award in December of 2018 for excellence in academic, leadership and physical performance.

Having lived on Shelter Island all his life, he has opinions about the place, making the point that affordable housing is important, but so is affordable lunch. “We need more reasonably priced places to eat, enough to satisfy everyone’s tastes,” he said, adding that he thinks the best are Maria’s Kitchen and the Pharmacy.

Mike plans to major in accounting at SUNY New Paltz, and thinks he might go on to get an MBA. “I’d like to work with numbers,” he said. “If I ever had the money to come back to Shelter Island I would come back.

Mike has traveled on the East Coast, to the Dominican Republic and with a Shelter Island School trip to Spain, experiences that helped him value this place.

“The people are different here,” he said. “We know each other, we have a better understanding of what everyone is dealing with. We know what we can do to help each other.”

Lightning Round

What do you always have with you? The $2 bill I got from my grandmother.

Favorite place on Shelter Island? Maria’s Kitchen.

Favorite place not on Shelter Island? Flight Club [a consignment store for sneakers].

When was the last time you were elated? My first time at Sneaker Con.

What exasperates you? I hate people who put themselves above others in a way that makes other people feel less than they are.

What is the best day of the year on Shelter Island? Late August, when everything is dying down, and the weather isn’t too crazy.

Favorite movie or book? ‘Bohemian Rhapsody.’

Favorite food? Fried calamari.

Favorite person, living or dead, who is not a member of the family? J. Cole. I love his music.

A Shelter Island family bids adieu to a beloved baseball stadium

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO The seats were narrow and worn, but the vibe behind home plate at the Jays old stadium was so good.

Christopher Bohn is a stadium usher at the Toronto Blue Jays spring training park in Dunedin, Florida. On the concourse behind home plate, as the final game in that venerable old diamond went into the 6th inning, Mr. Bohn was getting a little misty.

“You’ll never get closer to a batter than this in a baseball stadium. I feel terrible about it,” he said. “You’ll never get closer than this to the game.”

Mr. Bohn grew up in Patchogue but has been living in Florida and working at the Jays stadium long enough to remember when this wasn’t the only intimate venue for spring baseball. When the Phillies played at nearby Jack Russell stadium, the players were so close to the fans that when our son Isaac was 8 and wanted a game ball, he could just stand by the first base line for a few minutes and eventually be handed one by a soft-hearted player.

Up until the Jays Dunedin Stadium closed for renovations last Saturday, the same could be said for it.

“This,” Mr. Bohn said, “is the last stadium of this size in the Grapefruit League.”

My family picked out Dunedin, Florida as a place to spend a week in March largely because of the stadium, both the size and scale of it, and the fact that you can walk to it from anywhere in town. This year was our 16th visit, and for the first time, we were joined by a new member of the family, Isaac’s fiancée. Getting to see Martha take part in our family’s spring training rituals was almost as moving to me as saying good-bye to the old stadium, and I had to put on my sunglasses once or twice when it wasn’t sunny and dab at my eyes.

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO It looks like somebody’s first baseball game.

The upcoming renovation of the stadium was much on the minds of the morning breakfasters at the Dunedin Holiday Inn, where another renovation had taken place since last year — the replacement of the automatic pancake maker with a lamp-heated Cinnabon tray, each pastry wrapped in trademarked Cinnabon paper and topped with the signature sour cream frosting that takes the sting out of airport layovers.

Six-year-old Trent Game was getting some advice from a seasoned baseball fan about where to stand on the third base side to get a close look at Bryce Harper, the Phillies newly-signed right fielder, when the Phillies played the Jays.

Often the major leaguers show off their supernatural skills during spring training, but this year most of the surprises on the field were of the forehead-slapping kind. In a game against the Atlanta Braves, the Jays came back from a steep deficit to get the tying and winning runs aboard with two outs in the bottom of the ninth.

When the Jays batter walked to load the bases, the runner at third, possibly dreaming of postgame Cinnabons, strayed too far off the base and was picked off, ending the game in an 8-7 Jays loss.

“It was a boneheaded play,” said a kid to his dad, and fans all around shook their heads as they streamed out of the stadium.

On Thursday, we traveled with the Jays two miles to Spectrum Field, the Phillies spring training stadium, where we got a taste of what the Jays newly-renovated spring digs will be like, with two Tiki-bars in the outfield, room for 1,500 on the berm and a wide swath of concession stands surrounding the field in a 360-degree mall of popcorn, souvenirs and sausages.

The Phillies finally beat the Jays, with home runs flying out of the stadium like popcorn from a hot pan — six for the Phillies and four for the Jays. One of Bryce Harper’s two dingers had two guys in shorts and sandals searching through the thick, swampy brush in back of the stadium for the ball, and by the time they found it, a dozen fans stood along the outfield concourse telling them where to look, and keeping an eye out for alligators.

Just then another shot came in just below the berm, this one a home run for the Jays, which was nabbed by a 10-year-old.

On our last day in Dunedin, at the top of the seventh inning, Mr. Bohn led the crowd in singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” for the last time in the little stadium that had made baseball magic in Dunedin since 1977. We sang along, my husband, our grown-up sons and our new daughter, and I put on sunglasses and went through a few more tissues.

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO Allie Kroeker with a foul ball she chased down at the Jays stadium. She’s a catcher in her home town of Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario.

Island Profile: Suzette Smith, helping Shelter Island feel good

SHELTER ISLAND PILATES & BARRE PHOTO
Suzette Smith

Suzette Smith, owner of Shelter Island Pilates & Barre has helped quite a few Islanders feel better about their bodies, and for this she has devoted and grateful fans. But as a child, she was an unlikely candidate for careers in dance and fitness.

“I was really clumsy and lanky and my parents were worried about me,” she said.

They decided to sign Suzette up for tap-dancing lessons, even though they couldn’t afford lessons for her sisters and brother.

“At first it didn’t help,” she said, “I was bad. The teacher wanted to take the taps off my shoes because I was off the beat, and my mom marched down there and said, ‘You’re not taking those taps off.’”

The memory of feeling awkward motivates her work today. “Now I know what it is to be comfortable,” she said. “You’re not hiding. You don’t have to be more than you are. That’s a sense of freedom.”

Suzette grew up in Milford, Connecticut where her parents, Pat and Fred Smith, high school sweethearts, raised four kids with Suzette in the middle between older sister Michele, younger sister Robin, and brother Ricky.

Suzette is tight with her family, including her niece and goddaughter Lindsey Shortell, and niece Saron Smith Hardin, who works with Suzette in her business and is, said Suzette, “like a daughter.”

Suzette showed an instinct for entrepreneurism as a child when she walked around her Connecticut neighborhood looking for houses with dirty windows to ask the homeowner if they’d hire her to wash them. She got quite a few takers. “It was my first job,” she remembered. “I saw an opportunity, and I made money.”

The tap-dancing lessons paid off when Suzette got a scholarship in high school to the University of Massachusetts for the summer to study dance. “It was very exciting to be among dancers,” she said. “A big adventure, and it lit my fire.”

She graduated from Central Connecticut College with a degree in marketing, but quickly realized she wouldn’t be happy unless she could figure out a way to make dancing her livelihood.

Suzette began to study seriously, working with Lee Lund, a former Broadway dancer from “Cats” who had a studio in Milford. The 80s were the days of “Flashdance,” a heady time in the dance world. “We were having super fun,” Suzette said. She moved to New York, continued to train as a lyrical jazz dancer and worked hard to make a career, landing a job performing with a musical theater troupe called A La Carte, at a supper club in Oslo, Norway.

One of only two Americans in the troupe, Suzette spent two years doing television appearances and cabaret at a time when supper clubs, not to mention Americans, were considered a little out of the ordinary by Norwegians. “It was very exciting,” she said.

With New York as her base, she continued to dance, and soon landed another job in Porto, Portugal where she spent two years. Next, she started a ballroom dance company, Sophisticated Steps, offering dance instruction to wedding couples, and teaching swing dances and the lambada at parties.

When she volunteered to teach dance in a program for at-risk children in Manhattan, her work got noticed, and she was hired by a New York City Public School located in the same building to teach dance to elementary students, leading to her second career — teaching.

Suzette got a Masters from Cambridge College in Education, and went on to teach dance and choreography at the Professional Performing Arts School. During her 12 years teaching in New York City schools she worked with City Center to connect New York public school students with high quality professional dance, and won an award for choreography.

Suzette had just started teaching dance at the Professional Performing Arts School, when her mother called to say that she had discovered a lump in her breast, had it checked out, and was O.K.. Suzette immediately examined herself and found a lump in her own breast. Unlike her mother, Suzette discovered she had a cancer that required surgery and multiple sessions of radiation.

“It woke me up to my spiritual side,” she said. “I was 38. It made me take a look at what I value.”
Suzette began to reexamine the trajectory of her life. She learned about food and nutrition and about Reiki, a form of alternative medicine. “I learned that it’s hard to be happy if you don’t have your health – for me, impossible,” she said.

In 1990, Suzette had taken advantage of the break in the school calendar to work as a waitress for the summer at The Chequit, her first experience of Shelter Island. Eleven years later, she was a cancer survivor, struggling with chronic fatigue syndrome, and shaken by the terrorist attacks of 9/11. She decided to take a year off from teaching in New York and go back to Shelter Island. She’s lived here ever since.

Eventually, she found a house to rent on Hedges Road with enough space for mat classes and recreated herself as a business owner focused on fitness and wellness. As she did with her first two careers, Suzette got training; Pilates at the Kane School of Core Integration, as a booty barre Plus instructor, in Reiki and Transformational Breath practice, and in Zumba and Nia dance instruction. In 2004, she established Shelter Island Pilates.

Active in the Shelter Island Chamber of Commerce, for four years Suzette has helped organize the Christmas tree lighting. She’s also done the warm-up for the June 10K and October 5K runs.

She discovered that long-term rentals on Shelter Island are hard to come by, forced to move five times in her 15 years on the Island. “Buying a home was my biggest dream come true,” she said.

Finding affordable housing is still a big problem for her as a business owner, since her employees face the same housing problems she had before she found a house she could buy.

Suzette recently hosted a family reunion in her new place. “Shelter Island is home for me,” she said. “My parents retired and they sold our house, and we all scattered, so it’s really nice to have a home.”

Now, the awkward girl who couldn’t get her taps straight helps people get in tune with their bodies in two studios on the Island, and her Pilates and barre classes are popular year-round. “The work helped me relax, to express who I am,” she said. “People wanted to listen to what I have to say.”

Lightning Round

Favorite place on Shelter Island? My home.

Favorite place not on Shelter Island? The Algarve, Portugal.

When was the last time you were elated?  When I could finally buy a house here after having to move so many times.

What exasperates you? Waiting in line.

What is the best day of the year on Shelter Island? The day we light the Christmas tree.

Bennett Karnis: Grilled cheese master and hash brown martyr

CHARTIY ROBEY PHOTO
Bennett Karnis.

Labor Day is game time for short order cook Bennett Karnis and the grill at the Shelter Island Heights Pharmacy is his field of play. Speed, accuracy and skill will deliver the melted cheese and hash browns he is famous for.

“I’ve got to lace up, tape up and put my game face on,” he said.

Bennett, who has been cooking breakfast and lunch at the Pharmacy counter since 1994, is at the heart of one of the Island’s best experiences, a meal eaten with casual acquaintances at an L-shaped counter, while seated on a rotating stool.

The meal, which might include bacon, eggs, toast, sausage, hash browns and lots of melted cheese, is prepared in full view of the diners.

“People love to watch the shredding of the potatoes, the flipping of the burgers and the melting of the cheese,” he said. It’s a tradition enjoyed by generations of Islanders and weekenders — Bennett’s tuna melts and breakfast wraps hold it all together.

Born in Forest Hills, Queens, Bennett was the only child of Olga and Simon Karnis. His parents, who married in 1949, had been hoping for a child for 10 years when Bennett came along, but did not live to see him grow up. His mother died in a car accident when he was 4, and his father died four years later from a stroke.

He was at a sleepaway camp in upstate New York when his cousin came to tell him his father had died. Bennett had started spending summers at Cejwin Camps — a Jewish camp with over 4,000 campers — after his mother passed away. When he was orphaned before he was 9 it became a refuge and a home. He spent 14 summers there.

Immediately after his father’s death, Bennett moved to Bowie, Maryland, to live with cousins on his father’s side, but within eight months he was back in New York. “I didn’t know it at the time, but the cousins who took me were in the process of getting a divorce and they couldn’t keep me,” he said.

He went to another cousin, a family with a daughter who became a sister to him, and lived with them in Merrick, Long Island until he was old enough to head out on his own.

“It was very difficult,” he said. “They were my guardians and took care of me. But the father didn’t make me feel too welcome,” Bennett said. “I had to walk in that house on eggshells.”

“The death of my parents really did a number on me,” he added. “I didn’t do very well in school, but I wanted to be in school because I loved to be around people. By the time I got to 6th grade my desk was outside the classroom. I wouldn’t behave. The only thing in my life that kept me on the straight and narrow was summer camp. It was the Judaism, the friendship, sports, arts and crafts. The counselors and all of the people who took care of you were good people.”

In his last few years at camp, Bennett went to work in the dining hall. He attended Sullivan County Community College (SCCC), studying culinary arts and hotel technology.

In his final year at camp he was promoted to baker. Bennett called one of his instructors from SCCC who came to camp to give him some pointers. “I was good to go for the rest of the season,” he remembered. “The cornbread rose high, I made a nice apple cake, coffee cake with crumbles, birthday cakes for the campers.”

His experience at camp and culinary studies led to a steady stream of restaurant jobs, including four years at Terrace on the Park, a banquet hall in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, where he cooked from 1983 to 1986, and three years at Nautical Mile in Freeport.

“I was a bachelor, rocking and rolling. Work hard, play hard,” he said. “I dated girls, nothing serious.”

He was a chef at the Sheraton LaGuardia when The Doobie Brothers spent the night. While Bennett was closing the kitchen around 10 p.m., the general manager said, “The Doobie Brothers are hungry.”

“Sure, but I’m almost closed, what do they want?” he asked.

“Fifty peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.”

It was well known that the Doobies were so-named because they liked to smoke things other than tobacco. That night they had a rock-star-sized case of the munchies. “I wrapped 50 sandwiches up, put them in a big box, and off they went,” Bennett said.

In 1992, he got a call from a camp friend, Michael Stone, who was a chef on Shelter Island, inviting him to work with him at the Crescent Beach restaurant that is now known as Sunset Beach. At the time, the restaurant was owned by the Kraus family, and Michael Stone and Bennett began to operate it under the name, Michael’s Crescent Beach.

After a soggy first season that saw rain on 16 of 20 weekends, Bennett had awnings designed and installed, created a mouth-watering menu of ribs and steak, brought in rock bands, and did both bartending and cooking. Business picked up and New York Magazine wrote about them. “No weather could stop us,” Bennett said.

But Michael didn’t share all the trouble he was in. Bills went unpaid. “It got pretty ugly,” he said. Bennett said the final blow came when the owners raised the rent.

Michael moved to California, but Bennett stayed. “On Shelter Island, I never felt safer in my life,” he said. “Like summer camp year-round.”

After Bennett lost Michael’s Crescent Beach, he worked at The Dory, a now defunct restaurant called Duvall’s and at Gardiner’s Bay Country Club. He also bartended at the American Legion Post for 12 years.

In December 1993, he wound up in the hospital with an injured back for 10 days and was discharged right before the holidays. At home, incapacitated, with his friends away, he called the Pharmacy to ask if there was anyone who could deliver his medicine.

“Greg [Ofrias, the co-owner] came right out and brought me the medicine,” Bennett said. “When I got stronger I went in and shook his hand.”

A year later, when Bennett heard that Greg was looking for a short order cook one day a week, he applied, and one day a week eventually grew to three or four.

Prior to Bennett’s reign at the grill, they served a breakfast potato — a small potato sliced into such thick disks that they reduced the heat when they hit the old griddle and didn’t brown much.

Bennett saw a better way. He put butter on the griddle, took a box grater and grated the potato right onto the griddle, one order at a time. “It cooked faster, got nice and brown and it didn’t take the heat away from the griddle. We started calling them hash browns.”

Now the hash browns from the Pharmacy grill are the stuff of lore on Yelp and TripAdvisor. But a warning to those who would try to reproduce this made-to-order delicacy at home — in 24 years, Bennett said he’s had rotator cuff surgery on both shoulders from grating potatoes.

“I have cooked for king and country,” Bennett said. Ewan McGregor, Matt Dillon and the B-52s have sat cheek by jowl with the guy who orders a bacon, egg, and cheese on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and sausage, egg and cheese on Tuesday and Thursday. Saturday his order is a breakfast platter with hash browns.

In 1997, Bennett was a member of the team that won the men’s bowling championship at the American Legion. Teammate Bob Rescigno invited everyone over to celebrate with a dinner of his wife’s homemade pizza and sausage bread. While eating pizza on the deck, Bennett met Bob’s daughter, Robin Rescigno.

They married three years later.

Bennett and Robin live in the same house where they met. ChiChiLee, their friendly and affectionate mutt keeps close by, and for Robin’s birthday every year, Bennett makes a lobster BLT on a toasted Kaiser roll and a fresh-squeezed watermelon juice cocktail. They’ll celebrate their anniversary this year in Maui, where they honeymooned 18 years ago.

Bennett figures he’s fed several generations of Islanders. He takes deep satisfaction in seeing the cycle of Island life play out. “I’ve watched a kid graduate from high school, graduate from college, get a girlfriend, get married and now their kids are engaged to be married,” he said. “A lot of happiness comes with my job.”

Lightning Round

What do you always have with you? A book of photos.

Favorite place on Shelter Island? The golf course at the Shelter Island Country Club.

Favorite place not on Shelter Island? Maui.

What exasperates you? The way people drive. The recklessness.

When was the last time you were afraid? December 2011 for my second cervical spine surgery.

What is the best day of the year on Shelter Island? A day in October, when it’s cooler and the leaves are changing and it’s our anniversary.

Favorite movie or book? “Casablanca.”

Favorite food? Veal or Chicken Caprina, a thin cutlet with prosciutto and mozzarella — the recipe is from Villa Paul in Hampton Bays.

Favorite person, living or dead, who is not a member of the family? Robert (Bob) Rescigno, my late father-in-law.

Island Profile- Francesca Frasco a student and scientist who never stops running.

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO Francesca Frasco at home on Shelter Island.

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on June 1, 2018

When Shelter Island High School senior Francesca Frasco and I sat down to talk at her family’s home on Wade Road, it was Friday afternoon of Memorial Day weekend. She had just returned from a tea party. A real one with brewed tea in china cups, sweet snacks and conversation.

High school seniors typically attend awards banquets, proms and after-parties, but this is Shelter Island, where years ago Marilynn Pysher began to invite all the young women from the previous year’s high school graduating class to have tea with the young women on the verge of graduating.

It was an event so eagerly anticipated that Jacki Dunning, the school district’s clerk and irreplaceable person, stepped in two years ago when Marilynn was ready to hang up the tea towel.

“Mrs. Dunning is famous for two things. One, her kindness, and two, her cupcakes.” Francesca said. “She went into the corner and we talked about whatever we wanted to.”

Francesca grew up in Mastic Beach with her sisters Melissa and Nicolette, twins born one minute apart, and only 18 months before Francesca.

Her mother Jasmine, who worked at the Center Moriches School and her father Frank, who commuted to the New York Stock Exchange, had their hands full, to say the least.

The girls attended a Catholic school in Center Moriches, and in 2006 when Francesca was about five, the family found a small ranch house on Shelter Island and started spending weekends here.

They became close with their Island neighbors, the Dunnings and the Hallmans. In the company of Elizabeth Dunning and Breanna and Madison Hallman, the three Frasco girls rode their bikes up and down Wade Road endlessly.

Frank Frasco had been telling his family for years that they would someday live on the Island full time, and in 2011 he began renovating the little ranch house that became a new home on the old foundation. At the start of the 2012 school year, Francesca entered 7th grade on Shelter Island.

Although she liked her neighborhood in Mastic Beach, living full-time on Shelter Island was a welcome difference. “We could go outside and do whatever we wanted. We had freedom,” Francesca said. “Where I used to live, my school friends were 30 minutes away and we talked by computer. It’s more of a community here.”

She started running in the 5th grade. At first she just enjoyed running around outside, but after she moved to the Island, friends Joshua Green and Lindsey Gallagher convinced her to join the newly-formed running club. Francesca was in 9th grade when an official cross country team started and by then she knew she wanted to stick with it.

A bout of tendinitis, complicated by trying to get back into running too soon, led to a setback for Francesca in the 10th grade. “I got better, jumped back in and clearly did not learn,” she said, “I ended up not running for six months.”

In her junior and senior years, Francesca was back in good form and the team’s results tell a story of excellence. Both the boys and girls teams were cross country, county and league champions and both teams made it to the state competition. This year was the highest the boys and girls have ever placed as a team.

Francesca’s ability to visualize success, to see the goal she is working toward, is part of what put her in the first group of biology teacher Dan Williams’ students to get publishable results while working under his guidance in the Intel research class.

She began working with Mr. Williams in her junior year to determine the structure of Methylenetetrahydrofolate Reductase, known as MTHFR, a human protein associated with nutrition problems. Mr. Williams suggested they try to get to the bottom of the real structure of the protein, something scientists had previously guessed at.

Francesca loved the challenge. “Mr. Williams had never had one of his students take a project and go from concept to reality,” she said. “In my head I said, ‘Watch me, I will be your first.’”

She spent most of a year researching the problem, trying to build a solid base of concepts to work from. In her senior year, Lauren Gurney and Emma Gallagher began to work with her. Mr. Williams suggested they use a technique called protein crystallography to determine the structure of MTHFR. But first, they needed a sample of the protein to work with.

A flurry of email inquiries led the students to Dr. Elizabeth Trimmer of Grinnell College in Iowa, who is also studying MTHFR and agreed to share her supply with the Shelter Island scientists. Success started to look possible. “I said, we’re going to do this and we’re going to do it before I graduate,” Francesca recalled. “I don’t like to give up. I like to push, I like to accomplish things.”

Francesca, Lauren and Emma spent long days at Brookhaven National Lab, returning four or five times as they worked to grow crystals of MTHFR that could be analyzed.

Despite some setbacks, Francesca awoke one morning to an exciting text message from Mr. Williams, who had stayed even later than his students at Brookhaven, and had made a positive identification, “Congratulations! Folic acid! 2.6 angstrom.”

Their structure will likely be published later this month in the Protein Data Bank that is open to all and used by scientists and researchers.

This fall, Francesca plans to attend SUNY Cortland where she’ll run winter track, spring track and cross country. She’s not sure about a major, but her experience with science in high school is something she’d like to build on and combine with her love of running, possibly in exercise science.

President of her class for three years now, Francesca is an enthusiastic event planner.

Last year’s prom at the Pridwin is the result of her inclusive style of leadership, as is this year’s senior trip to Orlando that includes stops at Universal Studios, The Kennedy Space Center, Cocoa Beach and an aquatic park.

She gets joy doing community service and has participated in three mission trips accompanying Bryan and Kerri Knipfing, one to Boston, one to Shirley, Long Island and last year to Greenport. She worked as a camp counselor with kids, restored property damaged by a storm and last year cleared space in one person’s yard to accommodate a ramp for handicapped access.

In six years of living full-time on the Island, Francesca hasn’t seen it change much, although she said, “I’ve changed. Now I’m 17 and more involved. I know who’s on Town Council. I know the people at the Reporter.”

For her last weeks as a full-time Islander, Francesca is behind the counter at the Tuck Shop, where the Frasco sisters have scooped the mint chip and the rocky road for years, side-by-side.

Lightning Round — Francesca Frasco

What do you always have with you? I have a safety pin with pearls pinned to my running shoes, reminding me that I have to sacrifice things for running.

Favorite place not on Shelter Island? A tiny town called Omisalj. My grandma grew up there, the Shelter Island of Croatia.

When was the last time you were elated?  When I found out we had crystals for the MTHFR protein.

What exasperates you? When people judge each other and they say it out loud.

What is the best day of the year on Shelter Island? The day of the 10K. It’s my favorite holiday.

Favorite movie? I love ‘Jersey Boys.’  I’ve seen it six times.

Favorite food? All vegetables except radishes, which taste like spicy dirt.

Favorite person, living or dead, who is not a member of the family?  My coaches Bryan Gallagher and Toby Green — in life and in running.

South African, Olympian and coach of the Shelter Island Bucks

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO
Janet Hanley with Coach Darryn Smith. Janet and her husband D.J. are hosting Darryn for the season at their home on Smith Street.

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on June 26, 2018

The first thing Hamptons Collegiate League Coach Darryn Smith did when he met with his new Shelter Island Bucks team was give every player a beaded key ring from his native South Africa.

The gift evokes a tradition Darryn’s parents started when he was eight, before his first baseball tournament. For every tournament he played, they gave him something small and lucky. Darryn is 42 now, but he still believes in the power of the key ring to unlock good things.

Darryn was born and raised in Durban, South Africa. Three years ago, he sold his hardware business and moved his family to Cape Town, where he works in marketing. His wife Michele grew up in Pretoria and moved to Durban where the two became high school sweethearts. They have three children, Tyler, Brandon and Jordyn.

Baseball is a big deal in the Smith household. Darryn has played for the South Africa National Team since he was a boy and has been both a player and the coaching commissioner for his region of South Africa for almost 12 years. Tyler, 21, attends Grand View University in Iowa and is a sophomore infielder, playing shortstop for the Bucks this summer. Brandon will also attend Grand View this year. He’s a pitcher, like his dad. Jordyn, 11, is a pitcher. She’s spending the summer in Cape Town with her mother. Even Michele played softball in college.

“She holds us all together,” said Darryn of his wife. “She knows the game and she’ll let me know if we do something wrong.” Leaving home for the summer was “happy and sad. This is one of the longest times I’ve ever been away from Michele, but I was very excited to come.”

Asked by the Reporter not long after he was tapped to be Bucks head coach how a South African kid became a baseball player and coach, Darryn said he caught baseball fever at age six. “My family went down to watch my cousins play at a field next to the shopping mall in our home town,” he said. “From the first, I knew I had an aptitude for the game and was instantly hooked. At school we played a number of ball games, including soccer, but baseball has always been my passion.”

Darryn is currently the pitching coach of the South African senior national team, and an international scout, having just stepped off the mound himself as a pitcher and mainstay of the South Africa National Team. He competed in the first two World Baseball Classics in 2006 and 2009, an international tournament.

He became an Olympian when he pitched for South Africa at the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney. “I get goosebumps again,” he said. “I couldn’t believe I’d put myself amongst these athletes in the best shape of their lives. At the opening ceremony, I was mingling with the best of the best.”

He pitched against the U.S. and struck out Pat Borders who went on to become one of just four players in baseball history to win a World Series — with the Toronto Blue Jays — and a gold medal in the Olympics.

“That’s a good memory,” Darryn said.

When he was invited to spring training by the Phillies, it was his first real exposure to Major League Baseball. The Phillies offered him a scouting contract and since then he has served as an international scout and coach, doing some work for the Dodgers and now with the Red Sox.

Although his full-time marketing job supports his family, Darryn is on a baseball field, coaching and scouting six or seven days a week. He hopes eventually to coach full-time in a high school or college.

His approach to coaching is grounded in educational practice. “Always teach the why,” he said. “If a kid knows the why, they’ll never forget it.” As a pitcher, Smith says he got his edge by closely observing hitters and learning what they do. He lived by the words of Warren Spahn: “Hitting is timing. Pitching is upsetting timing.”

Darryn believes there is a place in baseball for sabermetrics, but as a coach, he describes himself as intuitive. “I don’t only look at the number of hits a hitter has. I’ll look at how productive he is, his place in the line-up and if he can be productive there. For a pitcher, over and above command and control, I’ll look at a strike-out to base-on-balls ratio. We want 2-1 on that. We’ll look at ground ball outs to flyball outs. If we can get a pitcher to get ground ball outs at 2 to 1 in that ratio, that’s good.”

He tells his players, “leave the game in a better way than you found it,” and he applies that philosophy to himself as well. “I believe if you do that, you never stop learning. You will get better. Your kids will get better.”

Lightning Round

What do you always have with you? As a young player before my first tournament my parents gave me a ‘Care Bear’ key ring with a four-leaf clover. I still have it.

Favorite place on Shelter Island? Wades Beach, which reminds me of a piece of land I bought on the West Coast of South Africa.

Favorite place not on Shelter Island? My 45-minute commute to work — within a 3K radius of my house are vineyards and a 15-minute view of Table Mountain, one of the seven wonders.

When was the last time you were elated? Coming here was a pretty good moment.

What exasperates you? If a player doesn’t hustle.

When was the last time you were afraid? I got apprehensive every time I got on the mound in an international game. Jitters, just before that first pitch.

Favorite movie or book? ‘The Rookie.’

Favorite food? A good steak.

Favorite person, living or dead, who is not a member of the family? Marc Moreau, my boss and president of the South African Baseball Union.  He’s driven, focused and his integrity is unsurpassed.

Off the Fork: The perfect burger... Don't try this indoors.

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO | ‘Tis the season for burgers … so get grilling!

Play ball!

Memorial Day is the opening pitch of the summer grilling season, time for me to step outside, heft the spatula and connect with an orb of ground beef.

If I’m doing it right, there will be smoke. Like playing baseball and spray painting wicker porch furniture, cooking hamburgers is an activity best done outdoors.

Of course, you can also pay someone else to grill you a hamburger. Isola in the Heights has a burger on the menu every night, and Chef Seth Nathan says the pan as well as the meat are important factors in achieving a great burger.

“My patties are cast-iron-pan cooked with a blend of Kobe brisket, domestic short rib and ribeye trim for fat content,” he said.

The Islander’s crowd-pleasing burgers (and powerful kitchen ventilation system) have made them an Island favorite. How do they do it? Owner Ashley Knight said, “Good quality meat and the right balance of spice.” Their best sellers are “The Stinky” — gorgonzola and bacon stuffed inside and on top, and the “West Coast” — guacamole, bacon, pepper jack and chipotle mayo.

Another reliable source for excellent hamburgers is the flat-top grill behind the stands at Fiske Field when the Bucks are playing a Hamptons Collegiate League game. The Bucks’ first home game vs. the Southampton Breakers is on Friday, June 1 at 5 p.m. — just in time for dinner. A team of volunteer grillers, including chef and food educator Tom Hashagen will take their turns with the spatula.

Anyone who has stood around a smoky grill with a few colleagues knows that the relative merits of hamburger cooking techniques are contentious. People who continue to live in peace with relatives who voted the wrong way in the last election will shun them over the question of whether to flip frequently or just once.

Equally fraught is the debate between using a skillet for better heat control or cooking on the grate for more charcoal flavor. Tom declared the he was once a charcoal-broiled burger guy, but in the last couple of years has switched to pan grilling.

Since I’ve enjoyed a few of the Fiske Field burgers immoderately, I asked Tom to tell me what makes a great burger. This is sort of like asking Aaron Boone what makes a great lineup. His explanation was so convincing that now I’m doing it his way. Here is a tamed version of Tom’s take on the perfect burger.

Tom Hashagen’s Smash Burgers

Serves 4

2 tablespoons ketchup

2 tablespoons mayonnaise

1 tablespoon mustard

2 teaspoons pickle juice

1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

4 soft hamburger buns

Iceberg lettuce, four slices of tomato and dill pickles

1 pound of hamburger meat, about 20% fat, 80% lean

Kosher salt and ground pepper

4 slices of American cheese

1.  Mix the ketchup, mayonnaise, mustard, pickle juice and Worcestershire together to make a sauce.

2.  Split and toast the buns, then spread both halves with the sauce.

3.  Put some iceberg lettuce, a slice of tomato and a few dill pickle slices on the bottom half.

4.  Loosely pack the meat into eight balls of about 2 ounces each.

5.  Heat an iron skillet, put the meat in the pan, and within 30 seconds use a spatula to smash the balls down to about the diameter of the bun.

6.  Cook a minute or two until the edges of the patties turn a little gray and start to bubble.

7.  Season with salt and ground pepper, and flip them, making absolutely sure to get every bit of the crispy caramelized crust off the pan.

8.  On half the patties put a slice of American cheese, and within 30 seconds put a patty without cheese on top of one with cheese.

9.  Whamo! Incredible burgers in about four minutes of cooking time.

The boyhoods of summer: The Reporter goes to spring training 2018

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO A day in the sun for fathers and sons, like the Diedrich Family.

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on March 29, 2018

When my husband, two adult sons and I travel to Dunedin, Florida, the spring home of the Toronto Blue Jays every March, we come home improved.

We read, we sit around, we drink beer and we watch baseball. It is the spiritual and culinary highlight of the year, a place where our family can experience baseball as a kind of faith and spring training as a pilgrimage.

I start every day with a bowl of Raisin Bran and skim milk in the Holiday Inn breakfast room with the other guests, many from Canada and New York. This year a delightful Toronto-area family of five — parents, two kids and their grandmother — held the room captive. The son was the kind of talkative 10-year old boy who knows a lot of excellent jokes about flatulence. As he encountered the breakfast bar he paused by the tray of condiments to ask his mother, “Did you know that if you put ketchup packets in the freezer they will explode?”

At the table with his parents, and 14-year old sister, he tucked into a pastry completely coated in some kind of thick, white icing. “Cinnamon buns are my favorite unhealthy thing,” he said. “If you were dying, what would your final meal be? My final meal would be a giant hamburger, sausage and bacon.”

His sister took the bait: “Mine would be baby food because that’s what I started with.”

Mom corrected her, “Actually you started with breast milk, so that would have to be your final meal.”

“Gross,” said Dad, changing the subject.

A coach of his son’s team back home, he led a review of the play they witnessed at a Jays game the previous day that began with a base-running error by Dwight Smith and led to two Blue Jays standing on second base, followed by a rundown and a double play that would have been a triple if the Jays hadn’t already had one out, to end the game. Follow?

Never mind. Dad said, “By that point the whole team was laughing.” As were we.

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO Mother and child in the Florida sunshine on the berm at Phillies Spectrum stadium.

 

My husband reminded me that Dwight Smith hit a home run off one of our sons at a tournament in Cobb County, Georgia, back in the days when we saw base-running errors and run downs every day in Little League play.

This year, baseball talk in the breakfast room was sometimes derailed by events of the day. In the corner, near the heated box holding the cinnamon buns, three guys in Phillies T-shirts were consulting Google Maps to devise a strategy for driving to Lakeland while avoiding the worst of the spring break and Disney traffic. The guy with the gray goatee asked his Google-Mapping buddy, “What do you think of the Yankee starters?”

Engrossed in his phone, his companion gasped: “Oh my gosh, he just fired Rex Tillerson.”

Our first game was the Yankees away at the Oriole’s Ed Smith Park in Sarasota. We were delighted to see Aaron Judge had also made the trip, something marquee players rarely do in spring training. It’s said that the great Yankee reliever Mariano Rivera never even had a travel jersey for spring games. But there was Judge, a few yards away in right field, making plays and studying the replay on the Jumbotron, looking to get better, as good as he is.

His agility was even more incredible when I took in his kayak-like feet.

On Friday, we traveled along with the Blue Jays a couple of miles to the Phillies Spectrum field. Jays shortstop Gift Ngoepe, was working hard for his spot on the roster. Ngoepe is the first black African player in Major League Baseball.

The Jays recently added poutine, the Canadian comfort food to their stadium menu.

 

He played a brilliant shortstop, making several dazzling plays. After the game, fans gathered to observe an alligator floating in a fenced-in storm drain outside the stadium on the way to the parking lot.

By Saturday morning, a new front opened in the Holiday Inn breakfast battle of the bulge when the toaster, mounted on a steep angle to make it easier to grasp and remove the bread, began to pop like a fly ball, with toast landing on the floor several feet away.

“Whose toast is that?” said the breakfast room supervisor.

“Why does it jump like that?” asked the gentleman from Quebec.

Dad from Toronto chimed in, “You have to stand by the toaster and catch it, or it just flies right out.”

The matriarch of the family of five from Arkansas suggested, “You should hand out fielder’s gloves so we can get some practice shagging toast.”

Saturday at Auto Exchange Stadium in Dunedin was the Jays annual game with the Canadian National team, a chance for the most promising 16-to-18-year old Canadian players to brush up against the majors. The Jays starter against the junior team was Marcus Stroman, a Long Island native who identifies home as “Medford, LIE exit 65.” The Jays catcher, Russell Martin a former Yankee, came up through the Canadian National team.

The Jays reached into their roster of young legacy talent to make it a day for fathers and sons. Kacy Clemens (son of seven-time Cy Young Award winner Roger) started at first, Cavan Biggio (son of Hall of Famer, Craig) at second, Bo Bichette, (son of Dante) at shortstop and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. at third.

Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s father was voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in January, a notorious bad-ball hitter who would swing at anything, so when Vladimir Jr. walked his first time up, his patience prompted a fan to remark that he must have gotten his plate discipline from his mother.

Braden Halladay, son of legendary pitcher Roy Halladay, pitched a perfect 8th inning for the Canadian Junior Team. His impossibly long and elegant pitching stance evoked his father’s, who threw the second no hitter in postseason history and died last year in an airplane crash. Halladay’s performance was an emotional link to his family history, as well as baseball history.

Like spring training, it was beautiful, and all too-brief.

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO Braden Halladay, son of legendary pitcher Roy Halladay, pitching a perfect 8th inning for the Canadian Junior Team.

Waiting, watching and thinking-hunting on Shelter Island

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO Animal Control Officer Beau Payne on the hunt recently, getting into position an hour before sundown, a time when deer are most active.

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on February 1, 2018

On a frigid afternoon in January, harnessed to a tree stand 14 feet above a thick nest of bittersweet, and well into my second hour of deer-hunting, the parts of me in contact with the steel seat were very cold.

I was armed with nothing more lethal than a camera, but the hunter in the tree stand a few feet away had arrows, and he knew how to use them.

Beau Payne, Shelter Island’s animal control officer, had warned me that hunting with him was likely to be uncomfortable and boring.

“I have no ritual, and I don’t worry about scent,” he said. “I put camo on and get in a tree.”

Although about 200 men and a handful of women hunt on the Island, the responses to a recent town-sponsored survey of residents showed that for many people, deer-hunting is a mystery. Some respondents didn’t seem to be aware that hunting is legal here from October through the end of January.

Since I’m one of the uninitiated, I decided to try and learn what it’s like to hunt deer on the Island.

The first misconception I had to overcome was the idea that it involved a lot of shooting. A hunter can wait silently for hours watching and waiting for a chance to take a shot. It is a winter activity, and snowy conditions are ideal for seeing deer, if not for the comfort of the hunter.

The hunter may sit, lie or climb into a tree erected on the property of a landowner who has given permission, then wait and observe.

It helps not to move too much.

“It’s not particularly exciting,” Mr. Payne said. “The exciting part is seeing game and even possibly harvesting game.”

I’d heard that falling out of a tree stand is a real hazard, so I decided to remove my mittens long enough to make sure I had done a thorough job of closing the carabiner on the safety clip. An hour later, my fingers still aching from exposure to the wind, I understood how a fall could happen.

When the wind shifted the tree against my back, I realized I’d been in that slack-jawed state of consciousness that precedes a nap. If the creaking and shifting of the tree hadn’t jolted me back to awareness, hanging in a harness from the safety strap would have done the trick.

Deer are most active around the first and last lights of day and hunting is permitted from the published sunrise until sunset. Hunters like to be in place well beforehand. That’s why, although we spent the afternoon watching, we didn’t see deer close enough to shoot at until shortly before the time when hunting was prohibited.

With a half hour to go before sundown, four deer appeared, moving in a wide circle around the dense patch of bittersweet in which we watched. They came up around us circling through the brush and appeared suddenly in a grassy clearing directly below us.

The arrow hit the lead doe in the back, and she took off like a rocket.

Mr. Payne was not happy. Later, he said, “It was not a good shot, akin to being shot across the fleshy part of your behind, a very close shave. It might have been more appropriate for me to delay or pass given the turn of events.”

We spent the next hour tracking the doe, starting with a tuft of hair shaved off by the arrow, to the arrow itself, lying near the place where she had bounded into the woods. Mr. Payne was able to judge from the condition of the arrow, her movement as she fled, and the amount of blood, that the wound would not be fatal. But he continued to search.

“I’m probably going to regret doing this,” he said, hunched over, as he entered a briar-ridden thicket of vines so dense it could have been home to a herd.

He extricated himself from the thicket and followed a sign of blood looking like black seeds on the dry leaves — invisible to me — continuing to search until it was too dark to see.

It was a teachable moment on the distinction between hunting deer and culling deer. “If this was culling, the deer would have come to the bait at the exact time and place that I determined, but baiting is not legal for recreational hunting,” he said. “The unpredictability of hunting is what creates the challenge.”

“She was the lead doe in that pack, very intelligent, and this experience will make her extremely intelligent,” he added.

Mr. Payne saw her again a couple of days later, but was not able to take a shot.

The doe was not the only one educated by the events of that day. I saw first-hand the challenges and difficulties of harvesting deer, and the trade-offs between safety and humane treatment of humans and deer on our densely populated Island.

REPORTER FILE PHOTO

A brief history of deer hunting on Shelter Island
In spite of the local legend that Shelter Island’s deer are descended from a pair brought here in 1892 by Francis Marion Smith, a business magnate, the indigenous whitetailed deer of Eastern Long Island were likely here already, but in much smaller numbers than today’s herd.

Mr. Smith is said to have brought in a non-native species of European red deer or possibly mule deer to stock his deer park, at the site of today’s Deer Park Lane.

Before the turn of the 20th century, Shelter Island wasn’t a good place for deer to thrive because of a limited food supply. But when people began to establish farms and build homes and barns, the deer population exploded as every border between woods and field or house and farm provided perfect places for browsing, which is the term used for herbivores, such as deer, that mainly feed on ground vegetation.

By 1916, the Island’s deer herd was so large and voracious that local farmers called on the state to help eliminate the herd humanely. Over six days in late April 1916, the state answered the call, attempting to relocate all the deer on Shelter Island (estimated at 75 to 200) to Pennsylvania and upstate New York. The project was an abject failure.

After a week of fencing, herding, capturing and shipping, most of the deer were injured, drowned or otherwise killed. About 30 remained at large and only six deer made it out alive and in good enough shape to be transferred to Utica, New York.

Deer in North America had been hunted almost into extinction and public concern led to the formation of a State Conservation Department — the precursor of the Department of Environmental Conservation — established to bring back game species. The conservation efforts worked and by 1969, Suffolk County opened up a limited season to encourage hunting as a way to manage the growing herd.

By the middle of the 20th century it was legal to shoot deer on Shelter Island, but there was not a season. By the 1960s, hunting was such a normal part of Shelter Island life that at least one hunter remembers going for pheasant in the morning before school and then taking his gun to school and leaving it in his locker.

In the 1960s and 1970s, a private hunt club operated on the land that is now the Mashomack Preserve comprising almost a third of the acreage of the Island. Islanders still hunt there as they have for 50 years.

Today, the Shelter Island deer herd is estimated in the thousands, and recreational deer hunting at Mashomack, Sylvester Manor and on a few private properties accounted last year for an annual harvest of about 450 deer.

Roger Horowitz: Shelter Island summers of beach, softball and non-kosher chicken

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO Roger Horowitz at the home on Menantic Creek that has been in his family since the 1960s.

 

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on September 21, 2017

Roger Horowitz grew up on the Upper West Side, went to school in the city and spent every summer of his childhood on Shelter Island, where he learned many important life lessons.

One involved chicken.

Roger’s mother, Louise, used to buy chicken from a kosher butcher in the city, but in the 1960s you couldn’t get kosher meat on Shelter Island. Since the family couldn’t survive the whole summer without chicken, she bought from Bohack, the local supermarket at the time, where she discovered that chicken — and every other kind of meat — was significantly less expensive than the kosher stuff she had been buying all her life.

“There was a whole world out there of meat that was much cheaper,” Roger said. It was a revelation that fueled his interest in the business of American food, and how brands and labels are used by manufacturers to influence consumers.

Roger is now director of the Center for the History of Business, Technology and Society at the Hagley Museum in Delaware. His book, “Kosher USA: How Coke Became Kosher and Other Tales of Modern Food,” won the National Jewish Book Award for the best book in American Jewish studies in 2016.

Before his parents bought the house on Midway Road that Roger still owns, they rented a cabin in Shorewood, where he remembers being a 4-year old playing in the goldfish pools and formal gardens of the Victorian Manor House. In 1962, a hurricane came through and Roger’s family spent the night in the Manor house to ride out the storm.

When the power went out, they lit candles, and Roger, who must have been a real pest, decided to see what would happen if he put a fork into the flame, and burned his finger.

When the family drove out from the city, they usually encountered horrific traffic, with Roger and his two sisters stuffed into the back seat of a Volvo sedan with shedding cats and no air-conditioning. On every trip, they stopped at the same diner to eat. One time his older sister was sick and threw up at the diner, and in the chaos that ensued his younger sister found a stray cat which she managed to keep by asking their father’s permission while he was distracted.

Edmund turned out to be a great cat.

“The drives were always deeply unpleasant,” said Roger, “which heightened the appreciation for Shelter Island once we got here.”

On day one of each vacation, Roger and his siblings completed a self-imposed checklist of activities — swim in Fresh Pond, take a dip at Wades Beach, ride a bike to Tarkettle Road and back — to mark the commencement of a summer free from supervision. “The mothers would report to all the other mothers where we were,” he said, “but we had freedom.”

A 4 p.m. softball game topped off every afternoon, played in a vacant lot owned by the Ross and Levine families, just up Midway Road from Wades Beach. The pitcher was always an adult, usually Mimi Ross herself. Balls and strikes went uncalled to encourage everyone to swing. Every year a much-anticipated “Daddy’s Game” was held, during which one of the fathers would inevitably pull a hamstring, or trip and fall.

When Roger was about 14, his parents divorced, and their family summers on Shelter Island came to an end. His mother kept the house on Midway Road.

Roger’s mother, Louise, had a Ph.D and taught philosophy at Long Island University, but by 1973, she was out of a job. She entered law school, graduated in 1978, and practiced commercial law for the rest of her life.

“She was ferocious in conversation,” Roger said. “She took no prisoners. Not even her children.”

After the divorce, Louise brought a man named Alton Johnson into their lives. Al was an unlikely companion for a college professor-turned lawyer since he had little formal education and was a veteran of three wars, including Vietnam. He knew plumbing and carpentering, could fix anything, and showed Roger how to work with his hands. Al settled into the house on Midway Road, where he lived for 25 years until his death in 2001.

Meanwhile, Roger graduated from the Ethical Culture Fieldston School, and eventually from the University of Chicago. But first he took some time off to work at a machine shop in Chicago called Chromium Industries, and then as an inspector of tools used in manufacturing televisions.

Roger had grown up in a household where no one worked with their hands. Getting to know Al Johnson, and working in manufacturing gave Roger a set of skills he’d never thought about. “There is a certain feel and sight that comes with using equipment,” he said. “I learned tactile abilities that human beings have but don’t always matter, abilities that, growing up in an intellectual Jewish family, I didn’t develop.”

Roger went on to get a Ph.D. in history from the University of Wisconsin, and joined the faculty of the University of Delaware, where he is now professor of History and Jewish Studies.

The house on Midway Road is still an important part of Roger’s life, even if he now lives far away. Roger and his wife, Jessica Payne, live in southern Pennsylvania, with their children, Lucy, 9, and Breck, 14. The family’s visits to the Island involve a five-hour car trip that takes them perilously close to New York traffic. Roger’s son, Jason, is 25, and often joins them.

Roger’s parents, who had been divorced for 40 years, both died one month apart in December 2010 and January 2011. His father lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico and his mother lived in New York City.

“The timing was very, very tough,” Roger said. “They brought me into this life. It was my responsibility, when they were leaving it, to make it easier for them.”

In keeping with his vocation as a historian of business, Roger said the major change he’s seen on the Island in the 50 years he’s been observing, can be measured in late-model cars. “You used to see Fords and Plymouths and Chevys, and now you see Lexuses, Range Rovers and BMWs.”

He also observed that as middle-class people have been squeezed out, the Island has become much more liberal. “Liberals are more open to government regulation. Out here that means a willingness to regulate short-term rentals, and to preserve public resources. As it’s become more crowded, a realization grows that you need to take care of these resources, rather than assume that nature will take its course.”

Roger measures time like a historian, with a long view of environmental challenges. “I’m very much the result of Shelter Island. I have an appreciation for the natural world and I believe that nature is tough, and resilient,” said Roger. “If you give nature a chance it will recover.”