The History Project returned to Florida to continue interviewing former residents of East Hampton who have retired there and to attend the Bonacker Reunion in March.

On the way to Florida, we first stopped in North Carolina to interview Eleanor Ray Hall, Louise Edwards and Charlie Keyes, the last surviving member of the original three-man East Hampton Police Force.

Our first stop in Florida was outside of St. Augustine where we saw Edith Talmage Penney, a childhood friend of Mary Louise Dodge.

Louise Edwards, shown here baking rolls while being interviewed at her home in North Carolina. Louise lives alone with her horse, dog and several cats. Louise married into the Edwards fishing family. She has been an avid horsewoman and photographer, all her life.

On our trips north, we saw Carl & Eleanor Miller Dordelman, Donald "Gunk" and Grace Gibbons, Florence Miller Reed, a wonderful storyteller and sister of Milton Miller, former Justice of the Peace, Shep Frood, and Former Postmaster of Wainscott, Russ Hislip and his wife Rose, nee DiSunno.

On several trips to Ft. Meyers on the West Coast of Florida, across "Alligator Alley" the famous highway through the Everglades, we taped Ruth King, widow of Budd King, a legend from Prohibition days; her brother Leonard Lester, and Carl and Gail Erickson.

Closer to our winter home, in the southern part of the East Coast, we taped Norton "Bucket" and Mary Louise Daniels, Elsie Edwards, Vinny & Dot Lyons, Leon and Kathryn Hedges Rauscher, Agnes Napolillo, Joe Lisanti and Dorothy Vollmer Jones.

Finally, on our way home to East Hampton we stopped in Sarasota to tape Margaret Nugent, widow of "Dr. Paul", and then went on to Tampa to interview Walter Hackett.

OUR GREATEST GENERATION!

Most of the people we've been interviewing belong to what Tom Brokaw refers to as "The Greatest Generation". We might suggest that East Hampton could contribute its own chapter to his book. Bonackers fought on all fronts during the Second World War.

It isn't our job to make assessments of the people we've interviewed, but we can't help noting that East Enders have made a fine showing during all of the 20^th Century. We have recorded interviews with Goodhue Livingston, whose poor cavalry horse was "blown to bits" at the front in the forest of Ville-Bretonneaux during WWI; and dozens of interviews with local men and women who served during WWII both overseas and on the home front. We have an interview with Larry Gourlay of Wainscott, who served in the C.I.A. in Vietnam and with Jim Eckes who, as a civilian, was critical in assisting American and Vietnamese in the exodus from Saigon during the closing days of that war. His description of his escape on what might have been the last plane out, is as exciting as any action movie.

Emerging from the over 140 interviews that we have done to date, is a picture of a population that has been dedicated to its country, to its home town and to its families. These were people that were not materialistic; nobody lived beyond their means; they provided for their families. They were thrifty. They lived their lives the best way they knew how, facing adversity and helping each other in times of need and did their duty without question.

Even today, among the local population of East Hampton, these fine qualities survive, because of the example set by "Our Greatest Generation".

Tony Prohaska
Project Director

Bucket Daniels (who will be 80 this year), tells of the time during Prohibition when someone wanted a drink with milk in it in Fred Blumenthal's bar, "So Benny Hasselberger went down there to Tillinghast's Dairy down there on Apaquogue Road and stole a cow and walked it back to there and milked it right in the middle of the dance floor."

RECOLLECTIONS ...

Leonard Lester, age 95, recalls when he worked for Albert Herter at The Creeks during Prohibition and his brother-in-law, Budd King was looking for a place to store some of his bootleg whiskey. "He had this studio built and it was a beautiful, big building. Because he needed it. Because these were fourteen feet, these big murals that we were doing. Now, in order to do this mural, instead of getting on a ladder and going up and painting, we would lower the canvas. Right at the wall there was a trough about this wide. We'd open the trough and lower the canvas into the trough. Well, I don't know how Budd ever got in touch with Albert Herter. However...Mr. Herter thought about the trough. So he said, "Budd, bring it up (the whiskey) and we'll put it in the trough and close it and nobody will ever know." And that's what he did."

Tony with Carl Erickson, Jr. on the dock of Carl's successful shrimp fishing business in Ft. Myers Beach.

BONACKER REUNION '99

The 6^th Annual Bonacker Reunion was held at a lovely restaurant in Boca Raton on March 6^th. 84 "Bonackers" were in attendance including many people who have been interviewed by The History Project.

Ward Freese, the organizer of the annual reunion, announced that a contribution from the Reunion treasury would be made this year to The History Project, in recognition of the importance of the work we are doing. When the announcement was made, someone in the audience called out "Save the Bonackers!"

We have completed 145 interviews and we are far ahead of our goal of 150 interviews by the end of 1999. But…there are still many interesting people we haven't spoken to yet…so we plan to continue interviewing until the end of 1999. After that, we must concentrate on transcribing and indexing the existing interviews so they can be placed in the Pennypacker Collection at the East Hampton Library. We have been working on this Project full time, for the past year and a half and we see at least another year to go before we reach our final goals.

Martha Kalser
Project Manager