Embedded Files
The decade of the 1970s seems to have nurtured a sense of common purpose, with a variety of people working to bring improvements to the growing community. Small-scale and sometimes quirky fund-raising and other civic events included beauty contests, Donkey Baseball, and Columbus Day parades. Well-known people like Betty Friedan, Edward Albee, and Dick Cavett rubbed elbows with local volunteers as people from all walks of life rolled up their sleeves to establish a public library and a medical center in Montauk, among other causes.
The decade of the 1970s seems to have nurtured a sense of common purpose, with a variety of people working to bring improvements to the growing community. Small-scale and sometimes quirky fund-raising and other civic events included beauty contests, Donkey Baseball, and Columbus Day parades. Well-known people like Betty Friedan, Edward Albee, and Dick Cavett rubbed elbows with local volunteers as people from all walks of life rolled up their sleeves to establish a public library and a medical center in Montauk, among other causes.
The Montauk School's graduating eighth-grade class of 1970. Marge Winski Photographs.
The Montauk Medical Center opened in 1974 thanks to the efforts of local business people and other members of the community.
Founded in 1961, the Montauk Village Association raised funds for community beautification projects and scholarships in large part through its famous Greenery Scenery parties featuring celebrity bartenders such as Edward Albee and Dick Cavett.
In the 1970s Montauk readers were served by a visiting Bookmobile, but by 1980 volunteers had rallied to create a small library alongside the Montauk Community Church in a small residence that today sits almost directly across from the present-day Montauk Library. Listen to a clip of our oral history interview, at left, with a cofounder of the Friends of the Montauk Library.
Ed Ecker, an unidentified man in the middle, and John Behan on the viewing stand, at the 18th annual Montauk Friends of Erin St. Patrick's Day Parade. John Behan served as Grand Marshal. that year, which was 1979. Al Holden Collection.
School band members march and play in a 1980 Columbus Day Parade. The events were organized annually by Joseph Bosco from the mid 1970s until the 1980s.
Buddy Burke Jr. in a 1970s St. Patrick's Day Parade. Carl Darenberg Sr. Collection.
Advertisements from, respectively, the July 16, 1970, and the January 29, 1970, issues of the East Hampton Star. A group called the Citizens Concerned for East Hampton seems to have been a predecessor to the Concerned Citizens of Montauk, which was created in 1970 to oppose a plan to build more than 1,400 homes near Big Reed Pond. The Curtiss Wright proposal referred to in the advertisements would have created a new development just east of Hither Hills State Park to the west. Courtesy of New York Historic Newspapers.
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