Tags Posts tagged with "Mount Sinai Congregational church"

Mount Sinai Congregational church

Suffolk County Legislator Sarah Anker. File photo from Anker's office
By Samantha Rutt

Suffolk County Legislator Sarah Anker (D-Mount Sinai) recently organized a local history initiative to help tell the story of historic Mount Sinai.

Initially, “I want to try to bring together the local community and the historians to document the history of the Chandler Estate, Mount Sinai Congregational Church, Sea View Cemetery and Mount Sinai Harbor,” Anker said. “There’s a lot of fascinating history. I’ve spoken to a number of folks that are in their 80s and 90s, and they have really amazing stories.” 

Through this undertaking, Anker said she hopes to enhance the existing historical archives by adding documentation, stories, photos and maps collected from the surrounding area. 

The event will feature a round-table discussion of around 25 participants, including key members of the Miller Place-Mount Sinai Historical Society, Brookhaven Town historians and other local advocates who will contribute to the documentation process. 

“We’re meeting to talk about what information can be identified, and move forward hoping to open it up to anyone who has additional information,” the county legislator explained. “The meeting on Friday will be mainly focusing on the historians and how the process works and what information they have.”

For nearly 30 years, Anker has lived in the Mount Sinai community. Shortly after settling in, she came across the Mount Sinai Civic Association in a local newspaper. There on the cover stood a group of people from the civic association standing in front of bulldozers fighting to preserve the Chandler Estate as it was set to be a site for new development. 

     As a result Anker decided to get involved, becoming a member of the organization. 

“When I saw that article, that picture sparked my interest because it’s near where I live,” she said. “I like that they’re getting involved with their community and doing good things. … And that’s when I became a member.”

The local history project will touch upon the Chandler Estate, originally an upscale resort that overlooked Mount Sinai Harbor. Years after closing, the resort caught fire, leaving minimal remains that have since been taken over by a great deal of brush.

Residents now use the land for leisure. “I grew up right by there,” said Noreen Guilfoyle, a Mount Sinai resident of the once-luxurious estate. “The land used to be a big fancy mansion. … It burnt down though. There’s a trail there now, it’s a really pretty trail. But there are a lot of old foundations from buildings that are no longer there.” 

Anker has plans to open up the forum, pending the initial meeting’s success. 

“Following that [initial meeting], in another month or two we could open it up … and see if folks want to come to sign up or send us [something in] writing,” she said. “Then we can add it to the information that we have.”

To help on the complex history project, Anker is partnering with Ann Becker, a local historian and librarian. Becker is an established author with her book, “Mount Sinai,” centered around the hamlet’s fabled history.

The project is set to include input from the Suffolk County Historical Society, Mount Sinai-Miller Place Historical Society and Stony Brook University Library Archives’ special collection.

“There are so many of our local folks that have the stories, but we’re going to lose their stories and information about their experiences if we don’t document them now,” Anker said. 

Photo by Raymond Janis

Congregants, community members and peace advocates gathered Sunday, Jan. 15, outside the Mount Sinai Congregational Church to erect a Peace Pole.

The ceremony was part of the international Peace Pole Project, a program that has spread to every country with the universal message of global peace. 

Kevin Mann, president of the Rocky Point Rotary Club, attended the service. Though not a member of the Congregational Church, he traced the church’s long history championing various social causes throughout American history.

“Before the term ‘social activism’ was invented, this congregation was doing it,” he said. “This congregation’s history goes all the way back to being a part of the Underground Railroad. They also had the first free men of color as members,” adding, “They were always ahead of the curve and involved in every single social activism movement.”

Sunday’s peace ceremony carried symbolic significance as well, marking the 94th birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 

Tom Lyon is a congregation member and co-founder of Building Bridges in Brookhaven. “Martin Luther King did get the Nobel Prize for Peace,” Lyon said. “That wasn’t just about the United States. That wasn’t just about segregation. He talked about universal love, unrequited love. … That’s kind of the concept: the universality of peace.”

He added that King “spoke out against the Vietnam War, which became very controversial. That was in 1967, exactly a year before he was killed.”

To Lyon, peace is often caricatured in popular culture as passive, even pacifistic. The example of MLK, he said, awakens one to the possibilities of peace, something he viewed as highly active and courageous. 

“Martin Luther King was always talking about how being a person of peace takes much more courage, much more strength, than a person who just gives into their anger or acts out violently,” Lyon said. “To seek peaceful solutions often is more difficult, more challenging, but in the long run, that’s what we feel we’re called to do.”

Corridor of Peace

Above, Tom Lyon (left) and Kevin Mann pose with the newly planted Peace Pole outside Mount Sinai Congregational Church. Photo by Raymond Janis

The Peace Pole planted at the congregation is part of a major local effort tied to the Peace Pole Project, the proposed Corridor of Peace, coordinated by the Rotary. 

“We are attempting to declare a Corridor of Peace, which is [routes] 25 and 25A and four school districts at the moment — Rocky Point, Miller Place, Shoreham-Wading River and Longwood — that will designate how they want to make their communities a more peaceful environment,” Mann said.

Through this initiative, Mann hopes community members can better understand the problems unique to their area and work toward positive change. “You have very common themes and issues — food insecurity, inequality, housing, opioid addiction — many things,” Mann said.

Through the project, he sees an opportunity “to continue to increase the quality of life for people in the corridor.”

Lyon added to this sentiment and vision. He said members of the corridor could find unity through shared values and a mutual desire for peace. “Hopefully, people in the communities of peace will be reminded that’s the connection with the Peace Pole Project,” he said. “You see one in front of a couple of stores or another in the neighborhood where you are walking. It’s just a reminder.”

Conflict abroad

Mann and Lyon defined the Peace Pole Project as apolitical, a program committed to the mantra, “May peace prevail on Earth.” However, both acknowledged the ongoing human conflicts around the globe, namely the Russo-Ukrainian War.

Lyon said the Peace Pole Project reminds Americans of the need to promote peace, especially when the United States is not at war. “It’s sometimes easy to be a little complacent when things are going good for us as Americans,” he said. However, the project is “a universal thing,” and the cause for universal peace applies equally to Americans as it does to Ukrainians and Russians.

Outlining the Rotary’s response to Russian belligerence, Mann said the club has sponsored training for trauma nurses and has even brought a 9-year-old Ukrainian girl to Long Island for heart surgery. 

“There’s no political stand involved, but there are people in need,” he said. “We’ve been very, very active in the Ukrainian concept … and bringing focus to the Ukraine issue.”

‘The military is a business that drives economies, unfortunately.’ — Kevin Mann

Finding peace

Despite the war and violence dominating the headlines and news cycles, Mann maintains that humans are naturally peaceful. Drawing from the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi, he said peace usually endures for long periods of human history, with brief interruptions of war.

“For long periods of history, peace has prevailed,” Mann said. “For short periods of history, war has broken out.” 

Finding a silver lining in those interruptions of war, Mann added that technological advancements had accelerated during wartime. “One of the byproducts of war breaking out, as bad as it has been, is that it has led to technological and medical advancements that have helped humanity.”

Defining some of the problems inherent to these times, Mann said high-speed communication and mass media culture now spread news and images of war quickly and widely. At the same time, war remains a lucrative international business.

“The military is a business that drives economies, unfortunately,” he said. “Peace hasn’t gotten that kind of focus internationally.”

As warmongers in the press continue to drive nations into battle, and as arms dealers continue to profit from the blood spilled on the fields of human strife, Mann maintains that there is still room for hope.

“Polio is almost being totally eliminated, and malaria is well on its way to being controlled,” he said. “Over the last hundred years, people have worked to make those things happen,” adding, “They’ve happened despite diverting resources to other causes, so I think there’s great room for optimism.”

by -
0 71
From left, Kevin Mann of the Rotary Club of Rocky Point; Pam, Lewin Farms farm manager and Keith Owens of KO Cares. Photo from Mann

For over two decades, on the day before Thanksgiving, the Rotary Club of Rocky Point, along with a local farm, has facilitated over 300,000 pounds of produce to get into the hands of people who need it.

The Calverton-based Lewin Farms, which Rocky Point Rotarian Kevin Mann called “the big farm with an even bigger heart,” has hosted volunteers from soup kitchens and food pantries looking for fresh produce. On Thanksgiving Eve 23 volunteers from seven soup kitchens and food pantries converged on Lewin’s to gather around 20,000 pounds of produce and fruit. 

The seven groups that came are Long Island Cares, which gathered 8,896 pounds of food, Island Heart Food Pantry in Middle Island, The Friendship Kitchen in Middle Island, Mount Sinai Congregational Church, Friend’s Kitchen in Rocky Point, North Shore United Methodist Church in Wading River, the Medford-based KO Cares and the Gordon Heights SDA Church.

Mann said the project will continue next year and thanked Lewin Farms for its consistent help.