Aventura in Commack was cited by feds for allegedly giving Chinese-made technology to the U.S. Govt. Photos from U.S. Attorney’s Office
The U.S. Attorney’s Office is charging a Commack company, Aventura Technologies Inc., and seven current and former employees with allegedly selling Chinese-made electronic equipment with known cybersecurity vulnerabilities to the federal government and private customers, while falsely representing the equipment as made in the United States.
Yacht seized from the owners of Commack business Aventura. Photos from U.S. Attorney’s Office
The individual defendants charged in the alleged scheme include Northport residents Jack Cabasso, Aventura’s managing director and de facto owner and operator, and his wife Frances Cabasso, purported owner and chief executive officer. The Cabassos were also charged with money laundering proceeds from the alleged schemes and fraud for falsely representing Frances Cabasso as chief executive of Aventura to gain access to government contracts set aside for women-owned small businesses. The government froze approximately $3 million in 12 financial accounts that contain proceeds from the alleged unlawful conduct and seized the Cabassos’ 70-foot luxury yacht Tranquilo, which was moored in the gated community where the Cabassos reside.
“As alleged, the defendants falsely claimed for years that their surveillance and security equipment was manufactured on Long Island, padding their pockets with money from lucrative contracts without regard for risk to the country’s national security posed by secretly peddling made-in-China electronics with known cyber vulnerabilities,” stated U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Richard Donoghue in a release.
In addition to Aventura and the Cabassos, the company’s senior executives Jonathan Lasker of Port Jefferson Station, Christine Lavonne Lazarus of Shirley and Eduard Matulik of North Massapequa were charged in the complaint, along with Wayne Marino of Rocky Point, a current employee, and Alan Schwartz of Smithtown, a recently retired employee.
If convicted, the defendants each face up to 20 years imprisonment on each charge of the complaint, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. No trial dates have been set, according to John Marzulli in the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The attorney for Frances Cabasso was out of town. Jack Cabasso’s attorney did not respond before press time to messages left on his answering machine.
Equipment labeled with the Aventura logo. Photos from U.S. Attorney’s Office
“With the arrests, the defendants’ brazen deceptions and fraud schemes have been exposed, and they will face serious consequences for slapping phony ‘Made in the U.S.A.’ labels on products that our armed forces and sensitive government facilities depend upon,” Donoghue said.
Case documents state that the company lied to its customers, including the U.S. military, for more than a decade. Aventura reportedly generated more than $88 million in sales revenue from November 2010 and the charged scheme has allegedly been ongoing since 2006.
“Greed is at the heart of this scheme, a reprehensible motive when the subjects in this case allegedly put into question the security of men and women who don uniforms each day to protect our nation,” stated FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge William Sweeney Jr.
The money laundering scheme allegedly entailed siphoning illegal profits out of the company through a network of shell companies and intermediaries, including transferring hundreds of thousands, and in some cases, millions of dollars into an attorney escrow account belonging to an unnamed Long Island-based law firm, where the funds were used to purchase homes, in some cases for relatives.
The FBI has established an email hotline for potential victims. Anyone with information regarding Aventura’s alleged crimes or anyone who believes they have been a victim can send an email to [email protected].
Inside the Hounds Town USA Dog Daycare. Photo by Kyle Barr
Taking Care of Your Pup Come Winter
“It’s common sense,” Deszcz said.
Dogs not accustomed to cold weather, she said, should not be out longer than 15 minutes at a time, enough time for them to do their business. Sometimes, if the ground is frozen, an owner should be outside with them to watch and make sure their paws don’t attach to any iced surface. A dog’s paws can crack in cold temperatures, and they may be inclined to lick road salt, so they need to be watched especially when out on walks.
In winter, she said people should keep dogs inside, but she knows of several of her customers who are the athletic sort, who may be taking their pets out for extended runs. In those cases, she suggests a balm or wax for a dog’s feet. Both keep the dog’s paws safe from cracking and from road salt. That’s especially important for people who live in apartment complexes that constantly salt their sidewalks.
Some dogs, like Newfoundlands or huskies, may want to stay outside in the snow, them having multiple coats of fur. Short haired or smaller pups may need a little help.
“If you have a short haired dog, they do like to wear little coats,” she said.
Deszcz also reminded that dogs will need to drink water, even if it’s cold outside, especially after walking or running.
A small, colorful storefront in Port Jefferson Station, behind two doors at the local Hounds Town USA, goes back 17 yards of space, with over 20 dogs trying to bark louder than the next.
Marianne Deszcz has worked at the Hounds Town USA since 2006. In 2012, she came to own the location and has worked there ever since. She has six employees and many others who work seasonally, with a surprising number of teachers coming back in the summers. Deszcz said they can’t seem to stay away from educating whether they have two legs or four.
Marianne Deszcz has worked at the Hounds Town USA since 2006. Photo by Kyle Barr
For years, she has seen both small and big changes in the way people interact with pets.
There’s a little bit of good but plenty of bad as well.
“People always think the pet business is such a money maker, but they also forget about the liabilities involved,” she said. “For a long time, it was in-home pet sitters, but then they realize Fluffy is going to chew your sheet rock, and that animals pee and poop — not always outside.”
She has seen other trends in the pet industry come and go. When she originally started, the general concept of interactive doggy daycare had boomed, but the idea quickly sputtered over the next few years.
“That was the briefest faze of all, because this is really hard,” she said. “Gauging how a dog will be in a group, being able to walk out of a room to get a mop without the rest of them having a WWE smackdown is really difficult. It’s an expensive business to run, and there’s not a high profit margin here.”
Despite it all, she’s kept with it because, as she said, “I know what I’m doing.” Much of her staff have been with her for years from when she bought the location from the previous owner.
The veteran dog caretaker said one problem is always with animal rescue groups never having enough funding. As ever, animal shelters constantly publicize their residents to try and get them adopted, and there are always more pets that need a home than people looking to adopt.
“Shelters are so overcrowded, and there are so many people who do not take responsibility for their animals and dump them in a shelter or dump them in a rescue,” she said.
As someone who has taken care of dogs for months at a time, she said it has become apparent that less people are doing the work to train their pets.
“Just walking on a leash, sitting if you ask them to, just the basics,” Deszcz said. “I have noticed that trend. It’s refreshing to us for someone to walk in with a trained dog.”
A Wading River resident, she and her husband own a house on North Country Road notorious for its continuous Halloween decorations, with them sitting on the porch by the nearby duck pond waving to those passing by during the annual Duck Pond Day and the recently held Fall Festival. She herself has owned many dogs, many of them rescues. From her viewpoint, more people have strayed away from buying pure breeds from breeders, instead putting rescue dogs and mutts in their homes.
“People are much more receptive to rescuing now,” she said. “Back when I started, it was very unusual to see a pit bull or a mixed breed. Now people are very receptive to it.”
It’s a turn she said is a result of local rescue groups like those she’s worked with, such as the Port Jefferson Station-based Strong Island Rescue and Southampton’s Last Chance Animal Rescue. She has seen an influx of rescue groups come onto the scene, more than there had been when she started, and their messaging of the plight of abandoned animals seems to have made an impact.
Steven and Wayne Rampone Jr. hold images of the Ford dealership when they opened the Route 347 location. Photo By Leah Chiappino
By Leah Chiappino
With a vintage Ford planted in the showroom, the Ramp Ford Dealership in Port Jefferson Station evokes a feeling of nostalgia right as you walk in. Founded in 1944 by Alfred Rampone, the dealership is celebrating 75 years in business. As the oldest family-owned Ford dealership in Suffolk County, it has seen four generations of Rampone family ownership. Currently, Steven and Wayne Rampone Jr., are partners along with their father, Wayne Rampone Sr.
Alfred Rampone during the original founding of the dealership. Photos by Leah Chiappino
“I guess you could say [the business] is in my blood,” Wayne Rampone Jr. said.
The story goes that Alfred worked as a sales representative for Chevrolet, who denied his request to open his own dealership. However, when he reached out to Ford they came through on his request. They offered him a spot in Quogue or Port Jefferson. He chose the latter to make it easier to commute from his New Hyde Park home.
Originally, the dealership was located in lower Port Jefferson village at what is now the Chase Bank building. It operated with a handful of vehicles with a single salesperson and mechanic. The Rampones expanded to their current location on Route 347 in the mid-1960s. Today, they employ 45 people, who call themselves the “Ramp family,” and sell both vehicles and parts, as well as service vehicles.
Rampone Jr. says their business model has remained the same all this time.
“We are a customer-focused and customer-centered dealership,” he said. “We take pride in me being able to say we are a family-owned business and we literally treat our customers like family. When they walk in the door, we know them by name. We take care of each other.” He added their bond with the community has been instrumental to their success.
As part of their business model, owners said the dealership attempts to give back to the community in place of traditional advertising. They sponsor Little League teams, contribute to church organizations, and are deeply involved with Hope House Ministries.
“We spend a lot of time, a lot of money, and a lot of energy in the community,” Rampone Jr. said. “We believe if we give back to the community, they will give back to us.”
Suffolk County Police Sixth Squad detectives are investigating a single-vehicle crash that killed a woman in Port Jefferson Station Oct 15.
Kaitlyn Schaal was driving a 2001 Jeep Cherokee southbound on Old Town Road when the vehicle crossed the northbound lane and struck a tree on the east side of the road at Greenhaven Drive at 6:03 a.m.
Schaal, 19, of 60 Chestnut St., Mount Sinai, was transported to Stony Brook University Hospital where she was pronounced dead.
The vehicle was impounded for a safety check. Detectives are asking anyone with information on this crash to call the Sixth Squad at 631-854-8652.
Volunteers help revitalize the Terryville Road community garden Oct. 5. Photo by Kyle Barr
One would have never known there was a garden on the side of Terryville Road in Port Jefferson Station. Vines had strangled the fence that bordered the road, and to anyone without some local knowledge practically anything could be behind those rusting chain links.
Comsewogue students Sarah Thomas and Briana Rodriguez tear apart vines at the community garden. Photo by Kyle Barr
Now, those driving past see something completely different — a full garden with planting boxes, a greenhouse and a large sign reading “Community Garden.”
Over the course of Oct. 5, close to 20 community leaders, volunteers and young people looking for high school service hours hacked at weeds, shrubs and vines, quickly bringing the place back to a presentable standard.
The garden property is owned by the Comsewogue School District, and for years had been operated by the Comsewogue Youth Center, according to district officials, but the crew suddenly ceased operations nearly a decade ago. Since then vines overtook the fence, and the site faded from many locals’ memories. While the grass was maintained by the district, the rest of the site was left to its own devices.
“The lady who took care of it eventually moved, and after that it fell to squalor,” said Sal Pitti, the president of the Port Jefferson Station/Terryville Civic Association.
As the volunteers moved in, many were surprised by just how well the property had survived after years of neglect. Only a few wooden pieces had to be replaced, such as needing new 2-by-4 lumber for the wooden benches and for a few new planters, along with new Plexiglas for the greenhouse door. Otherwise the civic leaders were pleasantly surprised.
Members of the PJS/Terryville Civic discuss ideas for the garden. Photo by Kyle Barr
“The bones of this is in relatively good shape,” said Charlie McAteer, civic corresponding secretary. “Maybe it needs some paint, maybe it needs a touch up.”
In just a few hours, a mountainous pile of plant debris had already formed by the gate onto the property.
Local landscaper Kevin Halpin, of Halpin Landscaping, said he was contacted via Facebook by civic vice president, Ed Garboski. The day before the cleanup, Halpin came in with appropriate equipment, and did much of the heavy lifting along with cutting the grass. He said he will come back on request to help with whatever needs doing.
The area, he said, needs that extra effort and TLC.
A number of high schoolers from the area also showed up to lend a hand.
Comsewogue students Sarah Thomas and Briana Rodriguez laughed and joked around as they plied a bundle of rough vines apart.
“It was a huge mess, there were vines everywhere,” Thomas said. “It’s definitely a lot cleaner without all the vines and stuff. I think a lot more kids might come here.”
Suffolk County Legislator Kara Hahn (D-Setauket) arrived midday Saturday and immediately started picking up litter from the side of the road in front of the garden gate. She said cleanups like this are good ways for community members to make a difference in an immediate and tangible way.
A sign for the Community Garden was surprisingly intact. Photo by Kyle Barr
“They’re usually very effective ways of getting people involved,” she said.
Pitti said he is looking to work with the school district to see if other students looking to get service hours in the future could work in the community garden.
“As much as the kids get into it, they’re welcome to come,” the civic president said.
The civic leaders are looking forward to next spring, where they will start planting vegetables and flowers, hoping that they maintain a staunch group of locals to tend the garden. Once the garden starts growing, they plan to donate the food to neighboring St. Gerard Majella R.C. Church for its food pantry, and if they grow even more, they will share with other churches in the area.
Animals were up for adoption at Save-A-Pet's Hounds on the Sound event in Port Jefferson 2015. Photo by Bob Savage
By Leah Chiappino
Save-A-Pet Animal Shelter is looking to expand its reach to the Berkshire Mountains in western Massachusetts where the organization plans to open a sanctuary.
The Port Jefferson Station-based animal shelter is due to close on a 20-acre property that contains a barn, house and space for a veterinary facility this month, according to shelter president Dori Scofield.
Starting around the holiday time, the sanctuary will be open to older or disabled dogs and cats that have had a difficult time finding a home.The sanctuary’s first residents will be three dogs currently residing at the shelter from Mexico who were hit by cars and are now paralyzed.However, they will still be available for adoption.
In the spring, Scofield hopes to welcome farm animals, such as pigs and goats that have been “faced with slaughter, factory exploitation, auctions, and whose lives have been wrought with fear and loneliness,”
she said.
The facility won’t just benefit animals. The shelter president said Save-A-Pet has plans to use the sanctuary to “provide an educational program where people can experience the individual personality of each animal, to become kindred spirits and therefore begin to understand the changes we must make in our own lives to stop the exploitation of animals for food and consumer products.”
The organization has fundraised what they need to make a down payment through a capital campaign and has mortgaged out the remainder of the cost. However, Scofield says the sanctuary still “desperately” needs funds.
“I am nickel and diming my way through this just like I did with Save-A-Pet,” she said.
Scofield is looking for volunteers to provide services such as plumbing, electrical work and carpentry to assist in some capital repairs needed on the Massachusetts property. They are also looking for veterinary assistants and volunteers willing to care for the animals at the property, while building a staff of volunteers in the Berkshires.
“Everything we have at Save-A-Pet we will need there,” she said.
Save-A-Pet will be hosting an Uncorked Love fundraiser at Madrian The Wine Bar at 209 Main St. in East Setauket set for 7 p.m., Nov. 7. Tickets are availble at Save-A-Pet located at 608 Route 112. All proceeds will go to the sanctuary.
Josephine Gruposso recently competed in a New York State bagging championship. Here she stands at the Northport Stop & Shop. Photo by Kyle Barr
What goes into bagging items in the grocery store?
It’s not a thought held by the hundreds who check out their groceries in local supermarkets every hour of every day. For Josephine Gruposso of Port Jefferson Station, it is a matter of deftness, intelligence and speed.
Josephine Gruposso recently competed in a New York State bagging championship. Here she stands at the Northport Stop & Shop. Photo by Kyle Barr
“I think it’s fun — some people might think it’s silly,” Gruposso said. “But when you work in a supermarket, with silly little things like this, I feel like bagging makes my time go quicker. It’s an amazing way to interact with your customers, an amazing way to interact with your employees.”
Just this last weekend Gruposso, 36, traveled upstate to participate in the 2019 New York State Best Bagger Finals at the Stop & Shop in Poughkeepsie. She, along with her Poughkeepsie-based teammate Joanne Chapman, huddled over shopping bags Sept. 21 to see who could stack and fill the fastest and neatest.
First, New York grocery stores held competitions in “heats” with multiple baggers competing against each other at a time. Each store sends two employees, and the Port Jeff Station resident was chosen for Stop & Shop.
Gruposso has been working with the supermarket chain since 2008 and has only recently started training as a customer service manager. She said she started to become interested in bagging skills when she worked the register many years ago in a store in Rhode Island. She first heard of the competition there, and though she only got to the second round in that state’s competition, she found the experience fun.
“I made it a game — and when we got really busy, I said: Okay I’ll put my timer here and we’re going to see how fast we can bag this.”
Gruposso said she has developed a bagging method that generally allows her to bag $20 worth of merchandise in under a minute, and a $100 order in one to two minutes. First, she separates the products, then places boxes around the sides of the bag to straighten and provide structure, then lays cans and bottles in the middle, which gives the packed bag balance and ensures the sides don’t tear.
“I made it a game with my cashiers, so at the same time I was practicing,” she said. “I would see how fast each customer would take me.”
She competed among 16 other contestants from stores around New York, including Stop & Shop, D’Agostino Supermarket, Gristedes, Hanaford, Price Chopper, PSK Supermarket, ShopRite and Tops Market. Those who win have the chance to travel to San Diego for the National Best Bagger Champion at the National Grocers Association annual convention.
Yes, there is a national competition, and there is a cash prize of $10,000.
The competition has gone on since 1983, when the American Paper Institute sponsored the first competition. Moving on since then, and with plastic bag laws across the state, the competition has switched to reusable bags.
The competition went well, she said, and while she didn’t win, she said she had fun watching others use different rapid bagging techniques.
Comsewogue library takes up task of preserving history
A number of artifacts now being displayed at the Comsewogue Public Library. Photo by Kyle Barr
If the old, black-and-white photos could speak, some would be crying. Others, perhaps, could be looking forward to the future.
Past Councilman Steve Fiore-Rosenfeld and Cumsewogue Historical Society President Jack Smith on a recent trip to the Gentlemen’s Driving Park in Terryville. File photo by Elana Glowatz
For 10 years, Jack Smith, a Port Jefferson Station resident and retired teacher, built the historical society from the ground up. He collected countless documents and materials and became a leading figure in local history. The Cumsewogue Historical Society, named to reflect the old spelling of the original Native Americans in that area, would be at the head of numerous outreach projects, from advocating Brookhaven town buy the Gentleman’s Driving Park in Terryville to fighting to preserve two historical structures on Main Street in Port Jefferson Station. Smith was named one of TBR News Media’s persons of the year on two separate occasions.
But by the end of 2018, Smith said he had no real choice but to dissolve the historical society, leaving thousands of artifacts to the care of the Comsewogue Public Library.
Smith said the historical society’s near 10-year run ended for a number of reasons. One was the society’s space at the Comsewogue Union Hall had mold problems and was an ill place to store items of historical significance, it not being climate controlled with structural issues. The other was the charter renewal for the historical society required that the society have five board members to vote. Smith added it had gotten harder and harder to find people willing to serve. At the start of 2019, he was also planning a half-year-long trip, and there would be very few people who could have taken care of the artifacts.
“It was just a perfect storm” he said. “I was very disappointed it couldn’t continue.”
Smith, 69, said it had grown increasingly hard to get the community active in its events.
Nick Acampora, the president of the Greater Port Jefferson Historical Society, had worked for years alongside Smith on a number of projects. He said people are busy in this day and age with work, and many have little time for volunteering. While he added his group is fortunate in the amount of support it gets, he’s always worried for the future.
“It’s a tough time for all volunteer organizations,” Acampora said. “Even some of our board members, some of them have been doing it for 30 years. When one of them steps back someone needs to take over, and who do we have to pass the baton onto?”
Brookhaven town Councilwoman Valerie Cartright (D-Port Jefferson Station) said town officials will continue to work to preserve historical sites in the area, all the while praising Smith for his past work.
“The Cumsewogue Historical Society has laid the foundation for us to continue to highlight history,” she said.
Instead of letting all the artifacts fall to the wayside, Smith presented all artifacts as a deed of gift to the Comsewogue Public Library, which he described as one of the real community centers in the PJS/Terryville area.
Library’s new historical role
Debbie Engelhardt, the library’s director, said she has long agreed that should the historical society dissolve for any reason the library would take in its artifacts.
“So while they understood the town historian would take very good care of the items, there was concern they wouldn’t be as readily available to the local residents,” she said.
Lori Holtz, the exhibit coordinator and head of adult services at the library, made the connection that other historical societies often have deep roots and foundations in a community, leading to greater support, while the Cumsewogue Historical Society was born out of passion, it had that much more work to do, and needed that extra community support.
A number of artifacts now being displayed at the Comsewogue Public Library. Photo by Kyle Barr
“What he [Smith] was doing which was really noble — he was trying to gather things that really haven’t been gathered all this time and trying to create something,” she said.
The library has displayed numerous items from the old historical society’s collection, including pictures and artifacts from the Comsewogue school district, pictures of the Gladyz family on their farm and even the rusted shell of binoculars from the old Gentleman’s Driving Park. The library plans to rotate these items in and out throughout the year.
However, the library isn’t stopping there. Holtz said they have future plans, including some things the historical society wouldn’t have been able to do, including scanning and digitizing some of the artifacts to make them available on the library’s website.
In honor of October being American Archives Month, the library is planning to put together an exhibit of several of the historical pictures and artifacts still not available at the library. The display will be available during regular operating hours.
“We’re thinking it’s not going to be a really heavy lift to continue what we were doing and hopefully do a little bit more,” Holtz said. “Hopefully more people in the community do come forth.”
Barbara Russell, the Brookhaven town historian said the group did the right thing by donating all its materials to the library.
“It takes a group of people to maintain a historical society,” Russell said. “They had a nice group of working members, but it was small, and you can’t have that small a pool of volunteers.”
Smith continues to be involved with his artifacts, taking the trip to the library when the directors need help identifying artifacts. Both library and Smith have long worked together since the beginning of the historical society doing displays and lectures, but the president of the dissolved society said even then he would have a hard time getting people to come to events.
Historical advocacy
Smith said while he will still continue to be active in the area, his advocacy days are largely over.
He and the historical society were involved in several projects, having been at the head of Brookhaven buying the Gentleman’s Driving Park property to help preserve it. Last year, Smith made a huge push to preserve 101 and 105 Main St. adjacent to the south side of the train tracks in Port Jefferson. Those buildings date to the early 1900s, one of which housed E.H. Rogers Feed Mill, a relic of the area’s agricultural roots. While the 2014 Port Jefferson Station Commercial Hub Study contained recommendations from local architects for preserving a number of those buildings, Smith had said last year they were under threat by local developers.
The above photo, taken in the early 1900s, is of the Rogers Grain and Feed Mill (a.k.a. the Remz Feed and Grain Mill) in Port Jefferson Station which serviced local and far-reaching businesses, farms and families throughout Long Island including the Brookhaven National Laboratory. This photo, along with others of the era, is on view at the Terryville Union Hall. Photo courtesy of Cumsewogue Historical Society
Sarah Kautz, the preservation director of Preservation Long Island, a nonprofit that advocates for protection and stewardship of historic sites, said Cumsewogue had reached out to them over those buildings looking for support. She added lacking support like the now defunct historical society to keep tabs on such projects impacts their ability to try and preserve such properties.
“For the work we do in helping to advocate for preservation across Long Island, we really depend on partners like that in local communities, because they’re the ones on the ground, they find out about these new proposals,” she said. “Advocacy really comes from them, the grass roots.”
Cartright said there are no new plans presented to the town about those properties on Main Street, but said she will work to protect those historic sites, along with maintaining the town-owned properties of the Gentleman’s Driving Park and Terryville Union Hall.
Acampora said he had conversations with Smith last year about those particular properties and had promised to work to preserve them. The news that his neighboring historical society had dissolved came as a shock to him and to the rest of the historical society’s board. He said his group will do its best to try and preserve those properties, along with other historical sites in the PJS/Terryville area.
“I’m hoping we can do something with those buildings on the south side of the tracks,” he said. “It’s going to be up to us, and that’s what we try to do with any of our old buildings — keep an eye on it and do what we can.”
Cmdr. Bill Wolf leads the ceremony. Photo by Richard Knutson
Color Guard helps start the centennial ceremony. Photo by Richard Knutson
Suffolk Legislator Kara Hahn (D) gives proclamation to the post. Photo by Richard Knutson
Post members show their moves on the dance floor. Photo from Richard Knutson
Port Jefferson and Port Jefferson Station vets have shown dedication to a local institution for just over 100 years.
The American Legion Wilson Ritch Post 432 held its 100th Anniversary Dinner/Dance at the Port Jefferson Moose Lodge Sept. 14. Local veterans and members of the lodge celebrated the centennial achievement alongside residents and local elected officials.
The post was named after the late Cpl. Irving Wilson Ritch Jr., who made the ultimate sacrifice Sept. 6, 1918, on the Vesle River during the Oise-Aisne campaign during World War I. On Sept. 1, 1919, 15 of the original members came together to form the post, which was formally chartered Sept. 16 that year.
Their first meetings were held at the Port Jefferson Hook and Ladder House on Jones Street, presided over by A.C. Fiske, who was the post’s first commander and president.
Later, meetings were held at the local YMCA, the Port Jefferson court room, the K. of C. rooms and the rooms over the Port Jefferson Free Library. The group has now been meeting out of its new formal headquarters located at 1450 Hallock Ave. in Port Jefferson Station.
Since its start the post has been very active in the Port Jefferson Station and surrounding communities: attending and participating in various activities, ceremonies and events such as the annual wreath laying ceremonies on Memorial Day and other remembrance ceremonies on Veterans Day. Recently, the group has been working alongside other local vet groups and with Suffolk County Legislator Kara Hahn (D-Setauket) raising funds to revitalize local veteran memorials.
Members of the post said they look forward to serving and celebrating in local communities for another 100 years.
Information provided by post historian Richard Knutson.
Suffolk County Police said they are currently investigating an alleged stabbing that took place on Bicycle Path in Terryville Sept. 16 at around 3 p.m.
A 17-year-old, which police declined to name, was allegedly stabbed in the calf by an unknown assailant and was transported to a hospital for non-life threatening injuries. No arrests have been made and the investigation is ongoing.
Suffolk County Crime Stoppers offers a cash reward of up to $5,000 for information that leads to an arrest. Anyone with information about these incidents can contact Suffolk County Crime Stoppers to submit an anonymous tip by calling 800-220-TIPS (8477) or texting “SCPD” and your message to “CRIMES” (274637). All calls and text messages will be kept confidential.
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