The communities of Miller Place and Rocky Point, along with the neighboring hamlets of Brookhaven’s North Shore, are gearing up for an annual rite of spring. The Friends of St. Patrick’s 68th annual Miller Place-Rocky Point St. Patrick’s Day Parade will take place on Sunday, March 11. The event will kick off at the comer of Harrison Avenue in Miller Place at 1 p.m. sharp and will proceed east along Route 25A before ending at the comer of Route 25A and Broadway in downtown Rocky Point. Route 25A will be closed to traffic at noon to prepare for the event.
The committe has named longtime committee member and co-owner and chef of the Hartlin Inn in Sound Beach Andrew J. Streeff as this year’s grand marshal.
In keeping with the tradition of recognizing aspiring young women in the community,the title of parade queen has been bestowed upon Jordon McClintock of Wading River. McClintock is a senior at Shoreham-Wading River High School and is an aspiring physician. The queen will be graciously escorted at the parade by her ladies-in-waiting Miranda Navas, a senior at Rocky Point High School, and Melanie Weidman, a self-employed model and dancer from Sound Beach.
This year’s parade will feature veteran and community groups and organizations, along with elected officials from all areas of our government. Of course, no parade would be complete without the presence of local fire departments, high school bands, Irish dancing, Scout troops and many colorful floats. Be sure to come down to cheer your favorite on! There is something on this special day for everyone, as this local parade reaches historic proportions by carrying on a 68-year community tradition.
For further information regarding parade updates, please visit www.friendsofsaintpatrick.org.
Andrew Streeff likes being a behind-the-scenes kind of person.
For the past 20 years, he has operated out of the kitchen in the back of The Hartlin Inn, a Sound Beach pub and restaurant and community fixture where he serves as chef and co-owner and he’d hoped to keep it that way. He has always been eager to help local school districts and clubs through fundraisers and donations, but never seeks recognition. And, in 2001, when encouraged by his business partner and mentor Richie Hartig to join the Friends of St. Patrick, Streeff was hesitant, despite his lifelong Irish pride and love for the group.
“I told him, ‘I’ll do it as long as I don’t have to march up front,’” Streeff said, referring to the group’s annual Miller Place-Rocky Point St. Patrick’s Day parade. In his 17 years with the organization, and being involved in the parade, Streeff has run raffles, sold T-shirts and fed information to the event’s announcer.
“That’s what I really enjoy,” he said. “When the cameras and the politicians come, I’m darting out of the way.”
That all changes March 11 when Streeff leads the nearly three-mile march from the Flying Pig Cafe in Miller Place to Broadway in Rocky Point as grand marshal of the 68th annual parade. This honor is bestowed on longtime, dedicated members of the organization, or those who have proven to be pillars of the community, and Streef “fits both those bills,” according to Friends of St. Patrick president Michael Tatilian.
“He’s very active in our community, a great guy, and, whenever we’ve asked him to help us out with something, he’s always been there,” Tatilian said.
“While Richie would have loved to have led the parade, in my heart I know that he’ll be walking right alongside Andrew.”
— Linda Hartig
But Streeff said he isn’t marching for himself. Instead, he’s accepting the honor in memory of the man who pushed him to join the group in the first place — Hartig, one of the two original owners of The Hartlin Inn; a U.S. Navy veteran, a detective in the Nassau County Police Department, a commodore of the Mount Sinai Yacht Club; and a proud member of the Friends of St. Patrick until his death from a heart attack in 2004 at age 63.
Hartig died before it was his turn to be grand marshal, Streef said.
“Anyone who knew Richie knew this was right up his alley,” he said. “My biggest concern really was asking his wife how she would feel about this if I did it. It turned out she was 100 percent behind it. A lot of people are excited that I’m doing this in Richie’s name.”
Linda Hartig, who joined the restaurant full time as an accountant after her husband’s death, described Streeff as a “standup guy” who would do anything for anybody in the community. She said she was honored by his motivation to march.
“While Richie would have loved to have led the parade, in my heart I know that he’ll be walking right alongside Andrew,” she said. “I’m sure he’s looking down very happy.”
Streeff was born in Queens to a Finnish father and Irish mother, and moved to Sound Beach in 1969 when he was 7 years old. Just a year later, he marched for the first time in the parade as a Cub Scout, later joking that his mother indoctrinated him with the importance of St. Patrick’s Day from day one.
“I think when I was in Catholic school in Queens, with the mandatory uniform on, she made sure that, on St. Patrick’s Day, I had green on somewhere,” Streeff said. “Any time I got a new job growing up, I’d tell the boss, I can work any holiday and any weekend throughout the year except that one Sunday in March.”
Streeff has been in the restaurant business since he was 16 as a student at Miller Place High School. By the time he graduated in 1979, he had been working full time for about a year. He began at the old Nine Doors restaurant in Port Jefferson and picked up different styles of cooking, from a variety of cultures like French and German, as he moved on from one local establishment to next. He eventually found himself working seasonally in Florida’s Palm Beach County for a number of years in the 1990s, until he learned his friend, Linda Sarich, and her business partner, Hartig, bought a restaurant in Sound Beach. The name Hartlin is a combination of Hartig and Linda’s names. Streeff originally offered to help set up their kitchen and menu, but within a matter of months, he became a full partner.
“Having grown up here, it was ideal for me to get involved,” said Streeff, who, since 1997, has taken it upon himself to hire youth in the community with the aim of steering them in the right direction and keeping them out of trouble. “This is a down-home type of family restaurant in a tight-knit community where you wave to strangers. You don’t really see that anywhere else anymore.”
After 40 years in the restaurant industry, and 21 strong years at The Hartlin Inn, Streeff said, “It feels like I’m the typical hometown boy who made good.”
For 71 years, McCarrick’s Dairy has been a staple for Rocky Point residents. So it was no surprise when owners Hugh McCarrick, Kevin McCarrick and Bridget Idtensohn announced through a social media post they were closing the store and selling the family business, the news spread rapidly, and was met by many with nostalgia and sadness.
On the morning of Friday, April 7, the last day before the sibling owners retired, friends and longtime patrons filled the store to remember old times, while flipping through photo albums.
Among those customers was Neil Maguire, who was having a bit of fun dressed in a cow costume while holding a double-sided sign that read: “McCarrick’s don’t close. Cows in protest. Cows in udder confusion” and “Cows in protest. Cows in disbelief. Don’t close.”
Maguire, who grew up in Port Jefferson, said he remembered when the McCarrick family would deliver milk to homes, and coming to the store with his family when the now-owners’ father Tom ran the small grocery.
“Mr. McCarrick would give us lollipops or a fruit juice to drink while my parents were running around shopping,” Maguire said.
He said it was McCarrick’s Dairy that inspired him to go into the milk delivery business, and he could always count on the family for advice.
Janice Bambara was disappointed that it would be her last day walking to the store for her morning coffee, preferring McCarrick’s over large chains like Dunkin’ Donuts or Starbucks.
“It was a very friendly and pleasant place to shop for so many years here,” she said. “They’ll all be missed.”
Kathy DiPierro, a cousin of the McCarricks, looked at the photo albums reminiscing about her grandparents homestead which once stood where McCarrick Medical Park is today. Her husband Nick, a former Grumman employee, remembered when he worked in the stores on Saturdays for a short period in 1969. He said the senior McCarrick was always generous and patient with him.
“I remember the first day he left me all by myself in that store,” DiPierro said. “He said, ‘It’s OK, this is how you work a cash register.’ I never worked a cash register. Boy, was I nervous.”
The goodbyes culminated when Brookhaven Town Councilwoman Jane Bonner (C-Rocky Point) and town Supervisor Ed Romaine (R) stopped by to present the family with a proclamation and declare April 7 McCarrick’s Dairy Day in the Town of Brookhaven.
While presenting the McCarricks with the proclamation, Bonner, who lives in the area and has known the family for nearly 30 years, had to hold back the tears. Like many who filled the store, while she was sad to see the store close, she was happy for the owners.
“It’s so great that they are leaving on their own terms to enjoy their retirement, not because they were forced out by a big box store or another chain store or supermarket,” Bonner said.
The owners said nearly 500 community members have worked in the store over the decades, and nearly half-a-dozen employees met their spouses there.
The McCarricks have been an integral part of the community.
The family has been part of the Miller Place-Rocky Point St. Patrick’s Day Parade since 1950, after Tom McCarrick and other local businessmen founded the Friends of St. Patrick not-for-profit organization that fundraises for the historic event. Kevin McCarrick, Tom’s son, also served two terms on the Brookhaven Town Board from 2004 to 2007.
Hugh, Kevin’s brother, said his grandparents emigrated from Ireland to Rocky Point in 1911. The couple had a few cows and grew vegetables on their homestead. It was in 1946 when his parents, Tom and Phyllis, decided to start a milk delivery business.
“It’s so great that they are leaving on their own terms to enjoy their retirement.”
— Jane Bonner
The land parcel, where the current McCarrick’s Dairy store was opened in 1984, holds many memories for the family. The house on the west side of the parking lot is where Tom and Phyllis raised nine children; the dry cleaners that sits toward the front was once an office and the original store that opened in 1960; and the thrift store toward the back of the parking lot was once a four-bay garage where the milk trucks were housed.
Hugh McCarrick said all of the children worked in the store at one point or another, and through the years every one of his children, nieces and nephews worked in the store.
“We grew up in the business working side by side with my dad and mom,” he said.
“We met in 1970, and he put me right to work,” his wife Miriam joked.
His older brothers delivered milk to homes, and later he and Kevin delivered to schools and local shops like bakeries. When they were in their early 20s, the two became more involved in the business.
But as times changed, the business changed.
“In the ’70s supermarkets started coming out, and families were having two cars,” Hugh McCarrick said. “So now the wife who stayed home, she had her newfound freedom, so she would go out and buy her own milk and stuff.”
One of Hugh’s earlier memories was when milk bottles would come back and still have milk left in them. They couldn’t be returned to the processing plant like that, so the children would clean them out. He said if there was sour milk in there, and you pushed down on the lid, it would shoot out.
“To this day I can’t eat cottage cheese,” he joked.
Despite the sour milk, the years working with his family have been positive ones. His brother agreed.
“We were very fortunate in that all of our family worked in this business from my older brothers right down to my younger sister, Bridget,” Kevin McCarrick said. “It was nice to have a family business that everyone participated in.”
Their sister, who started working at the store 35 years ago, said the outpouring of good wishes touched her.
“You go to work and you don’t think much about it,” she said. “To have everyone come here like this … this is such a wonderful, wonderful community.”
During the last week, she said she heard a number of heartwarming stories about her father.
“Your father delivered milk, eggs and butter to my house every day, and never charged us until my father got back on his feet,” she said one man told her. “I’m an adult now, and I realize how important that was.”
According to the McCarricks, the business will be leased to another food store and completely renovated. While they may be retiring from the store business, the owners will still manage the property.
As the store closed at 6 p.m. on its final day, former employees were invited to join the McCarricks for dinner. Family from near and far also gathered to bid farewell.
Hugh McCarrick’s daughter Kimmie Wheeler flew up from South Carolina the night before to be part of the store closing. She said she knew she needed to send off the store with her family.
“This is my whole life,” she said. “I started working here when I was a teenager and worked here with my cousins and my whole family. It was such a great way to be part of the family and the community.”
Her sister Kendra Beavis said the younger family members’ careers have taken different directions than their parents, becoming teachers, graphic designers, getting involved in law enforcement and various other things, but said she couldn’t picture anyone else taking the place of her father and the rest of the family.
“Even if someone were to take this over … they did such an amazing job,” she said. “I don’t know if anyone could ever fill their shoes.”
Residents braved chilly temperatures Sunday, March 12, to cheer on the annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Bagpipers, Girl Scouts, and more marched down Main Street in Huntington to celebrate the Irish.
Kings Park celebrated the Irish at their annual St. Patrick’s Day parade this past Saturday, March 4. Residents from all over the North Shore enjoyed marching band performances, bagpipers and more.