by Walter Elliott
NEWARK / BELLEVILLE – Columbus Hospital’s second name change in 100 years, as unveiled by Newark, Belleville and Bloomfield officials Nov. 11, has some locals turning heads.
Newark North Ward Councilman Anibal Ramos, Jr. Belleville Mayor Michael Melham and Bloomfield Mayor helped celebrate Prime Healthcare’s addition of a Dual Diagnosis Department at 495 North 13th St. with a ribbon-cutting that Thursday morning. The cutting was made at the ambulance entrance – and below where the new “Silver Lake Hospital” sign now stands.
Belleville’s Silver Lake section stops three blocks northwest of the hospital. It is not known whether Meadow Brook, a long-underground now-sewer that used to feed Second River water for the actual Silver Lake, ever got near the hospital.
Columbus Hospital’s founding in 1921 provides a clue. Several Italian Newark doctors first set up shop at North12th and Beardsley to better serve their communities in North Newark-Forest Hill, Bloomfield-East Orange’s Ampere and Belleville’s Silver Lake sections. Columbus moved to its present site in 1934.
Cathedral Health East, who bought Columbus, St. Michael’s Medical Center and St. James Hospitals, added “Long Term Acute Care Hospital” to Columbus’ name in 2010. It, St. Michael’s and the St. James Medical Pavillion are now owned by Prime Healthcare, of Ontario, Calif. The now-Silver Lake Hospital continues its LTACH functions.
The namesake Silver Lake was created in 1730 when wood mill owner Jasper Crane dammed up Meadow Brook at where St. Anthony of Padua Church now stands. It created a pool a half-mile long and 300 feet wide from the corner of North Sixth Street and Heller Parkway and along North 13th Street. It was drained after a July 30, 1889 rainstorm burst the dam.
Patients could have gone to “Sunfish Pond” Hospital – Crane’s original name for the lake.
Newark Mayor and Public Safety Director Issue Joint Statement on Shootings
“Newark Police Shooting Response Team detectives are vigorously investigating four non-fatal incidents of gun violence that occurred last night, resulting in eight victims. We are shocked and disgusted by this outrageous level of senseless violence and it will not be tolerated. While we continue to work intensively around the clock with our law enforcement partners, as evidenced made by the illegal guns recovered and arrests in the last 24 hours, we need the entire judicial system to help us as many of these persons involved were released into the community despite having pending criminal cases and previous weapons offenses.
“Without fail, our patrol officers immediately responded to each incident, rendering aid until EMS arrived. This level of gun violence is entirely unacceptable and we implore all concerned community members, who are also rightfully outraged, to come forward with any information that can assist us in identifying these suspects, who have callously inflicted violence on our streets.
“Newark Police are investigating the shooting of two adult males in the area of Lincoln Street and Court Street that occurred just before 6:25 p.m. yesterday (Nov. 16). One victim is reportedly in critical condition, while the second victim’s condition is listed as stable.
“Just before 8:10 p.m., two juvenile male victims, ages 15 and 17, were located by police shot while riding in a stolen car in the area of Quitman Street near Montgomery Street. Both victims are reportedly in critical condition.
“In a separate shooting incident at Maybaum Avenue near Tremont Avenue, police located one male who had been shot just before 8:40 p.m. While police were with the victim at University Hospital, a second shooting victim, a 15-year-old male juvenile, arrived. Both victims are reportedly in stable condition.
“At approximately 10:10 p.m., police responded to the area of 17th Avenue and Hunterdon Street where they located a man who had been shot. The victim was transported to University Hospital, where he is reportedly in stable condition. A second adult male victim arrived at the hospital in a private vehicle. Both victims are reportedly in stable condition.
“Shooting detectives are also investigating incident in the 100 block of Telford Street, where an arrest was made following a firearm discharge.
“Each incident remains under investigation. Updates will be provided as information becomes available.”
IRVINGTON – “Local Talk” has learned that a celebration of life service for James and Shenique McGee was held at Newark’s Whigham Funeral Home Sept. 24. Their last rites were recorded on Whigham580’s Facebook page.
That service for father James, 66, and daughter Shenique, 46, who died during Tropical Storm Ida Sept. 1-2, was made largely possible by contributions from their acquaintances and the Irvington community.
The owner of Manhattan’s New London Pharmacy, for example, raised at least $13,000 for James’ widow, Joann. James was a longtime employee of the Chelsea section drug store.
Wonder Foods, Inc., had meanwhile raised at least $9,000 in honor of Shenique. Shenique was a chef in their Cranford Central Kitchen.
Mayor Anthony “Tony” Vauss personally gave Joann McGee $3,400 on Sept. 22 for funeral expenses. Vauss said that the bulk of the contributions were cash donations of $5 and $10 from Irvngtonians.
James and Shenique were shoring up the basement of their Lincoln Place house when a bang was heard and the adjacent overflowing Elizabeth River rushed in Sept. 1. They were two of five identified Essex County Ida victims.
Brother and uncle Darrell is also among the McGee’s survivors.
EAST ORANGE – Police have also been looking out for a late model BMW – and the driver who carjacked- since Nov. 8.
EOPD officers, responding to “a carjacking in progress,” found a victim along South Harrison Street at 6:35 p.m. that Monday.
The victim said that a male used force to take his car – a 2017 blue four-door BMW with NJ license plate number B80-MVA. The car was last seen driving south on South Harrison “towards Orange.”
ORANGE – The Hillsborough County (Fla.) Sheriff’s Office has a Plant City man in custody since Nov. 11 regarding the murder of an Orange man there.
Sheriff’s deputies said they went to the intersection of North Wilder and Williams roads, in response to a “shots fired” call, 2 a.m. that Thursday in Plant City.
Deputies first found a crashed car there with two men inside. Both men – including Solomon Cohen, 25, of Orange – had been shot. Cohen was declared dead at the scene.
Investigating officers meanwhile interviewed Michael Cappella, 19, of Plant City, at the scene. Cappella told them that he had “an interaction” with Cohen before shooting at the vehicle.
Cappella’s shooting caused the driver to lose control and crash. Authorities have not said what the Cohen-Cappella altercation was about, nor had identified whether Cohen or the injured man was the driver.
Cappella is being held on murder, attempted murder and shooting into a car. The unidentified passenger remains hospitalized.
There are no funeral announcements for Cohen, who used to live in the Seven Oakes section, as of press time.
WEST ORANGE / LIVINGSTON – There is one legislator, west of “Local Talk” territory, who is more than taking comments and complaints from Community Coach 77 riders along its route.
Livingston Township Councilman Michael Vieira told “Local Talk” in September that he was taking remarks from West Orange, Orange and East Orange who take the 77 along its route. The complaints included late or missing buses and communication problems with 77 parent CoachUSA. The July 15 death of dispatcher Maurice “Moe” Butler from COVID was another setback.
An Oct. 5 Vieira meeting with CoachUSA General Manager William Pelzer resulted in the latter dedicating the latter’s Paramus garage drivers to the 77 since Oct. 11. An increasing volume of New York City rush-hour commuter traffic, however, has made late buses persistent.
CC 77 is also realizing revived competition from Decamp and the Livingston Express Shuttle. Decamp restored Route 66 West Orange service Nov. 1. The LES Livingston Mall-South Orange railroad station service resumed Sept. 7.
SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – Public attendance at Nov. 15’s South Orange-Maplewood School District Board of Education meeting reached pre-pandemic levels thanks to a planned outcry by the South Orange Maplewood Education.
Some 60 SOMEA members, several of which had to stand in the outside hallway, took up most of the seats in the SOMSD Administration Building board conference room Monday evening. Members, led by SOMEA President Rocio Lopez, took two-minute turns decrying the lack of a new contract and its ramifications.
SOMEA and SOMSD are at a negotiations impasse since earlier this fall. They are being paid as per the expired contract. The Orange Public Schools and the Orange Education Association are the only other “Local Talk” school district who have started the 2021-22 year without a new contract.
Lopez distributed charts of salary ranges compared against West Orange and Montclair. SOMEA teachers with a bachelor’s degree in their third year earn $53,660. Similar West Orange teachers make $57,681 and Montclair teachers $59,895.
SOMSD Board President Thair Johnson said, in an October statement, that the board declared an impasse after the union rejected two offers. The latter offer was a three-year contract with annual two-percent increases. The first was a one-year contract with a salary increase.
The union, between the BOE Negotiations Committee’s offers, proposed a four-year contract featuring a 6.14 percent increase the first year and 3.3 percent annually the other three years.
Johnson said that 6.14 percent was “almost double the current average of 3.13 percent annual salary increases negotiated between school boards and local education unions throughout the state.”
BLOOMFIELD – Township police detectives are asking for the whereabouts of a 16-year-old resident, last seen here Dec. 6, in Irvington, East Orange, Newark and Passaic.
BPD top brass said that Xamavi Wilson, 16, was known to frequent neighborhoods in those four municipalities. She was last seen getting into a white Jeep here Dec. 6. (The Jeep’s license plate number is not known.)
Wilson’s foster parents here said that she would run away but return later that day or the next day.
BPD said, however, that Wilson was under N.J. Department of Children and Families Division of Child Protection and Permanency custody Dec. 6, 2020. DCP&P officials told police that Wilson had run away from previous foster families for months at a time.
Camden County authorities had found Wilson, who was reported missing from Winslow Township March 7, 2020, “in North Jersey” 48 hours later.
Xamavi Wilson is described as 5-ft., 7-in. African American weighing 160lbs. Wilson has dark brown eyes but was known to wear lighter-colored contact lenses.
Wilson, on Dec. 6, wore a black sweatshirt, black pants and black sneakers. She does not have a cell phone.
MONTCLAIR – A proposed ordinance that would have made additional Montclair Public Library funds’ release contingent upon greater township financial control was tabled at Nov. 15’s council meeting.
Mayor Sean Spillar, calling the township-library relationship “a collaborative process,” asked the council to table their Nov. 1 resolution. Spillar announced that $245,638 of the MPL budget, held since August, will be released.
Spillar’s actions were the result of a three-week-long reaction to an Oct. 19 $31,500 forensic audit made on MPL’s 2019 and 20 budget and expenses. The PKF O’Connor Davies-Benecke Economics report found, for example, that MPL fell short on its revenue by $160,000 in 2019 and $100,000 by overbudgeting.
The Nov. 1 resolution followed Bob Benecke and PKF’s David Gannon’s recommendation to have the township withhold the library’s budget above the state minimum until MPL’s board of Trustees turn over financial oversight to township administrators.
Montclair is obligated by state law and funding formula to supply MPL $2,680152. The council added $419,848 in part to reopen the COVID-closed MPL’s Bellevue Branch. Montclair’s elders called the auditors when savings from when the Branch was closed and 32 MPL employees were furloughed in April 2020 were not found.
The post-audit release included the trustees disagreeing to the resolution and 10 people protesting before the Main Library Oct. 14.
GLEN RIDGE – That Gov. Phil Murphy had committed $65 million towards the purchase of the former “Lower Boonton Line” from Norfolk Southern Nov. 12 may come as a welcome relief to Mayor Stuart Patrick and the Borough Council.
That sigh of relief could have been heard from Borough Hall that Friday a quarter-mile southwest to the Bloomfield Public Library, where Murphy (D-Rumson) made the announcement. The $65 million, some of it coming from NJDOT and the newly-signed federal American Rescue Plan Act.
Patrick and the council, on June 22, 2020, approved applying for an NJDOT bicycle grant that would make its part of the 8.4-mile Montclair-Jersey City right of way.
Glen Ridge’s bike grant application was two months ahead of the August 2020 agreement by NS to sell the right of way to the Open Space Institute. The freight railroad gave that third party until Jan. 1, 2020 to come up with the money.
The borough’s application was also ahead of a two-year chorus of municipal and county officials who want the “Essex-Hudson Greenway.” Resolutions were since passed by elders from Montclair, Bloomfield, Belleville, Newark and Jersey City plus Essex and Hudson counties.
The greenway started life as the Erie Railroad’s Greenwood Lake Division from Jersey City. What was called the “Lower Boonton Line” branched off the trunk line at Newark’s Forest Hill Junction. Respective passenger and freight service ended Sept. 20, 2002 and 2010.
Buying the right of way from NS is the first step. Adaptive work includes making the WR Passaic River Drawbridge between Newark and Kearny safe for walkers and making a detour around the DB Drawbridge that has been left open for Hackensack River marine traffic between Kearny and Secaucus.
NUTLEY – The township held a community “Coach D. Memorial Day,” honoring the late Nutley High School head football coach and U.S. Government teacher Steve DiGregorio, here on the Park Oval gridiron Nov. 14.
DiGregorio, 60, who guided the NHS Maroon Raiders to an 85-58 win-loss record over 11 seasons, died Oct. 12. His three-year battle against a rare pancreatic cancer called Ataxia-Telangiectasia caused him to temporarily turn over his whistle and clipboard to JD Vick in 2019. He came back for an undefeated 6-0 season in 2020, NHS’s first since 1939, before retiring March 4.
“Digger” DiGregorio was a Maroon Rader and NHS Class of 1969 graduate who came back to coach 2004-11, 2017-18 and 2020. His teams reached as far as the 2009 NJSIAA North Jersey Section 2 Final game at Giants Stadium.
Wife Nadia, sons Zack, Derek and Aaron and sister Lynda are among his survivors. Derek, 24, has been battling A-T for half his life.
