TOWN WATCH
NEWARK – To say that Beulah James Fulker, 109, whose visitation and funeral was held here at the Perry Funeral Home Oct. 5, was the mother of Mayor-State Senator Sharpe James would only be scraping the surface.
James Fulker, who died in her sleep in Maplewood’s Winchester Gardens Sept. 28, also gave birth to future NJIT graduate and rocket engineer Joseph “Louis” James. James Fulker, who outlived husbands Louis James and Tom Fulker, was also a trailblazer of her own.
Born in Beulah James in Jessup, Ga., Sept. 18, 1914, James Fulker fled Jim Crow segregation and an abusive boyfriend in Jacksonville, Fla., by fleeing north with Joe and James in tow by train. Settling in Newark’s Johnson Street, she, she married Louis James in 1933.
The accomplished pianist, restaurateur and cook joined Newark Beth Israel Medical Center’s nursing program. She graduated with highest LPN honors and worked in Cherry Hill, NJ. She would later own homes in Newark and Lawnside, N.J.
The lifelong Hopewell Baptist Church member raised Louis and Sharpe through South Side High School in 1953 and 1954. Louis graduated from then-Newark College of Engineering (now NJIT) to become an aeronautical engineer, working on Trident missile systems for Lockheed and the U.S. Navy.
Sharpe was a scholar-athlete at then-Montclair State and Springfield (Mass.) colleges. The Washington State University doctoral candidate went on to become Newark South Ward Councilman, Mayor (1986-2006), State Senator, Essex County College Urban Studies Director and author.
Beulah James became Beulah James Fulker by marrying Tom Fulker after J. James’ untimely death. Grandsons John Sharpe (also a South Ward Councilman,) Elliott and Kevin and granddaughters Janet and Judith are among her survivors. “Kosher Soul” singer Joshua Nelson provided the funeral’s musical arrangement. James Fulker was buried in Berlin.
IRVINGTON / MAPLEWOOD – There is a reason why admission prices at the Oct. 6 Columbia High School football game were raised in the wake of their Sept. 14 game against Irvington – and why police detectives from Irvington and Maplewood are looking to interview those who attended the latter game.
Irvington and Maplewood police are looking for the suspects who walked from the former’s side of Underhill Field to Columbia’s side Spt. 14. Columbia’s Cougars (4-2) were getting blanked by the (4-2) Irvington Blue Knights, 21-0.
Video recordings that were brought to both townships’ police and the South Orange-Maplewood School District attention noticed several males began fighting with those in the Columbia stands. CHS Principal Frank Sanchez said that at least one person on the home team side was injured in the one-minute altercation. MPD and security officers and SOMSD administrators were present.
Sanchez, in his Sept. 18 open letter, said that CHS students with a valid ID will hereafter pay $3 admission. Everyone else, including visitors and CHS alumni, will pay “adult prices.”
While Sanchez congratulated the CHS community’s behavior at the home games up to then, he warned that night football games may be replaced by daylight games as early as Oct. 21’s match here against Montclair.
The incident and Sanchez’s letter were part of SOMSD Board of Education Second Vice President’ Nubia Duvall Wilson’s report at their Sept. 28 meeting.
The CHS Cougars beat the Bloomfield Bengals, 42-6 Oct. 6.
EAST ORANGE – There is a reason for any moving activity going on this season at the former Walgreens or Rite-Aid pharmacy on 80 Central Ave.
Extra Supermarkets, according to the city’s Sept. 28 announcement, will be opening a second grocery store in the 11,268-square-foot store at Central and Grove Street’s northeastern corner.
The drug store had opened as a Rite-Aid in 1997 and underwent a renovation in 2018. Rite-Aid, in a corporate downsizing, sold 80 Central to Walgreens – among others in East Orange, Orange, West Orange, Irvington and Glen Ridge – by 2020.
This will be in addition to Extra’s familiar store at 563-69 Central Ave. Extra bought its economy and international food offerings to the former late 1950s-era Good Deal/Shop-Rite at Central and Sanford Street Extension’s southwestern corner.
The new Extra would relieve a grocery desert in East Orange’s Hollywood-Teen Streets and Newark’s Roseville section since Western Beef closed at “1A New Main St.”/Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd. Sept. 8, 2019. (Extra also has a supermarket along Clinton Avenue on the Maplewood-Irvington border.)
ORANGE – Some of the four people, including a two-year-old toddler, may still be in a local hospital, recovering from a four-car crash above Interstate 280 here Oct. 6.
A city police blotter entry that Friday night told of officers responding to a multi car crash on “South Jefferson Street and I-280” at 10:20 p.m. They would be joined by several local ambulances and an Orange Fire Department engine.
The report is not clear whether the four vehicles in the mishap were on South Jefferson’s bridge over I-280 or nearer to Madison Street to the north or towards Glebe Street to the south. It is also unclear whether units or firefighters from the nearby West Orange Fire Station at Valley Road were also called.
Officers and ambulance EMS technicians promptly extricated the four vehicles’ occupants and sent them off to area hospitals for treatment. The five admitted for treatment included some “with severe injuries” and the toddler.
The scene was reopened to traffic, after an on-scene investigation was conducted, by 12:01 a.m. Oct. 7.
WEST ORANGE – A Manhattan couple is having the Essex Equestrian Center here at being restored for a 2024 reopening.
Brianne Goutal-Marteau and Romain Matheau, who said they had bought the center from the Hall family, of Verona, for $1.15 million in September, added that they have had interests from 20 t0 40 horse owners who want to board their horses here in the spring and next autumn.
Brianne Goutal-Matheau, a twice Gold Cup equestrian champion, and real estate husband Romain said that their revisions to the near-century-old stable will reduce its 100 stalls to 60. The space will give more room for the horses, larger indoor and outdoor rings plus an option for therapeutic riding.
Renovations will also be made to the residence on 10-22 Woodland Ave., for year-round operation. At least two trainers will be on hand. They have not said whether they will also improve the tunnel running beneath Prospect Avenue to the Eagle Rock Reservation.
The Matheaus have not said whether EEC will keep its name, revert to “Suburban Essex EC “or “Montclair Riding Club” or “Woodland Riding Club” or reopen with a new name.
The Halls closed the last riding or equestrian center in Essex County Dec. 31. Neighbors and residents were concerned that the property, due to its zoning for residential use, would be converted to housing.
SOUTH ORANGE – At least 55 humans and canines braved Sept. 7’s rainy weather to march against hate to the village center’s Spiotta Park.
The 55, going by a group photo taken at the park at 11 a.m. that Saturday, walked from Harper’s Cafe at West Orange’s South Valley Road as a rally in support of it and Pet Wants SOMA here at Village Center. They marched in protest to six years of vandalism and slurs both store’s owners have endured.
The incidents, which ranged from bricks thrown through storefront windows and Pride rainbow flags torn down to insults from a fellow South Orange business owner, have been filed with the respective police departments.
“We’re proud of you guys and are proud to have you as business owners in West Orange and South Orange Downtown,” said Village President Sheena Collum on her Facebook post Saturday afternoon. “We see you and always have your backs.”
The march was to have started on Sept. 23 until Tropical Storm Ophilia intervened.
BLOOMFIELD – Those walking by 209 Franklin St., – better known as The Essex County Boys Technical-Vocational High School – depending on whether a township ordinance is passed, may want to take a lasting look.
Mayor Michale Venezia and the Township Council, on Sept. 18, passed an ordinance introduction where the municipality would buy the former “Bloomfield Tech” building from Essex County.
“The town is purchasing the Vo-Tech school,” announced Venezia that Monday night, with the intent to “tearing down the building and making it for open space and for an athletic facility – but the opportunities are endless.”
“Newark Tech,” after 18 months, had vacated 209 Franklin St. Feb. 3 after their own building underwent a renovation. The “Bloomfield Tech” building has been used as substitute for “West Essex Tech” while that building was renovation.
The building – also known as Block 335, Lot 21 on the township zoning map – had first closed when its and the former North 13th Street, Newark communities were consolidated into the then-new Donald M. Payne, Sr. Technology High School in Newark’s Roseville section in 2019.
The Essex County Schools of Technology Borad of Education, deciding that “Bloomfield Tech’s” use is done, voted to sell the three-story building and five-acre lot to the county proper for $100 March 13.
Bloomfield’s elders may decide on buying Bloomfield Tech as early as their Oct. 30 meeting. That night’s agenda was not yet posted as of Oct. 9.
MONTCLAIR – Residents and landscapers here plus businesses from 12 other towns within and outside of “Local Talk Land” are hoping to be before a State Superior Court judge in time to institute an injunction against the Township here before Oct. 16.
Montclair resident and landscapers here, West Orange, Bloomfield, Glen Ridge, Nutley, Essex Fells, Livingston, Verona, Clifton, Woodland Park, Parsippany and Columbia filed a request Sept. 28 for an injunction hearing Oct. 12 against Montclair Township’s Oct. 16 gasoline-powered leaf blower ban from taking effect.
The Township Council passed the year-round ban in August. Montclair’s elders, on Sept. 12, an amendment allowing residents to own no more than two electrical leaf blowers for personal use on lots of less than an acre in size.
This revision also allowed municipal judges to impose larger fines. The cost of a first offense would be $250.
The plaintiffs are arguing that the ordinance would treat businesses and residents differently. Landscapers would be forced to raise their fees for the extra time it takes to trim a lot with electric blowers. There is also no provision for landscapers to use an onsite or onboard power generator.
They also content that Montclair’s ban would be stiffer than the state’s 50 hp or smaller engine gas blower standard. The municipal law would therefore be stricter than the states Clean Air Act.
GLEN RIDGE – A state grand jury, in a Sept. 28 announcement by Acting Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin’s Office, has handed a no bill of indictment against a Montclair Police Department officer in what became a fatal pursuit of two Philadelphia men here in The Glen May 10, 2022.
The jury handed their no bill of indictment against MPD Off. Michael Kupchak Sept. 18 after studying evidence of the one car crash that killed driver Gregory K. Dukes, 42, and Cecil Richardson, 47, both of Philadelphia, at about 4:30 that morning.
The evidence presented included the two men’s autopsy reports plus dashboard and body camera of Kupchak and the other MPD officer who followed Kupchak along Bloomfield Avenue eastward between Maple Avenue and Pine Street in Montclair to just west of Glen Ridge’s Ridgewood Avenue intersection.
The footage showed Kupchak identifying the Philadelphia duo’s car as being connected with a burglary earlier that day, turned on his overhead lights and siren and pursued the car. Kupchak backed off that pursuit after 20 seconds when the suspected car accelerated to up to 65 mph int Glen Ridge.
That car, a moment later, lost control just east of the Ridgewood Avenue intersection, hit a tree and plunged into The Glen. Both men died of their injuries.
Kupchak and fellow officer Brandon Taylor were shown getting out of the car to the crash scene. There they found a passenger, Todd Hill, injured. Hill, who was taken to Newark’s University Hospital for treatment, has been indicted by a separate grand jury on robbery and weapons offences; he is awaiting trial.
The no bill means that Kupchak has been cleared of any criminal wrongdoing. The NJAG’s Office of Public Integrity and Accountability, following their July 2021 guidelines,
Driver Dukes was eulogized May 8 at Philadelphia’s Garden of Pryer Worship Center and passenger Richardson May 14 at Lenwood Jones Funeral Service. Both were buried in Cehelten Cemetery.
BELLEVILLE / NUTLEY – Last rites were given to a Nutley resident and funeral director Oct. 8 while the Belleville man who is accused of killing her remains held in Newark’s Essex County Correctional Facility.
A funeral, followed by a private cremation, were held in Newark’s Alverez Funeral Home Sunday for Erica Rae Volosin. Volosin, who was born Jan. 18, 1986, in Passaic, was a licensed funeral director thanks to the state, a diploma from Mercer County Community College and an associate degree from Bergen County Community College.
Volosin, who worked at Alverez and at Dover’s Ann Taylor funeral homes, was a basketball scholar-athlete in her native Wallington High School. Mother Laurie, Grandmother Carmella Viera and Brother John Carroll are among her survivors.
Volosin was found by responding Belleville police officers at a house along the 100 block of Mecham Street at 10:24 a.m. Oct. 1. She was declared dead from a gunshot wound in the neck by the medical examiner there at 10:42 a.m.
Arrested at the scene was Meachum Street house resident Scott H. Hurring, 43, of Belleville. Hurring is being held on one count each of purposeful murder and the unlawful possession of a weapon. Belleville Police and ECPO Homicide Unit detectives said the shooting came after a night there of partying and narcotics use.
Memorial donations may be made to Eva’s Kitchen of Paterson, evakitchen.org.
