TOWN WATCH
NEWARK – The 2023 Holidays Season, outside of the COVID years, is the first time the Newark Boys Chorus will not be making signing appearances since 1969.
Individual third through eighth grade members will be signing this season but with chorus in other schools – including St. Benedict’s, Phillips Academy and some of the Newark Public Schools – that they had transferred to before Oct. 31.
Oct. 31 was when NBS Board Chairman Robert Wright “temporarily” closed the school and took down its banner in front of the NPS Dr. Marion Bolden Student Center at 230 Broadway.
The rigorous academic and choir school had made noted appearances at Newark City Hall, NJPAC, longtime next door neighbor Symphony Hall, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, the White House and the Vatican. The school largely depends on donations.
Both Wright and Head of School Dr. Ansley W. Lamar, on Nov. 7, said that they had not met their $500,000 to cover the 2023-24 school year by Oct. 1. They said that the school, like many institutions, had been facing headwinds since the 2020-21 COVID pandemic and resulting inflation.
NBS had landed at the Bolden Student Center after an attempt to convert the historic State Street School building had failed. They began moving out of 1014-18 Broad St., a former car dealership, for the four-story 111-apartment unit Symphony Flats, in 2019.
The NBS, on their Facebook page, posted a Giving Tuesday appeal at 9 a.m. Nov. 27.
IRVINGTON – The township more than mourned the death of Irvington Fire Division Firefighter Barney Roundtree, 50, throughout October.
The Irvington Fire Headquarters at D. Bilal Beasley Civic Square put out mourning bunting until Nov. 1. IFD members and civic officials sent condolences and/or attended FF. Roundtree’s last rites, arranged by the Cotton Funeral Home, earlier that month.
Beasley Civic Square was where some 100 Irvingtonians stepped out and finished their annual American Cancer Society Walk Against Breast Cancer Oct. 15. Mayor Tony Vauss, before stepping out, held a moment of remembrance for Roundtree. Four of the walkers carried a banner with his likeness.
FF. Barney L. Roundtree, Jr., who was born June 16, 1973, died Oct. 1 after a bout with cancer. The firefighter was living in the Weequahic section of Newark at the time.
Son Eric is among Roundtree’s survivors. Memorial donations may be made to ACS.
EAST ORANGE – A city man is to be scheduled to face a State Superior Court-Newark arraignment hearing for Nov. 15 charges of auto theft and burglary and resisting arrest in Glen Ridge.
Borough police Sgt. Anthony Mazza said that he was on his patrol at Hillside and Bloomfield Avenue that Wednesday when he heard a car alarm sounding from the Hillside Avenue parking lot. A Glen Ridge Crossing Guard had heard the same alarm and had called police headquarters.
Mazza said he entered the lot and found a car with a broken window. He also saw a man walking east away from the car.
The sergeant said he followed the suspect to the Bottle King Plaza at 720 Bloomfield Ave. and ordered him to stop. The man ran across the avenue into Bloomfield instead. Mazza pursued on foot until he apprehended the suspect several feet east of and across from Clark Street.
Kelvin Ollennu, 18, was found to have several items from the car with the broken window on his person. Ollennu was taken to GRPD headquarters for processing and release with a Superior Court date. He has been charged with criminal mischief, burglary from an automobile, theft and resisting arrest.
ORANGE – It will be a long time, if at all, before former tenant Ali Height is ever released from state prison over the 2021 death of former landlord Renown Wilson. Superior Court Judge Mark S. Ali sentenced Height, 54, on Nov. 15 to life in jail plus 10 years.
The life sentence comes from a jury finding Height guilty on Aug. 9 of first-degree aggravated manslaughter, and second-degree counts of unlawful possession of a gun and possession thereof for an unlawful purpose.
The extra 10 years comes from a later proceeding where Height was convicted of being a felon in possession of a weapon. Ali, on Nov. 15, ruled that Height has to serve consecutive life and 10-year sentences – which adds five years before he could be considered for parole.
County prosecutors said that Height had come from his Salisbury, NC home to wait outside Wilson’s address here June 24, 2021. When Wilson, 55, arrived, Height shot him in the stomach, chased him and grazed him in the neck.
Renown Abdur Rahim Wilson died of his injuries July 2. His Janazah funeral service was held Nov. 15 at East Orange’s Islamic Center of America, followed by burial at Linden’s Roseland-Rosehill Cemetery. Height was arrested at Salisbury July 10 and was extradited.
Prosecutors said that Wilson and Height had known each other for years, the former allowing him to stay at his place and helping him find a job. An argument in February, however, prompted Height to move back to North Carolina.
WEST ORANGE / SOUTH ORANGE – Bartender Magazine and The Bartenders’ Foundation had announced this month that village native and 16-year bartender at The Manor Ray Foley, 80, had died in Basking Ridge Oct. 27.
Foley had left being The Manor’s Assistant General Manager in 1982 to devote publishing Bartender Magazine trade publication full time. Bartender.com, Mixologist.com, The Bartender Hall of Fame and The Bartenders’ Foundation followed. He authored “Bartending for Dummies” for the “For Dummies” series and, in 1985, created the “Fuzzy Navel.”
Raymond Peter Foley’s formative years were in South Orange and West Orange from when he was born July 11, 1943. The 1965 Columbia High School Yearbook noted him for “his fiery red hair and sense of humor.”
Foley left 266 Waverly Place for Seton Hall University and to join the U.S. Marine Corps. He was hired by The Manor in 1967. He meanwhile met and married Jaclyn Wilson in 1967 in Bernardsville. They moved to Basking Ridge to raise son Ryan.
Foley had died from complications of Parkinson’s disease. He believed that he contracted the disease from contaminated water while in USMC’s Camp Lejeune in the 1960s.
Daughter-in-law Cait Fallon, and granddaughter Nora are also among his survivors. He was buried in Millburn’s St. Rose of Lima Cemetery, after a Funeral Mass there, Nov. 2.
Foley’s collection of cocktail recipe books, one of the world’s largest, is on display at Milan, Italy’s Galleria Campari Museum. Memorial donations may be made to The Bartenders’ Foundation.
MAPLEWOOD – The latest car theft from 1511 Springfield Ave., as of deadline, happened early on Nov. 18.
Responding Maplewood Police officers arrived after 4 a.m. to meet the owner of a Honda Transport at the Wawa parking lot. The owner said he had left the Honda unattended, running and unlocked when the car theft suspect got in and sped away east on Chancellor Avenue.
Newark police, at 5:22 a.m., told their Maplewood colleagues that they found the Transport, matching the swiped vehicle’s description, on their streets abandoned. There has no description given of the suspect.
Nov. 18 is the seventh time going back to August 2022, where an unlocked and running car was taken from the filling station-convenience store’s lot.
An Infiniti that was taken on April 10, for example, was found abandoned by the New Jersey State Police on the New Jersey Turnpike. Another car was taken at 7:09 a.m. Jan. 19 and was last seen heading east. A 2021 Honda Pilot was taken Oct. 1, 2022 and was found in Newark.
A BMW X5 was taken while its driver was refilling its tires with air while the Aug. 11, 2022 incident was categorized as a carjacking. The suspect left behind a driver from the store, demanded car keys, pushed the victim and pulled out the keys from his pocket. The car was found around Newark’s 138 Hunterdon St.
BLOOMFIELD – When Brookdale neighbors of Adelphia Lucas, 90, learned that she had died from COPD Oct. 26, they remembered her as a 53-year resident, an election day polling station worker at the Demarest School and founder of Duffy’s Party Consultants here.
“Ms. Duffy” or “Mother Duffy.” was better known in and beyond the greater “Local Talk” area as a trailblazing nurse who integrated local hospitals in 1950s-60s. The 42-year nurse parlayed her sales associate experience in Lisa Jewelry, of West Orange into several businesses in the 1970s and 80s, including the Miss Duffy’s Party Shop ice cream parlor, of Passaic.
Born Adelphia M. Perry Sept. 19, 1933 in Passaic the second youngest of six siblings excelled in English and writing while living in their Central Avenue address. The Passaic High School Class of 1952 graduate attained her nursing degree from Fairleigh Dickinson College, then in Rutherford. The private duty nurse specialized in palliative care.
Perry was one of the first African American nurses, helping to integrate hospitals in Essex and Passaic counties in the 1950s and 60s. She co-founded the Passaic African-American Committee of Women, dedicated to reserving that city’s black history and providing annual scholarships.
Perry met James B. Lucas while on her rounds. They married and moved to Bloomfield in January 1970 to raise Caryl and James Lucas and, through marriage, the late Daryl C. Perry. Grandsons Ira, Isaiah and Jordan Perry and great-granddaughters Alaia and Kenzie Graffe Perry followed.
Lucas’ faith walk moved with her from Passaic’s Union Baptist Church and Alpha Bible School to Nutley’s First Baptist Church and, in 1999, back to UBC. The ABC-certified evangelist, for example, was UBC’s fundraising chairwoman, senior missionary choir member, and, with daughter Caryl, served with the Unstoppable Girls Foundation.
Sisters Mintha Marshall and Christine Smith are also among her survivors. James Lucas, Daryl C. Perry and brothers Willie B., Dr. Calvin and Jessie Lee Perry predeceased her. Lucas’ respective funeral and burial were at UBC Nov. 11 and in Paterson’s Cedar Lawn Cemetery Nov. 13.
MONTCLAIR – Montclair State University Police, when a student reported swastikas etched on to the Amphitheater early Nov. 17, they did not know at first that they were talking with the perpetrator.
The publicly unidentified student said that someone had scratched two swastikas and “Death to Israel” onto one of the outdoor theater’s steps. MSUPD promptly called ECPO as it was reported as a hate crime.
Campus police, later that Friday, listened to the student’s confession that he had made the scratchings.
“The student, who identifies as Jewish, ” said MSU President Jonathan Koppell in his open public letter, “said that he thought placing the swastikas would compel the University to take action in support of the campus Jewish community.”
ECPO spokesman Robert Florida said, “It was determined that the individual was in need of psychological services” and that neither agency filed charges.
The 2,000-seat amphitheater, built in 1940, was in the original part of the Montclair Normal School for Teachers. About two-thirds of MSU’s campus has since expanded north into a former quarry in Little Falls.
GLEN RIDGE – Some patients who would normally be admitted to Hackensack Meridian Health’s Mountainside Medical Center have been diverted to other local hospitals since Nov. 26.
While Mountainside accepts emergency room admissions, EMS ambulance drivers are being told to take non-emergency patients to other nearby hospitals.
Mountainside, fellow Hackensack Meridian member Pascack Valley Medical Center, of Westwood, and 28 hospitals across the nation were hit with what contractor Ardent Health Services with a computer software lockout from “a potential security incident.”
The Nashville-based Ardent oversees Mountainside and Pascack Valley’s informational technology systems. The two hospitals are under the 18-hospital Hackensack Meridian umbrella. No other HMH or “Local Talk” hospitals have been targeted or affected as of press time.
Ardent, in a Monday press release, said that its technology team “safeguarded data and regained functionality,” while understanding the nature of the event. Law enforcement agencies have been notified and hired third-party “forensic and threat intelligence advisors.”
None of the parties involved have said that Mountainside and the other 29 hospitals were targets of ransomware – so named for hackers demanding money before releasing software data.
Hackers had disabled Mountainside’s data access for two days in 2019. Doctors had to give care without access to electronic records and non-emergency surgeries were postponed.
Mountainside had paid an undisclosed amount of money to regain access; its insurance covered remediation, recovery and ransom. Hackers have found medical records up to four times more valuable than getting Social Security numbers.
BELLEVILLE – Members of the township fire and police departments rescued three occupants of an SUV that was trapped by early morning flooding here at Main and Little streets Nov. 22.
BFD and BPD members reported to that T-intersection on a car stuck in flood waters there at 5:10 a.m. that Wednesday. Rain runoff from overnight Nov. 21-22 had flooded that intersection, which also caused the BP filling station at 473 Main St. to delay its 6 a.m. opening.
Police officers promptly detoured traffic away from Little street while colleagues were able to transfer two of the trapped occupants into one of their cruisers. A News12 New Jersey television crew had arrived to find and record live BFD officers using a flat row boat to rescue the third person at 6:10 a.m.
The National Weather Service had predicted that the heavy rain would leave the area by 9 a.m. The rain had dissipated to a drizzle in North Newark by 7 a.m.
A BPD spokesman said that Main and Little streets were the only place of major flooding reported. Passaic police had closed Route 21 at State Street for flooding. Route 3 between the Garden State Parkway in Clifton and Nutley’s Bloomfield Avenue exit were also closed that rush hour.
NUTLEY – Township residents/car owners are not immune to the rash of motor vehicle thefts within and outside of here and the “Local Talk” area of late.
A Wilmington Street neighbor called 911 at 4:30 a.m. Nov. 18, for example, about two unfamiliar people taking a pair of cars from an adjacent driveway.
Responding Nutley police officers met with the owners of the missing cars. They said that whoever stole their cars broke into their house and helped themselves to the twin sets of keys that were earlier laid in a countertop basket.
The thefts came nine days after Nutley Public Safety Commissioner Alphonse “Al” Petracco’s comments at their Nov. 9 public meeting. Petracco said, that Thursday, that unlocked cars have contributed to the auto theft and theft from autos’ trending.
Petracco and Police Chief Thomas Strumolo have since reminded residents and car owners not to keep valuables – including car keys – in plain view within their houses or apartments.
