TOWN WATCH
NEWARK – It appears that two Fairmount street front businesses will remain closed for the time being and 52 people displaced by a noonday July 16 fire. The blaze at 263 South Orange Ave. had injured three Newark firefighters and brought mutual aid and station coverage from as far out as Jersey City.
The NFD fire blotter stated that the first alarm from Papa Pat’s Pizza came in at Noon. The first units found heavy smoke and flames from there and Charmain Has Hands 4 You in the same three story building.
The incident commander promptly pulled two more alarms for mutual aid and station coverage. PSE&G was also called to have a truck crew shut off electrical and gas power. South Orange Avenue traffic, including NJTransit’s Route No. 31 buses, were detoured between Fairmount Avenue and Bergen Street.
Those 52 residents – 33 adults and 19 children had meanwhile self-evacuated and sought at least shade. The fire happened in the midst of a heat wave in the high-90-degree-F range, requiring more than the usual mutual aid.
“Local Talk,” for example, found coverage for Engine 13, Ladder Truck 6 Fire Station at 715-18 Mt. Prospect Ave. provided by four Jersey City Fire vehicles at the 1 p.m. hour. Three firefighters were taken to University Hospital presumably for heat exhaustion.
Charmain and Masjid Muhammad subsequently posted on their Facebook pages, The former thanked people for their prayers and donations. A spokesman for the masjid, three doors to the east, said their operations were not affected.
IRVINGTON / BELLEVILLE – Belleville’s Township Council, since July 16, have been wondering whether their municipality should have something that Irvington has had since April 1 – a ParkMobile app.
Mayor Michael Melham, the full council, Police Chief Mark Minichini and Town Manager Anthony Iacono plus a ParkMobile App representative named Shea held a five-minute presentation and question session before the public and the local livestream feed. ParkMoble provides “contactless” parking payments with minimal municipal operation.
People along Springfield Avenue, Beasley Civic Square and some other “Five Points” streets may have noticed PM’s green standalone signs and parking meter stickers. A driver with a smartphone would keyboard in the sign’s zone number and sticker’s serial number to the PM website.
PM would provide pages for parking rates and other information. The smartphoning motorist then puts in the parking staying time (in 15-minute increments) and pays through the owner’s bank account. Overtime penalties are added to the account.
Those with flip phones may need an extra step or two to navigate PM’s software. Establishing an account with PM is preferred but not required – and they can be used in other PM towns.
Shea said that Belleville would be joining a network that includes Newark, Nutley, Montclair, Bloomfield and Passaic, and that she has been with PM for two months – which why she did not mention other participating “Local Talk” towns – Irvington and East Orange.
Iaocono said that PM is opening to have Belleville use the system on a trial basis along Washington Street. Although Belleville has replaced mechanical parking meters with Unimeters that also read credit/debit cards, the thinking is that “contactless” PM would reduce wear and tear on the said meters.
EAST ORANGE / ORANGE – There are former Third Ward neighbors and Orange Valley high school classmates who are more remembering Mary Jo Kopechne this week every year than for the historic Apollo 11 Moon flight.
While Montclair’s Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin was preparing to become the second human to walk on the Moon 55 years ago, Kopechne’s family and friends were learning that she had died when the car and Sen. Edward “Ted” Kennedy were in ran off the Martha’s Vineyard – Chappaquiddick Island bridge into Poucha Pond July 18-19, 1969.
Sen. Kennedy, who swam to safety, said he tried to free Kopechne, 28, but walked home and reported the crash to police July 19. His actions, which resulted in a two-month suspended sentence for leaving the scene of an accident, haunted the rest of his life and political career.
The arc of Kopechne’s life, which started with her July 26, 1940 birth in the Wilkes-Barre suburb of Forty Fort, Pa., bent through East Orange and Orange 1934-58. Father Joe brought Mary Jo and wife Gwen to 229 Shepard Ave. in the Third Ward so he could work as a shipbuilder and, later, as an insurance salesman.
The Kopechnes, devout Roman Catholics, enrolled Mary Jo into Blessed Sacrament School and matriculated from there to Orange’s Our Lady of the Valley High School in 1954. Mary Jo was considered by her peers and nun-teachers as someone who hung out with honor roll students. She was on the drama and glee clubs and was on the school newspaper and valiant yearbook staff.
The B+ average student, who was also a member of Valley High’s Sodality Christian charity staff, graduated to then-Caldwell College for Women in 1958. The woman who considered becoming a nun graduated from the school’s two-year business-secretarial program and a four-year bachelor’s degree. She also belonged to the National Federation of Catholic College Students, which led her to join the John F. and Robert F. Kennedy presidential campaigns.
May Jo Kopechne would have turned 84 on July 26.
WEST ORANGE – A Mt. Carmel Guild Academy special education teacher here is back in his Bayonne home after spending July 16-17 in Newark’s Essex County Correctional and Central Judicial Processing.
Jaron Spicer, 32, was released on condition that he must regularly report back to CJP and that he has no contact with his accuser. He had been meanwhile charged with second-degree endangering the welfare of a child and disorderly conduction-simple assault.
Spicer, said Essex County Prosecutor Theodore “Ted” Stephens II and West Orange Police Chief James Abbott July 19, is accused of throwing an 11-year-old autistic boy to the ground and holding him down with his body weight for nearly 15 minutes at the school April 18.
The boy’s mother reported the incident to WOPD April 22. Township detectives then called in ECPO detectives. Those same detectives arrested Spicer July 16.
The boy, said his mother, complained that he could not breathe during the hold and that he suffered bruises and a rug burn on his face. A 30-minute video tape was later found – showing the student throwing a chair at another classmate Spicer’s alleged throwdown and hold. The recording showed that the incident happened before other students and adults walking in and out of the room.
Ben Pinczewski, Esq., of Brooklyn, who represents the family, said that other parents have come forward with similar abuse stories. It is not clear whether the other stories include Spicer. The Mt. Carmel Guild Academy works with Pre-Kindergarten-12th Grade students who have learning and developmental disabilities.
SOUTH ORANGE – An investigator’s July 11 report to Seton Hall University’s administrators had sought to answer whether Board of Regents Chairman Kevin Marino had sexually harassed the wife of the then-university president in June 2021.
The now-ex SHU President Joseph Nyre, in his December, 2023 filing to the school’s Title IX office, accused Marino of inappropriate behavior to Kelly Nyre on several occasions in 2021. He said Marion brushed her hair back and kissed her neck at a June 2021 Board of Regents dinner.
Joseph Nyre’s filling came seven months after he had resigned from the presidency. SHU’s School of Law had been dealing with the aftermath of several longtime employees being accused of embezzling $975,000 in late 2022. Law School Dean Kathleen Boozang resigned that month.
The Nyres and Marino’s relationship may have soured after the embezzlement scandal. The couple used to vacation at Marino’s summer home in Marth’s Vineyard.
The independent investigator from the New York firm Perry Law LLC reported that he found more than no evidence to Joseph Nyre’s claims but, instead, found evidence of Nyre encouraging SHU’s then-chief financial officer to file a false harassment claim against Marion.
Christopher Porrino, attorney representing Marion, said that he and his client “will take the necessary steps to hold the Nyres accountable.” Armen McCombrer, representing Nyre, called the report “an absolute sham.”
NOTE: The South Orange Village Council have set a virtual meeting to discuss putting a proposed water department sale to New Jersey American Water on the Nov. 5 public question referendum for 7 p.m. July 29.
MAPLEWOOD – The township’s police department has posted the latest area bear sighting, and had posted an advisory here July 19.
Residents in the Lower Wyoming section said they saw a bear walking by Wyoming Avenue and Lewis Drive earlier that Sunday. The street corner is several blocks from Essex County’s South Mountain Reservation and near a dog walk park.
Sunday was the latest in a flurry of bear sightings this season. Some of the bruins came from the 2,112-acre South Mountain Reservation, which also spans Millburn, West Orange and South Orange.
The Essex County Sheriff’s Office personnel had to shoot dead a bear who approached a group of humans in the Locust Grove-Millburn part of the reservation June 10.
MPD is referring residents to the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife for details and questions. One may call in bear sightings to DFW at 1(877) 927-6337. Its website has pointers on what to do when one sees a bear.
BLOOMFIELD – It may have taken three months for word of former mayor Ralph Conte’s April 6 death in Hamburg to arrive here – but his loss has been felt in Bloomfield, South Orange and Roseland.
Conte, 94, was mayor here 1963-67. He shepherded the financing and construction of the 1967 current Bloomfield Public Library, a new Bloomfield High School gymnasium and multipurpose rooms at the Berkeley, Brookdale, Fairview and Franklin schools. He started the Municipal Youth Council and, with Councilman Richard West, the Bloomfield Adult School.
Ralph G. Conte, who was born in Newark June 7, 1929 before his family moved to Ampere Parkway in 1934, was first known as a Democrat who made inroads into the then-Republican majority Township Council. Voters elected Conte in 1960 as the first Democratic councilman since 1924. He became Bloomfield’s first Democratic mayor in 1962, leading a council ticket that included West, Joseph Barry and Vincent Rospond.
Conte had graduated twice from Seton Hall University, first with a social studies degree in 1950 and a theology degree in the 1990s. His juris doctorate at Fordham Law School pursuit was interrupted by the Korean Conflict; he served in the Army from Berlin 1951-53. He became a partner of the (Felix) Rospond, (Vincent) Rospond and Conte, LLC in Newark.
Conte and wife Barbara – who raised Joseph, Mary, Ralph, Christian and Ann Marie at Victor Place and Barbara Street, first moved to Roseland in 1971. It was not an easy decision since the BHS Class of 1946 graduate was a lector at S. Valentine’s Church and a member of the local Knights of Columbus post.
Ralph and Barbara retired to North Carolina in 1993 but moved back north to Hamburg. He had recorded a “Life and Times of Ralph Conte” in 2014 for the Historical Society of Bloomfield and WBMA-TV.
MONTCLAIR – News – both good and bad – came and went on the township’s official website here July 19.
Montclaurnjusa.org became disabled before the start of business that Friday. It turned out that the municipal site was among millions here and around the world during that week’s CrowdStrike mishap.
CrowdStrike, while taking responsibility, said that it was updating its security software serving Microsoft Windows when an error started pulling down their clients’ sites on July 15. Various governmental, nonprofit and commercial web sites from here to Australia became Blue Screens of Death.
Newscasters had to fill air time by reading material from handwritten notes. Hospitals, when not postponing elective surgeries, took prescriptions on “sticky notes.” Airlines could not confirm reservations or issue boarding passes. (Airlines in and out of Newark Liberty International Airport, as of July 23, remain in recovery mode.)
Locally, NJTransit advised that their destination boards and Ticket Vending Machines are down July 15. The only TVM that “Local Talk” used that Monday, at Newark Broad Street Station, was unaffected. The carrier’s bus destination boards at Newark Penn Station and the Irvington Bus Terminal remained down.
Montclair interim Town manager Michael Lapolla and interim Communications Specialist/CFO Tony Fan, at 1:35 p.m. that Friday, announced that the municipal website was back up.
NUTLEY – The Nutley High School Maroon Raider nation and the township community in general gave their final tributes to scholar-athlete-businessman Charles S. Piro July 9 here at the S.W. Brown Funeral Home and July 10 at Belleville Nanina’s in the Park. Piro, 48, a member of NHS’s state championship football team and a 30-year business owner or operator, died after a brief illness July 3.
Piro, except for his 1993-97 pursuit of a Rowan University bachelor’s degree, was a lifelong Nutleyite since his Aug. 9, 1975 birth. He joined older brother Joseph on to the Maroons’ football and wrestling teams in 1990. The 1992 football team he was on won the NJSIAA North Jersey Group III, Section 2 and he Essex County championships with an 8-1-2 regular season win-loss-tie record.
“Chuck,” NHS Class of 1993, ran his own Piro Painting here from 1997 until he became the general manager of the Franklin Steakhouse, 238 Franklin Ave., in 2007. He and future wife Stephanie Rizzo met while both were working there; their manager outlasted the steakhouse. (It will reopen as Hudson Rose “Elevated American” Aug. 2.)
Charles became Accent painting Group’s account manager until his illness. Brother Joe remains NHS Athletic Director. Sisters Julie Piro and Jackie Searle are also among his survivors.
Donations may be made to the Hackensack UMC John Theurer Cancer Center via HMH Foundation, 343 Thornall St., 7th Flr., Edison, NJ 08837.
