TOWN WATCH
NEWARK – What started out as a downtown bus ride for a NJTransit passenger and his bus driver Aug. 16 ended with both being booked at Newark Police Headquarters for aggravated assault – on each other.
Police division officers, said Newark Public Safety Director Fritz Frage, came to the corner of Court and Broad streets on a report of an onboard bus fight at 1 p.m. They arrived to find the bus driver and the passenger beating each other before about 24 onboard passengers.
Officers separated the duo and began interviewing them and the riders. The driver, identified as Toron Walker, and passengers said that the altercation began when the rider spat on the driver, igniting a war of words. The bus was at Broad and Lafayette streets after Noon.
Those words, going by passengers’ onboard cell phone video recordings, escalated to where Walker parked the bus at Broad and Court, got out of his seat, ordered passengers to move to the rear of or exit the bus and began punching the alleged spitter. The driver was shown putting the rider in a chokehold before throwing him down onto the center aisle.
Although neither suffered serious injuries, Walker was charged with aggravated assault – as was the rider for spitting on him. Both Newark and NJTransit Police are investigating the incident.
A NJTransit spokesman confirmed that there was an assault aboard one of its buses and the agency does not condone such on any of its vehicles and facilities. The driver is “out of service.” The rep reminded the public that assaulting any transit employee is punishable by fine, up to seven years’ imprisonment and a permanent riding ban.
IRVINGTON – Funeral arrangements were not immediately available as of press time for resident and retired Irvington Police Division Sgt. Winchester Beaumont.
Beaumont, 52, according to IPD Police Benevolent Association Local 29’s Facebook page, had died Aug. 24.
Local 29’s posting said that Beaumont was first hired by Irvington Township as a telecommunication specialist, answering 911 calls, in 1994. He joined “Irvington’s Finest” July 20, 2000 after taking training at the Essex County Police Academy. “Chad” was promoted to sergeant before retiring Dec. 1, 2020.
Beaumont’s mother, wife and two daughters are among his survivors.
It is anticipated that Beaumont’s last rites will be held in the local church where he was a deacon.
EAST ORANGE – City elders are honoring a city pioneer by giving visitors to the East Orange Fire Department Headquarters a new entrance in her name in early 2026.
Mayor Theodore “Ted” Green and Interim Fire Chief Bruce Davis unveiled an artist’s rendering of the coming Alberta E. Daniels Heritage Hall at the headquarters here July 31. The Daniels Hall, which will be built on 486 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd.’s west side, will eliminate visitors having to enter by walking through a fire engine bay door.
The Art Deco era headquarters and the Elmwood Fire Station 5 at 205 Elmwood Ave. are being renovated and modernized. Station 5’s fire engine and ladder truck, for example, had been earlier moved east across Stuyvesant Avenue to a temporary tent erected on the former Vernon L. Davey Middle School/first Langston Hughes School parking lot.
Daniels, who turned 95 in August, was also among the announcement’s dignitaries. The East Orange High School graduate was the first woman appointed to the East Orange Board of Fire Commissioners 1986-2005. The East Orange Women’s Alliance co-founder is the longest-serving East Orange Democratic Committee member.
Daniels, then and now, is a Fifth Ward resident. Former Essex County then-Freeholder and Registrar and once-city councilwoman Carol Clark is her daughter.
ORANGE – Mayor Dwayne D. Warren, Council President Adrienne Wooten, East Ward Councilman Kerry Coley and at-large councilors Clifford Ross and Weldon “Monty” Montague III made some 10 stops on their annual National Night Out tour Aug. 20 wearing “Orange United” t-shirts.
The white shirts featured a black shield with the city, police and fire department logos on the corners and “2024 A City United” working at the center. Below that line is: “Our Fight, Our Time, Our City.”
Montague, who “Local Talk” met up at the “Rock the Vote” Ebenezer Baptist Church voter registration sign up at the corner of Park and William streets Aug. 24, explained the reasoning behind the “City United” slogan.
“We’ve had, ‘Moving Orange Forward’ during political times,” said Montague. “We’re a family who have had their argument. Now it’s time for, ‘A City United.’
Montague added that the “United” shirts debuted at the 40th anniversary NNO last year. 2023 was also when Rock the Vote and EBC started holding voter registrations together.
“We’re a Democratic state but our turn out is low,” said Montague. “We’ve some 17,000 registered voters in a city of 30-to34,000 but our turnout is in the hundreds or low thousands.”
Saturday’s registration drive, meet-and-greet and cookout was held between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Two people, with children in tow, signed up the first 30 minutes; another two promised to return later.
WEST ORANGE – Township elders and representatives of the Black Inventors Hall of Fame are working on the details of landing the former’s museum at the Mayfair Farms site.
BIHOF Executive Director James Howard, from his Wharton headquarters Aug. 14, announced that the institution had bought a 5.5-acre parcel of the former banquet hall property. An artist’s rendition has a new building attached to a to-be-renovated mansion-turned-catering kitchen.
The combined old-new structure will be an overall 105,000 square feet to house the hall of fame, museum and a STEAM learning center. It is not clear whether the 5.5 acres include the intended site of a four-story assisted living center.
The West Orange Planning Board had earlier approved subdividing Mayfair Farms for senior housing and commercial uses after it ended its 80-year run in 2022. Township planners allowed Wonder Group caterers to move in. Wonder, known for its final food preparation vans appearing at clients’ doors, had applied to add 10 BBQ meat smokers to 481 Eagle Rock Ave. to the property July 8.
BIHOF has a touring display; “The Three Era of African American Inventor Experience Journey,” that has made stops at Essex Community College’s Newark Main Campus, Princeton and as distant as Alexandria, Va. It has inducted said inventors annually since 2022.
Inductee Lewis Latimer (1848-1928) had collaborated with Thomas A. Edison 1884-1911 on several inventions and was a legal patent consultant here. He was the first African American member of the Edison Pioneers.
SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – Menorah Chapels of Millburn at Union announced the July 8 death of Edith Oxfeld, who resided in South Orange for 74 of her 104 years here, on Aug. 20.
Edith and husband Emil Oxfeld, who died July 20, 2003, had raised daughters Nancy and Ellen at 252 Raymond Ct., which was built for them in 1950. While Edith had ended her career as an English and business teacher at the then-South Side High School to raise them, she became active in various South Orange-Maplewood organizations.
The former League of Women Voters chapter president was also active with the Maplewood/South Orange Peace and Community Action in the 1960s and 70s. She was a protester against nuclear testing and the wars in Vietnam and Iraq.
The former Edith Brodsky was born in Brest Litovsk, then in Poland, July 4, 1920. She and younger sister Selma emigrated with the family to Newark in 1925. Edith and Selma graduated from schools in Newark and Irvington; they lived at Newark’s 109 Hillside Ave. in 1940.
Edith graduated from Montclair State Teachers College/Normal School in 1942 and had volunteered as a nurse’s aide in local hospitals during World War Two. She became Edith Oxfeld after marrying the civil liberties lawyer in 1947.
Emil, who founded the ACLU of New Jersey in 1960 and was its president until 1985, and Edith also collected contemporary art. Edith, post-Emil, attended chamber orchestra performances in Maplewood and opera in New York until recently.
The Oxfelds thank Casimira, Elisabete and Patricia Paulo for their caretaking since 2020. A gathering, not a formal memorial service, is to be announced. Memorial donations may go the ACLU-NJ Foundation and/or New Jersey Peace Action.
BLOOMFIELD / GLEN RIDGE – There should be no surprise to see mourners from here, Montclair, West Orange, South Orange and Maplewood having paid respects to Cong. William “Bill” Pascrell (D-Paterson) at Paterson’s Cathedral of St. John the Baptist Aug. 27-28.
Pascrell, 78, who died of breathing conditions Aug. 21 at Livingston’s Copperman-Barnabas Medical Center, was those “Local Talk” towns’ “Our Man on Capitol Hill” 1997-2001 despite his being a lifelong Patersonian.
Pascrell was first elected to Congress’ House of Representatives via the old Eighth District in 1997. The “Old Eighth” included the eight “Local Talk” towns until they were drawn out after the 2000 Census. The 14-term Congressman and his home city became the core of the current Ninth District in 2013.
He created legislation which created and funded the USDOT rush hour railroad station minibus grant program in 1998, basing it on the pioneering 1996 Maplewood jitney service. The bill led to jitney service in Bloomfield, Glen Ridge, Montclair, West Orange, South Orange, Irvington and Union County’s Springfield plus expanding Maplewood’s service. (Orange had jitney service for two years; East Orange was awarded a mini grant.)
Pascrell, who was on the Houses’ Ways and Means Committee and was an original Homeland Security Committee member, also led the bid to designate Paterson’s Great Falls district a National Historic Park.
William James Pascrell, Jr. born the grandson of Italian Immigrants Jan. 25, 1937, was first appointed onto Paterson Board of Education before running successfully as an assemblyman in the “old 35th” State Legislative District in 1987. The former Paramus High School teacher left the State House to get elected as Paterson’s mayor in 1990. He left that city hall to take his Capitol Hill seat in 1997.
Democrats in the 9th CD’s 35 Passaic, Bergen and Hudson are to replace Pascrell’s name on the Nov. 5 General Election ballot on or before Aug. 29. Pascrell won his party’s June 4 primary towards a 15th two-year term.
Wife Elise, sons Bill III, David and Glenn, daughter Kelly, sisters Barbara Pascrell and Joyce Ferraro, three grandsons and three granddaughters are among the former U.S. Army reservist’s survivors. Memorial donations may be made to the Brain Injury Alliance of New Jersey, Eva’s Kitchen and/or the Kessler Foundation.
MONTCLAIR – The Montclair Public Schools will be launching a five-year strategic plan along with the 2024-25 school year.
The Montclair Board of Education concluded 10 months of plan development by approving it at their Aug. 12 meeting. The plan, which was introduced in October, was refined through three community planning sessions last November and December.
The plan has set goals in five areas for the district through 2030: Achievement for all (including staff), community communication and engagement, operations and systems and an “Equitable, Safe and Healthy Learning Environment.” The plan, as presented by Interim Superintendent of Schools Damen Cooper and Charlene Peterson of the N.J. School Boards Association Aug. 12. is to be a living document guided by “meaningful, research-oriented and data-driven action steps.”
Exactly what those action steps will be are to be set by the board during its annual late August retreat.
Aron Funeral Sept. 7
The family of Michael Aron have set his memorial service for 2 p.m. Sept. 7 here at the First Congregational Church, 40 So. Fullerton Ave. Aaron, 78, a five-decade New Jersey political reporter, news host and editor, died after a lingering illness Aug. 13. Memorial donations may be made to Integrity House.
BELLEVILLE / NUTLEY – Belleville motorists, bus riders, pedestrians and business owners who have endured NJDOT’s Washington Avenue rehabilitation project so far may want to take up to three years’ worth of patience with them here – and in Nutley when the project comes to them.
NJDOT and its contractors have closed Washington’s two center lanes along a five block stretch in Belleville since early this summer. All traffic – including NJTransit buses and delivery vehicles – have to take the right hand lanes.
Curbside parking along that stretch has been suspended. The construction zone’s Jersey barriers have blocked pedestrian and vehicular cross street intersection traffic.
NJDOT, in an August update, said that the “Route 7 Rehabilitation” project is advancing northward in eight stages, which began in April between Howard Place and Rutgers Street. This summer’s work is between Rutgers and Holmes Street.
The remaining Belleville stages are to be between Holmes and Joralemon Street, Joralemon and Little Street, Little and Greylock Parkway, Greylock to Carmer Avenue. and Carmer into Nutley’s Hancox Place. The all-Nutley and last stage is to be Hancox to Centre Street.
The two-mile NJ Route 7 stretch of Washington Avenue is to benefit from $20 million worth of milling, paving, traffic signal upgrading and high-visibility crosswalks and curb cuts. Essex County had concluded its own two-mile repaving and fiber optic cable installation project along Newark’s Broadway in May.
