by Walter Elliott
NEWARK – Although the rear-door boarding and “free ride” sun has set on most of New Jersey Transit’s bus routes since Aug. 3, there are riders on nine of its routes – including three serving “Local Talk” towns here, who have been enjoying a twilight.
NJTransit returned to front-door boarding and its drivers accepting cash fares since that Monday on the grounds that buses that needed more comprehensive driver protection panels were retrofitted and returned to service. Those buses that have not been retrofitted yet, as per the carrier’s Aug. 3 and later announcements, will continue rear-boarding and no cash acceptance for the time being.
Riders among the up to 11 towns served on the Nos. 13, 39 and 70 routes, however, have been rear-door boarding and having their cash fares waived on the 9500-series Neoplan articulated buses almost daily. Up to 21 of the older buses have been running on those routes from Maplewood-Hilton and Belleville-Big Tree depots.
An NJTransit spokesman told “Local Talk” Aug. 31 that the Neoplans are being replaced “one for one” by up to 110 New Flyer Xcelsior articulated buses statewide through year’s end. The Neoplans will not be retrofitted and eventually be up for auction.
The interim effect is that riders among six towns who have a Neoplan stop for them along the 13, 39 and 70 routes may feel like they have just received a winning lottery ticket. Those more frequently served Newark, Irvington, Maplewood, Belleville and Nutley may feel like they just got a free cup of coffee or some other “loyalty rewards” program perk.
The gradual twilight, however, will go entirely dark when the 80200-series New Flyers will have replaced the Neoplans by 2020’s end.
Man Charged in Break In
A city man, said Newark’s top cop Sept. 18, is wanted for breaking into and stealing from a West Ward residence June 4.
Quran Anderson, 42, said Newark Public Safety Director Anthony Ambrose, is to be charged with burglary and theft when he is arrested. Anderson is accused of entering a house along Hazelwood Avenue in the Vailsburg section and leaving with clothes and other household items.
Hazelwood is a two-block north-south street which includes the North Star Vailsburg Academy. The street is within several blocks of South Orange’s Seton Hall University and East Orange’s Third Ward.
Anderson is described as standing 5-ft, 7-in. and weighing 125 lbs. He has brown eyes, black hair and a light brown complexion. A recent photo has been posted on the Newark Police website.
IRVINGTON – The ECPO Homicide and Major Crimes Task Force detectives have been investigating the fatal shooting of a township man here since Sept. 17.
Responding Irvington police officers said they came to a house along the 200 block of Eastern Parkway at 1:35 p.m. that Thursday. They found an unconscious and unresponsive Alsherman T. Counts, 43, in his dwelling with at least one gunshot wound.
Medics rushed Counts to Newark’s University Hospital – where he was pronounced dead at 9:06 p.m.
Funeral arrangements for Counts, as of 6 p.m. Sept. 22, have not been posted.
ORANGE – The family of an Orange resident, who was struck and killed by a spinning propeller at Newark Liberty International Airport in 2017, has filed a negligence lawsuit against the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, United Airlines and three other respondents in State Superior Court-Newark.
Jacqueline Mkalama, 53, said attorney Joseph Monaco, was between cleaning airplanes on EWR’s Terminal A apron Sept. 2, 2017 when she was struck by the propeller of a CommutAir Bombardier DHC-8202 near Gate 25.
Airplane mechanics on the Bombardier immediately cut power to its engines and summoned medics. Mkalama, an SEIU 32BJ union member, was rushed to University Hospital-where she later died.
Monaco, who filed the suit Aug. 25, accuses the mechanics at the scene for failing to secure an on-ground engine spotter. That spotter had gone to his private car parked elsewhere on the 1,000-acre airport’s grounds.
Primeflight Aviation Services and Champlain Enterprises, who operate CommutAir for United, are named in the suit. The PA Police Department is also a respondent. Mkalama’s heirs, said their New York City attorney, are seeking “equitable damages,” including the recovery of attorney’s fees and costs.
The suit was filed in Newark after its initial filing in New York City in 2018-18. Monaco first filed in New York, reasoning that it is the PA’s headquarters’ location. A New York State appellate judge dismissed the suit in late 2018, ruling that the accident happened in New Jersey.
Jacqueline T. Mkalama’s Funeral Mass was held here at ST. John’s RC Church Sept. 16, 2017. The family held a visitation the night before at West Orange’s Dangler Funeral Home.
WEST ORANGE – A second floor apartment fire at the James Degnan House for Seniors here Sept. 22 left three people injured and a fourth occupant dead.
WOFD firefighters, responding to a fire report at 430 Main St., found heavy smoke there at 6 p.m. Tuesday. Although the building was evacuated swiftly and the fire put out within 30 minutes, extractor fans were needed to dissipate the smoke.
Two residents suffered smoke inhalation but refused medical attention. A third person was taken to a local hospital after bumping her head upon exiting the building. A house cat, however, did not survive.
Traffic, including NJTransit Route 21 buses, were kept away from Main Street’s intersection with Eagle Rock and Harrison avenues into late evening.
MAPLEWOOD / SOUTH ORANGE – It took an early morning effort, permission by township and county officials and the detouring of Sunday traffic, but Maplewood has its second “Black Lives Matter” street mural as of Sept. 13.
Volunteers – including the MAPSO Youth Coalition and SOMA Justice members – painted the now-familiar yellow block letters along Springfield Avenue’s eastbound lane between Burnet and Boyden avenues.
The letters, to be read from the south side, run the length of the Maplewood Police and Court Building – which includes the South Orange-Maplewood Municipal Court.
The volunteers’ painting was assisted by Maplewood police officers, who detoured the county road between those streets. Buses on NJTransit’s No. 25 and 70 routes were among the affected eastbound traffic.
That mural, which now joins a similar one along Columbia High School’s Valley Road frontage. was postponed from early August over COVID-19-related social distancing concerns.
“Systematic racism and ignorance exist in all facets of our lives,” said Maplewood Mayor Frank McGehee, at the nearby Maplecrest Park gazebo-centered reception, “In our community we have police officers, both black and white, who support Black Lives Matter.”
MONTCLAIR – ECPO officials may have released details of the police officer who was a hit-and-run victim at a Bloomfield Avenue business district parking garage Sept. 22 – and the two suspects in the vehicle that struck him – by when you read this.
Montclair Police Sgt. Terence Turner confirmed that at least five cruisers and a Montclair Ambulance had responded to an officer down report at The Crescent Parking Deck at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday. The officer, who gave a description of the car that hit him, said Turner, was taken to “a local hospital.”
Sgt. Turner then referred additional questions to the ECPO office in Newark. A spokeswoman there said she was pulling information on what happened and who were involved as of 9 a.m., Sept. 23.
Witnesses said that at least two MPD cruisers engaged the suspects’ car in a southward pursuit along South Fullerton and Harrison avenues onto Orange Road. How the pursuit ended in the South End has not been elaborated on – except that two suspects were arrested.
The pair, who have been remanded to Newark’s Essex County Correctional Center, will likely face charges of assaulting a law enforcement officer, leaving the scene of an accident, eluding and reckless driving.
The struck officer, said an MPD colleague to a reporter at the Crescent parking lot, did not appear to have suffered serious injury. He was reportedly on foot patrol duty.
BLOOMFIELD – South Junior High School’s last principal, Charles S. Nankivell, Sr., will not be around to see the long-closed building’s pending conversion to Bloomfield Lofts.
Nankivell, 88 – who was also the combined Bloomfield Middle School’s first principal in 1987 and Bloomfield’s 1979 “Man of the Year” – died Sept. 3 at his Pennington home with his family present. The Hillsborough Funeral Home will hold his services when COVID-19-group assembly restrictions are lifted.
“Charlie,” who was born in Newark Jan. 15, 1932, came to Bloomfield upon his 1955 honorable discharge from the U.S. Army and joined the police department. He obtained a B.A. in chemistry from Rutgers-Newark after-hours and went on to get a Masters from now-Montclair State University in 1961 plus doctorate credits from Rutgers-New Brunswick – all with honors.
Nankivell left BPD to become SJHS’s mathematics, science and photography teacher in 1958. The Bloomfield Board of Education appointed him its principal in 1975 and to head the move into the former North JHS in 1987. He retired in 1994 for his successful election to the BBOE – becoming its president and vice president in his six-year membership before retiring to Pennington in 1999.
The Barringer HS Class of 1950 graduate continued his scholarship and athleticism by joining the Army that year. The Bussac (France) Chemical Depot photo lab director became its champion in javelin, shot put and discus.
Son Charles “Chuck,” Jr., daughters Lisa Youngberg and Celeste Gross, sister Arlene Belt, four grandsons and two granddaughters are among Nankivell’s survivors. Wife Elizabeth Mary “Betty” Tighe, who he met while she was Rutgers’ veterans’ advisor, died in 2012.
Memorial donations in the former Bloomfield Volunteer Emergency Squad trustee’s name may be made to Montgomery EMS Squad 47 Rescue, 8 Harlingen Rd., Belle Mead 08502.
BELLEVILLE – “Four Seasons” co-founder and native son Tommy DeVito, who died in a Henderson, Nev., hospital Sept. 21, is to have a memorial service held in or around here in the near future.
DeVito, 92 who initially formed the Variety Trio before adding Frankie Valli, died from COVID-19 complications at Siena St. Roy Dominican Hospital 9:30 p.m. local time Monday. He was last publicly seen, said daughter Darcel, having dinner at a local Italian-American club Aug. 19.
Tommy (whose first name was actually Gaetano) was born the youngest of nine children here June 19, 1928 and were raised in their uncle’s apartment during the Great Depression. He started playing one of his older brother’s guitar along with the radio at eight years old.
DeVito, who said he had an early reputation as a hellraiser, left school in the eighth grade to start playing and performing in local clubs. (Belleville High School awarded him an honorary diploma in 2012.) He, brother Nick and Hank Majewski formed the Variety Trio in the mid-1950s to play in bars, lounges, and other area venues.
It was at a Belleville bar when DeVito noticed an under-aged Francis Castelluccio – Frankie Valli – slipping in one 1957 night and ushered him on stage. Valli wowed the crowd with his falsetto style and offered him a place.
The quartet went through several names, record labels and performers before DeVito, Valli, Bob Gaudio and Nicholas “Nick Massi” Macioci became “The Four Seasons” in 1960. Their first 45 rpm record, “Sherry” made Billboard’s top 10 in 1962 – ushering a string of 29 top 40 hits through 1970.
“We suddenly went from earning $1,000 a week to $1,000 a day,” recalled DeVito. “I went up and down three or four times and have gone to hell six or seven times.”
DeVito left the quartet, sold his rights to Valli and moved to the Las Vegas area in late 1970. Although the announcement cited a hearing problem, DeVito said later that he tired of the touring. The “Jersey Boys” 2007 play and 2014 movie, however, alleged that DeVito had racked up Mob-held gambling debts.
“What you saw in ‘Jersey Boys’ is 50 to 85 percent true,” said DeVito in 2008. “Members of my family knew members of ‘the family.’ The most I did for them was to sing at several of their benefits. And I’m clean – very clean.”
DeVito worked various and sundry jobs until he opened a home production studio in the 1980s. Valli and Gaudio gave him a 25 percent cut of “Jersey Boys” profits and royalties.
NUTLEY – Riders here and in the Upper Montclair/Montclair State University area are running out of time and options to use their Decamp Bus Lines tickets on NJTransit.
NJTransit will stop taking and honoring unexpired Decamp tickets on its Montclair-Boonton Line and on its 191, 192, 195, 199 and 324 bus routes after Sept. 30. The statewide carrier had actually extended the deadline from Aug. 31.
The 191, 192 and 195 have local stops here, and/or MSU, Montclair Heights and Upper Montclair on their way to and from New York City’s Port Authority Bus Terminal. All five specified routes use the Route 3 corridor from either Clifton’s Allwood Park-and-Ride or the Willowbrook Mall.
195 bus riders in the Great Notch area will still have their NJTransit passes cross-honored by M-BL train staff as they have had since Great Notch Station was abandoned Jan. 15, 2010.
Nutley and Belleville who used to take Decamp for local intrastate rides have presumably switched to the 192, 13 and 74 routes. CoachUSA has meanwhile stopped honoring Decamp tickets on its Community Coach 77 route since Sept. 14.
There has been no indication from Decamp, as of 2 p.m. Sept. 22, on when, or if, they will resume commuter service. The 150-year-old carrier, citing low post-COVID-19 ridership, suspended all of its services Aug. 7.
