TOWN WATCH By Walter Elliott
NEWARK – A former child welfare headquarters and police substation here in the Vailsburg section, is now a pile of rubble here since its Nov. 26 fire.
The first Newark Fire Division units arrived at 765-67 South Orange Ave. 4:40 p.m. that Friday with the 1900 2.5-story wood frame building with thick smoke and fire coming out of its first and second floors.
The on-scene incident commander pulled a second alarm for all hands while firefighters fought to bring the blaze under control. That control was made by 5:30 p.m. but not before the building had collapsed at 5.
A woman in 765-67 meanwhile jumped from a second-floor window. On-scene EMS took her to University Hospital, where she was admitted in stable condition. She was the only injury suffered by anyone from the incident.
The vacant 765-67 South Orange Ave. used to be Babyland Family Services’ headquarters before moving out to allow for the building’s renovation. The building’s east side had been propped up with wooden beams for several years. New windows were recently installed.
NPD turned the vacant building into its first “storefront” community center in 1986. The West District Community Service Center moved across the avenue before selling it to Babyland in 2011.
NFD personnel stayed overnight Nov. 26-27 to search with the ECPO Arson Unit for any possible victims. Neighbors told firefighters that there may have been squatters inside.
Meanwhile, on the night of Nov. 27, a vehicle literally exploded in flames by 142 Abinger Place right before midnight. NFD Fire Eng. 26 (from 420 Sanford Ave. Station, also home of Ladder Co. 12 and Battalion Chief 6-Special Operations, arrived on scene in seven minutes after the fully involved blaze was reported.
In 16 minutes, the fire was knocked down. No injuries were reported, and the arson squad did a preliminary investigation, but found nothing of note as of deadline.
Residents in the building were evacuated at the time for safety purposes, but some wondered as to how the car got in the empty lot next to their building and why it was there.
IRVINGTON – A former township resident and NJTransit have reached a $2 million settlement, in a Nov. 18 announcement, over an injurious 2015 bus collision here.
Kiliek Anthony was 25 years old when he was struck by a NJTransit bus while crossing Chancellor Avenue by Coit Street 6 a.m. Dec. 1, 2015. The New York City Public Schools paraprofessional was coming away from a nearby ATM machine when township police records said he was thrown 15 feet by the bus to the pavement.
Police records and witnesses said that Anthony was returning to his car, where his girlfriend and their infant son were waiting, was in the crosswalk and had the green light. Two passengers aboard the bus told police that they had yelled out to the driver about Anthony, prior to impact.
Anthony, said Roseland attorney Bath Baldinger, suffered head, neck, back and facial injuries and amnesia. Medical records also showed that Anthony also lost frontal lobe brain tissue, resulting in significant cognitive difficulties that keep him from driving and working.
NJTransit had fired the bus driver, who allegedly amassed a poor driving record, after six months on the job.
Anthony now lives in North Carolina. Baldinger – of Mazie, Slater, Katz & Freeman, LLC – said that the settlement was reached in August and the check sent to her client in October.
EAST ORANGE – The mother of the 14-year-old girl who ran away Oct. 14, triggering a 29-day bistate search for her, is home for at least part of the holidays since Nov. 23.
Jamie Moore, 40, was home for Thanksgiving but without her daughter or her three-year-old son at the dinner table. N.J. Superior Court -Newark Judge Michael L. Ravin released Moore from the Essex County Correctional Facility Nov. 23 on condition that she has no contact with her daughter and son.
Ravin further ordered that Moore be under home confinement until the next court hearing on Dec. 20. That homestay is being monitored by an electronic ankle bracelet she has to wear.
Moore, who is represented by Durann Neil, Jr., Esq., still faces two counts of child endangerment that the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office charged her with Nov. 13. She was placed under arrest by 5 p.m. Nov. 12 – 18 hours after the daughter was found in Harlem Nov. 11.
Nov. 12 was also when the daughter and son were placed into state welfare custody. The daughter accused her mother of abuse and neglect going back “several years.”
The 14-page ECPO complaint detailed the daughter being struck in the head with a frying pan, stabbed in the shoulder with a steak knife and temporarily blinded with sprayed bleach. Moore is accused of not registering her for the 2021-22 school year so she could babysit the son, run errands and panhandle on street corners.
The filing has the daughter’s testimony that the mother said, “If you don’t find the debit card, don’t come back.” The mother had publicly said, “I told her to retrace her steps back.”
The daughter had lost the family debit card on her way to a local delicatessen 7:30 a.m. Oct. 14, went back out and disappeared for 29 days.
ORANGE – Public funeral arrangements for Locksley “Slide” Hampton, whose eight decades of jazz trombone netted him an NEA Jazz Master title among other awards, have not been announced as of press time.
Hampton, 89, said son Lamont and grandson Richard, had died here Nov. 18. He had been playing his trombone in his Walter G. Alexander apartment as late as Nov. 16. The Jeanette, Pa. native who had lived in Brooklyn and Europe moved here in 2012.
Locksley Wellington Hampton was born April 21, 1932 into a family of 14 – including parents who taught them to play musical instruments. L.W. became “Slide” when the family noticed that the six-year-old could adeptly play right- and left-handed slide trombones.
The family band won a 1952 appearance at Carnegie Hall, opening for Lionel (no relation) Hampton. Slide, that weekend, visited nearby Birdland and was exposed to bebop jazz.
Slide Hampton turned to playing and arranging with various musicians, including mentor J.J. Johnson, Dizzy Gillespie, Motown Records and, later, Stevie Wonder and The Four Tops. He formed his own Slide Hampton Octet before joining the Woody Herman band for a 1968 European tour – and staying in Paris until 1977.
Hampton was a man in demand into the 2010s. He taught jazz in Harvard, the University of Massachusetts and Chicago’s De Paul University. He won a Grammy each for collaborations with Dee Dee Bridgewater in 1997 and with the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra in 2004.
Hampton’s wife, Althea, died in 2006 and a son, Gregory, died in 2019. Son Locksley, daughter Jacquelyn, four grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren are also among his survivors.
WEST ORANGE – The township planning board (or adjustment) will continue its consideration of Public Storage’s application to build one of its three-story facilities at 424 Eagle Rock Ave. here at their Dec. 16 meeting.
PS Atlantic Coast LLC, at its initial Oct. 28 hearing and Nov. 8 continuance, wants to so replace the Eagle Rock Lanes bowling alley. (Roof damage permanently closed the alley on May 6, 2020.) The Public Storage warehouse’s construction includes felling 38 mature trees on the panhandle-shaped lot’s south and east sides.
The Our Green West Orange environmental group pointed out, however, that the said trees line Crystal Lake on its south and the cliff face on its east. The eastern cliff face, carved out by the Orange Quarry Company, drops down to a 60-acre lot where Crown View Manor and the Villas at Crown View are. The Manor apartment building was finished in 1998 and the Villas in 1993.
OGWO is concerned that the 38 trees’ removal will increase the cliff face erosion – like what may have happened to the Ron Jolyn Apartments’ Sept. 1-2 rockslide and Oct. 11-12 condemnation at 275 Northfield Ave.
The group, post-Tropical Storm Ida, considers the township’s 25-degree slope ordinance as insufficient.
MAPLEWOOD – Services for Joseph F. Trinity, 94. a 62-year Maplewoodian, was set for Dec. 1 at the Jacob A. Holle Funeral Home and Dec. 2 here at St. Joseph’s Church.
Trinity died at home here surrounded by family members Nov. 26. He had been mostly at home, recovering from a broken hip, since before March 2020. No cause of death was announced.
Trinity’s 15 minutes of fame may have come during the 1953 Inauguration Day Parade for President Dwight D. Eisenhower. He stood in a cap and gown, waving atop an “Education” float. Trinity recalled that he got paid to ride the float – and that he was a lifelong Democrat in a Republican’s inauguration.
Trinity had worn caps and gowns plenty of times before and after 1959 – when he and his newlywed wife Mary moved here to raise five children. Born Aug. 31, 1927 in Philadelphia, Trinity graduated from La Salle High School there and from Washington, D.C.’s Catholic University.
The U.S. Army veteran and part-time actor taught drama and speech at Springfield’s Jonathan Dayton Regional High School 1952-92. He and Mary saw children Mary, Eileen, Joseph,, Frank and John graduate from their schools.
JDRHS’s play director and Irvington’s Good Shepherd Church parishioner was also survived by Sister Eileen Trinity and 12 grandchildren. His beloved Mary, brother Sonny and sisters Honor Mitzak and Sr. Mary Mercita Trinity predeceased him.
Memorial donations may be made to Sisters of Mercy, 515 Montgomery Ave., Merion Station, PA 19066.
BLOOMFIELD – This holiday season will be the first one in 76 years where descendants of Larry S. Wassil know where his remains are.
The Wassil-Loock family announced Nov. 23 what the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency told them July 27. The agency’s scientists at their Offutt Air Force Base laboratory in Nebraska used DNA to identify the body brought there from Belgium’s Ardennes American Cemetery in April 2019 as Wassil’s.
Sgt. Wassil, 33, took part in World War Two’s European Theater while assigned to the Army’s 8th Infantry Division, 13th Regiment, 3rd Battalion, Company K’s reconnaissance unit. He and three other recon members were part of the Hurtgen Forest offensive and were scouting enemy positions near Bergstein when German gunfire scattered and separated them Dec. 28, 1944.
When Wassil’s two colleagues reported back that they were unable to find him, their superiors listed him as missing Dec. 28. German forces never listed him as a POW. The War Department issued him as presumptively dead Dec. 29, 1945.
Wassil’s remains, after three postwar searches, was declared unrecoverable in 1951. A Bronze Star and Purple Heart medal were posthumously awarded.
Larry Stanley Wassil was born in Bloomfield July 12, 1911 and graduated from Bloomfield High School in 1929 as a Bengals star Bengals football player. He worked as a machinist on oil drums in Elizabeth Dec. 7, 1941. He and his first wife had son Lawrence L. and daughter Barbara (later Barbara Loock) before their divorce; the latter three lived in Nutley.
A DPMAA historian, in April 2019, had preliminary concluded that the body in Griesheim Mausoleum niche X-1198 may be Wassil and, after informing his descendants, had the remains exhumed and sent to Nebraska.
German woodcutters found that body in 1952. The historian’s news came in time for Larry L. Wassil, 80, who died later in 2019.
L.S. Wassil’s body has come home to the U.S. – but his last resting place will not be in Bloomfield. His May 22 burial is set for Arlington National Cemetery.
MONTCLAIR – The Township Council will have an outside attorney exploring promotional discrimination claims against the Montclair Fire Department over the holidays – if they have not hired that lawyer last month.
Several council members said to two media sources Nov. 19 that their Civil Rights Commission has awarded such a legal services contract “Local Talk” was unable to find the contract among the council’s Nov. 15 meeting agenda packet. That measure may be official when and if included among the council’s Dec. 21 to-be-posted meeting agenda.
The Council’s commission’s intent is to clearly investigate made by two MFD firefighters to the NAACP-Montclair Branch around Nov. 15 that criticized how that department’s top brass have handled a Sept. 30 promotional exam.
The complaining firefighters said that the 100-point exam rubric did not award any points towards seniority. The Sept. 30 exam was to fill vacancies among the ranks of lieutenant, captain and battalion chief. The last exam, held in 2010, gave five points for seniority.
Their claims of “inadequate administration and supervision of the examination” included Fire Chief John Herrmann failing to “recuse himself from his son’s MFD promotional activities” and superiors’ “selective consideration of minor, decades-old disciplinary incidents and excused medical advances.”
BELLEVILLE – The township honored one of its own with an honorary street renaming 10 years to the day of the honoree’s death.
A block of Carpenter Street, at Continental Avenue, was renamed Det. Michael Morgan, Jr. Way Nov. 7. That block was where Morgan, 32, used to play whenever he was not attending St. Peter’s Elementary School here or North Arlington’s Queen of Peace High School.
Although Morgan’s performance as a QoP Golden Griffin star football linebacker earned him several scholarships, he attended New Jersey City University and play as a Gothic Knight. He later graduated from the Essex County Police Academy and joined the Newark Police Department in 2005.
Morgan first worked in the Second Precinct’s Auto Theft Task Force, earning him a promotion to Detective and the Criminal Gang Intelligence Unit the next year. He was transferred to the Street Crimes Task Force/Gang Unit and, on Nov. 7, 2011, the Special Investigations Unit.
Morgan’s end of watch, after 6.5 years of duty, came early and while off duty earlier that morning in Paterson. He and several friends were talking with a Straight Street nightclub employee outside at 3 a.m. when a stranger grabbed a purse and drew a gun in an armed robbery attempt. Morgan was shot while drawing his own gun and later died at St. Joseph’s Hospital.
Jerome Wright, who was arrested Nov. 9 in a Philadelphia area motel pleaded guilty to first-degree aggravated manslaughter and two counts of first-degree robbery. He is serving a 39-year prison sentence.
Mother Phyllis Ann Morgan, brother Vincent and sisters Dawn Palmieri and Nicole Morgan are among his survivors. His Funeral Mass was held Nov. 12 at Newark’s St. Lucy’s Church, followed by burial at Glendale Cemetery.
NUTLEY – Two Avondale area schools were briefly locked down and traffic detoured while Nutley police officers handled a domestic violence dispute-turned standoff here Nov. 17.
Nutley’s top police brass – Chief Thomas Strumolo and Director/Commissioner Alphonse Petracco – said that traffic was diverted away from the Park Avenue and Humbert Street intersection and having Eastwick College and the Washington School populations staying in place were made as “precautions” that Wednesday morning. A Belleville Fire Department crew assisted with the detouring.
The first NPD units arrived at a Humbert residence shortly after 9 a.m. on a report of a “domestic incident.” They found a man barricading himself within. The initial \report said that the said man had a gun, and that two people had been injured.
A woman was released to police early in the negotiations; she was taken to a local hospital for treatment of what Strumolo said were serious injuries “not the result of a firearm.”
The man, who soon surrendered to police, was found not to bear a firearm. He was taken to a separate hospital for injury treatment and for later arrest. The schools’ lockdown was lifted, and local traffic returned to normal.
