FIRE CHIEF SUSPENDED
EAST ORANGE – Fire Chief Andre Williams, announced city spokeswoman Connie Jackson, has been indefinitely suspended with pay since Dec. 6, and Deputy Chief Bruce Davis, Jr. will be leading “East Orange’s Bravest” as acting fire chief pending the conclusion of one or the other investigations on Williams.
By two investigations on Williams, First Ward Councilwoman and Public Safety Committee Chairwoman Amy Lewis said, on Dec. 3, that the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office had opened its own investigation of Williams’ behavior to other firefighters.
ECPO spokeswoman Katherine Carter, on Dec. 3, would not say that an investigation at their level exists.
Jackson, that same Friday, confirmed that the Public Safety Committee had hired outside counsel Victor A. Afanador, of Newark, in September to probe details of workplace harassment, discrimination and retaliation written by two firefighters.
The letter, by Capt. William Kingston and Ff. Garrett Winn, outlined incidents of promotional denial, retaliation, intimidation and discrimination that 11 EOFD had suffered by Williams going back to 2003. Williams’ accusers include three deputy chiefs, four captains and three firefighters.
Kingston and Winn, as respective Fire Officers Association Local 223 and FMBA Local 23 presidents, called for either Williams’ suspension or granting the 11 accusing EOFD personnel paid leave. It is not known whether Deputy Chief Davis is among the 11 aggrieved members.
The letter was addressed to Mayor Theodore “Ted” Green, who forwarded it to Lewis, Chief of Staff Anthony Jackson and Business Administrator Solomon Steplight.
Williams, who joined EOFD in 2003, currently makes an annual salary of $153,700. He has been chief of the 200-member force since 2017.
NEWARK – The city’s first woman firefighter, Jacqueline Rendelman Jones, 70, has died Nov. 23, in Iron Station, NC.
The Ebony & White’s Funeral Service, of Lincolnton, notified the “Gaston Gazette” of Jones’ passing Nov. 30. Her service was held at E&B and burial at Mount Vernon Baptist Church Cemetery Dec. 4.
Jones, 70, rose to the rank of captain – the first African American firefighter in the state to be so promoted – in 1989 before retiring to North Carolina in 2006. While serving in NFD, “Jackie” was an active member of Newark’s Vulcan Pioneers of New Jersey and among the International Association of Black Professional Firefighters’ five founding organizations’ charter members.
Jones was given a particular certification to sit for a 2001 battalion chief examination mainly because she was denied field position assignments and left in administrative assignments.
Although she failed that exam she noticed, as stated in court documents, that “Caucasian maple captains were permitted to take the examination without the same certification.” This experience was part of a discrimination suit she, 23 other firefighters and the Vulcan Pioneers filed against NFD in U.S. Third Circuit District Court in 2002.
The daughter of Jerome Alexander Hunter, Sr. and Katherine Rendelman Hall was born in Irvington General Hospital March 25, 1951. The Weequahic High School (1969) and Dillard University graduate before joining “Newark’s Bravest” in 1981.
The Order of the Eastern Star member, in retirement, worshiped at Mt. Vernon Baptist Church.
IRVINGTON – If the late Dawn Emily Rich’s life had two acts, then her first act here helped form her second in Bradford, N.H.
Rich, 92, who died Dec. 2 in New London, N.H., spent almost all of her first 48 years in Irvington. Born Dawn Foster in Newark in 1929, she was among the Irvington High School graduating Class of 1947. She worked as a secretary for Irvington Public Schools when its Board of Education office was at 1148-1150 Springfield Ave.
Foster married Newark native-turned Irvington police officer Marvin Rich in 1950. While Marvin rose to the rank of lieutenant, community officer, PAL National President and IPS Board of Education President, Emily was the Irvington PAL twirlers advisor. The Trinity Episcopal Church members raised Robert, Dawn, John, Donna and Michael here.
When Marvin retired from the IPD to become Bradford’s police chief in 1977, Emily landed a secretarial job with the Kearsarge Regional Elementary School. The school, on her 1998 retirement, established the annual Dawn Rich Award for fifth-grade students.
The couple moved to New London’s Woodcrest Village in May 2019. USN World War Two veteran Marvin, 93, died there Aug. 1, 2019.
Dawn’s visitation and funeral were held Dec. 6 at the Chadwich Funeral and Cremation Service and St. Andrews Episcopal Church, both of Bradford. Her remains were interred next to Marvin’s at Bradford’s Sunny Plain Cemetery.
Eight grandchildren, three great-grandchildren and sister Lynn Kasper are also among her survivors. Memorial donations may be made to the Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth-Hitchcock at chadkinds.org or 1 Medical Center Dr., Lebanon 03756.
ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – Orange’s public buildings, for the second straight year, hosed a menorah and its lighting provided by Cong. Bris Avrohom Nov. 28-Dec. 5. The menorah, which first graced the Orange Public Library’s front lawn in 2020, was lighted by Rabbi Avremy Kanelesky in the presence of Mayor Dwayne D. Warren, menorah sponsor Emanuel Klien and several City Council members on City Hall’s front lawn.
Orange’s gaining a menorah, however, came the same time that a three-foot-tall indoor model, after several years, was not set up in the Maplewood Train Station waiting room.
Orange’s nine-foot-tall menorah, indeed, is similar to same-size or 12-foot outdoor menorahs that have appeared in recent years within the Maplewood Train Station, Newark Penn Station, Newark Liberty International Airport and 100 other locations as far out as Atlantic City International and JFK airports. Most of these places never had the nine-place candelabras, lighting the eight days of Hannukah, before.
Kanelesky, from his Bris Avrohom office in Hillside, explained that his menorah placing and lighting is part of an outreach effort blessed by the late Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Schneerson (1902-94). The menorahs are to educate all of the miracle of the Jerusalem Temple’s one night’s worth of oil lasting eight days and to reawaken less orthodox Jews to that movement of Judaism. Schneerson founded Bris Avrohom at 910 Salem Ave., a half-mile southwest of the Newark border, in 1979.
“One day last year, I got a call from Emanuel Klien,” said Kanelesky. “He said he had several properties in Orange and asked if I like to put up a menorah there.”
The public menorah lighting at OPL last year may have been the first since Cong. Beth Torah left 270 Reynolds Terr. to join South Orange’s Oheb Shalom in 1983. That congregation began with a meeting of Orange merchants at 20 Cleveland St. in the 1870s and grew into a formal synagogue at 153 William St., (now Ebenezer Baptist Church’s sanctuary) by 1925.
Kanelesky, when asked about the Maplewood train station’s menorah absence this year, suggested calling Cong. Beth Ephraim’s Rabbi Sholom Bogomilsky. Bogomilsky has helped organize Maplewood’s own outdoor menorah lighting at nearby Ricalton Square/Dickens Village Dec. 2. The township also held a second lighting, by the Springfield Avenue Gazebo, 5 p.m. that Thursday.
WEST ORANGE – The Dec. 6 -10 week will be the first real-world test for Community Coach 77’s latest schedule for riders between New York City and here, East Orange, Orange and Livingston.
Initial Dec. 6 CC77 riders postings on Facebook indicate relief in that the 5:30 and 6:15 p.m. NYC Port Authority Bus Terminal departures have continued beyond the Richard Codey Arena here. An initial Dec. 6 schedule, posted Dec. 3, had those two westbound runs end here.
CoachUSA official Derrick L. Wade posted the revised Dec. 6 schedule, reflecting riders west of Codey Arena’s demands, later on Dec. 3. CoachUSA, of Paramus, is CC77’s parent.
The schedule has all 11 eastbound and 11 westbound bus runs stop at the arena. Riders on the seven westbound runs that serve East Orange and Orange’s Erie Loop, however, must tell the driver, upon boarding, where they are getting off. Seven eastbound runs have scheduled Orange-East Orange stops.
Community Coach 77’s latest schedule, as of 4 p.m. Dec. 7, is available on the CC77 Riders FB page. Coachusa.com retains the Dec. 14, 2020 timetable – and was “temporarily down.”
SOUTH ORANGE – Last rites for Anthony Wonski, who literally moved Town Hall Delicatessen to its present site, were set for Dec. 9 at the Preston Funeral Home and Dec. 10 at Our Lady of Sorrows Church. His burial was scheduled to be at Paramus’ George Washington Memorial Park, not far from where the 30-year villager had grown up in Teaneck and Hackensack.
Anthony Robert Wonski, 71, had died in RWJBarnabas Cooperman Barnabas Health Center in Livingston on Dec. 4, surrounded by his family. He had most recently moved to Essex Fells from South Orange.
Tony Wonski came to the village in 1991 while commuting to New York for various retail jobs. He most likely stopped at Town Hall Deli, then at 18 South Orange Ave., for take-home dinner from work at Federated Stores and CompUSA – while dreaming of owning his own business.
Wonski bought the deli in 2003, modernized some of its operations and expanded its menu. He first moved the eatery to 60 Valley St. in 2007 and to its present 74 First St. in 2013.
Wonski was not through with 18 South Orange Ave or 60 Valley St, restoring both buildings and 309 Irvington Ave. He and son-business partner Matthew were recently awarded a dinging services contract with Seton Hall University.
Memorial donations may be made to St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital and or Adopt a Boxer (dog) Rescue.
The Vietnam War veteran (U.S. Army 101st Airborne 1969-71 with distinction) is also survived by wife Beth, son Phillip, daughter Leah and sisters Maria Richardson and Marguerite Willard.
BLOOMFIELD – The initial feedback from the Bloomfield Zoning Board of Adjustment of an incoming daycare center’s intention to use one of a historic church’s buildings may be heard when you read this.
The zoning board has, among other Dec. 9 agenda items for consideration, an application by the Bloomfield Presbyterian Church and the Leonardo Da Vinci International Academy of Learning, Inc.
Da Vinci Academy, currently in the former N.J. Department of Labor/Unemployment Office at 75 Park St., wants to move into the Presbyterian Church on the Green’s chapel/meeting hall on 67 Park Place.
The applicants are asking for a use variance for the chapel/prospective child care center is within a residential one-family R1-A zone.
The application will not use or affect the actual 1795 sanctuary on 147 Broad St. nor the usual Sunday worship services in the chapel. There may be midweek schedule adjustments for worship and its Monday night food pantry should the center for preschool and elementary school students are allowed to move in.
MONTCLAIR – Some of the shock of Dr. Alfred Davis, Jr.’s sudden Dec. 2 passing from heart failure may ease by when his scheduled funeral service at Rockaway’s Christ Church, 140 Green Pond Rd., is held 11 a.m. Dec. 17.
Davis, 65, was a Montclair Public Schools Board of Education member since his May 2019 appointment by Mayor Robert Jackson. The Montclair African-American Heritage Foundation co-founder and Montclair’s Civil Rights Commission member was also a Bloomfield College adjunct professor since 2017.
Former Fourth Ward Councilwoman Dr. Renee Baskerville has literally called Dr. Davis “The spine of the community,” since his opening Davis Integrated Medicine at 316 Orange Rd. in 1981. The former State Board of Chiropractic Examiners chairman had been an encouragement to fellow South End business owners.
The township native had attended Bloomfield College and Seton Hall University before attaining his degrees from the Northeast College of Health Sciences and, in 1985, New York Chiropractic College.
One of Davis’ proudest moments was when he personally gave his son, Alfred III, his diploma at the Montclair High School Class of 2021 graduation June 24.
Fellow chiropractor Peter Kofitsas has scheduled an RSVP “Friends and Family Table Celebration” of Davis at the practice Dec. 11, 1-3 p.m.
