NEWARK – A public memorial for Earl “The Street Doctor” Best is being set for mid-January at Irvington’s Transcend Worship Center. Other last rites, arranged by Plinton-Curry Funeral Home of Somerset, have not been publicly detailed as of Jan. 3.
Best, who spent this century championing and advocating youth, the downtrodden and the re-entering incarcerated, died in a local extended care center Dec. 27 – the day after his 74th birthday. He was admitted there in October after struggling against cancer for several years.
Best, who co-founded The Street Warriors in 2003, could easily be spotted in and around City Hall and among the five wards. Sharply dressed in a suit-and-tie or a doctor’s coat or in military fatigues, Best would deliver meals and blankets, organize recreational teams and mentoring groups, take children out to the Shore or a water park, raising funds and, as a motivational speaker, call out against poverty, crime and gang life.
Born in the South Ward Dec. 26, 1947, Best returned to Newark in 2000. He had served a 17-year sentence for a 1983 bank robbery – 10 of those in solitary confinement. He used his time in solitary studying law and philosophy and reading spiritual books.
When The Street Warriors had a storefront office at 12 Linden St., Best laid out concrete blocks on the floor to outline the size of a solitary cell. Best’s moving Street Warriors from that office into a donated van was depicted in the 2009-10 Sundance Channel “Brick City” documentary series.
Mayor Ras Baraka and employment and training deputy mayor Rahaman Muhammad hired Best as a special events coordinator in 2015. Best had shared a speakers’ stage with the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet during Newark’s 2011 Peace Education Summit. He and Muhammad were arrested during a nonviolent protest of Mayor Cory Booker’s 2010 partial privatization of the city’s sanitation division.
Best, who co-founded the Newark and Essex County Anti-Violence Coalitions, is survived by a son and several sisters, among other relatives.
IRVINGTON – Riders and NJTransit bus drivers will have to go elsewhere than the Valley Mall Plaza Outlet lot fronting 468-480 Chancellor Ave. to start or end their trips here as of Jan. 15.
A sign posted by NJTransit by the passenger bus shelter since Dec.27 reads: Due to Valley Fair Management, This Bus Stop Will Be Eliminated. Please Go to Chancellor Avenue Eastbound at Woolsley St. A photo of this sign was posted on the New Jersey Bus, Rail & Light Rail History Facebook page.
“Local Talk” found, on Jan. 4, that NJTransit’s two bus shelters have been removed. There are some 20 large concrete blocks redirecting most traffic downhill to the mall building.
Valley Fair Outlet’s decision to remove the stop west of Wendy’s restaurant ends decades-long use by Public Service, Transport of New Jersey and NJT. Their buses have been stopping, laying over and turning around on the lot since the former Gould & Eberhardt World War Two tank factory became a Great Eastern Mills department store in 1959.
The dislocation will affect the 13V, 90 and 96 bus routes’ southern end point and their connection with the 39 route. Calls to NJTransit and Valley Mall Plaza Outlet early Jan. 4 were not immediately returned.
It is not known whether Valley Mall management has submitted site plans to redevelop the bus terminal site before Irvington’s planning or zoning boards.
Valley Mall management has attracted seven retailers since renovating and reopening the building in 2017. It had been the Valley Fair Discount Center 1975-2008.
UPDATE: NJTransit sent “Local Talk” the following statement: “NJ TRANSIT is in the process of developing new service alternatives for these bus routes which will be announced soon. The agreement between Valley Fair management and NJ TRANSIT has concluded.”
EAST ORANGE – Demolition of the 1987-built Brick Church Shopping Plaza and adjacent buildings, which began in stages last month, is to continue through this winter.
“Local Talk,” while getting groceries at the plaza’s Shop-Rite flagship 7 a.m. Dec. 22, noticed workmen setting up temporary fencing and anchoring sandbags around the plaza’s southwestern building. Employees from Sky Construction, of Wayne, were on the former Rainbow clothing-anchored building’s roof by 1:30 p.m.
Sky, after three weeks’ hollowing out, had leveled Halsted Commons, at 33 Halsted St. on Dec. 24. The two-story building, which once housed Wuensch’s surgical appliance and children’s shoe store since the 1940s, had more recently been a Social Security office and a pop-up store until 2018.
The Imported Jewelry Outlet at 505 King Blvd. and the Liberty Tax franchise at 507 King vacated there in anticipation of their buildings’ fencing and demolition. The PNC Bank branch at King and South Harrison Street has moved two blocks west to Orange last summer. The shopping plaza, which once held 19 stores, is now down to the Shop-Rite and a donut shop.
The store-by-store vacating of the plaza has been going on since the Brick Church Opportunity Zone Fund 1 LLC first made its 820-housing unit The Crossings at Brick Church application before the East Orange Planning Board in 2019.
The planning board, on January 2020, approved replacing the plaza’s block with another three structures: a five-story and nine-story residential buildings with 197,650-square-feet of street-level retail space plus a seven-story parking garage.
At present, the current thinking is that the supermarket will move to either the nine-story or the five-story building, whichever is the first completed. The Shop-Rite will remain open until then; NJTransit Brick Church Station operations will also be unaffected.
ORANGE – Mayor Dwayne D. Warren’s Dec. 24 executive order to close all city public buildings “to employees and the public” remains in effect until Jan. 10, “safety permitting.”
Warren, citing ” a significant uptick in positive COVID-19 cases in our area,” has closed public access to The Brook Alley Public Works Facility, City Hall, the DeMarzo Memorial Fire Headquarters, the Pohill Law and Justice Complex (the municipal court and police station) and the Orange Public Library.
Those who tried visiting the public library since Dec. 9, however, may have been doing double-takes with the mayor’s directive. OPL, on its front door and in sent e-mail messages, has been closed, “due to lack of heat; we’re currently working on the heat issue.”
It is not known, as of press time, whether “the heat issue” is technical or bureaucratic or both.
Library Director Stephanie Flood, in a Nov. 10 interview, explained that the checks she signs also have to be signed by the library trustees board president. Flood, since her Sept. 10 hiring, had also been smoothing relations with vendors who had gone months without being paid.
“Local Talk” knew of one exception to Warren’s order at 234 Lincoln Ave. Dec. 29. The Central Avenue Park Field House was open, as previously scheduled, by the Health Department 10 a.m.-2 p.m. that Tuesday to offer COVID vaccinations or booster shots. Another part of the field house was open at 9 a.m. for a scheduled “drive-through” food distribution.
WEST ORANGE – A police officer who was shot while walking into an altercation at a Valley section store Dec. 27 may have come home before New Year’s Day. The man suspected of shooting him, however, spent the holiday while detained in Newark’s Essex County Correctional Facility.
Acting Essex County Prosecutor Theodore “Ted” Stephens II and West Orange Police Chief James Abbot said, late that Monday, that the off-duty officer had walked into the Krauser’s / Blimpies at 18 So. Valley Rd at about 3 p.m. that day. The officer had also walked into an altercation between two men – and decided to intervene.
The suspect switched his engagement from the other civilian – who then fled the scene – to the officer. He struck the officer with his gun then shot at him, grazing his head. The suspect then sped away from the CVS Plaza in a grey SUV.
Township police and Essex County Sheriff’s officers promptly swarmed the plaza to transport the officer to a local hospital and obtain evidence. An all-points bulletin was put out on the suspect and the SUV.
Newark Police responded to the APB, saying they have the vehicle and the suspect at the Exxon station, 226 South Orange Ave., some 15 minutes later. Although the gasoline station and the convenience store are 4.2 miles apart, the suspect most likely had gone 5.7 miles by going east on Route 280 and south on Bergen Street.
Shaahid T. Forshee, 36, of East Orange has had a central justice processing hearing on Dec. 28 He has been on a count each of aggressive assault with intent for serious bodily injury, unlawful possession of a handgun without a permit, possession thereof for an unlawful purpose and attempted felony murder.
CVS Plaza, abutting the Orange border, started life as the Grand Union supermarket shopping center in the 1950s.
MAPLEWOOD / SOUTH ORANGE – The family of Columbia High School and Seton Hall University graduate Stephen N. Maskaleris, Esq., 94, held a private funeral here at the Jacob A. Holle’s Maplewood funeral home after his Dec. 9 death – so it is not known if “Taps” was played for him on his tuba or bass.
That send-off would have been appropriate since Maskaleris played bass and tuba while with the US Army Air Force in World War II. Maskaleris was part of the Air Force Replacement band formed after the Dec. 15, 1944 disappearance of bandleader Glenn Miller over the English Channel.
The 1927-born Newark native continued playing jazz whenever his legal practice allowed. He had appeared with the Clooney Sisters and with the bands of Sammy Kaye, Bobby Byrne and Tommy Tucker. He and musician daughter Sue used to appear together in New York nightclubs.
Maskaleris, who received his Juris Doctorate at Newark’s Rutgers Law School, hung out his Maskaleris & Assoc. shingle there for 61 years. He defended John William Butenko, an accused USSP spy, in the 1960s.
Maskaleris helped form the Office of the Public Defender in 1962. The Continuing Legal Education instructor strove to keep his clients from receiving capital punishment.
An active CHS alumni association member, Maskaleris last played jazz in the Millburn Public Library. Wife Corinne, daughter Carol Ball and grandchildren Frank and Madeline Ball are among his survivors.
Memorial donations may be made to his Ila Foundation for legal defense and appeals for the underrepresented, PO Box 92, Millburn 07041.
BLOOMFIELD – Six of “Bloomfield’s finest” quickly found the cause of “a man with a gun” call they received here Dec. 30.
The officers said they had found a man matching the given description in the area of 542 Bloomfield Ave. – less than a block southwest of police headquarters. A search recovered “a handgun along with an extended high capacity magazine and hollow-point bullets.
“Further details from the Bloomfield Department of Public Safety release – including the arrested suspect’s charges and identification – were not given.
Public Schools Offer Remote Option
Bloomfield Public Schools Superintendent Salvatore Goncalves, after consultation with the just-reorganized Board of Education Jan. 3, is offering “a voluntary remote instruction model through Jan. 14.”
Goncalves is giving BPS students and parents a choice between remote and in-person instruction “after having given careful consideration to the local, state and national trends in light of the new COVID-19 variant.”
Parents who choose to go remote are to meet with their school’s principal to pick up a virtual instruction program and other pertinent materials.as an in-service day for staff only.
MONTCLAIR – Whoever Mayor Sean Spillar names as the late Dr. Albert Davis’ successor onto the Montclair Public Schools Board of Education has two considerations to make between now and a Feb. 5 deadline.
Both of those considerations have to do with the district’s transition from a Type I mayor-appointed board to a Type II voter-elected panel.
Should Spillar fail to appoint Dr. Davis’ successor on Feb. 5. That vacancy will be added to the anticipated three MBOE seats up on the Nov. 8 General Election ballot. It will then be used to fill an unexpired term.
Davis died on Dec. 2 – the day after board members made March 8 as a special election day. March 8 is when participating registered township voters will add two people onto the current seven-member panel. Both seats will have terms shorter than the usual three years to bring them into synch with the November election cycles.
Should Spillar make his choice on or before Feb. 5, that person would be serving until Jan. 1, 2023 – making it available for the Nov. 8, 2022 election anyway.
Board President Latifah Jannah revealed the Feb. 5 appointment deadline at the Dec. 1 meeting. Jannah and Priscilla Church’s seats will be up for three-year terms on Nov. 8.
GLEN RIDGE – The Glen Ridge Public Library, when it comes out of its COVID-cautionary Dec. 27-Jan. 2 holiday Jan. 3, will be headed by interim Library Director Cindy Czesak.
Czesak may be more familiar to Paterson and Clifton public library patrons, having been a director there for a respective 17 and 14 years. Since her official 2017 retirement, Czesak has been the interim director for the Demarest, Parsippany and Washington libraries and the BCCLS interlibrary network.
The GRPL Board of Trustees appointed Czesak, and bade farewell to Jennifer Breuer, at their Dec. 18 special meeting. Breuer, after 11 years as director, left on Dec. 23 to become director of the Johnson City, Tenn.-based Holsten River Region library district.
It is not immediately known whether GRPL Trustees will conduct a director’s search on their own or through a hired consultant or search firm.
