TOWN WATCH
NEWARK – Those who drive or ride New Jersey Transit buses in the area of Bethany Baptist Church, 275 W. Market St., may want to anticipate delays and detours there 8:30-11 a.m. March 4.
BBC will be where former resident and Sayreville Councilwoman Eunice K. Dwumfour’s funeral will be held. The church was chosen given that hundreds attended her Feb. 8 memorial service in Sayreville’s Epic Church.
Her home congregation, Champions Royal Assembly, at 986 Broad St., does not have the capacity to receive mourners. The church, Newark Emergency Services for Families and Quality Health Care have long subdivided the former 420-seat Carlton Theater / Mindlin Playhouse building.
Dwumfour, 30, was a CRA church director and a part-time EMS technician who commuted between here and her apartment in Sayreville’s Parlin section. The Weequahic High School Class of 2010 graduate was shot at close range in her SUV yards away from her home at 7:17 p.m. Feb. 1.
Dwumfour’s killer is still being sought by the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office with assistance from the FBI, the State and Sayreville Police.
March 4 would have been the first-term Sayreville councilwoman’s 31st birthday. Husband Ezechukwu Peter Akwue, daughter Nicole, parents Prince and Mary Dwumfour and four siblings are among her survivors.
IRVINGTON / EAST ORANGE – City officers are back looking for a long sought missing woman that they had apprehended here Feb. 22 – but had escaped while receiving a medical examination in a Newark hospital later that day.
East Orange Police officers found a woman matching the description of city native Destiny Owens, 29, while along South Maple Avenue at 1:10 p.m. that Wednesday. An on-site interview confirmed Owens’ identity plus a records check of outstanding arrest warrants from other New Jersey and Pennsylvanian jurisdictions.
Owens and Imani Glover had been reported as missing since Dec. 24. They were last seen together at a Harlem shoe store in Jan. 4.
EOPD, while holding Owens on the said warrants, took her to RWJBarnabas Health Newark Beth Israel Medical Center for an examination. It was there where she “had somehow managed to escape.”
It is not known whether Glover, of Morristown, is cooperating with police. Glover according to an East Orange source, was found in The Bronx, N.Y. Feb. 8. Both Glover and Owens’ mothers and community advocates had posted handbills of their daughters in the Newark Penn Station area where they were last spotted Jan. 15.
Owens is described as standing 5-ft., 6-in. and weighing 160 lbs. She has ties to Irvington, East Orange, Newark, Morristown and Harlem. Owens’ mother Tamika said that “it’s not like her to let a day or two go by without texting or calling me.”
ORANGE – When Robert Butts had his Johnson C. Smith University basketball jersey No. 23 retired in a Feb. 18 ceremony in Charlotte, what Orange High School graduates present could have told the Brayboy Arena audience that he was already star material.
Butts, JCSU Class of 1972, was honored that Saturday night for being the Golden Bulls men’s basketball team’s top rebounder at 1,369. He joins the late Frederick “Curly” Neal and three other JCSU top scorers in having his number retired.
Butts, OHS Class of 1968, contributed to the Orange Tornadoes’ 1967-68 undefeated boys basketball championship season. The Tornadoes, under head coach Horace J. Mahon’s guidance, went 27-0 while capturing the 1968 Essex County Tournament and the NJSIAA Group 3 State Championship.
Butts, that same season, became the first Tornado to score 1,000 varsity career points. “Bob” or “Bobby,” when he reached that milestone, was congratulated in the OHS gym by Mahon and Board of Education Frank Smith.
Having moved to Orange in his childhood, Butts started off in the OHS freshman team in 1965-66. After “The Little Tornadoes” attained a 14-3 1964-65 season, Butts was promptly promoted to the varsity team, skipping the JV squad.
Butts, No. 23, helped the varsity Tornadoes to a 13-5 65-66 record and a 16-4 66-67 record, including ECT and state postseason play.
WEST ORANGE – The West Orange Public Library joined the West Orange Public Schools, Seton Hall Prep and the Golda Ochs Academy in closing for the weather Feb. 28 – the day it had opened its temporary quarters at 80 Main St.
WOPL reopened its temporary office at 80 Main St.’s Suite 230 10 a.m. Feb. 27. It will remain open 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. non-holiday weekdays until renovations at its new headquarters at 10 Rooney Circle are completed.
80 Main St, almost directly across the now-closed WOPL at 46 Mt. Pleasant Ave., features ample parking and library material drop boxes. The five-story office building, owned by Sheldon Gross Realty, replaced the C.B. Rutan hat factory and the corner Llewellyn Garage and Amoco station.
Replacing the factory and garage, as well as replacing the Erie Orange Branch yards with the Habermann office building across Main Street, was part of a 1966 Urban Renewal plan.
WOPL staff members remind borrowers that its lent materials are to be deposited in any BCCLS interlibrary system drop box from Feb. 27.
Use (862) 658-3224 and/or circ@westorangelibrary.org to inquire.
SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – Two separate incidents within and outside of Maplewood Feb. 24 made travel rough for Morris & Essex riders east of Summit and for Springfield Avenue motorists.
NJTransit riders at Maplewood station who were planning to take Train No. 6644 here at 1:47 p.m. Friday heard on the PA system that the eastbound train to New York Penn Station was delayed by nine, then 12, minutes.
The NJT announcements first said that the delay was due to “a power supply problem by Short Hills” and then “an overhead wire problem.”
What was learned later on was that a tree in the backyard of 84 Great Oaks Dr. in Millburn’s Short Hills section was blown down by an 18 mph wind gust at around 1:30 p.m. The tree fell onto the M&E’s overhead catenary power wires east of Short Hills station.
NJT deactivated power between Maplewood and Summit and sent out replacement buses. Transit and JCP&L utility crews took three hours to remove the tree and restringing the wires.
Those who chose to walk south from Maplewood Station on College Hill to pick up an NJT No. 25 or 70 bus along Springfield Avenue were further delayed.
A Maplewood Police blotter report noted that officers and a South Essex Fire Department crew closed the Springfield and Oberlin Street intersection 2-4 p.m. The intersection was closed from when a traffic light fell down until a PSE&G crew replaced the pole. Buses on the Nos. 25 and 70 routes were detoured via Hilton Avenue and Tuscan Road.
BLOOMFIELD – The Nevada Diner, here at 293 Broad St., remains closed while the Nissirios family assesses the extent of the property damaged by an early Feb. 27 fire.
Bloomfield Fire Chief Louis Venezia said that the first call, regarding a kitchen fire, first came to Station No. 3, at 124 E. Passaic Ave. just past Midnight Monday. The first responding crews, at 12:08 a.m., found heavy smoke coming from the kitchen area and out the diner’s roof.
The incident commander promptly pulled two more alarms and closed Broad Street between Belleville Avenue and James/Pitt streets. Firefighting was focused on the kitchen while trying to keep smoke and flames from spreading beyond the inner walls and roof loft.
Belleville and Nutley fire units arrived to have the fire brought under control within 30 minutes. Bloomfield police detoured traffic, including the last northbound NJTransit 72 bus, onto the JFK Parkway between Belleville Avenue and Pitt Street. (Neither the NJTransit No. 709 route nor DeCamp’s 33 route was running at that time.)
All BFD hands plus Nutley and Belleville units stayed until the last hot spot was quenched by 2:17 a.m. Units from the East Orange, Montclair and Clifton departments had meanwhile covered Bloomfield’s headquarters and its three stations.
Two firefighters reported minor injuries, which were treated at the scene. What Nevada customers and staff present were evacuated without injury. (The diner usually closes between 2 and 6 a.m. daily.)
The Nevada Diner first opened in 1981 and has since had two renovations. Nissirios Realty also owns five houses along adjacent Almira Street.
MONTCLAIR – The Township Council, by introducing the issuing $700,000 worth of bonds here Feb. 21, intends to have all three municipal pools fixed and running this summer.
Some council members, after approving the bond issue’s introduction, 6-0 that Tuesday night, reassured Council Chamber gallery audience that any work will be done prior or after the Esex, Nishuane and Mountainside pools’ season. The work will not affect the pools’ namesake parks’ operation.
Councilman-at-Large Peter Yacobellis and Fourth Ward Councilman David Cummings called the remaining work at the Essex and Nishuane pools, “cosmetic work” and “tying up loose ends.” Councilman Robert Russo was absent during the vote.)
The Nishuane and Essex pools, due to protracted supply chain delays, remained closed throughout last summer. The Mountainside Pool, which was open, had to take up customer demand.
About $665,000 of the issue would be for the actual work; the remaining going to bankers and lawyers fees. A public hearing and final vote on the bond issue is set for March 16.
GLEN RIDGE – A Bloomfield man may well be visiting the Orange Municipal Court before answering to more than a Jan. 17 DWI charge here at Glen Ridge Municipal Court.
Patrolling police officers said that they first met Emoilio Sarmiento Zuinga, 35, while he was behind the wheel of a car they said was being “driven recklessly” along the 200 block of Ridgewood Avenue 7:30 p.m. that Tuesday. They had also stopped Zuinga’s car because it had heavy front-end damage.
The GRPD officers, when approaching the car, then noticed “the back seat passenger bleeding from the head. They promptly called the Glen Ridge Ambulance Squad to treat the rider.
Their stop also determined that Zuinga was “intoxicated” and that the car had been involved in an accident in Orange and had been fleeing from that scene.
Details on the accident in Orange were not readily available.
BELLEVILLE – Nurses here at RWJBarnabas Health Clara Maass Medical Center has asked its administrators to “Have a Heart” here Feb. 14.
The nurses, members of 1199 SEIU Health Care Workers East, wore “Have a Heart” stickers on their chests. They were not the only nurses to do so that Tuesday.
Similar demonstrations were made that day at Edison’s Embassy Manor, Perth Amboy’s Spring Creek, Hackensack Meridian Health at Shrewsbury, Union City’s Manhattanview, Wayne’s Arbor Ridge and Westfield’s Complete Care at Clark. All of the said medical care facilities’ management is negotiating with 1199 SEIU.
More than 500 Clara Maass registered nurses voted to form a union with the SEIU on Aug. 11. They have been since negotiating with hospital management over wage and health insurance issues.
Union Executive Vice President-New Jersey Rhina Molina said, on Feb. 17, that “negotiations have slowed down.”
“Clara Maass Medical Center,” said a hospital statement that Friday, “is currently negotiating and continues to work with the union in good faith until a contract is reached.
NUTLEY – The Long Clock, a purportedly Colonial-era grandfather clock, is keeping time here at the Kingsland Manor – but not for long.
The Historic Restoration Trust of Nutley, which owns the Kingsland Manor, said they had reached an agreement Feb. 24 that will return The Long Clock to a family in Texas – and not to the man who “donated” it in June 2021.
Donald Palmer, the Florida “donor,” said that he inherited the clock from his parents in 1984. It was made around 1730 by William Kipling in London and was shipped to George Washington’s Mount Vernon before the Revolutionary War with Great Britain broke out in 1775.
Another relative, Allan Palmer, of Texas, in a civil suit filed in Newark in 2022, disputes all of the above. Alan says that he is the clock’s sole owner and that Donald did not have the clock’s title and gave it away without his permission.
Washington’s ownership of The Long Clock, further asserts A. Palmer, is disputed by curators and historians at Mount Vernon and the National Archives. A. Palmer said he had only lent the clock to D. Palmer.
The Restoration Trust, in their Friday statement, said that Township Attorney and A. Palmer’s lawyers have agreed that the family will be reimbursed for having the clock shipped from D. Palmer and Florida. The trust, once they receive that check, will return the clock to A. Palmer’s family.
