Huntington History

Twelve-year-old Edward Rhatigan of Centerport was one of the first American casualties of World War I. He was shot in Northport the day after Congress declared war on Germany.

Although the United States stayed out of the war for over two years, tensions with Germany had been mounting. In the spring of 1916, the U.S. government seized control of the German owned Atlantic Communication Company’s wireless plant in Sayville, which was one of the few stations in America capable of sending radio transmissions to Berlin. When the United States broke off diplomatic relations with Germany in February 1917, all German or potentially pro-German employees of the wireless station were replaced with Navy personnel. Troops were also sent to guard the grounds. Additional troops were sent to Northport to guard the Long Island Lighting Company power plant, which provided electricity to the wireless station.

Two months later, on Saturday, April 7, Edward Rhatigan, a bugler in the local Boy Scout troop, was a passenger in a car driven by his 17 year old friend Thomas Hall. The two boys were driving into Northport to see a movie. Shortly before they arrived in the village, one of the pumps at the power plant failed causing lights in the village to dim. Fearing sabotage, the marines assigned to guard the plant stopped all cars approaching the plant, which was located on the water side of Woodbine Avenue south of Main Street. Hall’s car was reportedly approaching the plant at “a lively rate of speed.” The marine guard ordered him to stop. Hall later said he thought the soldier was kidding. Two more orders to stop were given and ignored. One of the marines fired at the car. A bullet struck Rhatigan killing him immediately.

Rhatigan would not be the last Huntington casualty of the war. Of the more than 1,000 young Huntingtonians who served in the armed forces during the short war, thirty-nine gave their lives.

Huntington was involved in the war effort in several other ways as well from training pilots to planting victory gardens and knitting sweaters. Here is a snapshot of some of those efforts.

The Yale Unit

War had been raging in Europe for over two years before the United States entered.  Although isolationist sentiments were strong, many saw American involvement in the war as inevitable.  One of those who anticipated America would not be able to remain on the sidelines was a Yale sophomore from Locust Valley, Frederick Trubee Davison.  Trubee Davison’s father had assumed leadership of Morgan & Company when J.P. Morgan retired in 1913.  He was one of the most powerful and influential men in the country, as well as one of the wealthiest.

Young Davison’s perspective on the inevitability of the United States being dragged into the war was no doubt shaped by his experiences driving an ambulance in France during the summer of 1915. Trouble on the Mexican border in March 1916 reinforced the view that the country needed to be prepared for conflict. He returned to Yale and after the spring 1916 term, Davison with a small group of classmates formed an aero club to learn how to fly with the hopes of eventually helping to staff a string of air stations to be set up to watch the American coast for hostile ships and creating a naval air reserve corps.  It was barely more than a dozen years since the Wright Brothers’ first flight and American military leaders were not convinced of the utility of aircraft as a tool of warfare.  According to one navy report, “the aeroplane was a toy.”

It may, therefore, be no surprise that Davison was unsuccessful in securing official recognition or support from the navy for his proposal.  His father financed the flying club and hosted the dozen young members at his estate in Locust Valley.

In the summer of 1916, the students, working with a single plane based in Port Washington, learned to fly and maintain an airplane.  At the end of the summer, Davison proved the worth of the proposed coastal defense system by locating two American ships off Fire Island as part of a demonstration meant to convince the navy of the value of aircraft.

When they returned to Yale in the fall, the students continued textbook study of aviation as part of the school-recognized Yale Aero Club.  On most Sundays, they traveled to New London to continue flying and to work spotting ships from the Groton naval base.  To the surprise of officials at the navy base, they even successfully spotted submarines because they left a telltale trace after diving or when using a periscope.

In early 1917, after Germany resumed attacks on all shipping—including ships from neutral countries such as the United States, President Wilson broke off diplomatic relations with Germany.  The Yale students finally received official recognition from the navy.  They were permitted to withdraw from Yale and enlist as the navy’s first air reserve squadron, officially known as the First Yale Unit. Newspapers, however, dubbed them the Millionaire’s Unit.  It was a fitting description considering the members’ backgrounds.

Now officially a part of the navy, but still paying their own expenses, the unit embarked for training in Palm Beach. Shortly after they arrived in Florida, Congress declared war on Germany. The men learned to fly and maintain their planes in Florida until the heat and mosquitoes made Florida unbearable. Colonel Thompson, their navy overseer, searched for an appropriate site on Long Island to continue the training. He settled on the 75 acre Cartledge Estate in Huntington Bay. Now the site of the Bay Hills section, the property provided a quarter mile of beach on the Bay where Thompson had hangars, runways, a machine shop, a radio shed, and docks built. The estate was converted into a real military base—although the airmen slept in the Cartledge mansion and had their meals prepared by a private chef.

The unit now had enough planes that each member was able to fly every day. Soon each member had flown solo. In addition to their required military maneuvers, the pilots would fly low over nearby beaches and estates. Their early morning start upset at least one neighbor, but his complaints were ignored—after all, there was a war to be fought.

The Yale Unit at Huntington Bay

Trubee Davison’s sister and other young women from Long Island were also stationed at the Cartledge estate where they were trained as radio operators. Several of the pilots and radio operators later married.

There were a few crashes and one tragedy when a sailor was hit by a propeller he had been cranking. The engine backfired and his arm was caught in the end of the prop knocking him into the spinning propeller. He died later that night.

Tragedy also came for Trubee Davison on the unit’s last day in Huntington. July 28 was testing day. The pilots had to climb to 6,000 feet, spiral down and cut the engine at 3,000 feet and then glide to a landing within 200 feet of a mark. During his descent, Davison’s plane was buffeted by wind. He ended up corkscrewing nose first into the water. He had to be freed from the cockpit by one of the officers observing the test. He was rushed by his father’s yacht, which had been loaned to the unit, to St. Luke’s Hospital in Manhattan. He survived the crash, but never saw combat in the war.

The other 27 members of the unit passed the test. A few days later, a German submarine was spotted off the South Shore. The Yale unit was ordered to send an armed patrol. After two hours of fruitlessly searching for the submarine, the pilot and his observer—Trubee’s brother Harry—return to Huntington Bay. Perhaps frustrated by the failure to engage the enemy, Harry fired the plane’s machine gun while the plane floated in the waters of Huntington Bay. He managed to shoot the plane’s propeller to pieces.

Two members of the unit were sent to France to join the fledgling American aviation forces. Most of the other newly minted pilots were sent to new air bases to train other pilots for the new aerial fighting force.

Brindley Field

Renowned as a cradle of aviation, it should be no surprise that Long Island served as the prime training ground for war’s newest weapon—the airplane. Two large fields in central Nassau County—Mitchel Field and Hazelhurst (later Roosevelt) Field—had been used by early aviators since 1911. In 1916, they were re-oriented to military uses. Two smaller air fields were established after war was declared, Lufbery Field near Wantagh and Brindley Field in Commack.

The government leased William H. Randall’s 90 acre farm at the northeast corner of Jericho Turnpike and Larkfield Road in early June 1918. Randall was a gentleman farmer who probably could afford to give up farming for the duration of the war. Nonetheless, he was compensated for lost crops and trees in addition to receiving annual lease payments. The new airfield opened on June 15. A few weeks later, the government realized it needed additional land, so it sought to lease three additional properties—an acre and a half parcel from Daisy Sammis, 15 acres from Gottlieb Weber, and 14.3 acres from Frederick Peck, who wanted 50% more in annual rent and more than double in compensation for crop damage than the government was willing to pay. In the absence of his consent, the government initiated condemnation proceedings to seize Peck’s farm.

Originally named Chapman Field, the base was renamed in August in honor of Major Oscar A. Brindley who was killed in a plane crash near Dayton, Ohio three months earlier. Brindley had trained under the Wright Brothers and was the chief instructor of the American military pilots.   Also killed in that crash was Colonel Henry J. Damm, for whom an air field in Babylon was named.

Randall’s farmhouse was used as the Field’s headquarters. For the first six weeks, the men slept in tents. By August, barracks had been built. The camp brought electricity to Commack for the first time. The new power lines from Northport had to be moved west away from Larkfield Road because they were too close to the Field’s runways.

Pilots received advanced training at Brindley before shipping off for Europe. There were about three or four dozen Curtis Jenny training airplanes. The number of men stationed there fluctuated from a few hundred to as many as 1,000 as pilots cycled through their training.

Huntingtonians were treated to the spectacle of flight, something that was still very new. Unfortunately, the training was not without accidents. On one flight, the airplane caught fire. The pilot, surrounded by flames, managed to make an emergency landing in a corn field three miles from Brindley Field. His mechanic was badly burned. Several other pilots suffered broken bones in crashes. But the worst accident occurred on August 16, 1918 when the wing on a plane participating in a mock dogfight broke. The plane crashed to the ground on the Havemeyer property east of Town Line Road. While the pilot, Harold F. Maxson, survived the crash, he died soon after. His passenger, G.S. Gedeon hit the ground with such force that an imprint of his body could be seen in the field. He died instantly. These were the only two deaths at Brindley Field during its short existence.

The new airfield attracted so much attention that soldiers were stationed in front of the camp to protect the soldiers and other pedestrians from speeding cars. The Long-Islander reported that “the roads at Commack near the aviation field are lined with automobiles, people coming from miles to see the flying and it is an interesting sight.”

Airmen of Brindley Field

The opening of Brindley Field had an immediate effect on six local bars in East Northport, Commack, and Kings Park which were ordered closed because they were within five miles of the camp. There was a question as to whether Hall’s and Ward’s in Centerport were within the five mile limit. That question would have been rendered moot if the Town Board had acted on a request to have the whole town declared dry.

The Northport Yacht Club offered the use of its clubhouse as a recreation hall for the soldiers while the YMCA provided a secretary to take charge of it. Northport residents also raised $1,150 to support the project. In addition to the rooms at the Yacht Club, Northport also hosted a carnival for the Commack airmen featuring baseball and water sports followed by a dance.

Likewise, two weeks after the Field opened, Huntington residents met to discuss opening a canteen to provide a respite for soldiers on weekend leave. Huntington merchants arranged for a jitney to run from Commack to Huntington village (10¢ each way). In Huntington, the community provided not only a recreation hall, but also sleeping accommodations for 50 soldiers who visited the village when they were given leave on weekends. The canteen and cots were set up in the new firehouse on Main Street. Residents also hosted soldiers in their homes.

Organizers solicited donations of books, newspapers, and magazines for the soldiers to read. The Huntington canteen also featured a piano around which the soldiers would gather to sing the latest tunes.

But Huntington’s hospitality was undercut by the Town’s Board of Health which imposed a curfew “in order to protect the visiting soldier and the visiting villagers from temptation.” Huntingtonians strongly objected to the curfew, which was supported by the local representative of the Commission on Training Camp Activities, also known as the Fosdick Commission. The Commission had been set up to provide advice on questions relating to the moral hazards in military training centers, such as venereal diseases and alcohol abuse. The Commission also promoted the establishment of recreation facilities on and off military bases.

Aerial View of Brindley Field

Perhaps insulted by the curfew and the implications that arose from it, the soldiers boycotted Huntington village. Some of the young women in Huntington, upset with the curfew, would not be deterred. They drove to Northport where the soldiers were still welcome.

In response to the outcry from residents, including no doubt the merchants who were losing potential customers, the curfew was lifted on July 16, “as a number of undesirable persons are said to have left the community since the passage of [the curfew].” It is unclear if Huntington really was home to a “number of undesirable persons” or if that was just an excuse for reversing an unpopular measure.

Over the course of one weekend the following month, 92 soldiers spent the night at the firehouse and about four dozen more stayed in private homes. In all 264 meals were served at the canteen that weekend. Residents provided entertainment at the Field as well in either the Knights of Columbus tent or the YMCA tent (the Y later replaced its tent with a proper wood building). The soldiers also entertained the residents. Just before Christmas 1918, after the war was over, the soldiers put on a show at the Palace Theater on New York Avenue. The event raised $300 for the Brindley Field Athletic Fund.

In October 1918, the soldiers at Brindley Field were quarantined in response to the influenza pandemic. The quarantine was lifted in early November which allowed many of the soldiers to celebrate Thanksgiving with local families.

Huntington’s hospitality was welcomed by the soldiers. Writing from a base in England, Sergeant Bob Ramey, thanked Huntingtonians for their hospitality. “None of us will ever forget Huntington and its fine people. Never have I been in a place where I felt so at home as I did there.” Another soldiers wrote, “I am sure you do not realize just how much your kindness and hospitality meant to us. It always seemed like home to us in the Canteen, and the people opened their homes to us just as if we were their own kin. I certainly appreciate it all and I know that the rest of the boys did. . . . I think Huntington the finest town on the map.”

After the war, the field was decommissioned. Brindley was slowly closed down over the course of the winter. In January 1919, the soldiers held a dance to which 40 young women came—along with a chaperone. The Huntington canteen and recreation center closed on February 1. The last two soldiers left Commack in May 1919.

Two of the large barracks buildings were relocated to the North Shore Holiday House Association’s newly purchased property on Huntington Road. The YMCA building was moved to Sunshine Acres, a Baptist Fresh Air camp on Town Line Road that is now a Town park (the building is long gone). The land that served as an airfield for less than a year reverted to the owners whose claims for damages persisted for a couple of more years.

Home Guards

An earlier military base of sorts had been established on Cold Spring Hill in 1905. Instead of airplanes, this base was home to horses. Squadron C, a Brooklyn based National Guard cavalry unit, purchased 82 acres west of Huntington village to provide a summer get away for its horses as well as its members

In July 1916, the Brooklyn men were mobilized for federal service on the Mexican border chasing Mexican revolutionary Poncho Villa after his attack on Columbus, New Mexico.  In March 1917, the unit was mustered out of federal service but remained as a National Guard unit.  Just four months later, the New York National Guard was called into service to fight in World War I.

While the Brooklyn men were preparing to fight in France, where they would be credited with helping to break the Hindenburg Line, the men of the Huntington Rifle Club met to consider forming a Home Defense Reserve, which would train at Squadron C Farm. At the initial meeting on July 13, 1917 at the Masonic Lodge, 24 men enlisted in a Home Defense League.  Sixty more joined at a meeting the next night.  Two volunteers had to be rejected from membership—Eugene Johnson, a veteran of the Civil War, was ten years over the age limit; and Thomas Miranda, an Italian immigrant, was not yet fully naturalized.

The League started drilling eleven days after its inception and made its first public appearance in the Town’s Labor Day parade that year.  The Huntington group intended to register as a Home Defense Corps under regulations promulgated by the Adjutant General of the National Guard, but Major C.S. DeBevoise of Squadron C recommended that they join the National Guard whose ranks had been depleted when its members were federalized.

The National Guard was seen as unable to perform its traditional duties, such as riot control or suppression of an uprising by the alien population (considered a real threat at the time).  Moreover, a trained force was needed as a back-up to federal forces engaged in Europe.  On September 26, 1917, 52 members of the Huntington group agreed to take the State’s oath of enlistment and became members of Troop K of Squadron C.  Troop K trained through the winter in Huntington village and along its highways.  The following June, horses arrived from the Armory in Brooklyn and cavalry training commenced at the squadron’s farm.  Huntington residents drove out to Squadron C Farm to observe the military preparations.

The local troop reached its greatest number in January 1918 when it had 64 members. The number dwindled as some joined the federal army and others dropped out as their enlistments expired and the Armistice obviated the need for the Guard.  After the war, the National Guard was reorganized and small, isolated units were transferred to armories throughout the state.  On October 30, 1919, Troop K was transferred to Brooklyn. The remaining 18 Huntington members were given Honorable Discharges on February 9, 1920.

Cold Spring Harbor Home Defense Guard on Main Street near Shore Road.

The men in Cold Spring Harbor, on the other hand, did form a Home Defense Guard. A few days before war was declared, Charles Davenport, director of the bio Lab, invited the men of Cold Spring Harbor to a meeting at the library to discuss ways to protect the community against a possible uprising by local German sympathizers. The result was the formation of a Home Defense Guard, which would drill regularly and stand ready to answer an emergency call for police duty. In July, the unit became part of the State Home Defense Reserve as the 97^th Company. Under the leadership of H.H. Laughlin, who had served as a lieutenant in the Kansas National Guard, the Guard held weekly drills on land provided by Robert DeForest and Helen Titus on Goose Hill Road. By the time the unit disbanded on January 3, 1919, 96 men had received training as part of the Guard and 39 of them went into federal service.

A similar effort was made to form a Home Defense Guard in East Northport as well.

On The Home Front

During the year-and-a-half duration of American involvement in the war, Huntingtonians eagerly supported the war effort. Residents sowed the seeds of victory by planting war gardens. A canning kitchen was set up in the Trade School building where women put up nearly 5,000 jars of fruits and vegetables. The Trade School was also used by the local Red Cross chapter as a bandage rolling station. Women and children rolled tens of thousands of bandages to be used on the battlefields of Europe. The Northport branch of the Needlework Guild of America and the Cold Spring Harbor Sewing Club provided woolen helmet liners, wristlets, sweaters and socks and other items for the soldiers by the thousands.

Residents also provided financial support. Each Town on Long Island was given a quota of funds it needed to raise through the purchase of Liberty Bonds to support the war. In the fall of 1917, a Liberty Loan rally was held in Huntington village. Residents marched through the village from the new Bank of Huntington building (now the Bank of America) to encourage their neighbors to buy bonds. The next year, Theodore Roosevelt gave a speech at Heckscher Park to promote the sale of the bonds.

Another celebrity appeal came in October 1918 in support of the Fourth Liberty Loan.   Silent film star and Asharoken resident Edith Storey visited the Northport Theater prior to the showing of a film in which she played the lead. She pledged $1,000 which was increased to $10,150 by the audience. Northport held a parade and rally the following week.

The Fourth Liberty Loan solicitation was announced at the end of September 1918. Huntington’s quota was $641,300. Within a week $150,000 had been pledged. Saturday, October 12, Columbus Day, was rechristened Liberty Day. A.V. Sammis, chairman of the General Committee, organized a parade from the Heckscher ballfields through the village to Wets Neck Road and then back to the park where “patriotic exercises” were held. There were speeches, a float with a torpedo, a 145 piece band, and a series of tableaux relating to history and patriotism was presented by local students. Aviators from Brindley Field put on an exhibition of “fancy flying.” In the end, banks in Huntington reported that $1,623,000 had been raised for the Fourth Liberty Loan. The total raised in Northport and Huntington for the four Liberty Loans and the Victory Loan was $4,612,850, the equivalent of almost sixty million dollars today.

Poster for the Red Cross Pageant.

The biggest fund raising effort was the National Red Cross Pageant held on Roland Conklin’s Lloyd Harbor estate, Rosemary Farm, in October 1917. Leading actors of the day such as John, Lionel and Ethel Barrymore, Douglas Wood, and Ina Claire personified the allied countries and pleaded their cases before Truth, Liberty, and Justice. In the final scene America, played by Marjorie Rambeau, accompanied by a detachment from the Fighting Sixty-Ninth Regiment appeared and pledged support for the allies followed by a rendition of the Star Spangled Banner.

The pageant featured 500 performers. The audience of 5,000, who arrived by car, wagon and special trains from Penn Station, raised $50,000, which would be the equivalent of almost a million dollars today. As the audience members took their seats in the open air amphitheater designed by the Olmstead Brothers overlooking Cold Spring Harbor and the Long Island Sound, they enjoyed music from the 250 piece Great Lakes Naval Training Station Band under the direction of John Philip Sousa. There was also a fifty piece orchestra.

Ten year old Mary Saylor, whose mother had helped establish the local Red Cross chapter six months earlier, played the part of a Belgian refugee displaced by the war. Young Mary, in a costume of tattered rags, walked behind Ethel Barrymore, who personified Flanders.

The pageant was staged a few weeks later at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. The outdoor performance was also filmed to continue the fund raising effort at theaters across the country. Unfortunately, no copies of the film are known to have survived.

Other residents contributed to the war effort in unusual ways. Up the road from Brindley Field near the train station in East Northport, Roy Knabenshue, a famous aviation pioneer who was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1965, used an abandoned doll factory to manufacture large surveillance balloons for use above the battlefield. Like the doll factory, which operated from 1911 to 1915, the balloon factory was a short-lived venture. The factory opened in May 1918; the war was over six months later.

Surveillance Balloon at East Northport Factory

Xenophon Kuzmier, one of the highest paid chefs in the country (Grover Cleveland invited Xenophon to the White House to prepare at least one state dinner), and his family came to Huntington in 1896 and settled on East Rouges Path. Although he retired in 1914 and became interested in real estate, he soon resumed his culinary activities by making dehydrated food for the soldiers in France in a factory in Huntington. Kuzmier and Auguste Gay patented a process for making dehydrated food in 1918.

Armistice

Even before the war ended on the eleventh hour of the eleven day of the eleventh month, Huntingtonians erupted in a noisy celebration. Two days before the official Armistice, happy residents marched in an impromptu parade from Town Hall to West Neck Road and back. Churches rang their bells; people swung noisemakers or beat tin pans, blew horns, or beat drums. A clock at Finnegan’s, which presumably is a holdover from the Huntington House which was managed by Andrew Finnegan during the war years, is still stopped at 11:00 in remembrance of the armistice.

Memorials

After the war, two memorials to the 39 Huntingtonians who died fighting in the war were dedicated. The first was erected by the American Legion in Heckscher Park on Decoration Day in 1921. The simple monument consists of a bronze tablet set in a boulder. Planning for a more elaborate memorial was already underway. Supervisor Abraham L. Field appointed August Heckscher chair of the war memorial committee, which had selected a design by architect Henry Bacon (whose most famous work is the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.). The committee decided in late 1920, however, to postpone active fundraising “in view of the present difficult conditions, financial and economic.” The committee also noted that Huntingtonians had been asked to support a wide variety of worthy causes in recent years, such as the various Liberty Loans.

The new monument, featuring a slate tablet listing the names of the 39 Huntingtonians who died while in military service during the war, was built into the hillside on Main Street leading up to the Old Burying Ground. The memorial was unveiled during Decoration Day commemorations in 1923. Marchers in the annual parade stopped to decorate veterans’ graves in the Huntington Rural Cemetery before continuing to march down New York Avenue to Main Street, then to West Neck Road and then back to the new memorial, which was covered with an American flag. The flag was raised by the sister of Charles Frederick Wabberson, one of the first Huntington men to be killed in the war.

Town of Huntington World War I Memorial at the Old Burying Ground.

It is interesting that the memorial includes the name of a woman, Janet Ford., who was a graduate of the Huntington High School class of 1909.  She and her twin sister Eleanor graduated from Smith College four years later.

When the United States entered World War I, there was a need for clerical workers.   The 1916 law authorizing the creation of Naval Reserve Force did not specify that yeomen needed to be men.  Eventually, 11,275 women joined the Naval Reserve Force as yeomen, one of whom was Miss Ford (18 women from Huntington served in the military).  She died in January 1919—two months after the Armistice was signed but while she was still in the service.  At first the cause of death was reported as pneumonia—the same disease that had taken her father and mother 10 days apart in November and December 1918.  A later report attributed all three deaths to influenza.  The 1918 flu pandemic claimed tens of millions of lives worldwide (estimates range from 3% to 6% of the worldwide population died from the flu).  In the United States, some 500,000 to 675,000 people died.  In fact, ten times more people died in the United States from the flu than from the war.  Half of the American servicemen who died during World War I died from the flu.

In 1993, on the 75^th Anniversary of the Armistice, the Town installed a tablet in Town Hall listing the names of the 1,153 Huntingtonians who served in the war and dedicated the flagpole on Veterans Plaza in front of the building to their honor. Of those who served, eleven received special citations, including five who were awarded the Croix de Guerre.

Other World War I Memorials in the Town of Huntington: from top left, Heckscher Park, Northport, Centerport, Greenlawn, Cold Spring Harbor

Three Huntingtonians who Fought

Leroy Randle Grumman (1895-1982)

Leroy Grumman graduated from Huntington High School in 1911 at the age of 16. At the graduation ceremonies, Grumman’s commence speech was on the future of aviation. After graduating from Cornell in 1916, he enlisted in the Naval Reserve and became a flight instructor. The Navy sent him to study aeronautical engineering at MIT and then to the Loening Aeronautical Engineering Company in NYC to supervise the building of monoplanes for the Navy. When the company was sold in 1929, Grumman, along with two other Loening engineers formed their own company on Long Island. Grumman Aircraft Company became one of the largest suppliers of planes for the Navy during World War II.

 August Henry Galow (1892-1934)

August Galow graduated from Huntington High School in 1912 where he was captain of the baseball team and art editor of the high school journal. He graduated from Pratt Institute in 1914 and continued his studies at New York University and at the Columbia and Beaux Arts School of Architecture. At the beginning of America’s entry into the First World War, he joined the Navy. Shortly after receiving his Navy Commission in 1918, he married Miss Mary Kouwenhoven, a noted pianist, also of Huntington and left for convoy duty to Europe on the U.S.S. Gold Shell. During his architectural career, he designed many schools, hotels and office buildings on Long Island, many here in Huntington, such as the Huntington Hotel at the corner of New York Avenue and Fairview Street, Central High School, and the Cold Spring Harbor Firehouse. He died in 1934 at age 42.

Michael A. Connell (1890-1955)

Michael Connell grew up in Huntington. From 1917 to 1919, he served in the U. S. Army 307^th Infantry Division Band, playing the cornet. After the war, he returned to Huntington and learned embalming and started M.A. Connell Funeral Home in 1923. He married Florence McIntyre in 1930 and a year later they built the funeral home on New York Avenue in Huntington Station that continues to serve the Huntington community. He played “Taps” every Veterans Day at 11:00 in honor of all deceased veterans.

For a regional view of the war, read Long Island and World War I, by Richard F. Welch (History Press 2018).