Exhibiting the Pride of Esopus

To Preserve, Interpret and Disseminate
the History of The Town of Esopus

I am very excited about the 2006 Museum schedule as I hope you will be. Check our Calendar page for the dates and times of events.

The year started with our Annual Meeting and election on January 22nd. We changed our venue from the Esopus Town Hall to La Mirage Restaurant. We had a greater turnout in a more relaxed environment. We elected four new Trustees who are listed elsewhere on this site.

The Museum Operations Committee under leadership of Mary Brechter is moving forward on our 2006 exhibit, First Responders of Esopus. This is a tribute to the five fire departments and the ambulance corps. To prepare the museum for the exhibit Mary’s committee of Rosane Balistreri and Marie Kelekian have been busy packing the 2005 exhibit and refurbishing the kiosks. Mary reports that we are well ahead of schedule this year. The exhibit is being organized by long time museum member Joe Sills and Clark Maines. If you have any Town of Esopus firefighting artifacts we encourage you to lend them to us for this exhibit. Setting up the exhibits is the fun part of Museum membership so don’t be afraid to volunteer.

On April 8th the Edwin & Ruth Ford Speaker’s Series began with a talk by Marc B. Fried titled “The nature of local Indian, Dutch and English place names.” Marc is the author of several books about the Shawangunk Mountains. The program, given at the Town Hall in Port Ewen, was extremely well received. Marc’s familiarity with the Indian and Dutch languages added greatly to our understanding of how places in the valley were named. He changed some long held misconceptions. Marc signed copies of his books after his talk. You can find the titles of his books by clicking on our “gift shop” link. We thank Bea Moore for providing the delicious food for the program. We also thank Peter McGowan and the programs committee for arranging this talk.

Our Third Annual Recognition dinner will be held Thursday evening April 27th at La Mirage Restaurant. This year we are honoring Mary Polhemus, past President; James Barton, past Treasurer; Dorothy DuMond who established the library; Marjorie J. Lomoriello, past Executive Secretary; and Wilson Tinney whose recollections about the Town of Esopus have enlightened and amused us for decades. Please make plans to attend. Members will receive their invitations in the mail or you can call me at 845-226-8221 to get tickets.

New Trustee Herb Wilcox is working to organize the Strawberry Festival in June. This festival was dear to Marion Sahler who founded the Museum. How can anyone forget Marion’s shortcake? She passed away in 2004 but her recipe lives on. We are planning the Strawberry Festival for June 17th.

Ray Armater of Locust Grove in Poughkeepsie will be our second speaker in the Edwin & Ruth Ford Speaker’s Series. He will speak about historic architecture on June 10th at the Museum, 4 PM.

The Roger W. Mabie Speakers Series in the fall begins with a talk about immigration genealogy. Our speaker will talk about researching records for immigrants in the National Archives and elsewhere. This September 9th program is intended to expand the interest in the Museum as a resource for all of our town residents. There may be a modest fee associated with this talk. The second Mabie Speaker will talk about changes in firefighting in the town.

Museum member Vincent DeStasio is working on a Hudson River Cruise for this summer and Trustee Joanne Steele will be organizing a bus tour of the D&H canal. Deb Silvestro, a newly elected Trustee, will be organizing our exhibit related event which may be a “Fireman’s Ball” at the La Mirage in September.

In addition to our events, we continue to work on the Museum. As always, we invite you to join us in events but more importantly, we encourage you to help us with work parties at the Museum. It’s time for the next generation to step forward to fulfill our mission “to preserve, interpret and disseminate the history of the Town of Esopus.” The Museum is our town’s legacy to our children.

Alex Contini
President

Click here to read the 2005 Presidents Message