People

The awards were presented to two Sleepy Hollow High school sophomores, Emily Eagan and Amelia Bonvento at a late May ceremony at the Warner Library. The Library, the Historical Society of Sleepy Hollow and Tarrytown and the School District collaborate in sponsoring the annual contest whose entries are judged by the Library, Historical Society and the Hudson Valley Writers' Center.

Emily wrote about Cornelia Beekman, while Amelia's paper was about Minna Irving. The winners were introduced by Mary Ann Marshall of the Library and Sara Mascia of the Historical Society and given their $250 awards by Mayor Drew Fixell of Tarrytown and Ken Wray of Sleepy Hollow. Click image to see video.

While Irvington Police Officer Luigi Osso remains hospitalized in critical condition from serious injuries sustained from a high speed car chase in April, community members have banded together to raise funds and provide moral support for his family.

Over the course of the last month, various initiatives were undertaken, including the Irvington Fire Department holding a “boot” drive and the Irvington PBA selling 250 bracelets and over 150 magnets.  more »

For most of his stellar 16-year career with the New York Yankees, Bernie Williams held the coveted center field position on the hallowed grounds in the Bronx, winning four consecutive Gold Glove awards and four World Series championships.

The five-time All-Star and .297 career switch hitter, who won an American League batting title in 1998, was an integral part of the Yankees consistent winning ways and a clutch post season performer. In fact, up until 2007, Williams held the major league record for most post season home runs with 22.  more »

From the minute he set foot in Port au Prince, Haiti, almost two months after the monster earthquake that killed at least 290,000, injured 300,000 and left one million people homeless, Dr. Owen O’Neill witnessed the devastation and despair.

“It’s going to take forever to rebuild that country,” said O’Neill, medical director of the Department of Hyperbaric Medicine at Phelps Memorial Hospital Center. “Going to a place like that and seeing what goes on and all the devastation, we still have to appreciate what we have here. We still have it pretty good here with our health care system.”  more »

Ulcers, the most common stress ailment of the 1950s, have long been displaced by back pain – the ubiquitous disability that haunts a large portion of America’s population in the 21st century. Many who suffer from lower or upper back pain are told it’s due to stress, herniated discs, carrying too much weight, lifting improperly or performing a repeated sports activity incorrectly. Few want surgery as the solution, but many need help, and they go to Dr. Phil Striano, at Hudson Rivertowns Chiropractic health Care, in Ardsley.  more »

When Kendal On Hudson celebrates its fifth anniversary this month as a continuing care retirement community in Sleepy Hollow, its residents will receive an award for a program that is characteristic of the practices and values that guide Kendal’s activities.
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Janet Rivera always wanted a lot of kids.

“I always imagined a big dining room table with six kids sitting around it,” she said.

While fate may have given her only one biological child, life has given her more than 500. Rivera is the unofficial mom to the children at Washington Irving School in Sleepy Hollow, where she is a teaching assistant.

She comes to work early every day to make sure the kids in the cafeteria eat their breakfast. She readily gives out hugs and wipes away tears. She watches out for the children on the playground and makes them talk to each other if she sees they are not being nice.  more »

New Hudson Valley Writers’ Center Executive Director Frank Juliano relaxes at center’s headquarters in restored Philipse Manor railroad station in Sleepy Hollow. Juliano assumed his position in January.

Tarrytown resident John Nolon isn’t your run of the mill environmentalist. Sure, he recycles, turns off the lights when he leaves the room, thinks before he prints out emails and has been known to return toner cartridges. But John Nolon, Professor John Nolon to be exact, takes activism to the next level. John is the James A. Hopkins Professor of Law at Pace University School of Law in White Plains, the founder of Pace’s innovative Land Use Law Center and Visiting Professor at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. John’s specialties are in the fields of property, land use, real estate, and environmental law. His current research interest is the management of climate change through sustainable development law.  more »

H&H Photographers, a 65-year-old, full-service photography and video studio, has moved from Riverdale to Irvington. The company is currently owned and managed by Larry Gillet and Dan Fried, the sons of the founders.

Gillet has been with H&H since 1984 after attending the Culinary Institute of America. Fried, who was employed at the company during summers while a student at Cornell University, returned five years ago. He previously held several positions in the film industry where he worked with brother Rob Fried, a film producer, and later became a producer himself.  more »

Optometrist Debra Bernstein and attorney Ken Bernstein recently moved to a new home off Main Street in the Village of Irvington. However, they didn’t travel far, having lived the past 12 years outside village limits in the Cedar Ridge community.

“We wanted to be able to walk everywhere and be closer to the events that were going on,” said Debra from her newly opened boutique-style Squint Optometry on Main Street.

Ken, who recently left his job in Manhattan, now practices law under his own banner, sharing office space in the back of Squint.  more »

The role of mothering is fulfilling and delightful (I doubt a single mother would argue with that) but when the children go to school, when they’re tucked in bed, and when a mother yearns for an outlet to reveal her other talents, where does she find it?

Marcie Cuff, an Irvington mother, found her groove last fall when she stumbled across upholstery at a local church event. Loving the fact that upholstery is recycled material, she bought some for her home, and used it to make funky dresses for her two girls. Not wanting to waste any of the fabric, she used the remnant fabric to make cloth dolls.  more »

Ana Lopez serves as the coordinator of the Sleepy Hollow office of the non-profit Westchester Hispanic Coalition and has quite a lot on her plate. But she is not complaining.

“It’s a beautiful thing to be able through the Westchester Hispanic Coalition to do what we’re doing because I believe that this is a very historic moment for Sleepy Hollow,” she said during a recent interview in her office. “A lot of changes are occurring.”

Mayor Ken Wray and others are reaching out to the Hispanic community in the village, Lopez said. “We’re all working together, which didn’t happen before,” she said.  more »

(Editor’s Note: Britney Fitzgerald died August 19 at the age of 18. Below is a tribute to her from one of her closest friends.)

Five young girls on a quest to find love! Looking in all the wrong places, they finally stumbled upon something much greater than they could’ve possibly imagined; they found each other.

June 13, 2008 is the date that the five of us (Britney, Shakira, Raven, Me and Tamara) will never forget. According to Britney, this is the official anniversary of “Da Crew,” but who can put a label on a bond deeper than a friendship because we are more like a sisterhood.  more »

That anyone would compare them to Bill and Hillary surprises and flatters Pat and Eileen Pilla. But when you learn that between them, the Pillas spent nearly 30 years as mayors of Tarrytown, the former First Couple naturally comes to mind. Okay, Village Hall isn’t the White House, and protecting Main Street merchants from incursion by a shopping mall isn’t revamping the healthcare system. Still, their long, separate stints in Tarrytown politics left the Pillas grateful for having had the opportunity to serve but now they are relieved to be out of the fray.  more »

“I like to have these kids see things that they don’t have an opportunity to see in the city,” Anthony DiMartino said in explaining the award-winning photograph on the front page of this issue of The Hudson Independent.

It was not until after DiMartino’s photo of the two young girls playing in Matthiessen Park was chosen as the winner of the “Summer Fun” photo contest submissions on this paper’s website that our staff learned the story behind the photos.  more »

Every community has, at its core, people in the know: politicians, merchants or lifelong residents, who keep their fingers on the town pulse. Katharine Swibold is none of these and yet, few would argue that she is one of Tarrytown’s most well-versed residents, a virtual clearinghouse of helpful news and information about anything and everything in the village.  more »