We introduce to our readers this week, and to posterity, our Centennial edition. The edition took several months to complete and was scheduled to coincide not only with the Mayor’s Tea Dance but also with the week in which the Village was actually incorporated.

It was with a great sense of history and responsibility that we undertook this project. We recognized that documenting history is an task that must be accompanied by deep research and painstaking accuracy and that it should, additionally, be lively and interesting. We attempted to do that by reaching out to many within the community who had much to offer and by poring over the accounts of the friendly Village by the Bay in old newspapers, records and documents. For us, it was a labor of love.

For us also, it was an opportunity to get to know better the community we adopted two and one-half years ago as new publishers of the Amityville RECORD. In some ways, we felt like voyeurs, peeking into the history of a Village that we had only adopted; a Village we had not been born into, but had chosen; a Village we had been cautioned was close knit and often less friendly than its name would indicate.

Home, however, is really where the heart is and by exploring Amityville’s past we have been able to feel, more resoundingly, its pulse in the present. Friendliness abounds and warmth comes with understanding. By taking the time to understand Amityville, its past, its present and its people, caution goes to the wind.

We also felt very humble. There is a sense of perspective you get when you go through history and peer at the faces of those who have gone before you. We remember one moment in particular when we picked up a turn-of-the century photograph and realized that one of the faces staring back at us was that of Charles Delano, the first editor and publisher of the RECORD. It was a vivid reminder that newspapers really belong to history and to the people they serve, and that newspaper publishers are never newspaper owners—only their fleeting guardians .

There was a personal journey we also took. More than 40 years ago, Publisher Carolyn James spent summers in a home on Lake and Oak streets on the border of Amityville. The Amityville she remembers walking to as a child is well documented in the RECORD during that era. There was the Bohacks on Broadway, the movie theater, the ice cream parlor, the long walk on hot summer days along Lake Street, then a dirt road, to the swimming hole on Merrick Road. She remembers the drowning of a young boy there and the sound, some years later, of the constant pounding of a carpenter’s hammer as homes began to be built, and the woods were levelled and gone forever.

But this Centennial edition is not all about the past. In keeping with the Centennial theme: Echoes of the past; Visions for the future, we wanted to document Amityville today as well as our hopes for tomorrow. For that reason, we have included a look at who we are and where we hope to go. Our vision is that in l00 years our grandchildren and great grandchildren will know not only what we were all about but also what challenges we faced. This is, then, a living document by which they can measure our failures and successes.

We hope you enjoy this edition. Additionally, with a great sense of humility, we hope that it, in some small way, adds to the rich legacy of the friendly village by the bay.

Alfred and Carolyn James