Take a trolley ride through Amityville's past

Down every street, within every building and around every corner in the Friendly Village by the Bay, a rich history awaits. Those willing to explore can stand to inherit a wealth of understanding that links the present with the past.

And, no time is better to take that journey than on Sat., June 14, when the Annual Amityville Heritage Fair will be held. In addition to a host of vendors and food offerings, the fair will, once again, offer an historical Trolley ride around Amityville, touching on the sites and people who helped make Amityville what it is today; from the famous to the infamous, the glorious to the notorious.

The trolley ride will include a tour guide who will recount Amityville's history as the trolley rolls through the streets. People can expect to pass the site of the Zebulon Ketcham Inn on South Bayview Avenue where George Washington "supped" during his famed tour of Long Island in 1792, and the Fred Stone and Will Rogers houses on Clocks Boulevard, which was known as West Amityville.

Many of the sites are well-known to Amityvillians, but a "refresher" course is always a great experience, according to local attorney and historian Richard Handler, who is a tour guide. He and other local historians, Joe Guidice, Larry Basil and Seth Purdy, will take turns offering the six, one-hour tours during the day.

Did you know, for example, that a home on Ketcham Avenue was owned by the frugal and eccentric Charles Strang who owned the property that is now Aqueduct Raceway and who died in the early 1900s, leaving $1 million in his mattress? The money was eventually found and donated to Columbia University.

There is a strong connection between Amityville and aerospace as well. On Richmond and Ocean avenues, there is a plaque commemorating the first guided missile, which was launched there by the Sperry Corporation in the early 1900s. Add to that the fact that Robert Carbey, a chief lunar modular engineer and Kevin Kriegel, a two-time commander of the space shuttle, lived in Amityville, and the connection becomes more strongly bound by local events and local people.

Baseball, too, has a connection with Amityville, especially the Brooklyn Dodgers. Walter O'Malley, who was the Dodgers' general manager before the team moved to Los Angeles in the 1950s, lived at the south end of Ocean Avenue. Living across the crik Charles Ebbets, who landed his first job with the Dodgers as a bookkeeper in 1883. Seven years later, he became a shareholder of the team, and at one time managed the Dodgers. In 1905, he success- fully blocked an effort to move the team to Baltimore and financed the building of Ebbets Field in 1912, which bore his name.

Amityville was, at one time, home to Annie Oakley, Al Capone, Al Smith and John Gambling, the grandfather of radio talk show host John Gambling.

"I don't think there is a community I have visited that has as rich and diversified a history as Amityville," said Handler.

Celebrating all of that is the annual Heritage Fair, which is open June 14 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on the grounds of the Park Avenue Memorial School. There will be an art show and white elephant sale. The rain date is Sun., June 15 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.