With so many changes taking place in the world today, including in our local business communities, The Millerton News is taking a closer look at how the village of Millerton has changed in the years leading up to the present day. The paper will be running a multi-part series on the many changes that have taken place in the Millerton business district since it was first established in the late 1800s. This is the second part in that series. To read the series from the beginning, click here.
Part II
MILLERTON — The loss of Saperstein’s in 2017, after 70 years of providing the community so many of its retail needs, was a huge blow to the village. With its large, rectangular metal orange awning and white block letters on its facade and the charming mural of a farm scene painted on the side of the building at the corner of Dutchess Avenue and Main Street, for seven decades Saperstein’s was synonymous with Millerton. But now it’s gone and one day it will be but a mere memory.
Another big loss to the village’s business district was the closure of Terni’s on April 30, 2020. It sold everything from cigars and knives to hunting and fishing gear to high-end wool shirts, suits and blankets to newspapers and penny candy.
At some point in the store’s 100-year history, its marble soda fountain served ice cream and floats, always with great conversation from the recently passed away and much loved Phil Terni, or perhaps with his father and mother before him or maybe his grandparents, who after immigrating from Parma, Italy, opened the store in 1919.
“I was really sad when Saperstein’s left, and then when Phil got sick and couldn’t run his shop any more it was hard,” said Dick Hermans, who co-owns Oblong Books & Music at 26 Main St. (along with another location in nearby Rhinebeck) with his daughter, Suzanna Hermans; the Millerton bookstore just celebrated its 45th anniversary last October. “Next to us was a jewelry store that was there for 80 years, but things do change; you can’t hold back time.
“I’m kind of accepting of this stuff… I think [the village] has drifted away a little from the necessities of life,” added Hermans. “Saperstein’s represented that; Terni’s a little less so. It’s a changing of the guard. You’ll never find another shop like that ever here. They were really a very special family to do that for as long as they did.”
Local resident Jim Campbell agreed with Hermans, that without Lew Saperstein and Phil Terni, Millerton has lost a part of its past that it will never get back.
“After Terni’s had gone out of Main Street [even though the storefront is still there], honestly, there isn’t a whole lot down there as a local that is appealing or that I have need for,” he said. “The stores are trendy and they’re in and out of there. I can’t even tell you who’s there and who’s not there. They seem to come and go.”
Campbell was born at Sharon Hospital in Connecticut as so many in the area are and grew up in the town of North East, which encompasses the village of Millerton. The town’s population was 3,031 according to the 2010 Census while the village’s population was 958 according to that count.
Campbell served as a town councilman from 2021 to 2017, and worked for the electrical business Campbell and Campbell, founded by his brother and father in 1930; he later started the appliance business, Campbell and Keeler, with business partner Gordon Keeler in 1985; he retired in 2011.
Campbell vividly remembers what Millerton was like as he grew up in the community, before it became “trendy,” according to him.
“Everybody knew everybody. We all grew up together,” he said, “if that was for good or bad, I don’t know, but that was how it was in a small town. It’s totally different now — things evolve, like it or not. Naturally, I liked it the was it was.”
He said everything was at your fingertips back then — there was no need to travel outside the village to get anything.
“The village, it was certainly a true business district. You’d find everything, you name it, it was there,” said Campbell. “A jewelry store, a couple of car dealers, a couple of grocery stores, always at least one grocery store, there wasn’t much you couldn’t buy in the village of Millerton.
“There was furniture, clothing, Delson’s was the hub, because of everything it had to offer,” he added about the anchor store that stood for nearly 40 years and even survived a major fire in 1955. “Delson’s was a department store; as a little kid there were toys in there, which I loved, it had everything, school supplies, clothing, you name it, it was there. Then the village had a shoe repair, barber shops, you get the point. There wasn’t much of anything you couldn’t find in the village. I always felt people from other towns came here.”
In the next part of the series we will continue to examine how Millerton’s Main Street has evolved, and how the community feels about that evolution.
Sabrina Jaar Marzouka led the Oct. 2 Department of Community and Family Services Forum.
POUGHKEEPSIE — On the evening of Wednesday, Oct. 2, the Dutchess County Department of Community and Family Services (DCFS) held an open forum at the Department of Mental Health to discuss a five-year Child and Family Services (CFS) Plan.
Fiscal and staffing challenges aside, the focus of DCFS remains on refining the five-year plan, meeting its targets and serving the county’s most vulnerable residents, many of whom depend on these supports simply to survive.
The forum, which provided residents with detailed information on county services and programs for the domestic, physical and emotional wellbeing of children and adults in the county, also gave attendees the opportunity to weigh in on the plan, which runs from 2024 through 2029.
Dutchess County is obliged to provide a plan detailing social services offerings to New York State every five years, DCFS Commissioner Sabrina Jaar Marzouka said. The county works in conjunction with the state to identify programs for further development and improvement.
“We do not choose our goals,” Marzouka said. “They are prescribed by the state. So they give us a handful to choose from, based on what we determine to be our needs and from our data.”
The county can adjust goals as needed but must meet state requirements. These goals and their associated strategies are determined by research, data, and stakeholder meetings with companies, agencies, and individuals.
While DCFS team members tackled various components of the proposal’s planning stages, the end-result is expected to be a cohesive plan created by the state, county, and residents following public comment.
While programs such as Medicaid, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and Home Energy Assistance Program (HEAP), fall under the DCFS umbrella, the public session focused on three specific offerings — Child Protective Services, Preventive Services, and Adult Services.
Child Protective Services (CPS) seeks to ensure the safety of vulnerable children from suspected abuse, neglect or trafficking of minors. If confirmed, CPS may remove a child from the home. Its preference is for placement with relatives as opposed to foster care provided by strangers to maintain familial, environmental, and cultural ties.
“You don’t want the child to lose that connection,” Marzouka said. “Because that is their world.”
To prevent family ties from being cut, even temporarily, Preventive Services strives to strengthen affected families through domestic monitoring, motivational interviews, parental training/retraining, and family team meetings — strategies designed to expedite foster care discharge or circumvent foster care altogether.
Adult Services supports people in need of supervision (PINS) with a goal of preserving adult dignity. Currently, there are 30 adult guardian cases overseen by DCFS, a number which continues to climb.
Obstacles to the continuity of certain services remain.
Funding is a constant challenge. For example, childcare programs, the eligibility for which now includes working- and middle-class families, may run dry by 2025 unless the state provides relief.
Caseworker shortages present yet another challenge. To this end, the state has eased civil service requirements for positions such as social workers and case managers via NY HELPS, a program which may or may not be temporary.
According to Dutchess County’s Human Resources Commissioner Steven Rector, while specific data on caseworker shortages hasn’t been made available to his department yet, he concurs with Marzouka, who conveyed staff retention concerns.
“[These] titles are considered challenging to recruit for [and] with higher than average turnover,” Rector said.
On a cloudy Wednesday at the start of October, my girlfriend, Taylor, and I decided to enjoy the autumn afternoon by getting off our laptops and into the woods for some much needed movement. Having just moved to Norfolk as a new reporter for the Lakeville Journal, I was on the hunt for panoramic views of the landscape I now call home, accessible with the hour and a half of daylight left to us. Haystack Tower it was.
I’m not entirely unfamiliar with the landscapes of the Northwest Corner: I visited family and friends in the region as a child and would drive up on high school joyrides from my home in Westchester County. But calling somewhere home brings new meaning to a place, and I was eager to see a familiar view with a new sense of belonging.
To extend the walk a bit, we chose the yellow trail loop, starting from the bottom of the road leading up the hill off North Street. Our journey began on a neatly mowed path through a gently sloping meadow, with stands of purple-white New England asters poking out from a mosaic of green and red leaves and grasses on either side of the trail.
Our trail took us into a forest sporting half-autumn colors: some maple stands blazed gold and orange while others remained dark green. The occasional fiery swamp maple glowed bright red below the overstory, catching the glints of sunlight that managed to penetrate the cloud layer and canopy.
As we trudged up the forested hillside, my field of vision was so washed in texture — a chaos of rocks, roots, bark, and leaves of every shade — that my eyes almost started to ache.
The trail plateaued after a short climb into a new type of forest: three-story oaks underscored with hickory saplings. With a new composition, the forest assumed a browner and yellower hue than that of the maple-dominated lower hillside.
We eventually reached the imposing stone tower at Haystack Mountain’s summit, and we quickly climbed the winding stairs to find what we came for: 360-degree views of forested hills folding over one another as they spread into the distance, interspersed by patches of valley farmland. A copse of orange maples framed Route 44 as it passed through Norfolk below. This was the beautiful patchwork landscape I am lucky to now call home.
A relaxed jaunt down a wide carriage road took us around the mountain’s northeastern flank as eastern hemlocks leaned overhead and clung to the steep slope below. Reaching the car with daylight to spare, we decided to prolong the outing with an evening pint.
At Norbrook Farm Brewery, we were asked if we wanted to join a game of jukebox bingo. It looked like fun, but we couldn’t get enough of the October evening air, so we headed outside instead to sit fireside on the patio. Settling into an Adirondack chair, I sipped the brewery’s brown ale (the “Beckley Furnace Ale”). It was malty and crisp, and certainly one of the better in the style I’ve had recently. Taylor is partial to seasonal beers and opted for their pumpkin ale, joyously titled the “Gourdo.” I’m usually not a fan of pumpkin-flavored anything, but I agreed that this was a nicely balanced beer and enjoyed the few sips I took.
As the light faded on the hills, we noted that the foliage across the fields looked to be nearly peaking in the soft glow of the evening. A chill settled in and I huddled closer to the fire, eager to lean into the swiftly changing season in my new home.
Chilly rain sprinkles did not keep area art lovers away from the opening of the Kent Art Association’s Fall Juried Art Show on Sunday, Oct. 13. Judges for the event were association members Liz Maynard and Conrad Levenson. The show will continue until Saturday, Nov. 2, during the association's open hours.
Kent artist and long-term resident Carolyn Millstein (above) paused for a photo next to her piece, “Near Oakdale."
“SHELTER,” an art exhibit supporting The Gathering Place opened on Suday, Oct. 12, at the Royal Arcanum Building in Norfolk, Conn. Featuring works by fourteen area artists, proceeds from sales will benefit The Gathering Place based in Torrington, Conn., which provides essential services to the homeless across 26 towns in Litchfield County. Open weekdays, this vital resource offers everything from hot showers and laundry facilities to housing assistance. The exhibit runs through Nov. 24.
