
An artist’s rendering of the what a swimming pool and poolhouse in Eddie Collins Park in Millerton could look like.
Photo provided
An artist’s rendering of the what a swimming pool and poolhouse in Eddie Collins Park in Millerton could look like.
MILLERTON — The NY SWIMS capital grant program awarded $6.385 million to the village to build a community pool, a bathhouse, community room and septic system at Eddie Collins Memorial Park.
The announcement came from Gov. Kathy’s Hochul’s office on the eve of Labor Day, along with $38 million in grants to Dutchess County and towns and cities in the Mid-Hudson region.
“It’s incredible for us to receive this,” Mayor Jenn Najdek said. “To be in the right place at the right time, and to be in good standing with grants.”
The mayor said she hopes that there may be a groundbreaking in the fall of 2025.
“It wouldn’t be possible without the incredible group of volunteers,” Najdek said.
The Eddie Collins Memorial Park Revitalization Committee includes: Stephen Waite, chair, Jeanne Vanecko, vice chair, Edith Greenwood, treasurer, Jennifer Dowley and Greg Swinehart. Mayor Najdek is the village liaison to the committee.
Najdek also thanked Anna Clune, who wrote the grant for the village.
“The grant award is exciting news for Millerton and its residents. Anna did a fabulous job writing the application.
“I spent a lot of time at the old Denney Pool as a kid and made many friends there, some I still keep in contact with.
“The pool served the community well for 50 years until closing in 2016. It’s taken eight long years, but I’m pleased that people will once again be swimming in Millerton in the not-too-distant future.
“I’m grateful for the support from our leaders and donors and extremely proud of the work done by the Committee,” Waite said.
The NY SWIMS grant program was included in the 2025 New York state budget. In May, Village trustees voted to apply for a $6.385 million grant. The first round of applications for municipal swimming facilities were due in July.
The Village also has applied for a $675,000 grant through New York State Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation and has yet to hear news about that application.
The latest news follows a Millerton visit in late July by Carl Heastie, Speaker of the New York State Assembly, and State Rep. Didi Barrett (D-106) to announce that the Phase 2 renovation of the park will have its funding ensured.
The pool will be ADA-compliant like the rest of the park.
“This will make the entirety of park accessible,” said Mayor Najdek.
Under the NY SWIMS program, grants are offered to “to acquire, design, construct or reconstruct facilities, provide major renovations, improvements, and modernization or rehabilitation of swimming facilities.”
Municipalities are expected to cover 20% of the project cost.
The park’s first swimming pool was installed in 1966 in the rear southwestern corner of the park. Over time, the high water table lifted and cracked the pool. Groundwater infiltration prevented the pool’s water from heating up even on hot summer days. Repairs were attempted but fewer and fewer people came to swim, and Millerton’s summer camp was moved to Rudd Pond in 2015.
Last summer the park’s revitalization committee presented the Phase 2 plans. Construction on Phase 1 — regrading of the park, a new entrance and paved parking areas, a soccer field, accessible playground upgrades, new basketball courts and pavilion improvements—was completed in 2022.
Other big NY SWIMS grants among the 11 announced over Labor Day for the Mid-Huston region include:
Dutchess County — ($10 million) Youth Opportunity Union Aquatic Center: Dutchess County will construct the Youth Opportunity Union Aquatic Center, comprised of an eight-lane lap pool, a two-lane family and therapy pool, and locker rooms.
City of Kingston — ($3,343,345) Kingston Point Beach Swimming Facilities: The City of Kingston will implement a design of multi-tiered raised terraces to connect upland areas on either side of the existing beach to provide flood mitigation and protect the interior of Kingston Point against sea level rise.
City of Newburgh — ($8 million) Delano Hitch Aquatics Center: The City of Newburgh will construct a new aquatic center to replace the pool complex originally constructed in 1920, featuring a fully ADA accessible competition sized pool, new changing rooms and restrooms, new parking area, new concessions stand and a splash pad.
COPAKE — The Copake Grange will be busy on weekends in February.
On Friday, Feb. 14, and Saturday, Feb. 15, starting at 7:30 p.m. and on Sunday, Feb. 16, at 3 p.m., The Two of Us Productions is putting on a production of “CLUE on Stage — The Comedy Murder Mystery.”
“CLUE on Stage” will return Friday, Feb. 21, Saturday, Feb. 22, and Sunday, Feb. 23 at the same times as the previous weekend.
Tickets for the performance will cost $20 for adults, $15 for children under 18 and for seniors over 60. Tickets are available at the door or online at www.thetwoofusproductions.org.
The Copake Grange is located at 628 Empire Road in Copake. Full details for events can be found on their website, www.copakegrange.org and navigating to the “events” page.
COPAKE — Roeliff-Jansen Community Library is hosting Hillsdale resident Maria Socolof for a discussion of her memoir “Turning the Key: Unlocking the Mystery of my Chronic Pain,” Wednesday, Feb. 12 at 6 p.m.
The memoir details Socolof’s journey healing her chronic pain caused by a ruptured disc in her neck.
Socolof is a former gymnast and scientist with a Master’s degree from the Harvard School of Public Health.
Attendees will have a chance to win a free Audible audiobook copy of the memoir. The event is free and open to the public.
Roeliff Jansen Community Library, which is chartered to serve Ancram, Copake, and Hillsdale, is located at 9091 Route 22, approximately one mile south of the traffic light at the intersection of Routes 22 and 23.
Jan. 27 marked the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. I traveled to Poland as part of a delegation for the commemoration and spent a few days before the event with my father and sister learning, remembering and gathering information.
My dad’s parents, Miriam and Yehuda, of blessed memory, were deported to Auschwitz -Birkenau from the Lódz Ghetto. They both had families that perished and met each other after the camp was liberated.
The gate at Auschwitz. Natalia Zukerman
I put my feet in the train tracks where they would have arrived, ran my hands across the walls of the horrible gas chambers, the broken wood of the crowded bunks, gathered dirt in my shoes where they would have walked, and made sure to touch the trunks of the trees along the path—innocent witnesses.
My father’s parents survived. How did they do it? Miriam was quickly sent to a work camp on the Czech border, and Yehuda played violin in the Auschwitz orchestra (aka the Death Orchestra). Music saved him. A million miracles saved them both.
Many members of our extended family did not survive.
Suitcases taken from prisoners at Auschwitz.Natalia Zukerman
Cuikerman was the original Polish spelling of our name. We poured over page after page of our name in the Book of Names. I can’t explain it, but as I read the names—aloud and quietly—I felt some of their spirits finally release.
Innocent witnesses.
I never wanted to come to Auschwitz-Birkenau. I grew up in the shadow of the Holocaust. It was part of our dark story. From the time I was very little, I saw all the images, watched the movies, read the books. I’ve had nightmares my whole life. I remember the tattoo on my grandmother’s forearm. This was enough.
But until you stand in the field the size of a city and look out at the expanse of crematoria, gas chambers, bunkers, the enormity and scale is just a story, words on a page. Now I have metabolized it in a different way. Now it is part of my DNA on a deeper level. Now I am changed.
A crematorium at Auschwitz.Natalia Zukerman
On Holocaust Remembrance Day, world leaders from fifty countries—including King Charles, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Emmanuel Macron, Justin Trudeau and so many more— gathered with survivors and their families, musicians, friends and patrons of the organization in an enormous tent at the entrance to Birkenau. A freight train stood in front of the main gate. The car, from Germany, honors the 420,000 Hungarian Jews deported in 1944. Its conservation was funded by Frank Lowy, whose father, Hugo, was killed in the camp.
It radiated with horror in almost theatrical lighting, its now silenced whistle audible in the memories of all who gathered.
I listened to survivor after survivor speak. I watched as each world leader lit candles in remembrance. I said Kaddish (the Jewish prayer for the dead) with the several thousand people present.
But I only heard one person, 99-year-old Polish-born Swedish-Jewish doctor Leon Weintraub, utter any words that made sense to me, to my very fragile and shaken heart. He became a doctor after the war and told the group gathered the one absolute truth: there is only one race—the human race. He talked about the fact that under the skin, we are the same, words that were beyond powerful. In the very place where the most evil “experiments” were conducted to prove the supremacy of the Aryan race, this man stood there in all his beautiful bravery and told the truth. He was able, for a moment, to remove a hierarchy of care and replace it with an expansive, human appeal. He brought the memory of all the people killed, not just the Jews when he said, “be sensitive to all manifestations of intolerance and dislike of those who differ in terms of skin color, religion or sexual orientation.” He widened the conversation, lest we also forget the Romani, queer, disabled, dissidents and more that were also victims of the Nazis. Lest we forget the lesson of Gandhi when he said, “intolerance itself is a form of violence.”
Weintraub ended by saying, “allowing the memory of millions of innocent victims to fade would be equivalent to robbing them of their lives a second time.”
Shoes taken from prisoners.Natalia Zukerman
There are multiple genocides on planet earth right now. There are humans in actual concentration camps as I write this. There are whole populations being murdered.
After this experience, more than ever, I vow to speak the truth as loudly and as often as I can.
Speaking up, questioning and protesting is not only not antisemitism, it defines the core principles of what it means to be Jewish.
A beautiful Jewish human named Albert Einstein said, “Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.”
This must and will be my task. Nothing else makes any sense.
Prisoners slept four to a bunk at Birkenau.Natalia Zukerman