Volume 5, Issue 9

September 2025

The Trail Mix is the monthly newsletter of The Friends of the Greenway. We established this bulletin to keep you current on some of the “goings- on” regarding our Trail and to dispense a mix of bits and bytes of flavorful information. Hopefully, The Trail Mix will help to enlighten, inform, and entertain our readers.

The Friends of the Greenway is part of The Three Village Community Trust. The Trust was established more than twenty years ago to “Protect the Places You Love.” Support the Greenway today by joining the Trust today!

A Story About a Special Bench

During our August Monthly Cleanup, another bench was installed on the Greenway. The benches are part of the Friends of the Greenway’s effort to make the trail available to all users – including our those who need to place to take a breather, the elderly, and rehab patients in need of frequent rests.

Know this: the bench installation process is no simple task, and benches are expensive. There are specific standards we follow: for the size of the benches, the materials for the benches, the installation procedures, etc. But the result is our benches are durable, safe, secure and… widely used.

The bench installed last month was purchased by team members of the Suffolk County Landbank Authority. They wanted to honor the memory of a friend who recently passed away. And they wanted to see a bench installed near the former Lawrence Aviation site. The Landbank has worked tirelessly, and successfully, to secure the former industrial area for future public purposes. Yes, this bench is a wonderful way to pay lasting respect to a friend. Thank you SCLA.

The installation of the bench (near mile marker 2.5) you see in the photographs in this issue was completed by Holden Cone, an Eagle Scout candidate. Over the past year, he has been engaged in the process of securing the bench, the materials, and the site preparation. Holden has always proven to be a committed, hard-working and service minded Trail Steward! We thank his, and his family, for the work on this bench!

Yes, that’s our Greenway Chairman Charlie McAteer with Holden Cone.

Putting the Pieces Together

From this photo, you can see there is a lot of work that goes into the installation of a bench!

Tapping Down the Pour

Yes, that’s David Wang holds the bench during the installation.

Wow! A Great Turn Out for the August Cleanup!

Here is the whole team that took part in the August Cleanup!

Charlie Mcateer
Nicolo Charlestream
Shorena Onikauri
Chauncy Cone
Christina Cone
Holden Cone (Eagle Candidate)
Grandma Cone (Quality control!)
Patrick Portena
Norm Samuels
Kalila Belton
Makaio Belton
Larry Drusin
Sophia Pollina
Ellana Conard
Govir Aleeg
Kari Auer
Hart Ngayen
Kyle Ngayen
Joseph Ngayen
Svetlana Ngayan
Rob DeStefano
Janet Gremli
Ben Brehl
David Wang
Herman Pomales III
Nick Koridis
And Norm Samuels

Our August Green Team in Action

Photos by Nick Kordis

Greenway or Highway to Hell

Most people using the Greenway don’t realize they are walking or bicycling on a NYS-DOT corridor purchased to serve as a highway from Setauket to Port Jefferson Station. It was only through the work of a concerned community and the leadership of the former State Assemblyman Steven Englebright that the Greenway was built on this proposed ‘highway.’

Yes, the Greenway was built – but be clear – the NYS-DOT never, ever abandoned their plans for the building the highway. At any time, the Greenway could be torn out, and a four lane bypass installed.

In fact, the ‘build-out’ appeared in the most recent draft of the Moving Forward 2055 Plan, which is a ‘road map’ of the NYS-DOT’s future projects! Yikes!

Charlie McAteer was on the issue, as well as a number of other ‘Greenwayers.’ To the rescue were Assemblywoman Rebecca Kassay and County Legislator Steve Englebright. A big shout out to Town Councilman Jonathan Kornreich, instrumental in yanking the plan out of the draft!!
The Greenway is going to be AOK ….’till at least 2025!

Greenway … or Cleanway

Our steady and dedicated Trail Steward Norm Samuels is always out on the Greenway to cleanup litter and serve as our ‘eyes and ears.’ He recently remarked how little litter is found on the trail. This lead to our Friends of the Greenway Chairman, Charlie McAteer, to remark that maybe we should change the name of the Greenway to …the Cleanway!

Norm Samuels snapped this photo while he was out on the Greenway. Was he thinking already of …Thanksgiving

Join Us on Culper Spy Day, Saturday, September 6th!

Culper Spy Day is a wonderful celebration of our community’s colonial past. Created by the Three Village Historical Society, every year Culper Spy Day draws visitors from throughout the country – and the world! There will be a ton of fun family activities at the Historical Society’s grounds at 93 North Country Road, Setauket. And there will be more events going on throughout the area.

The Three Village Community Trust is proud to be part of the Culper Spy Day experience and will be hosting children and families throughout the day on the grounds of Patriots Rock – site of the Battle of Setauket.  We will have tours, a blacksmithing demonstration, a recreation of a Setalcott Nation village, and much more.

Join us at Patriots Rock between 10am – 3pm to learn about local history, observe colonial life, chat with friends and neighbors, and be part in a unique Three Village experience.

Now and then, there is such a compelling article that draws attention to the need to create ‘safe streets,’ greenways and bike paths that we just have to share it with you.

The lightly edited article below is by Nicole Gelinas and recently appeared in the New York Times. Read it – it is hard to believe.

They Let Their Children Cross the Street, and Now They’re Felons

By Nicole Gelinas – Ms. Gelinas, a contributing Opinion writer and the author of Movement: New York’s Long War to Take Back It’s Streets From Cars. She reported from Gastonia, N.C.

Jessica Ivey Jenkins cradled her sleeping 6-month-old daughter, Samantha, as she and her husband, Sameule Jenkins, talked softly about their 7-year-old son, Legend.

“He’d come home, get his coloring pencils, crayons, scissors, glue,” Mr. Jenkins said. “Swords, masks — he was very creative.”
“He was the sweetest,” Mrs. Jenkins said. “All the staff members at the school talk about how much of a joy he was.”

In the late afternoon of May 27, Brandon, 10, the oldest of the family’s seven children, and Legend, the second oldest, asked if they could walk to the neighborhood Food Lion supermarket and Subway sandwich shop, less than 10 minutes from the low-rise apartment complex in which the family had lived in Gastonia, N.C., for six years. The couple were reluctant.

“I really thought against it,” said Mr. Jenkins. He added that he and his wife are “very protective of our kids.” But he decided the boys could take the walk as long as they stayed on the phone with him so he could guide them.
“They made it there safe,” Mrs. Jenkins said.

On the way home, Legend stepped off a grass median dividing a four-lane road and was hit and killed by an S.U.V. driver. The driver, a 76-year-old woman, said she did not see him until he darted in front of her vehicle, the police report notes. (The driver faced no charges.) Mr. Jenkins, still on the phone with the older boy, rushed over.

“I wish we wouldn’t have never made that decision, but we can’t take it back,” said Mrs. Jenkins. Said Mr. Jenkins, “I feel so much guilt.”

If you thought nothing could be worse than losing a child, two days after Legend was killed, the county district attorney charged the Jenkinses with involuntary manslaughter and persuaded a judge to set bail at $1.5 million for each of them.

While they sat in jail, furloughed by a judge only to attend their boy’s funeral, social services workers placed the five younger siblings with Mr. Jenkins’s parents and Brandon with a relative of Mrs. Jenkins.

The jailing of Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins cruelly answers the question of whether parents still have a right to let their children go for a walk. It is particularly harsh given that America seems to have forgotten that pedestrians (adults and children) even exist as it accommodates drivers in the sprawl of cheap growth. But as many parents now control their children’s every move, transgressions by parents who take a freer approach — one that used to be normal — can result in criminal charges.

Gaston County’s district attorney, Travis Page, has not explained why he brought such high charges, and his office did not respond to several email and telephone messages I left to request comment.

The prosecutor’s office showed more leniency in April, when a 10-year-old Gaston County girl was shot by another child with a gun the girl’s father allegedly left unsecured. Intentionally bringing a potential harm into your home seems worse than letting your children take a walk, but the father in that case is free on $50,000 bond to face felony child abuse charges.

In one respect, though, Mr. Page was right to consider it aberrant to let children take a walk. The city of Gastonia, where Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins grew up and where they have been raising their children, is a reasonable stand-in for America. It’s a small, middle-class city — population: 85,000 — that used to be a mill town and is now a suburb of white-collar Charlotte. Gaston County has grown roughly 27 percent since the turn of the millennium, gaining in part from migration from higher-cost Northeastern cities. But when I rode around Gastonia, despite lush lawns in subdivisions and tame-looking side streets fronting small apartment complexes, not a child was in sight.

Parents have withdrawn their children from the public realm because they perceive the public realm as dangerous — and they aren’t wrong. North Carolina is about for national pedestrian deaths. But in the United States, that average is bleak, three times that of the rest of the developed world. The death toll of Americans on foot rose by 58 percent in the decade leading up to 2022, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says, from 4,911 souls annually to 7,768.

West Hudson Boulevard, the road where Legend was struck, illustrates how America, as it has suburbanized, has made its roads hostile to people on foot.

“These roads are designed to kill pedestrians, should one try to cross them,” said Sam Schwartz, a former New York City traffic commissioner, via email, after reviewing images of the crash site.

The boulevard features two narrow lanes on either side of a flat grassy median, which hosts stands of trees. Pedestrians standing on the narrow sidewalk might think they can see traffic coming from one direction, cross to the median for refuge and look for traffic coming from the other direction.

But the trees restrict visibility. A speed limit of 45 miles per hour means the average driver may be going over 50 miles per hour, Mr. Schwartz said. Combine speed with the fact that there are no shoulders, and there is no room for a child — or an adult — to move an inch in error. Ever larger American vehicles, too, are more deadly for walkers. The woman who police say hit Legend was driving a Jeep Cherokee.

A common response to the death of a jaywalker — whether an adult or a child — is to blame the victim: Why didn’t the boys cross at a traffic light, less than five minutes away?

But pedestrians navigating a landscape built for cars rightly perceive intersections as unsafe, too. On West Hudson, pedestrians who have pressed the button for a walk signal still must contend with fast-moving cars turning as they cross.
In this car-centered terrain, road planners haven’t accommodated pedestrians’ common patterns. A few weeks ago, around the same time of day that Legend was hit, I saw an older woman cross via the same median. If there had been a midblock crosswalk, Mr. Schwartz said, “the boy would be alive.”

Gastonia police officers were quick to arrest Legend’s parents, but they declined to visit the crash site with me to discuss safety improvements. Drivers don’t want crosswalks or lower speed limits slowing them down.

The Jenkinses didn’t have the resources to fight the serious charges they faced. The court reduced bail after a week, but even though the parents posed no flight risk or threat to public safety, it remained $150,000 — too much for them. Matt Hawkins, Mrs. Jenkins’s public defender, said he encouraged her to try to get bail reduced further so she could get out of jail and fight the charges. But when prosecutors offered to let the couple plead guilty to felony child abuse with a suspended prison sentence as well as probation, “she didn’t want to take the chance,” Mr. Hawkins said. “They were dangling her freedom in front of her face.” (In Mrs. Jenkins’s case, the plea does not acknowledge guilt, only that prosecutors have evidence to prove guilt.)

The felony pleas will haunt the couple, who are expecting another child in January. Mrs. Jenkins once worked cleaning houses and as a personal care assistant and aspires to become a medical assistant. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to do anything like that now, with a felony on my record,” she said.

Mr. Jenkins had an additional incentive to make a plea: A criminal history, including a felony seven years ago, put him at risk of a long prison sentence. With the previous felony receding into the past, though, he had been looking forward to a wider array of jobs becoming available to him. Instead, he has had his work disrupted by this case. Recently employed as a forklift operator, he has taken a temporary job in nearby Charlotte directing traffic at construction sites.

The couple must work to regain custody of the six surviving children, whom they see regularly at relatives’ homes. Being apart from their parents is hard for the children. Legend’s 6-year-old sister, Legacee, “can’t even talk about her brother without her eyes watering,” Mrs. Jenkins said.

“Just because parents don’t have their eyes on their kids every single second doesn’t mean they are bad parents,” said Lenore Skenazy, who chronicles such cases as president of Let Grow, which advocates more childhood freedom. “We’re blaming these parents, but they’ve done everything as good as they can for 10 years, and then something terrible happens.”

The Jenkins case also disturbed Bethany Mandel, an author and podcaster who often focuses on parental rights.

“I let my 11-, 10- and 8-year-olds cross a street like that without me,” said Mrs. Mandel, the mother of six young children, but after this case, she added, “I’m afraid to admit that.”

“The very act of raising children as we ourselves were raised,” she warned, “may now be treated as a crime.”
The Gaston County district attorney has callously overreached. But if something that used to be a normal childhood activity is now seen as so dangerous that parents who let their sons walk in the neighborhood are considered felons, the problem is not just with how we enforce our laws but also with how we allow cars to define how we live.

The 10th Annual Chicken Hill Country Picnic

Our parent organization held its Annual Chicken Hill Country Picnic on August 23rd. his community event raises money for the Greenway and other projects throughout the community. Close to 200 attended this year’s festivities for – BBQ, raffles, live music, live chickens, games… and the ever-popular Chicken Races!

Our Special Friends

Keep in mind, these special friends of the Greenway who support our efforts throughout the year! Please consider giving them your business, and mention you saw them in The Trail Mix.

Shown above is Dave Prestia, owner/operator, of Bagel Express

Bagel Express at 15-5 Bennetts Road in Setauket. Owned and operated by David Prestia, Bagel Express generously donates the catering of our Trail Steward breakfasts. Delicious bagels, hot, steaming coffee – sooo good! For the third year in a row, The Trail Mix has voted Bagel Express #1 for breakfast and lunch, and all of your catering needs. Call 631-675-2770 or check website at Bagel Express – New York | View our menu, reviews & Order food online (bagelexpressli.com)

Emily Riley Design631-512-3330 emilyrileydesign.com

Emily Riley of Emily Riley Design knows plants and landscaping. Using the latest understanding of natural, native and sustainable landscaping methods, Emily can transform your yard into a magical setting that lasts for years and years. As a landscape designer, Emily has been a generous donor of both time, energy and materials to a host of Trust projects!

A Big Friend of the Trust is Swan Cove Landscaping. Swan Cove does a whole line of services – lawn maintenance, pruning, stone walls, firewood. Dave Fortuna has recently retired, but his longtime employee Wander Aleman is now the new and capable owner/operator. Swan Cove donates many, many of services to the Trust. The result – our properties always look great! Thank you, Dave! Call 631-689-8089.

Emerald Magic Lawn Care’s horticultural consultant, Craig den Hartog has been providing flower bulbs for the Greenway over many years at “no cost.” We planted a big bulk of these bulbs at the kiosk on Gnarled Hollow Road, Setauket. Craig generosity is part of his beautification effort known as Old Town Blooms.Why not support Emerald Magic, who supports us! Call 631-286-4600, 631-804-9205.

Steve Antos – He can do it all!

For your yard’s beautification look to Setauket Landscape and Design. Steve Antos can help you plan and design the unique surroundings to make your property the envy of your neighborhood. His company has helped us with many large and small projects on the Trust’s historic properties. Call 631-882-7190.

And lots of thanks to Bove Industries and Skyline Industries for their generous support of the Trust’s projects – they have been instrumental in our grounds restorations at the Smith/deZafra House! Bove Industries and Skyline Industries are leaders in producing materials for roads and construction products.

Randall Brothers Tree Service is always a big help and big hearted in helping the Trust! Call 631-862-9291. Marty is the Man!

Jos. M. Troffa Materials Corporation at 70 Comsewogue Road in Setauket is a very special friend. The company has every conceivable item to beautify your yard. Mulch – they got it. Grass seed – yes! Soil, gravel, shovel, – everything. Forget the big box stores – You gotta go to Troffa!

Maeder Landscaping and Snow, Ltd. is a really great choice for your all of your yard’s needs. Rest your back, spend more time with your friends and family – give them a call at 631-988-9211.

Editor in Chief – Herb Mones