Highlands Current Audio Stories

Recovery from crash called 'miracle'

Laura Timmons always believed that her teenage daughter would recover from the traumatic brain injury she suffered in the car accident on Route 9 that killed another Haldane High School student in December 2023.

During Theresa Timmons' 15-month rehabilitation at Blythedale Children's Hospital in Valhalla, Laura Timmons chronicled each "big thing" in her daughter's recovery: the first time she swallowed drinks and food; the first time she responded to questions with gestures; and progressing to writing and talking.

"I knew in my heart we would get there, and I never felt any negative," said Laura Timmons, whose family owns Homestyle Bakery in Nelsonville and Peekskill.

Her faith received another reward on Thursday (May 29) when Theresa, wearing a shirt filled with signatures from well-wishers and supported on one side by a cane and the other by Laura's boyfriend, Mike Raguso, walked across Blythdale's lobby on her way home for the first time since the accident.

A gauntlet of family, friends and Blythedale staff and patients clapped and cheered as Theresa headed through the front door. Outside, Theresa began crying as staff assembled around her to take pictures and say goodbye. First responders from the Continental Village Fire Department, Cortlandt-Peekskill Paramedics and the state police assembled to escort the ambulance carrying her home to Garrison.

"Awesome," said Theresa, now 17, when asked about Thursday's sendoff and returning home. "I felt like someone famous."

Katherine Ingrasci and Mary Kate Filos used the word "miracle."

Ingrasci, a speech-language pathologist at Blythedale, said that Theresa could not eat or talk, and breathed using a tracheostomy tube inserted in her neck when she arrived at Blythedale. Theresa had "a lot of things to overcome" during the hospitalization and made tremendous progress from initially communicating solely through gestures, said Ingrasci.

One day, "I walked in and she looked up at me and said a full, beautiful sentence," said Ingrasci.

That progress owed much to Theresa, who Filos described as a "fighter" and hard worker. Filos also credited the family and friends who supported Theresa's recovery by donating money, visiting and sending cards and gifts.

"They had somebody at the bedside around the clock; Theresa was never alone," said Filos. "So we bonded not just with mom, not just with dad, but with so many extended family members and friends."

Also attending the sendoff were some of the Continental Village firefighters and paramedics who responded to the tragedy: a Dec. 15, 2023, car crash on Route 9 that claimed the life of Vlad Saban, a 17-year-old Haldane High School senior, and left Theresa, then 16 and a junior at the school, in critical condition.

Chief Joseph Maffettone said in September 2024 that firefighters responding to the accident found "complete wreckage." Attacking the doors and bottom of the wreck with cutting tools, they found Vlad already deceased and Theresa in the rear - unconscious and laying on her left side, protected in a "cocoon," according to Maffettone.

"There was a complete tunnel around her," said Maffettone, whose family has been buying baked goods from Homestyle for years and knew the Timmons family. "How she was positioned, it was amazing."

Jennifer Hunt, a paramedic with Cortlandt-Peekskill Paramedics, described Theresa's physical condition as "multi-system" trauma.

"She had anything and everything that could possibly be wrong with a patient going on," said Hunt last September. "We had a lot of decisions to make in a very short timeframe."

Hunt said that she and a colleague, Richard Blackley, sedated Theresa and inserted an endotracheal tube, which is used when patients cannot breathe unaided. With her breathing stabilized, they decided to drive Theresa to Westchester Medical Center rather than wait for a helicopter that had been standing by.

By February 2024, Theresa was responding to commands...

Writer to discuss 'walking memoir' in Beacon

Craig Mod's first book tour across America has so far been a resounding success, much to the confusion of bookstore owners.

"All the bookstore people have been freaked out," he said a few days after his stop in San Francisco had a line all the way down the street an hour before the event began. "Booking this tour has been difficult, because in their experience, if they don't recognize the name of the author, they're going to get seven people."

Mod will finish up his tour promoting Things Become Other Things: A Walking Memoir at Binnacle Books in Beacon on June 6, in conversation with Beacon resident Sam Anderson, a reporter for The New York Times Magazine. Although this is his first title for a major publisher, Mod has built a following with his lavishly designed, self-published books, online newsletters, photography and travel writing about Japan.

"I have absolutely no sense of who's out there reading my stuff since I'm kind of alone and isolated on the other side of the world," he said. "People are shaking as they bring me books to sign. It's bizarre, but everyone has been so sweet."

Mod grew up in a Northeast town that was slowly being hollowed out with drugs and violence in the wake of local factories closing. Once he graduated high school, he knew he needed to get as far away as possible. With scholarships, homestays and the exchange rate at the turn of the millennium, Tokyo was the cheapest option at the time.

Mod found in Japan what he'd been missing back in America. "There was an overwhelming shock of seeing people being taken care of by a greater whole," he said. After buying a used camera, Mod fell into two of the central tenets of his work: photography and exploring Japan on foot.

He began with long, late-night walks throughout Tokyo. "I'd be in this kind of romantic haze of listening to all these lives and these families functioning," he said. "Tokyo is so transparent. If you walk in certain neighborhoods, you just hear everything."

He befriended John McBride, an older Westerner with an encyclopedic knowledge of local history. Accompanying McBride on walks led to Mod making longer journeys across the county on his own. Things Become Other Things recounts in words and photographs one walk in 2021, during the pandemic, when he traced the historic 300-mile Kumano Kodo pilgrimage routes across the Kii peninsula south of Kyoto, with McBride emailing him historic details along the way.

"Most of the inns I stayed at, I was the only one there," Mod recalled. "It felt like the end of the world."

The desolate landscape of the Kii peninsula reminded Mod of his hometown, both filled with poverty, loneliness, trash-strewn yards and hostile dogs. But Japan's safety net and tight-knit society means that the people Mod encounters don't fall through the cracks. Central to this is yoyū, which is often translated to mean "breathing room." In Things Become Other Things, Mod defines it as "the excess provided when surrounded by a generous abundance. It can be applied to hearts, wallets, Sunday afternoons and more."

Mod said he began to truly understand the term when he started walking with McBride. "It's the space in your heart to be able to accept someone or something else without being stressed out by it," said Mod. "John is a person of essentially infinite yoyū.

"As the political climate has changed in America, it feels increasingly like folks are being pressed against the wall," Mod said. "Political decisions are being made from this lack of openness or empathy. It emphasized what it meant to feel yoyū in the Japanese countryside. It's hard for folks who don't live in a place that has that to imagine what it feels like to look around at everyone you pass by, and know that if some medical calamity hits them, they can't fall that far."

Binnacle Books is located at 321 Main St. in Beacon. The event begins at 7 p.m.

Clutter moves Five Points from Brooklyn to Beacon

After Miranda O'Brien and Josh Kimberg moved to Beacon from Brooklyn in 2011, they opened Clutter Gallery at 163 Main St., named for a glossy magazine O'Brien founded in England 21 years ago that ceased publication in 2017.

Clutter is the only gallery in the country dedicated to weird and wonderful designer toys for adults, says Kimberg. Earlier this year, the couple moved from their Main Street space, a popular gathering spot on Second Saturdays, to the KuBe Art Center, where they plan to add an art toy museum operated by a newly created nonprofit, the Designer Toy Foundation.

At the same time, the couple is transplanting their annual Five Points Festival of "designer toys, indie art, weird monsters and underground culture" - scheduled for June 7 and 8 - from Greenpoint in Brooklyn to The Yard in Beacon.

Jesse DeStasio, a Philipstown resident who hosts his own festival, Toy Pizza Expo, which met at the Happy Valley Arcade Bar in Beacon and merged this year with Five Points, will be there with Knights of the Slice, an action-figure line he created in 2015. Ron English of Beacon, a longtime toy designer and muralist under his Popaganda umbrella, created the event poster.

"This town takeover goes against the grain," says Kimberg. "We put together a roster of complete weirdos and fans of the bizarre."

Five Points, which began in 2017, attracted 6,000 people in Greenpoint last year. The first Beacon event will include live music, painting, tattooing and promised "oddities." The Beacon Theater will show sci-fi flick Dune (1982), the original Godzilla (1954) and Ghidohra (1964), the "three-headed monster."

Inspired in part by Japanese manga and anime, collectible designer items range from $20 to hundreds of thousands of dollars, says Kimberg. Made mainly with resin and soft vinyl, the irreverent totems stem from street and underground art. Though some small runs are handcrafted or 3-D printed in people's basements and garages, most items are imported.

Small-batch, handmade toys created by popular artists are obviously more cherished than a run of 500 made in China, says Kimberg: "What's most important is the name value, not a brand or even what the figure depicts. It's like Andy Warhol's silkscreens and Toulouse Lautrec with the printing press, creating multiple copies of works with a mechanical means of production and building a reputation."

Some artists in the free-for-all subculture create original designs and others reference pop culture, a la Warhol. Homer Simpson is a popular subject, but almost all designer toy representations of familiar figures distort and take liberties with the original form, signifying that the work is unlicensed.

"There is a conversation over whether this is fair use, and thus legal," says Kimberg, who once received a cease-and-desist letter but rebutted it with a 20-page reply. "We outlined the work's transformative nature, and they went away," he said.

A young woman chronicles her battle with anorexia

In January 2017, Sandra Slokenbergs wrote in her journal: "I have a sickening feeling my daughter is dying."

Her fears were well-founded. A week later, her daughter Lidija, 17, a Haldane junior, was rushed to a hospital, suffering from severe anorexia.

Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder which, if not treated, can cause serious medical conditions associated with starvation. Anorexia is second only to opioid overdoses in deaths tied to mental illness, including by suicide. Its causes are not fully understood but are thought to involve genetics, psychological and social factors and major life transitions.

In a newly published book, Hold My Hand, Sandra and Lidija tell their story in detail from each of their perspectives.

By age 16, Lidija had experienced more life changes than most. When she was 6 and about to enter the first grade at Haldane, she and her family moved to Latvia. Both sets of her grandparents had emigrated to the U.S.; her parents were born in New York, but Latvian was spoken in their Cold Spring home.

During the 10 years they spent in Latvia, Lidija changed schools five times. Although Latvia became independent from Russia in 1990, many schools still followed the rigid Soviet system, with multiple daily tests, teachers calling out students' grades, waiting for permission to sit and an intense level of competition.

"I didn't feel I could keep up," she recalled. "I knew I was smart, but I was made to feel stupid a lot of the time."

Lidija loved to dance but was told at age 12 by her ballet instructor that she danced "like a bear." She came home crying, feeling "intimidated, ridiculed and never good enough." There were cultural differences, as well. Although Lidija spoke fluent Latvian, it was with an accent. She was "the American," an outsider.

The Slokenbergs returned to Cold Spring each summer. Lidija said that was "paradise": swimming in her grandparents' pool, her July 3 birthday parties, camp and ice cream. Although she loved Latvia and had friends there, returning was always difficult. Sandra remembers the end of the summers as full of "anxiety, sadness and dread" for her daughter.

Red flags began to appear by the time Lidija was 14. Once, she stood by her bedroom mirror in Latvia sobbing, unable to decide what to wear to a birthday party. Sandra coaxed her to go, but it was a struggle. For a yoga class where everyone wore a T-shirt and leggings, Lidija agonized, rejecting one combination after another.

Sandra noticed her daughter's movements had become less natural. She had begun to dislike aspects of her body. "Clearly, self-esteem was seeping out of her," Sandra said. Lidija developed an uncharacteristic interest in Sandra's treadmill and worked out on it obsessively for several weeks. She later admitted hating every minute of it.

Ironically, a permanent return to Cold Spring in 2016 fueled what would soon be diagnosed as anorexia. "I was happy because I'd have two years left at Haldane," Lidija said. But other thoughts were troubling. "I felt I had the chance to reinvent myself, to become someone I liked more, someone who was smarter and prettier," she said. "I had been holding in a lot of stress, a perfect time for anorexia to swoop in."

Anorexia, she said, makes many false promises: "You'll be happy if you lose a bit of weight. You'll be happy if you control your food more. You'll be happy if you get to the desired weight."

Lidija's 16th birthday included a trip to Dairy Queen and an ice cream cake. It would be the last time Lidija ate without feeling the need to greatly restrict food. After eating leftover cake the next morning, she obsessed over the thought that she had already consumed more calories than she should for an entire day. She vowed to take control, to get skinnier, to be prettier. She thought, "Maybe I'll feel better then." Her mother recalled: "I saw her change into someone I didn't recognize."

Lidija became obsessive-compulsive...

Final summer of shows before new theater debuts

Beyond the new theater rising on a ridge above the river, things are percolating as the acting company now known as Hudson Valley Shakespeare prepares for its 38th and final season under the tent.

After a rebrand, the "festival" suffix moved down the road. "We're more permanent than ever," says Davis McCallum, the artistic director, explaining the change. "Festivals are associated with a defined time period and then they head off, like the circus, but we still want to have that celebratory, freewheeling exuberance."

The Samuel H. Scripps Theater Center is part of a $58 million project that includes the ecological restoration of the former golf course that is now the Hudson Valley Shakespeare campus and the addition of actor housing.

This season, the company's full-production plays include Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors, opening June 6, and The Matchmaker (June 8), by Thornton Wilder, which evolved into the Broadway musical Hello, Dolly! and the 1968 film shot in part at Garrison's Landing.

Will and Wilder alternate through Aug. 3. Then Octet, written by Beacon resident Dave Malloy, takes over the tent from Aug. 11 to Sept. 7. McCallum pursued the rights to the Tony-nominated play for five years; Hudson Valley Shakespeare is the first company to mount a full production after the show's Off-Broadway run in 2019.

"The original rights-holders planned a commercial Broadway production and a film, but COVID hit, and it's only been shown twice since then in limited productions," says McCallum.

Malloy's local ties extend to writing the music for Beowulf - A Thousand Years of Baggage, the greatest hit so far by local house-party hosts Jason Craig and Jessica Jelliffe at Banana, Bag & Bodice productions. The following year, 2011, Malloy collaborated with Craig on Beardo, a rock musical about Rasputin. Hudson Valley Shakespeare recently commissioned a work from Banana, Bag & Bodice that's about halfway completed, says McCallum.

Octet is billed as a "chamber choir musical" that references tarot cards and explores internet addiction and human alienation in the digital age through dialogue and an eight-part acapella harmony score. Only three of the troupe's regulars could pull off the singing-and-speaking task, so McCallum imported "ringers," he says.

When the tent goes dark for a week to prepare the production, the company will roll out HVS Cabaret, which transforms The Valley restaurant into a 45-seat cabaret (Aug. 6 to 9). Performances include a solo work-in-progress musical, Fathertime: Birth, Death and Songs, the return of former troupe member Bebe Nicole Simpson and a performance by composer Alex Bechtel.

In addition, a new production of Julius Caesar plays Sept. 9 and 10 for students and the public, with a stripped-down version moving to Bannerman Castle Trust on the island (Sept. 11 to 13).

For the first time, the Shakespeare company will send teaching artists and actors to nearby schools for three weeks in September instead of in the spring. Next year, after the Scripps Theater opens, the company will continue to visit schools and, for the first time, bring students to the grounds.

McCallum, who worked on The Matchmaker 30 years ago in London, considers Wilder to be "the best American playwright. He won two Pulitzers for drama and another one for a novel - the only American author who achieved that."

For The Matchmaker, wife-and-husband team Nance Williamson and Kurt Rhoads, who live in Philipstown, star as Dolly Levi and Horace Vandergelder. Although overshadowed by the Broadway and movie adaptations, the original play complements The Comedy of Errors, McCallum says.

"It's uncanny how much these two farces share structure, energy and momentum," he says. "Our actors are feeding off each other as they go back and forth working on them."

Hudson Valley Shakespeare is located at 2015 Route 9 in Philipstown. For a schedule and tickets, which range from $10 to $100, see hvshakespear...

World War II radio operator interred in Wappingers Falls

As the World War II bomber Heaven Can Wait was hit by enemy fire off the Pacific island of New Guinea on March 11, 1944, the co-pilot managed a final salute to flyers in an adjacent plane before crashing into the water.

All 11 men aboard were killed. Their remains, deep below the vast sea, were designated as non-recoverable.

Yet four crew members' remains are beginning to return to their hometowns after a remarkable investigation by family members and a recovery mission involving elite Navy divers who descended 200 feet in a pressurized bell to reach the sea floor.

Staff Sgt. Eugene Darrigan, the 26-year-old the radio operator, was buried with military honors and community support on Saturday (May 24) at the Church of St. Mary in his hometown of Wappingers Falls, more than eight decades after leaving behind his wife and baby son.

The bombardier, 2nd Lt. Thomas "Toby" Kelly, was buried Monday in Livermore, California, where he grew up in a ranching family. The remains of the pilot, 1st Lt. Herbert Tennyson, and navigator, 2nd Lt. Donald Sheppick, will be interred in the coming months.

The ceremonies are happening 12 years after one of Kelly's relatives, Scott Althaus, set out to solve the mystery of where exactly the plane went down.

"I'm just so grateful," he said. "It's been an impossible journey - just should never have been able to get to this day. And here we are, 81 years later."

March 11, 1944

The Army Air Forces plane nicknamed Heaven Can Wait was a B-24 with a cartoon pin-up angel painted on its nose. It was on a mission to bomb Japanese targets. Other flyers on the mission were not able to spot survivors.

Their wives, parents and siblings were of a generation that tended to be tight-lipped in their grief. But the men were sorely missed.

Sheppick, 26, and Tennyson, 24, each left behind pregnant wives who would sometimes write them two or three letters a day. Darrigan also was married, and had been able to attend his son's baptism while on leave. A photo shows him in uniform, smiling as he holds the boy.

Darrigan's wife, Florence, remarried but quietly held on to photos of her late husband, as well as a telegram informing her of his death.

Tennyson's wife, Jean, lived until age 96 and never remarried. "She never stopped believing that he was going to come home," said her grandson, Scott Jefferson.

Memorial Day 2013

As Memorial Day approached 12 years ago, Althaus asked his mother for names of relatives who died in World War II.

Althaus, a political science and communications professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, became curious while researching World War II casualties for work. His mother gave him the name of her cousin Thomas Kelly, who was 21 when he was reported missing in action.

Althaus recalled that as a boy, he visited Kelly's memorial stone, which has a bomber engraved on it. He began reading up on the lost plane.

"It was a mystery that I discovered really mattered to my extended family," he said.

With help from other relatives, he analyzed historical documents, photos and eyewitness recollections. They weighed sometimes conflicting accounts of where the plane went down. After a four-year investigation, Althaus wrote a report concluding that the bomber likely crashed off Awar Point in what is now Papua New Guinea.

The report was shared with Project Recover, a nonprofit committed to finding and repatriating missing American service members and a partner of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA). A team from Project Recover, led by researchers from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, located the debris field in 2017 after searching nearly 10 square miles of seafloor.

The DPAA launched its deepest-ever underwater recovery mission in 2023. A Navy dive team recovered dog tags, including Darrigan's, partially corroded with the name of his wife, Florence, as an emergency contact. Kelly's ring was recovered. The stone was gone, but...

Take time today to remember those who sacrificed

Memorial Day is a U.S. holiday that's supposed to be about mourning the nation's fallen service members, but it's come to anchor the unofficial start of summer and a long weekend of travel and discounts on anything from mattresses to lawn mowers.

Iraq War veteran Edmundo Eugenio Martinez Jr. said the day has lost so much meaning that many Americans "conflate and mix up Veterans Day, Memorial Day, Armed Forces Day, July Fourth." Social media posts pay tribute to "everyone" who has served, when Memorial Day is about those who died.

For him, it's about honoring 17 U.S. service members he knew who lost their lives.

"I was either there when they died or they were soldiers of mine, buddies of mine," said Martinez, 48, an Army veteran who lives in Katy, Texas, west of Houston. "Some of them lost the battle after the war."

Steve Merando, who has marched in Cold Spring's Memorial Day parade since he was 10 years old, agreed. "People forget that Memorial Day is supposed to be a memorial to those who were killed in action while serving their country," said Merando, who served with the U.S. Navy Seabees from 1969 to 1973, including in Vietnam and Thailand. He played Little League baseball with Keith Livermore, one of three Philipstown residents killed in the Vietnam War.

In Memoriam: Philipstown and Beacon

Here is a look at the holiday and how it has evolved:

When is Memorial Day?

It falls on the last Monday of May, which this year is May 26.

In Cold Spring, a parade will begin at 9 a.m. at Stone and Main streets and progress to Cold Spring Cemetery in Nelsonville for a ceremony. Hot dogs and refreshments will follow at the American Legion. Rain or shine.

In Beacon, a ceremony will be held at 11 a.m. at 413 Main St. It will include the dedication of a plaque to mark the 100th anniversary of the Veterans Memorial Building, which was completed in 1925.

Why is Memorial Day celebrated?

It's a day of reflection and remembrance of those who died while serving in the U.S. military. The holiday is observed in part by the National Moment of Remembrance, which encourages all Americans to pause at 3 p.m. for a moment of silence.

What are the origins of Memorial Day?

The holiday's origins can be traced to the American Civil War, which killed more than 600,000 service members - both Union and Confederate - between 1861 and 1865.

The first national observance of what was then called Decoration Day occurred on May 30, 1868, after an organization of Union veterans called for decorating war graves with flowers, which were in bloom.

The practice was already widespread. Waterloo, New York, in Seneca County, began a formal observance on May 5, 1866, and was later proclaimed to be the holiday's birthplace.

Yet Boalsburg, Pennsylvania, traced its first observance to October 1864. And women in some Confederate states were decorating graves before the war's end.

David Blight, a Yale history professor, points to May 1, 1865, when as many as 10,000 people, many of them Black, held a parade, heard speeches and dedicated the graves of Union dead in Charleston, South Carolina.

A total of 267 Union troops had died at a Confederate prison and were buried in a mass grave. After the war, members of Black churches buried them in individual graves.

"What happened in Charleston does have the right to claim to be first, if that matters," Blight told the Associated Press in 2011.

When did Memorial Day become a source of contention?

As early as 1869, The New York Times wrote that the holiday could become "sacrilegious" and no longer "sacred" if it focused more on pomp, dinners and oratory.

In an 1871 Decoration Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery, abolitionist Frederick Douglass said he feared Americans were forgetting the Civil War's impetus: enslavement.

"We must never forget that the loyal soldiers who rest beneath this sod flung themselves between the nation and the nation's destroyers," Douglass said.

His concern...

Protestors gather at academy gates, Garrison's Landing

President Donald Trump used the first service academy commencement address of his second term on Saturday (May 25) to laud graduating West Point cadets for their accomplishments and career choice while also veering sharply into a campaign-style recitation of political boasts and long-held grievances.

"In a few moments, you'll become graduates of the most elite and storied military academy in human history," Trump said at the ceremony at Michie Stadium. "And you will become officers of the greatest and most powerful army the world has ever known. And I know, because I rebuilt that army, and I rebuilt the military. And we rebuilt it like nobody has ever rebuilt it before in my first term."

Wearing a red "Make America Great Again" hat, the Republican president told the 1,002 members of the class of 2025 at the U.S. Military Academy that the U.S. is the "hottest country in the world" and underscored an "America First" ethos for the military.

"We're getting rid of distractions and we're focusing our military on its core mission: crushing America's adversaries, killing America's enemies and defending our great American flag like it has never been defended before," Trump said. He later said that "the job of the U.S. armed forces is not to host drag shows or transform foreign cultures," a reference to drag shows on military bases that Democratic President Joe Biden's administration halted after Republican criticism.

Trump said the cadets were graduating at a "defining moment" in Army history as he accused political leaders in the past of sending soldiers into "nation-building crusades to nations that wanted nothing to do with us." He said he was clearing the military of transgender ideas, "critical race theory" and types of training he called divisive and political.

Past administrations, he said, "subjected the armed forces to all manner of social projects and political causes while leaving our borders undefended and depleting our arsenals to fight other countries' wars."

At times, his remarks were indistinguishable from those heard in a political speech, from his assessment of the country when he left office in January 2021 to his review of November's victory over Democrat Kamala Harris, arguing that voters gave him a "great mandate" and "it gives us the right to do what we want to do."

Frequently turning the focus on himself, he reprised some of his campaign rally one-liners, including the claim that he has faced more investigations than mobster Al Capone.

At one point the crowd listened as Trump, known for his off-message digressions, referred to "trophy wives" and yachts during an anecdote about the late real estate developer William Levitt, a billionaire friend who Trump said lost momentum.

But the president also took time to acknowledge the achievements of individual graduates.

He summoned Chris Verdugo to the stage and noted that he completed an 18.5-mile march on a freezing night in January in just two hours and 30 minutes. Trump had the nationally ranked men's lacrosse team, which held the No. 1 spot for a time in the 2024 season, stand and be recognized. Trump also brought Army's star quarterback, Bryson Daily, to the lectern, where the president praised Daily's "steel"-like shoulder. Trump later used Daily as an example to make a case against transgender women participating in women's athletics.

In a nod to presidential tradition, Trump also pardoned about half a dozen cadets who had faced disciplinary infractions.

He told graduates that "you could have done anything you wanted, you could have gone anywhere." and that "writing your own ticket to top jobs on Wall Street or Silicon Valley wouldn't be bad. But I think what you're doing is better."

His advice to them included doing what they love, thinking big, working hard, holding on to their culture, keeping faith in America and taking risks.

"This is a time of incredible change and we do not need an officer corps o...

Voters also approve $98,150 annually for Butterfield Library

Haldane

Voters approved the Haldane Central School District's proposed $30.2 million budget by a vote of 474-125, or 79 percent. Turnout was 13 percent.

Voters also approved spending $205,000 on school buses (476-120) and increasing the maximum amount held in the Facilities Improvement Reserve Fund to $3 million and its duration by 10 years (480-117).

In addition, the ballot included a proposition to support the Butterfield Library with $98,150 in taxes annually, which was approved, 508-86. Voters approved referendums in 2015 to provide $73,150 annually to the library and in 2006 to provide $276,000 annually.

The Haldane spending includes a 2.8 percent tax-levy increase. Using the state's tax-cap formula, the district could have asked for a 3.38 levy increase. Board members debated this spring whether to go "to cap" but opted to forgo about $132,000 in revenue after voters last year approved an increase of 6.95 percent over three years to pay for $28.4 million in capital improvements. State aid for 2025-26 will be $4.55 million, an increase of $73,000 (1.6 percent).

The budget includes funding for a science-of-reading curriculum; software to improve student outcomes; a new pre-K program; special education funding for out-of-district placements; increased field trip spending; a softball field dugout; classroom air conditioners to comply with New York state's maximum temperature requirement; auditorium stage and performing arts equipment; and a transportation system analysis.

The district estimates taxes on a home valued at $500,000 will rise by $197 annually.

Sean McNall and Ezra Clementson ran unopposed to retain their seats on the five-member school board. Clementson will serve his second, 3-year term and McNall his third.

Garrison

Garrison district voters approved its proposed $14.7 million by a vote of 210-64, or 77 percent. Turnout was 12.5 percent.

By a 232-41 vote, district residents also approved a proposition that allows the district to enter into a contract for two to five years to continue sending high school students to Putnam Valley. Garrison includes grades K-8; its older students can attend Putnam Valley, Haldane or O'Neill.

There were two open seats on the seven-member board, and two incumbent candidates. Sarah Tormey was elected to her third, 3-year term and Kent Schacht to his second full term after being elected in 2021 to fill a vacancy.

The tax-levy increase of 3.58 percent was far below the 5.78 percent allowed for the district under the state's tax-cap formula. To avoid raising the levy further, Garrison administrators proposed paying for two pilot programs - an armed police officer and a lunch program - with $1.4 million in savings. State aid will be $1.23 million, an increase of $51,000 (4.4 percent).

With the budget approval, the district will hire a Special Patrol Officer, a retired police officer whose role would be limited to security. (A School Resource Officer, or SRO, which Haldane has, is a sheriff's deputy who also teaches classes on topics such as personal safety, cyberbullying and drug awareness.)

Student lunches will be available Monday through Thursday; on Fridays, the school will continue to sell pizza as a fundraiser.

The district estimates that a Philipstown home assessed at $300,250 will see its taxes rise by $306 annually.

$1.4 million in savings. State aid will be $1.23 million, an increase of $51,000 (4.4 percent).

With the budget approval, the district will hire a Special Patrol Officer, a retired police officer whose role would be limited to security. (A School Resource Officer, or SRO, which Haldane has, is a sheriff's deputy who also teaches classes on topics such as personal safety, cyberbullying and drug awareness.)

Student lunches would be available Monday through Thursday; on Fridays, the school will continue to sell pizza as a fundraiser.

The district estimates that a Philipstown home assessed at $300,250 will s...

Voters approve 5.09 percent tax-levy increase

Voters on Tuesday (May 20) approved $87.7 million in spending for the Beacon City School District for the 2025-26 academic year by a wide margin. The vote was 805-240, or 77 percent approval. Turnout was about 6 percent.

The budget includes a 5.09 percent tax-levy increase, just under the maximum allowed for the district by New York State. The levy will generate more than $50 million in property taxes.

At $31.6 million - an increase of $572,000 (1.9 percent) - state aid makes up the bulk of the remaining revenue. The district will spend $2.5 million of its savings in 2025-26, an increase of $500,000 over this year.

District officials say the budget will allow them to maintain improvements made in recent years, including smaller elementary class sizes, increased mental health support for students and a full-day pre-K program. For the first time, the district will launch a summer workshop program for incoming high school students and create an in-school mental health clinic at Rombout Middle School. It also will add teachers for elementary students struggling in math and reading and hire a part-time elementary speech instructor.

While the proposed levy increase is more than 5 percent, the addition of new households to the tax rolls means homeowners' bills may not go up by the same percentage. The district estimates that the owner of a $420,200 home (the median value) in Beacon will see their taxes increase by $240 annually.

In addition, voters returned Meredith Heuer and Semra Ercin to the nine-member board. Heuer will begin her fourth, 3-year term, while Ercin will serve her first full term after being elected in 2023 to complete the final two years of a vacated seat. The seat held by Alena Kush, who did not run for a second term, will be filled by Catherine Buscemi, who also ran unopposed.