Email-A-Friend

Printable Version

Comment on this Article

BACK IN THE DAY - 05/18/2008

NORTH JERSEY – Here’s a look at what was published in Suburban Trends in mid-May over the years.

1963 - Saucer full of secrets?
Here’s a freakish letter to the editor in the May 12, 1963 Suburban Trends:    

Dear Editor:
We ask your assistance in contacting witnesses to the flight of so-called Unidentified Flying Objects in your area. Per-sons who might have witnessed an unidentified flying object in the area since March 1, 1963 are being sought by the National Investigations Commission on Aerial Phenomena. Anyone who observed the object is asked to send a report and diagram of their observation to NICAP at 5108 S. Findlay St., Seattle 18, Wash.

Robert J. Gribble
Director

St. Elsewhere: The hospital that never was
Forty-five years ago, there were plans to construct a hospital in West Milford, but they must have fallen through somehow.

Dedication ceremonies were held on Saturday, May 11 at the 12-acre site of the proposed Lakecrest Hospital on Union Valley Road.

The event was the first public step in the erection of the proposed 100-bed, $2 million hospital.
Things were moving quickly. Just the prior November, township officials gave preliminary approval. Members of the Lakecrest Foundation said it would be three years before the hospital was operational.

“Interested citizens saw the need and want to meet it,” said members of the foundation that was 60 members strong. There were also 100 dedicated women in the foundation’s auxiliary unit that were dedicated to fundraising.

“Edward Armstrong, borough postmaster, and chairman of the program committee for Lakecrest, said the members viewed the daily needs met by Dr. Arthur Zampella at Idylease Convalescent Home, plus the overcrowding at Chilton, Franklin, and St. Anthony's in Warwick, the hospitals that service the 79-square-mile township, and decided it was time to do something,” it was reported.

In getting the committee together to lay the groundwork for the facility to service not only West Milford, but also other regional areas, John Bruno, a foundation member said, “There was no bickering and no selfish motivation on the part of anyone." He added, “We all take it very seriously, and now that the groundwork is laid we want to take steps forward."

Site near Idylease
One of the guiding lights to the founding of the hospital was Dr. Arthur Zampella, head of Idylease, who, members said, had brought the project that far, and pushed it farther every day.

According to Dr. Zampella, funds from governmental agencies were being applied for to cover one-third of the $2 million cost. The rest of the money was supposed to be raised through private contributors and the towns that were to be serviced by the hospital that never came to be.

He said that steps had already been taken in Trenton with the State Department of Institutions and Agencies, the licensing body for such institutions, to obtain necessary recognition.

The next step, according to the doctor, was to choose a design and appoint an architect. He added that it was most likely that the new building would be a hospital-in-the-round, “the latest technique in this type of construction and medical care,” it was reported.

In determining the needs for a hospital, committee members agreed that because of existing services there was a definite need that had to be met. They also wanted to go beyond meeting the existing needs. Also to be included in the complex was a village for the elderly to encompass 40 individual houses on a 20-acre site off Union Valley Rd. Target date for completion of this phase was by the beginning of 1964.

The major concern was raising the funds for the hospital. Committees were appointed to cover every segment of the township population and businesses. Fundraising efforts were also planned in Rockaway, Jefferson, Butler, Wanaque, Vernon, Kinnelon, Bloomingdale, Ringwood and Franklin. The hospital was to serve the 60,000 people who lived in the area.

The West Milford site was chosen, according to Dr. Zampella, because of its centralized location. Some of the other determining factors, he said, were the transportation facilities, terrain and especially weather, “since the area is in the heart of the ‘snow belt.’”

“The present plans are viewed by all those working for the hospital as something ‘very realistic’ which they feel that can achieve within a three-year target date. After that time, the present feeling is that they will go right on from there with potential expansion programs, and always driven by the fact that the population here is increasing 100 percent a year,” it was reported.

1973 – Hospital sunk
“Lakecrest Hospital Hit Hard as Federal Funding Plan Ends,” ran the headline 10 years later. What a coincidence that almost exactly 10 years after reporting on the hospital’s genesis we were reporting a serious blow to its progress.

“An administrative damper on hospital construction funds has all but killed chances for the Lakecrest General Hospital here to secure federal monies for a medical facility,” it was reported.

Lakecrest board chairman Peter Thornton called the federal fund termination “somewhat catastrophic.” Paradoxically though, he said the hospital committee had anticipated the cut in federal funds, and said that Lakecrest would not miss money it never had nor was ready to apply for.

Leonard Dileo, the state head of the federal hospital funding program, said that even with a documented need in the upper Passaic County area for a medical facility, approval by his agency, and incorporation into the state master plan as a priority need, the chances were slim that Lakecrest would get any federal money.

The state considered the West Milford area to be “overbedded” – meaning it had enough hospital facilities. The state’s emphasis, if you can believe it, was “on rehabilitation of inner-city facilities,” it was reported.

Chilton Memorial Hospital in Pompton Plains received only one small federal grant in 19 years.

1983 – The Ice Man killeth
“The body found bound and tied in woods along Clinton Road this past Saturday tentatively has been identified as Daniel Deppner of Pompton Lakes,” it was reported from West Milford. “Police said Deppner has been sought since January for the murder of Gary Thomas Smith, who was killed in North Bergen.”

Smith was said to be a native of the Newfoundland area of West Milford Township.

According to North Bergen Police Detective Carl Assenheimer, Deppner had been sought by the Hudson and Passaic County Prosecutor's Offices on a warrant that states, "on Dec. 23,1982, (Deppner) did with'" the jurisdiction of this court, commit the murder of Gary Thomas Smith."

Passaic County Chief Assistant Prosecutor Marty Kane said that due to the decomposition of the body, Deppner's identity was made through fingerprints.

Deppner, said to have been in his late 20s to early 30s, had lived in Pompton Lakes and Bloomingdale.

According to officials, in December 1982 Deppner's residence in Pompton Lakes was raided by police for operating an illegal car ring.

A veteran police officer that we didn’t name called Deppner “one of the bad guys.” He said that Deppner had run with a rough crowd who were “into a lot of different crimes.”

“I’m not surprised to hear about this,” he said.

Deppner was allegedly involved in a six-county stolen car ring that was uncovered in the Pompton Lakes raid the prior December.

Deppner's body was found by an unidentified township resident. Patrolman Gregory Post responded to the scene to find a bag in the woods 50 feet off Clinton Road. The victim's head was protruding from the bag, police said.

Second body found that spring
Deppner's was the second body found in the township that spring. Township Police and Passaic County investigators continued to investigate whose body was found on April 6 off of Route 23. It was a black man who appeared to have been strangled.

Both bodies had their hands and feet bound.

And who was the killer? His identity wouldn’t be found out for another five years, but if you’re a fan of New Jersey history, you already know. It was Richard Kuklinski, AKA “The Ice Man.”

Kuklinski worked for several Italian-American crime families, and claimed to have murdered over 200 people over a career that lasted thirty years. He got his chilling nickname because he would sometimes freeze his victims before disposing of them to confuse investigators about the times of death. He’s been written about extensively in this column before.

1988 - Reporter finds carcass
A Suburban Trends reporter named Bill Ohlmeyer found the decomposing carcass of a calf that was probably killed by a bear off of Otterhole Road in West Milford.

State wildlife officials didn’t believe a bear was responsible for killing wildlife in the area, but Ohlmeyer did.

He said:

I knew in order for the state to take this thing seriously that I would have to find some hard evidence to prove that there really is a bear out there. Obviously, they weren't totally convinced because the trap they erected to catch the bear was removed a week later.

I first saw signs of the bear while the trap was still there. The donuts used for bait on the outside of the trap were eaten. There were bear prints all over the place, but the bear did not even touch the donuts inside the trap which are intended to trap him inside the trap when the gate is sprung. This is just another evidence to make me presume this animal to be unusually smart.

Here is the rest of his story without this columnist’s interruption:

No one would go back there with me without a gun except for one person — Tracy Sanders.

Before I could finish my request for a partner, my longtime friend and fellow woodsman, Tracy said, "If we surprise this bear and he gets a hold of me, just keep clicking off your camera cause there's nothing you'll be able to do for me anyway."

It had just stopped raining when we entered the swamp, and the humidity left behind by the fallen rain was bringing every mosquito in creation from the bottom of the swamp.

We walked with a great deal of caution through the dense swamp following tracks that were made by the bear two weeks ago. We kept an eye on the turkey vultures above, they were our eyes in the sky.

Those scavengers would lead us to any carcass there might be. They share the feasts of the predators. They swooped in through the trees and back up to the sky never seeming to be interested in any one area, making it harder to follow their direction.

A sudden cloud cover had moved in and the swamp grew darker casting an eerie shadow that lingers in our minds to this day. At that point we had found the brook and what appeared to be signs of a death struggle in the leaves.

We continued keeping an eye out for anything that might lead us to the carcass, when I saw it way off in the distance.

I showed Tracy what I saw and he agreed that it could be the bear, but he wasn't sure. I looked up to see where the turkey vultures had gone and that's when Tracy said, in a real quiet whisper, "Billy. Billy, there he is, I see him, he just went through the trees."

Tracy pointed to a spot where he saw a turkey vulture fly up from the ground and then back out towards where we saw the bear. With the bear between us and the farm and armed with nothing more than a 35mm camera, we pushed our way deeper in to the swamp.

Realizing that the bear was circling us, but from a safe distance, and knowing that those turkey vultures probably flew up from the carcass, we knew we had to be getting closer.

We were up to our ankles in water when we saw what appeared to be markings on an old tree made by the bear to mark his territory.

At that moment, Tracy stopped dead in his tracks and said, "Hey Will, you smell that." I said, "Yes I smell it." Both of us knew a stench like that could only come from a dead animal.

Five to 10 feel away from where the bear had marked his territory and about 100 yards from the farm where it was taken, I saw the calf laying there, decomposed and covered with flies.

Email-A-Friend

Printable Version

Comment on this Article