Wallkill Valley Times July 17, 2019

Vol. 37, No. 29 3 WEDNESDAY, JULY 17, 2019 3 ONE DOLLAR State Champs Frozen Junior Page 32 Page 12 w w w .W V T I M ESON L I N E . c om Building Montgomery remembers Marion dept. woes Long-time Montgomery historian passes away at 95 Montgomery’s Interim building inspector reveals inadequacies By LAURA FITZGERALD [email protected] The Town of Montgomery’s interim building inspector painted a bleak picture of the building department at Thursday night’s town meeting when he described it as understaffed, underfunded and unable to keep up with growing commercial development in the town. “You have big projects going on, and they’re going on unmonitored,” Interim Building Inspector James Farr said. Farr said the town is failing to keep up with its commercial inspections. Building code requires “special inspections” be performed by third-party testing agencies retained by the project owner. The inspections include items such as concrete testing, steel inspections, fire code inspections and more. Farr said these inspections are currently not being performed on the 22 active commercial site plans under review. “They need to be reviewed properly,” Farr said. “It protects everybody. It protects the owner; it protects the town to get these things down, and it’s going to get paid for by the applicant.” The town has also failed to complete its basic stormwater inspections. The town is responsible for enforcing its own stormwater and erosion control regulations and should be inspecting all ongoing construction projects to ensure the owner is implementing proper stormwater controls in compliance with the Stormwater Pollution Prevention Plan (SWPP). While Farr said the town engineer Continued on page 5 By LAURA FITZGERALD [email protected] If you want to learn more about Marion Mohr Wild’s legacy, look no further than the Montgomery Village Museum. Her legacy is in the pages and pages of notes written in elegant, slanted cursive, detailing every piece of Montgomery’s history. It’s in the exhibits, some bearing her own memorabilia. It’s in the village itself, every facet of which was touched by her life. Montgomery’s historian for more than 20 years, Wild passed away on July 9. She was 95. A prolific writer who shunned computers, she preferred to hand- write notes that were tucked into filing cabinets and books and exhibits. The notes detailed the most momentous and the most mundane: a World War II-era cake recipe; the price of milk on Jan. 21, 1911; all the businesses who occupied the building formerly known as the Palace Hotel, with dates and owners; an account of a game from the 1930s known as donkey baseball. Wild could find any note or artifact from memory; ask her any fact, and she could point to the exact cabinet and file among a wall of them. Many people who knew her talked about her extraordinary memory and quick wit. “She really was one of the most intelligent people in Montgomery,” long-time friend Michael Mont said. She was passionate and dedicated to the village in which she spent her entire life. She was instrumental in establishing the Montgomery Village Museum in the former Methodist Church, along with the help of girl and Marion Mohr Wild was the grand marshal of the 2015 Saint Patrick’s Ramble. boy scouts earning their gold and eagle awards. Wild’s successor, Brian Fitzpatrick, knows he has big shoes to fill. Fitzpatrick and his wife, Charlene, are currently sorting and compiling Wild’s notes so they can be preserved. While Fitzpatrick has his own plans for the village museum, he said Wild’s passion and dedication for the museum and the village and her breadth of historical knowledge will remain unmatched. “I’m 6’5” but I always looked up to Marion,” Fitzpatrick said. “I wear size 13 shoes, but I will never fill her shoes. It’s impossible.” Long-time friend Marianne Mont said Wild went out of her way to collect information for anyone who asked, whether they wanted to learn more about their family or other historical information. That was the type of person she was; she was kind, outgoing, generous. She knew everyone and made friends Continued on page 19 SERVING CRAWFORD, GARDINER, MAYBROOK, MONTGOMERY, PINE BUSH, SHAWANGUNK, WALDEN AND WALLKILL