“The first annual Community Picnic and Field Day Saturday, sponsored by Montauk Youth Inc., has been termed a success,” The East Hampton Star reported on October 2, 1980. The newspaper added rather poetically that many local families had taken part despite the fields at Montauk County Park having been “windswept.”
Baking and cooking contests for the best homemade foods were a hit. The Star listed winners for best cake (13-year-old Donna Phillippe, Ellie Barry, and 12-year-old Melissa Weldon), best cheesecake (Edward Flynn, Carol Luksic, and Audrey Mardoza), and best bread (Loretta Weldon, Winefred Gilmartin, and Kathy Biondo). Ellen Johns was recognized for a trifecta of pie, jam, and sweet pickles, Margaret Stevens and Paulette Phillipe for pies, Nancy Lucas and Ruth Herbert for jams, and Anita Peel and Carla Converse for sweet pickles. (Many of those names will be familiar to many Montaukers, as will those of the judges: Mary Fallon, Deborah Skippon, Marjorie Bellefountaine, and Frances Ecker.)
Earlier, in 1964, the nonprofit Montauk Youth organization had opened a nightclub for young people – the Cola Copa – in a motel on West Lake Drive called the Hawthorne Harbor. The club, which was later moved to a Montauk Manor stable and regularly featured a band called the Statesmen, was the brainchild of Lindsay Maxwell, who was 21 at the time. Cola Copa offered 17- to 21-year-olds a spot where they could dance and socialize without alcohol. It eventually closed, but the organization’s Field Day, which was geared to a younger crowd, has endured for almost half a century, at times drawing hundreds to the picturesque, indeed sometimes windswept grounds of Third House.
Field Day highlights over the years have included turtle races and frog jumping contests, a greased pig chase, baby crawls, tugs of war, bucket brigades, corn husking, pumpkin decorating, bubble-blowing, and baking and cooking contests, sack races, egg-and-spoon races, pie throws (at such local luminaries as Jack Perna and Dan Vasti), bounce castles, obstacle courses, live music, magicians, and storytellers, and firehose demonstrations.
The Community Pride Council of Montauk helped sponsor Field Day for a time before disbanding in 1986. At some point the Concerned Citizens of Montauk joined Montauk Youth in sponsoring the event: in 2009, the Star reported that Peter Lowenstein, a private pilot, flew over the festivities, where a human “40” had been formed to celebrate CCOM’s 40th anniversary.
Montauk Youth and the Concerned Citizens continue to co-sponsor Field Day. This year’s will be held on Sunday, October 19, from noon to 4 p.m. It’s an enjoyable way to breathe in fresh air, beautiful scenery, and small-town companionship, and to practice good sportsmanship.
According to Wendy Boerem of Montauk Youth, some highlights will be both traditional and vegetarian/vegan chili and soups, cotton candy and popcorn, live music, bounce houses, raffles, and the usual field races. The pie victim will be Montauk School Superintendent Josh Odom.
“It’s a super fun event,” she said.
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