The Hudson Independent: News for Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow, NY

Our People

Capturing A Granddaughter's Childhood in Verse

by Andrea Kott

Ron Leonard has spent the past six years putting words in his granddaughter’s mouth. Not really. What Leonard does is write poetry that peeks inside the thoughts and feelings of his youngest grandchild, Caroline Brolly McGraw. While his poems, now self-published in two volumes, trace his adoring observations of Caroline’s first six years, they also open a window into childhood for all children, as well as parents and grandparents.

 “Perhaps you, like me, were too busy being parents and making a living to enjoy the miracle of childhood with your own children,” Leonard writes in the introduction to “Caroline, Caroline, What Are You Thinking?” the first of his two books. “Grandchildren present you with a second chance.”

Our People

Irvington Author Tackles Personal Challenges Head-On

by Andrea Kott

Catherine Johnson, like most mid-lifers, has endured her share of trials. Unlike many, however, the widely published Irvington author mines her experiences for lessons about human nature. While personal struggles stymie some, they pique Johnson’s curiosity about why people behave the way they do.

A Child of History

Dr. Frederick Douglass Opie comes home to Tarrytown

Marcy Gray

It’s hard to ignore the name: Frederick Douglass Opie. It is a noble and lofty name from history ending with, well, the son of Andy Griffith from Mayberry.
Yet it is a name that Fred Opie embodies well: he is a child of African-American history and a child of a small town where the older generation reminds him that they knew his father, his uncles, his cousins.

The reminder is both admonition and blessing: He has been carefully watched all his life.

Easy Rider on Main Street

Bike-riding police officer makes connections in Tarrytown

Robert Kimmel

 For about six months of this past year, Chris Caoili was one of the most visible members of the Tarrytown Police Department. “I couldn’t get from one end of Main Street to the other without talking to someone I knew,” Caoili said recently. The personable veteran police officer was Tarrytown’s single bicycle patrolman during the year’s warmer months.

“You get to meet a lot of people,” Caoili said about his tenure on a police bicycle. “Someone might ask for directions, others have questions about parking meters, about the waterfront, even about my bicycle and I often get greetings from store owners.”

Our People: Just Don't Call Her a Hero

One young woman feels the call to help her community, again and again

Andrea Kott

Call her dedicated. Call her inspiring. You can even call her brave. But don’t call Kelly Murphy a hero.

“I don’t think of myself as a hero,” the volunteer firefighter, ambulance driver and fireboat crew member said. “Just being out there and helping my community, whether on the fire truck, the fireboat or driving the ambulance, I do it because I want to help people."

The Marathon Man

From stay-at-home moms to Olympic athletes,
Mike Barnow coaches and applauds them all

Andrea Kott

Having a conversation with Mike Barnow takes catching him between starts. On a chilly October morning in Rockefeller State Park Preserve, Barnow is focused on his stopwatch and a few runners trying to beat their personal best on a 1.8-mile loop. 

It Takes a Village to Create a Haunted Hayride

Every year, community spirits work hard
to scare and delight

Andrea Kott

As you read this, spirits are stirring in Sleepy Hollow. They’re creeping down the Old Croton Aqueduct, winding through the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery and meandering through Douglas Park, curled up in hollow logs, crouched behind tombstones, perched in trees, waiting for Halloween night, when the forest becomes theirs.

You won’t find them by day, only the human forms they take: innocent-looking Boy Scouts, a village parks director, moms and dads, a nurse, a financial analyst. Some are your neighbors, having lived or worked in this community for years. In fact, they’re among hundreds of spirits behind the annual Sleepy Hollow Haunted Hayride, which takes place on Oct. 26 and 27. Now, don’t worry about their being of another world. For the time being, let’s just give them the credit they deserve.

And they deserve a lot, because producing the Haunted Hayride is a huge undertaking. Just ask Rob Pell, who, by day, is the parks foreman for Sleepy Hollow and has been orchestrating the ¾-mile ride for about 12 of its 16 years. 

Our People: The Art of Making Anything Possible

Jessica Kibel brings a sense of color and
community to the children of Irvington.

Esther Samra
For The Hudson Independent

If you happen to be near an unpainted wall at Dows Lane School in Irvington, watch out. It could be covered with painted fruit baskets or trees by morning. Who is the person bringing so much vibrant color to the school? The woman running around with a paintbrush in her hands is Irvington parent Jessica Kibel.

Before school ended last June, Kibel organized a cafeteria makeover with the help of the third grade and parent volunteers. She wanted to make the cafeteria a more inviting space by erasing the doleful green that had permeated the walls for so many years and by filling it with color.

After securing her labor force as well as a PTSA grant, Kibel set to work and drew freehand a cornucopia of fruits and vegetables. Every morning for 10 days, a class came down and painted, each child concentrating hard on pineapples or potatoes, and enjoying, literally, the fruits of their collective labor. 

OUR PEOPLE: The Candy Couple of Sleepy Hollow

When it comes to sweet things, a husband and wife design team test the limits of good taste.

Andrea Kott

Candy lovers, like the candy they love, come in all shapes and sizes. There are the jellybean, gumdrop and chocolate bar traditionalists; the progressives who crave combinations of chocolate and nuts or lollipops and bubblegum; and, the modernists, who derive their pleasure not just from sugar but from shape: candy necklaces, wax bottles and lips, bubblegum tape, and ring pops. Still, it takes more than taste to sell candy; it takes a gimmick, and it takes someone to invent the gimmick, which is where Roberta and Adam Straus come in.

A Labor of Love

Doula Margaret Yawman Helps ‘One Mom at a Time’

Andrea Kott

If there is one truth about motherhood, it is the surprise with which it arrives. Forget due dates, Lamaze classes and baby showers: there simply is no way to fully prepare for childbirth or brand new motherhood, not the toughest parts, anyway; coping with the physical challenges and changes, the fear, and the depression that can, so inexplicably, erase overwhelming joy.   

Few would disagree that having a baby is one of life’s most profound and joyous experiences. And yet, like so many milestones, it carries certain cultural expectations that can create guilt in women who request an epidural, have trouble nursing, don’t instantly bond with their newborns or are sidelined by anything other than ecstasy.

Margaret Yawman, a Sleepy Hollow resident, mother of four and certified doula, helps women during labor, childbirth and for weeks or months afterward, while they get back on their feet, physically and emotionally. “Women go into labor and birth afraid of what’s going to go wrong,” she said. “They don’t really know what to expect.”