2017

Year in Review

The 2017 season proved far more eventful than expected. Started out as usual with marching in the Westhampton Beach St. Patrick’s Day parade and returning to the Neshaminy reenactment. And we attended many educational programs at schools, the Smithtown Historical Society, and, after a decade-long absence, we returned to Old Bethpage Village Restoration where we performed for over 2,000 schoolchildren with our fellow, local Civil War living historians. In April, Your Correspondent visited Vicksburg, a site not often visited by Easterners and the following month we paid our second visit to Maple Grove Cemetery in Queens that, unfortunately, was a washout. The 67th NY and just about everyone in our local Civil War reenacting community received their 15 seconds of fame thanks to playing extras in the Long Island produced CBS sitcom, Kevin Can Wait. We also received an unexpected and unwelcomed dose of excitement at Cedar Creek in October which had to be evacuated thanks to an unexploded pipe bomb discovered on the grounds. Returning to the positive, in November we celebrated our 20th anniversary in style with a grand ball at the Smithtown Historical Society with all our local friends in the community and after a thankfully uneventful (but rainsoaked) return to Remembrance Day, we closed the season with our first period Christmas celebration at St. John’s Church in Oakdale. What a way of ending of two decades of Living History.