Love Story: Ice cream shop meeting foretold sweet future

Nellie Edwards talks about meeting her husband, Carlton (known to most as “Hub”), and their life together in Setauket.

Hub and I met in 1952. I was 16, one of 13 children, and living with my family in Huntington. My last name was Sands. Hub was 22 and had just been discharged from the Army after serving in Korea. We met at Wheatley’s Ice Cream Shop in Amityville. I was with friends, and he was a customer who arrived after us. Wearing his Army fatigues, he was so handsome (and still is at 90!).

Hub happened to know one of my friends. When I came over with my ice cream soda, I was introduced. I liked him right away. He asked if he could call me in three days. I said yes and waited by the phone. Sure enough, he called. We made plans to go to the movies. We saw a Western, a category I later learned Hub loves. (He still has the cowboy channel on every day.) 

We started dating regularly. Two years later, while Hub and I were in front of my family’s house, he asked me to marry him. He gave me a pretty engagement ring. I said yes and ran inside to show my parents. We were married Feb. 26, 1956, in my family’s home, which was beautifully decorated for the occasion. We eventually went to Niagara Falls for a honeymoon.

We lived with Hub’s widowed mother and extended family in a large apartment house in an area known as Chicken Hill in Setauket. It was aptly named because nearly all the residents raised chickens. Most memorable was an elderly man who was known to everyone as Uncle Beetle. He lived on the first floor of the apartment house and regularly used a fishing pole through a window to hook a chicken to cook up for dinner.

We lived in Chicken Hill for six years before buying a house on Christian Avenue in an area then called West Setauket. It’s still our home today. Our first son, Gregory, was born in 1957 and our second son, Blake, in 1963.

After working at a car dealership in Patchogue for 20 years, Hub joined Three Village Central School District as a custodian, working there for 40 years before retiring in 2000. While there, he started a community basketball program and ran it for 15 years.

I worked as a saleswoman at Swezey’s Department Store in Setauket for 12 years. After that location was closed, I went to work at Children’s Playground, a day care center at our church. For the past 16 years, I’ve been employed at Setauket Elementary School as an after-school teacher for its SACC program, short for “school-aged child care."

Hub and I belong to the Bethel AME Church in Setauket. I’ve been a member since we got married, and Hub has been a member longer, since 1934. In addition to singing in the choir, I belong to the Mary Eato Missionary Society and started a children’s chorus. Hub handles many of the maintenance chores at the church.

Hub has been a member of the Irving Hart American Legion Post in Setauket for 64 years and speaks every Sunday afternoon at the Three Village Historical Society about one of its current exhibits, the history of the Chicken Hill area.

Hub and I have been blessed with two grandchildren and have enjoyed a wonderful life together.

— With Ann Donahue-Smukler