Letter: Too little care for LI history
The Milleridge Inn in Jericho on May 26, 2015. The inn, which dates to the 1600s, was purchased in April by Kimco Realty, a New Hyde Park-based real estate investment trust. Credit: Barry Sloan
Glumly do I concede that a recent letter writer might be right about the fate of Jericho's early history ["Too late to save Jericho's history," Oct. 28]. But ultimately, a deeply embedded culture of public ignorance and apathy are destroying our area's historical legacy as effectively as any bulldozer or wrecking ball.
Over the years, I've met scores of residents who live within three miles of the Milleridge and Maine Maid inns who have never heard of Valentine Hicks, Elias Hicks, or the Quaker settlement of our area's towns and their role in the movements to establish religious freedom and abolish slavery.
It galls me that hardly two weeks pass when I don't meet someone who's lived in the community for more than a decade and doesn't know we have a history museum. Every year, we receive about 650 elementary school students and several hundred patrons -- including many out-of-staters and foreign tourists. People who run other historical societies, museums and historic sites report the same public ignorance and apathy.
The letter writer was correct when she noted that "the time to have preserved history was before the was sold." But preservationism is only successful when the public knows that there is a history to preserve and cares enough to undertake the effort to save it.
Paul Manton, Levittown
Editor's note: The writer is the president of the Levittown Historical Society & Museum.
