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An online petition is calling for a memorial sign honoring a nun who was killed on a Water Mill street to be reinstated.
The petition, titled “Keep the memory of Sister Jackie,” had received more than 1,200 online signatures as of Tuesday afternoon, after being posted on the petitions page of the political action website MoveOn.org last week and referenced in the comments section of 27east.com stories about the controversy that had arisen over the sign.
The petition—which, in fact, was reportedly created by a 27east.com commenter—asks that the street sign at the intersection of Rose Hill Road and Montauk Highway remain adorned with a blue memorializing sign dubbing the road “Sister Jackie’s Way,” as it had been for the 10 months. The sign commemorated the life of Sister Jacqueline Walsh, a Catholic nun who was fatally struck by a car on Rose Hill Road in 2012. The driver of the car fled the scene and has still not been caught.
The memorial sign was removed last week by Southampton Town Highway Superintendent Alex Gregor because the nuns who live at the Sisters of Mercy convent on the road asked him to take it down, after other residents of the road said they found the reminder of the grisly incident uncomfortable.
Mr. Gregor did not ask permission from the Town Board to dedicate the street before he put the sign up last fall. He maintains that he did not have to get permission, since it wasn’t officially renaming the street, which still bears the standard green Rose Hill Road sign at the intersection.
But town officials have said otherwise—and this week Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst said the Town Board would entertain proper proposals to dedicate the roadway.
“Anybody who wants can come to the Town Board and say, ‘Could you put this sign up in honor of this person,’” Ms. Throne-Holst said. “That would allow for the public hearing process and so forth. If it had happened that way from the beginning, we wouldn’t be where we are now.”
After some area residents complained about the sign, the town supervisor’s office sent out a survey to 43 homeowners on the road asking if they minded the sign. Just 21 homeowners responded, but 17 of them said they would prefer that the sign be removed.
When Mr. Gregor refused to take it down, Parks Department employees removed it at the behest of the Town Board. But Mr. Gregor subsequently retrieved the sign and put it back up. Mr. Gregor took the sign down again after, he says, the nuns told him they didn’t like the negative attention it was generating.
The head-butting over the sign was picked up by News 12 and New York City newspapers, and later went national, even being discussed jokingly on the cable show “Chelsea Lately.”
The vast majority of those who clicked their support for the online petition appear to be from western Suffolk and Nassau County—and from as far away as Texas. Many have posted comments with their e-signatures that say they knew or were taught by Sister Jackie, who worked in a Syosset parish and was visiting the order’s convent in the Hamptons on a retreat when she was killed by the hit-and-run driver.
“Sr. Jackie was the most wonderful person in the world,” wrote Janice Boyd, from Plainview, on the petition. “She was a true gift from God. Please don’t take away the sign.”
on Aug 13, 2014