Confession Of An Uneducated Man

As I was sailing this week a friend called me an "uneducated man". Yet up until that point, I thought I had one of the finest educations, thanks to my parents giving me the freedom to study whatever I wanted at George Washington University. However, the way I processed the condescending tone in which he scolded me, the phrase,"uneducated man," stuck in my craw.

The truth is I am an uneducated man because there is so much to learn and now at 64 I do not have a lifetime to learn it.

Throughout the years I have had the privilege to interview local East End legends, men and women who created businesses as simple as Iacono Farm's chicken to Tate's cookies.

I have also had one-on-ones with U.S. senators, presidential candidates, congressmen, judges and local town supervisors all giving me a peek into their political wisdom. I remember listening in a room of less than 7 to George Soros and Elizabeth Warren explaining things about the very new President Obama before doing their fascinating forum at Guild Hall.

At the East Hampton Jewish Center, Professor Gideon Rose explained the world situation as seen by someone who served with the National Security Agency before heading back to Princeton. Or even the night I was assigned to go to a Southampton dinner party to hear 6 Nobel Prize winners talk about the future of medicine.

Covering Michael Milken's "rain delayed" tennis event for prostate cancer at the Ross School gave me an opportunity to listen to both him and Charles Koch talk about "things" — and, lastly, spending one afternoon with a very ill Ed Koch, talking about voting districts, evolved into so much more as my wife, Cindi, and I stayed for more than 3 hours.

What I am saying is the more I learned, the less I knew about stuff; perhaps before I met these folks, things I never knew even existed. In the last year, respected Southampton resident Tate King of North Sea Farms passed away. A simple man who sat me in his kitchen and gave me his version of East End history from World War II to 2007. He had as much wisdom as anyone I have ever met. Who can forget a man saying, "Most of my life I had mostly the change in my pocket, now they tell me my land's worth $23M. But how can you sell the land where your mother and father and brother are buried?"

At a Pierson High School celebration a 100-years old Mrs. Hands — who was a teenager during the 1938 Hurricane and actually in Pierson School at the time — recalled in vivid detail watching The Whaling Church Steeple hover in the air above the church before crashing down.

I had the privilege to sit with fishing legend Frank Mundus on his boat and have him tell me his life story. He teared when he talked about his daughter and wife waiting for him at the dock to come back from a long fishing charter because they lived on the boat with him. "I bought my house in Montauk, soon after that," he recalled.

I suppose I could go on and on but my point is this: Reporting stuff and covering people and events on the East End has been a treasure of memories and a special education. I have met some jerks, and many brilliant minds. Hardworking folk, and trust fund folk, yet everyone had something to say. When I lived in Montauk, in a trailer at Ditch Plains Beach for 4 years, I walked my beagle Bo along the beach on many cloudless, clear nights with all those "Montauk stars" so visible over the dark ocean. Looking up at all those stars made me realize that there is just so much I know I will never know.

That is the confession of this uneducated man.