December 10, 2014 • www.theobserver.com • Vol CXXVII, No. 29
COVERING: BELLEVILLE • BLOOMFIELD
Church will be restored
• EAST NEWARK • HARRISON • KEARNY • LYNDHURST • NORTH ARLINGTON • NUTLEY
By Ron Leir Observer Correspondent BELLEVILLE – A local landmark church that was badly damaged by Hurricane Sandy in 2012 is getting government aid for a major fix. In fact, it received slightly more than double the amount it requested. The New Jersey Historic Trust has awarded La Senda Antigua Church, which owns and occupies the former Dutch Reformed Church of the Second River in Belleville, awarded the church a Sandy Disaster Relief Grant for Historic Properties of $250,000. Although there is a $150,000 cap placed on historic-related grants to religious facilities – and that’s the amount for which the church applied – Larry Hajna, spokesman for the state Dept. of Environmental Protection, which oversees the Trust, said that the state issued a “waiver.” “It was felt by our reviewers that it wasn’t reasonable to expect that the local congregation could raise the balance of the money needed to facilitate the repairs,” Hajna said. “We want to thank God -- it’s a miracle,” said the Rev. Miguel Ortiz, the church’s pastor. “Everybody kept closing the doors on us until now. We hope that with the restoration, this will bring a good feeling to the community.” see CHURCH page
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Stranger than fiction
Photo courtesy of Albert H. Hopper Monuments
The original monument, as found in the Meadowlands, awaiting its refurbishing.
By Karen Zautyk Observer Correspondent KEARNY– or nearly eight decades, Theodore Zetterlund of Kearny lay in an unmarked grave in Holy Cross
F
But it was never installed. And for most of those intervening years, it was missing. How it came to be found and at long last placed where Zetterlund rests is an incredible tale -- a fantastic story
Cemetery, North Arlington. This past Sunday, 79 years to the day that he was killed by a bandit, he finally got his headstone. His widow had bought it a few months after his death.
2 teens are charged in Kearny arson By Karen Zautyk Observer Correspondent
KEARNY – A cooperative investigation by the Kearny Fire Department and Police Department into a devastating house fire on Garfield Ave. last month has resulted in the arrest of
two township youths on arson charges. The suspects, aged 15 and 16, are both students at Kearny High School. After being taken into custody last week, they were remanded to the Hudson County Youth House. Police Chief John Dowie characterized the boys’ actions
as “just a random arson attack” as opposed to the targeting of specific victims. The two-alarm blaze gutted a single-family home on Garfield Ave. at the corner of Elm St. on Nov. 10. It was reported at 3 a.m. and quickly spread through the structure. The occupants, a
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involving a kayak and killie fish and an island that once was not an island and weeds and mud and water and a Kearny Police Department murder file and a case of the see HEADSTONE page
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man and a woman, were able to escape, but the man suffered minor smoke inhalation after he reentered the house to rescue three dogs, Dowie said. KFD Chief Inspector John Donovan, who conducted the initial investigation, see ARSON page
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