Serving Port Washington
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Friday, February 10, 2017
Vol. 2, No. 6
Port WashingtonTimes 3 I #
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PAGES 35-46
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Historic Baxter House heavily damaged in fire Cause cannot be determined: officials BY ST E P H E N R OM A N O
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE PORT WASHINGTON FIRE DEPARTMENT
The historic Baxter House was heavily damaged in a fire early Sunday morning.
The historic Baxter House was heavily damaged in a ďŹ re early Sunday morning in Baxter Estates. No one was injured in the blaze at 15 Shore Road that started around 3:30 a.m. and took ďŹ reďŹ ghters four hours to get under control, said Brian Waterson, chief of the Port Washington Fire Department. The Nassau County Fire Marshal’s OďŹƒce said the cause of the ďŹ re could not be determined. James Hickman, Investigations Division supervisor for the Fire Marshal’s OďŹƒce, said the formal report
has not been ďŹ led yet, but the investigation could not determine a cause. Hickman said the north side of the house was unsafe to enter because of the extensive damage, but the south side, which wasn’t damaged as badly, was safe. “The north end of the house sustained major damage,â€? Hickman said. “I would say the north end is not salvageable.â€? The village retained an engineer to survey the condition of the property. Because the house is surrounded by a temporary chain-link fence, the Continued on Page 65
Gunther Lawrence of Port dies at 89 Synagogue, who came up with the idea of the Holocaust Menorah, which he presented to Pope Gunther Lawrence, a long- John Paul II, died on Jan. 24 in time Port Washington resident Seattle. He was 89. The menorah, which was and member of the Community
BY ST E P H E N ROMANO
presented to the Vatican in 1999, now sits in the Vatican gardens, and others have been donated to 12 Catholic dioceses throughout the country. The Community Synagogue in Port Washington also has one. As the executive director of the Interreligious Information Center in Port Washington, he helped organize the ďŹ rst Catholic-
Jewish Lay Conference in Rome in 2007, where he presented Pope Benedict XVI with a miniature version of the original ďŹ vefoot menorah. “Most of the things he did, he did for the welfare of the Jewish community,â€? said Bert Tobin, a longtime friend who worked on the menorah. Lawrence, who was born in Berlin in 1927, ed Nazi Germa-
ny with his family in 1935 and arrived in the United States in 1936, landing in New York City. His father, Julius, who was a dentist in Berlin, was unable to practice in New York because he was a refugee, so he began working with Lawrence’s mother, Lucie Sobel, making gloves, said Leah Lawrence, his wife. Lawrence met Leah, who Continued on Page 75
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