| 1977
A Piper Comanche twin-engine plane
crashed into a factory yard on 129th Street, shortly after take-off from
Flushing Airport at the start of the year. It would ignite a
civic battle over the future of the airfield....
John J. Santucci,
a south Queens state senator, was named district attorney of Queens,
replacing Nicholas Ferraro, who resigned to become a New York
State Supreme Court judge....
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Tribune Editor Gary Ackerman stepped down from his newspaper position to
announce his candidacy for Queens councilman at large. The announcement
made the Feb. 25 front page.
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A federal investigation into alleged
misappropriation of clients’ funds from the estates of clients he
represented resulted in an indictment of City Councilman Matthew Troy....
A 285-count indictment against the
developers of Village Mall in Bayside and Hillcrest was dropped
in January by Jamaica Supreme Court....
Demolition of the
U.S. Pavilion in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park began in
February as the wrecking equipment arrived on the site....
The drive to save the Fire Department’s
Rescue Co. 4 succeeded with the announcement that the city had
decided to keep the unit at its Woodside site....
In February, Tribune founder and
publisher Gary Ackerman put to rest months of speculation and
formally announced his candidacy for the post of councilman-at-large for
Queens....
Ackerman stepped down as editor of the
paper in order to run for the Democratic nomination, and David Oats
was named executive editor of the Tribune. In a packed auditorium
in historic Flushing Town Hall, Ackerman addressed 400 cheering
supporters, saying that he hoped to “fill the vacancy created six
years ago when Eugene Mastropieri was elected
councilman-at-large.” The remark was a reference to Ackerman’s
charge that Mastropieri had an over 87 percent absentee rate as a
councilman, and that Daily News investigations revealed that the
incumbent did not even reside in Queens....
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A week after a plane crash at Flushing
Airport left one person dead, questions surrounded the airfield’s
future.
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The Astoria office of City Councilman Peter
Vallone was firebombed in March. The fire completely destroyed the
councilman’s legal files and personal papers and the office was
gutted....
The Tribune ran a four-page
section on the Concorde controversy, presenting both points of
view, pro and con, concerning the debate about permitting the SST to
land at JFK....
The Tribune reported in late March
that “Fear Stalks Forest Hills,” in the aftermath of a brutal
and mysterious shooting, in which a gunman went up to a parked car at
One Station Square and killed a girl sitting in the front seat. The
killer was believed to be also responsible for a string of
similar murders in other parts of the city. People were afraid to
leave home at night, the article reported. Police said the killer was
“deranged.”...
The Tribune reported that the
United States Tennis Association was looking into the possibility of
moving the U.S. Open championships out of the venerable West Side
Tennis Club in Forest Hills and into a new tennis center, to be
constructed around the rarely-used Louis Armstrong Stadium in Flushing
Meadows....
The offices of Tribune publisher Gary
Ackerman were broken into in late March and ransacked. Few items of
real value were taken, but the perpetrators appeared to have gone
through personal and business files, even taking apart pictures on the
wall. Police termed the break-in “suspicious and perhaps politically
motivated.”
Ackerman was in a heated contest at the
time with two opponents for the borough-wide seat of
councilman-at-large....
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The final days of the World’s Fair’s
U.S. Pavilion were preserved in the Tribune as the building was
being demolished,
a feature that ran on the
Trib’s April 12
front page.
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The Tribune ran a photo essay,
“Requiem for the Pavilion,” detailing the final days of the
once-stately U.S. Pavilion as it was being demolished....
In May, Flushing Airport appeared
to face a turbulent future after the fatal crash of a light plane into a
Flushing home that killed the pilot....
Five hundred people demonstrated in
Flushing against pornography and the restricted zoning proposal before
the City Planning Commission....
For a few hours in June, a Queens man had
the whole city holding its breath. Twenty-seven-year-old Hollis resident
George Willig, like a human fly, climbed the entire
110-story-high sheer wall of the World Trade Center....
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John
Santucci, a South Queens Senator,
was named Queens District Attorney.
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In mid-August, police captured David
Berkowitz in Yonkers and brought the 24-year-old postal worker,
under heavy security, to the Queens House of Detention and Criminal
Court for arraignment. The Tribune obtained a copy of a letter
that Berkowitz wrote to Captain Joseph Borrelli of Queens
Homicide before his arrest in which he wrote, “The wemon (sic) of
Queens are prettyist (sic) of all. It must be the water they drink. To
the people of Queens, I love you.”
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