Dan's Papers - December 7, 2007

After the service was over, after the choir sang "Abide With Me," and after about a dozen people tearfully spoke about the dear departed, Paul Monte got up to the podium and announced that we should all go out on the deck and watch as the ashes of our good friend and his beloved uncle Nick, the founder of Gurney's Inn and Spa, were cast upon the Atlantic Ocean. It was 2:30 in the afternoon.

There was a lot of rustling of chairs as the people who had packed themselves into this hall at Gurney's Inn rose slowly to their feet, and pretty soon many of us were out on the deck holding white carnations that were handed out at the glass door, while others stayed inside because of the bitter cold weather, to watch what would be going on down on the beach below from inside while also holding their carnations. The women had dressed up and the men wore sports jackets for the service, but practically nobody had dressed with the appropriate gloves and scarves and overcoats for this climax to the occasion. Hopefully, the casting of the ashes would not be a long drawn out business. People loved Nick and had honored his memory by their presence. This would put an official end to the proceedings, although everyone was asked to join after in the main dining room upstairs for a party in Nick's honor. Nick loved a good party, his nephew Paul had said. And he surely did.

Personally, I decided to stand about ten feet outside the door on the deck by one of the railings. It was indeed quite cold and windy. But I did want to pay my final respects to the man, Nick Monte, who had come to Montauk fifty years before at the age of 34, had bought this small oceanfront hotel called Gurney's, and had over the years built it up to one of the largest resorts and spas in New York State.

Down the steep cliff, out on the beach, we could all soon see a procession of about fifty people, all in black, walk slowly from the ground floor of the Inn out onto the beach and down to the water's edge. This would be the family and closest friends of the departed. There was a very large wreath held high as they walked. It would be cast upon the waters.

We waited out there in the cold. Fifteen minutes passed. People talked about Mr. Monte and how helpful he had been to everyone and about his accomplishments, and every once in a while stared skyward looking for the airplane. We were told a small plane would be flying over the sea. And it would drop the urn containing the ashes into the water and then fly away.

"There it is," somebody said, pointing. It was a small plane, droning along, moving slowly high up in the sky, the sort of plane that would at other times be flying a banner behind it. It struggled along through the clouds heading to the east and toward the Montauk Lighthouse at probably no more than 80 miles per hour.

"He's awfully high," somebody said.

The plane continued on toward the Lighthouse.

"I guess that's not it."

"Maybe it is it, and he's going to turn around and come in lower."

Soon, however, the plane became a speck on the horizon and then disappeared.

All around the Inn now, and there are about eight separate buildings that comprise this huge resort, people now appeared out on various balconies and decks to watch for the plane. All had white carnations.

"Look over there," someone said, and we all looked.

A man wearing just a bathing suit had gotten out of the indoor pool and gone out on the deck to see what was going on. Now he had locked himself out there and was banging on the glass door. Finally someone let him back in.

Another plane appeared high up but heading the other way. That wasn't it either.

Half an hour had now passed, and there was no casting of Mr. Monte's ashes upon the waters just yet. But we soldiered on.

My son David was there with his girlfriend Erika.

"If you wait long enough," he said to me, "you get used to the cold."

It didn't seem that way to me.

At the forty-minute mark, I thought about going back inside for a while to thaw out a bit. But the crowds on each deck, including this one, were now huge, and the glass door to go back inside was lined with several rows of people. So I waited where I was.

And then, just as the sun peeked from behind a cloud, we heard a low rumble from far in back of the Inn. From where we stood, we couldn't see what it was, of course, since it was behind the Inn. But as it grew louder, there was little doubt about it. This was the airplane.

It got louder and closer and louder and closer and then, with a tremendous roar, this red, white and yellow single engine stunt plane burst just over the Inn at about 300 miles per hour and flew straight out over the ocean. It was so low, it seemed to me, you could almost reach up and touch it, though, of course, that was an illusion. But it did rattle the windows.

Over the ocean, glinting in the sun, it banked left, then climbed up to about 1000 feet, and began this great turn out toward the lighthouse and then another turn back toward the Inn. It was going to come back over the Inn the way it had come out, but to the east of the Inn a few hundred yards. What was going on? And then, the pilot apparently flipped a switch inside the stunt plane and a great line of grey smoke began pouring out of the back of it. And it disappeared over the Inn again, leaving this great curving gray line in the sky.

And then it reappeared again, this time to the west of the Inn, heading back out to sea, still blasting this grey smoke out the back and it was now apparent that it was making a giant ring in the sky, embracing both the Inn and a piece of the ocean.

It arrived to where smoke plume had started, and it continued banking into the turn to do it again. Soon it had made three rings there over us. And the grey smoke wafted slowly down.

"You don't think...?" somebody said.

"Don't even go there. Stunt planes blow out this kind of smoke all the time," was a reply.

The stunt plane met up with the beginning of the circle out at sea for one final time, then banked sharply and headed right for us. Some people gave a little shout. But the plane pulled up at the last minute and once again disappeared over to the back of the Inn.

What a show!! is what I thought.

And then I thought, if only Nick were here to see this. He would love it. Well he WAS here!

It also occurred to me that after forty-seven years running the Inn from 1956 to 2003, after Nick had turned the reigns of CEO over to his nephew Paul, he and his living wife Lola moved to a condominium in Las Vegas. There, as we had learned at the ceremony, Nick, at the age of 80, was a busy guy going to all the attractions, the jousts, the volcanoes, waterfalls and falcon shows, and afterwards had often called Paul to tell him about the shows and that he ought to look into them.

Maybe Nick had seen and then planned this stunt plane for his final curtain!

And now we all knew what would happen. There was the roar of the stunt plane at the back of the Inn again, but this time it didn't rise to ear splitting proportions. Instead, the stunt plane gently appeared over the Inn heading back to sea, and when it arrived it glided past the crowd of people on the beach all dressed in black, and then out about a hundred yards until, yes, there it was, this tiny speck dropping down from the bottom.

"It's the urn! It's the urn!" people shouted.

And so it was, landing with a white splash way out there.

With that, the stunt plane suddenly whipped into a final salute. It headed straight up, went into a stall, emitted more gray smoke, then did a perfect ninety-degree turn to dead level, and then was off, once again, like a shot. It was over. And everybody applauded.

I never did get to see them cast the wreath upon the waters. As the plane disappeared to the east, the whole crowd hurriedly went back inside, groaning from the cold but happy as could be at what they had just witnessed.

"I am NEVER going to forget this," someone said.

And I will not either. And I thought you should know about it too. You shoulda been there to see it.

As we came back in, the PA system was playing a Frank Sinatra tune, "My Way."

"So, if the top was screwed tightly on the urn, how did, uh..." someone said, their voice trailing off.

And you should have been there to see something else that took place while we waited for the casting of the ashes.

About a hundred yards out into the ocean, just after the first of the slow tow planes but before the second, thousands, maybe even tens of thousands, of seabirds appeared out over the ocean directly off the Inn, and then commenced to dive bombing and splashing about, grabbing wriggling fish, fighting with one another over them and gobbling them down. We have all seen this before. But I have never seen anything of this magnitude. The birds and the fish continued like that for about ten minutes, an unbelievable natural phenomenon, until the birds finally tired of it, or ate up all the fish or responded to some other nature call, and moved on.