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The tale of how Bay Shore came to be is a story of growth, demise, and then rise to becoming the flourishing, diverse small town it is today.
And the documentary “A Small Piece of the World — The Bay Shore Story” depicts the hamlet’s evolution through the community members who know it best.
“The history lives with the people,” said director, writer, and Bay Shore resident Stephanie Walter. “The story is 300 years, and I had been in the community long enough to realize the diversity of the players that live here and how that diversity has always been here.”
“A Small Piece of the World” is now available for viewers of all ages to watch on YouTube (see video at bottom of this story).
Executive producer Susan Barbash, Walter, and her husband John Williams, who filmed the documentary, took greaterbayshore.com back in time to when they pieced the documentary together.
Here’s how it came to fruition.
300 years of stories
It was 2007 and the following year marked the 300th anniversary of Bay Shore’s founding.
Barbash said she and other community members were brainstorming different ways to observe this monumental day when she remembered two filmmakers just moved into town.
Walter, who grew up in Hicksville, and Williams, originally from Westchester County, moved from a predominately white neighborhood in Brooklyn to Bay Shore just a few years prior with the desire for their young son to grow up in a diverse, small town, Walter said.
With the local talent, proper funding and help from Priscilla Hancock at the Bay Shore Historical Society, they came up with a list of people who would deliver an accurate representation of Bay Shore and its history.
“There were all these old-timers who had these memories of Bay Shore dating back to the 1930s,” Barbash said. “I thought it would be great to do sort of a Ken Burns-style documentary of people talking about their reminisces of growing up in Bay Shore, back even before World War II.”
Williams described the photos provided by the Historical Society to use as a “physical window into the past” that showed the hamlet’s change over time.
The documentary takes viewers back all the way to 1708 when John Mowbray received the deed for the property that belonged to the Secatogue indigenous people.
In the 18th century, Bay Shore developed into a mercantile center and the film shows its transformation from a sleepy village into a booming town.
“Bay Shore is an unusually diverse community and always was, both in terms of ethnicity and at a socioeconomic level,” Barbash said. “It was a blue-collar town, it was also a town that had mansions, it kind of ran the gamut and we wanted that reflected in the film, and I think it succeeded.”
As the director, it was Walter’s responsibility to choose the story, and for her, this was the story of “every single type of human being” that has made Bay Shore what it is today.
The interviews were over the course of six months, and Walters said she met many community members along the way — from an older woman who knew the entire history of the street Walter lived on to the grandson of Dr. George S. King, who she asked to narrate the film.
“They were just so excited to share their memories and to really be able to be part of something that enabled us to preserve the history,” Walter said. “Preserving the stories of older citizens is extremely important.”
The documentary’s impact
Barbash and Walter said in order to truly tell the full story of Bay Shore, it was important to point out its “blemishes” too.
The women stated how necessary it was to portray the lived experiences of the people they interviewed.
This meant not shying away from topics like racism, economic disparity and environmental issues.
At the time, Barbash said they did receive some pushback as to why they touched on these conversations in the documentary.
“It’s a feel-good [film] without being cotton candy,” Barbash said. “It doesn’t shy away from controversy, and I think it shows that you can be honest about your history without pointing fingers and making people feel bad about themselves. We should look at our past and use it to inform ourselves in what we do going forward.”
Walter reflected on one emotional moment at the end of a public viewing of the film.
“I looked to the right and this is what got to me: there were people lined up against the wall, they were all black, and they all shook my hand and thanked me for telling their story because their story was never told,” Walter said, through tears. “It was so intense and I was so proud that I was able to do that for them, tell their story. It really meant a lot to them and they were so worried that I would gloss over it.”
In regards to environmental issues, one jaw-dropping moment in the film is the painful story of Kelly’s Lake, one of which Walter describes as the town “rising up and destroying its own beauty.”
“You could just pave lakes and ponds back then,” Barbash said. “So we learn from mistakes — sometimes it takes a loss for people to wake up and realize this is not right.”
Bay Shore’s rise from the ashes
At the time of the film’s release in 2008, Bay Shore was climbing out of decades of decline.
Fast forward almost 15 years later, Bay Shore today is on a whole new chapter of its story: a bustling downtown with a variety of restaurants, retail, housing, entertainment, and more.
“It’s kind of amazing how it’s changed in the last five years — I feel like we’ve got another version,” Barbash said. “I know people have a deep love for this town.”
Walter jokes that she and her husband are divided on the matter of the town’s more recent development.
She said she “moved to the country for a reason,” while her husband Williams is ecstatic to see Bay Shore evolve.
“I think what’s happening continues to be very exciting and really underscores that we made a right choice to move here from Brooklyn,” Williams said. “I think it’s going to be more people invested into the community.”
You can view the film “A Small Piece of the World — The Bay Shore Story” for free below.
Continue to follow greaterbayshore.com for more stories about the hamlet’s history.
Top: Screenshot of the film via YouTube.
