Repainting his old bedroom — now part of Hallockville Museum
When Tony Trubisz Jr. was a little boy, a North Fork summer meant wandering the fields and woods surrounding his family’s Sound Avenue homestead, traveling all the way to the Sound and exploring the 500 acres behind the property.
On Thursday, Mr. Trubisz — now 67 — returned from Richmond, Va. to the 19th century farmhouse of his youth, since relocated to the Hallockville Museum Farm property, to spruce up the old building which hasn’t had a paint job since its big move in 2010.
An all-volunteer crew worked that morning, scraping the peeling paint on the building and adding fresh coats of Benjamin Moore’s “butterfly bush yellow” and “holly leaf” green.
The crew finished by 12:30 and settled down to eat freshly grilled kielbasa sandwiches at the picnic tables nearby.
“We don’t play around,” said Tony’s nephew Anthony Trubisz.
More than a dozen volunteers pitched in after the farm’s assistant director Beth Motschenbacher put the word out via email and Facebook.
Trubisz, a retired engineer, spent his early days on his grandparents 45-acre farm just east Hallockville Museum Farm on Sound Avenue. His grandparents, Charles and Stephanie Trubisz, came from Poland around 1900 and bought the farm from Halsey Hallock in 1918 for $7,000. The grandparents lived in the “big house” on the farm and when his father Antone married Jean they settled in what was know as the “little house.”
Tony only lived there with his sister Barbara until he was 5, but has very fond memories, so much that he, along with the help of Hallockville board member Richard Wines, underwrote for and moved the house from the former farm in 2003 to the museum farm. It took five years to restore and in 2010 “The Trubisz Farm: An American Family Story” a timeline and exhibit of photos and family memorabilia by Richard Wines and Mary Anne Huntington was installed in his former bedroom in the small 600 square-foot building.
