Center Moriches Native Sydney Chartuk
Family and friends gathered recently to remember Center Moriches native Sydney Chartuk, who passed away at her home in Claymont, DE.
Sydney was a very independent person, having moved to Brooklyn to start her career right after graduating from high school at age 17. She worked in the city for various companies, including the candy company Ferrara and S&H Green Stamps. After relocating to Delaware, she spent many years with H.L. Yoh Staffing.
Sydney was an avid reader and amassed an astonishing handwritten record of all the books she completed. Since 1970, she meticulously listed 4,585 titles, including most of the classics, biographies, and true crime. Her most prolific year was 2017, when she poured through 191 books shortly after she retired.
Sydney was an avid collector, having put together an impressive display of antique bottles and Vaseline glass, prized for its yellow color. She was an expert angler and could handle a boat in her beloved Moriches Bay and the ocean, where she caught plenty of bluefish, bass, and fluke. She had a Bayliner on the Delaware River and made excursions to the Chesapeake Bay via the Elk River and the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal. Outside of Cupsogue, her favorite was Dewey Beach, where she often went in her classic woody Jeep Grand Wagoneer.
A music lover, Sydney attended the concerts of her favorite artists, such as B. B. King, Kev Mo, Elton John, George Strait, and Kenny Chesney. “I remember in the 1960s she had a record player and would come home each week with a new single,” said her brother, Robert Chartuk of Center Moriches, who noted that she earned money for the records from working at the Center Moriches Library. “I remember listening to the Rolling Stones’ Mothers Little Helper and the 1910 Fruit Company with her and laughing at Judy in Disguise by John Fred and the Playboy Band. The last time l saw her, we played our old favorites, and it brought back so many wonderful memories of growing up together, such as dancing at the nightclubs in the Hamptons and coming home in the wee hours of the morning.”
Robert added: “Sydney wanted to go to the Woodstock music festival in 1969 when she was 15, but our mother wouldn’t let her because she was too young. We were able to go backstage to meet B.B. King once at the Bald Hill Amphitheater, where he gave her a pin with his name on it, which she cherished.”
While in high school, Sydney traveled to Rome with the Latin Club, chaperoned by her teacher, Mrs. Beck, and toured the Colosseum, Pantheon, Trevi Fountain, and other famous sites. “For weeks after she returned, Sydney received dozens of letters from Italian suitors remarking about her beauty and seeking an invitation to come to America,” her brother recounted. “Our mother wondered why she kept getting so much airmail from overseas.”
Sydney was into gardening and was a frequent visitor to the DuPont estates of Winterthur and Longwood near her home. “She had found a single Wisteria seed at Winterthur and grew it into a beautiful vine,” Robert said. “She had a green thumb, and her landscaping had stunning andromedas, azaleas, and rhododendrons.”
A graduate of Center Moriches High School, where she was a cheerleader, Keyhole Club member, and clarinet player in the band, Sydney attended Baruch College in Manhattan. “She never missed an episode of Jeopardy and almost always got the final question,” her brother said. “She was extremely well-read and very hard to beat.”
Sydney is survived by her other brother, Michael Chartuk, and sister-in-law Lynn Ann of Virginia; their children, Michael Adam, Elizabeth, and Lauren; and niece, Sarah Chartuk.
Her parents, Michael and Frances Chartuk of Center Moriches, predeceased her. She was previously married to Jules LaMontagne, a nuclear engineer who was on Long Island working on the Shoreham nuclear plant. “My mother ran the Moriches Bay Historical Society thrift shop, and Jules used to come in,” Robert recalled. “She was the matchmaker who put them together.”