A man who had an abundance of concern for the well-being of his community was Dr. Frank Calabro, Sr., who, in 1947, fulfilled his lifelong dream of opening a hospital in Mastic Beach.
“Doc Senior” was the epitome of a country doctor, a familiar sight making house calls in his big black car. He turned the former Lawson Estate into Bayview Hospital, which he bricked over and doubled in size. For his dedication to his friends and neighbors, the doctor was revered by many and was honored as a Man of the Year.
Dr. Calabro’s continuing efforts to serve his community ran into a snag in 1964 when the insurance carrier Blue Cross determined that his plan to triple the capacity of his hospital was not warranted given the size of the community at the time and threatened to withhold its accreditation. A huge hole he had dug for the expansion had to be filled in. Historical photographs from the era document community events such as the Hospital Baby Contest fundraiser, Field Day, and meetings of the Hospital Ladies Auxiliary.
The property that would become Bayview Hospital has a storied history, beginning with its ownership in the 1700s by Richard Floyd IV, the cousin of William Floyd, signer of the Declaration of Independence. According to the “Who’s Who of Tri-Hamlet History,” a presentation of the Mastic Peninsula Historical Society, Richard Floyd was a Tory who supported the British King. He referred to his 3,000-acre waterfront estate as “Patterquas.” A creek that bisects the peninsula shares the name, as does the Pattersquash Civic Association.
Other owners of the property were Col. William “Tangier” Smith, Lord of the Manor of St. George, Dr. Daniel Roberts, the Lawrence family, the Lanier family, and, finally, John Howard Lawson, who sold a five-acre parcel to Calabro. After he died in 1968, Bayview was sold to Dr. Erol Caypinar, who continued it as a hospital for a while and then downsized it to a health clinic before closing its doors permanently in 1982. A few years later, the venerated building was burned down by arsonists, according to the Tri-Hamlet History book. The site, just off Neighborhood Road, was donated to the Town of Brookhaven in 1999 and is preserved as Bayview Park.
In 2017, local dignitaries participated in the dedication of a historic marker memorializing the hospital and the Floyd estate. Two people at the event were Edward DeGennaro and Richard Oldham, who, along with Michael Lubrano, are the Historical Society members who assembled the local history book that supplied some of the information for this story.
William Wallace Tooker’s Indian Place-Names on Long Island (1911) traces the origins of the name Patterquas back to 1670 when it was described as a “tract of land and meadows,” according to the William C. Pomeroy Foundation, which provided the Bayview marker. “Attributing it to an Indian who lived on Mastic at this time named Paterquam, Tooker observes that it may also have been a personal name. A variant is Pattersquash from 1790, which referred to a small island opposite a creek of the same name at Mastic Neck.”
Doc Senior’s son, Frank Calabro, became a popular physician himself, continuing his father’s zeal to serve his community. He died tragically in 1991 with his wife, Ruth, when he crashed a plane that he was piloting. An advocate of the Brookhaven airport in Shirley, the facility is named for him.