Backstory: The Tank on the Highway in Wainscott

When my dad moved our family out to East Hampton back in the 1950s, there was no restaurant building. There were a private home and barn set back from the highway which, at a certain point, had become a VFW Hall. Returning GIs, particularly those who saw action during the Second World War needed a place to meet.

Soon there were four such places in downtown East Hampton where you could engage with other war veterans, have a beer, hold events or fundraisers for non-profits, compare war stories. One was an American Legion Hall across from Brent’s Deli. Another was a VFW Hall at Main and Newtown Lane in a grand building that today is London Jewelers. The third was on Three Mile Harbor Road just a few hundred yards from where it veers off from North Main Street, and the fourth was still another VFW up here on the Highway which is what I want to tell you about.

Around 1980, the veterans at the VFW Hall on the highway ordered that a second building be constructed on the property. It went up on what had been the VFW’s front lawn. And it became a restaurant. Want to go to the VFW? There’s parking on both sides of the restaurant, and in the back between the new and old building. However, as time has gone on, there are fewer and fewer veterans and fewer and fewer activities. It’s a good thing. Because there’s fewer wars.

But then, around 1990, something very dramatic happened. One day, a 60-ton Army tank in working order appeared adjacent to the restaurant. Its cannon was pointed directly south. A shell which could be fired from it would fly over the highway and into the Perelman property. Of course, this never happened. But it did make sense. This VFW Hall is officially the Everit Albert Herter Post No. 500. And the first owner of the Perelman mansion across the way was a man named Albert Herter, who had been the Secretary of State to President Wilson during the First World War. His son Everit was killed in that war. The post was named for him.

A plaque on a post alongside this tank explained all that. Motorists could pull over and park in front of the tank, read about it and even sit upon it. It was a B-30 A3 Abrams tank, a model that dominated our efforts in the Vietnam War. On loan from the Fort Bragg Army base upstate, it remained here for the next 20 years.

And in that time, during the summer of 1994, this tank saw action, sort of. It disappeared from its location. And where did it go? General Colin Powell, a war hero now Secretary of State who had been urged to run for president but declined, was visiting millionaire Ron Lauter at his nearby home in Wainscott. He’d seen the tank. Could he arrange to drive it around for a day? He could. And he did.

Off the General went clattering over the open fields of a nearby potato farm for an afternoon. Up at Dan’s Papers we learned of it and took pictures of it. But we were asked not to write about it, so we never did.

I came to meet General Powell, well, sort of. That summer, Jimmy Buffett held a concert in a pasture out in Montauk. Thousands came. I came. And there, singing “Fruitcakes” along with everyone was the General, almost right next to me wearing a parrot head hat, singing and pumping his fist in the air with everybody else. I smiled and waved. He smiled and waved. That was that.

Last year, the tank was returned to Fort Bragg. It will grace another VFW Hall somewhere. Meanwhile, I’m told, the 2.2-acre property with these buildings here in East Hampton is for sale.

$6,175,000 and it’s yours.

Have a East End real estate story? Want to share? Text us at 516-527-3566. We’ll call you back, and then write it up for this weekly column. –Dan