In 1904, local printer Charles F. Delano and his wife Lida Hawkins Delano opened the Record newspaper, covering local news in the bustling bayside communities of Amityville and surrounding areas. The earliest editions noted the births and deaths of local residents, governmental meetings and social notes, all supplemented by the latest information about farming, gardening, livestock and fishing, provided by government agencies.

The family owned a home at 22 Greene Avenue; a house separated from the Record office by only the firehouse and police station. The location of both the family’s Greene Avenue residence and their newspaper office, was at the heart of Village news and quickly became a hub for local people to drop by, gossip, drink coffee and find out the latest political and social goings on.

The Delano’s had three daughters, Florence, Susan and Jessie. It was Jessie, who graduated from Amityville High School as class valedictorian, who early on showed an interest in the newspaper business. As a young reporter for the paper, she overcame the skepticism of the men she encountered and eventually won their respect with her tenacious personality. She took over as publisher of the newspaper from her father.

The newspaper was established as an Independent Democratic newspaper in a community run by Republicans. But the emphasis was on independence. As part of her responsibilities, Jessie Delano covered the Babylon Town Board meetings where she met her husband, Walter Gunnison, a reporter for the Brooklyn Times Union and the Brooklyn Eagle, both daily newspapers.

The couple were married in 1939. Several years later, Walter Gunnison joined the Record. He covered the village board, school board, police and sports, while Jessie wrote much of the rest of the paper and ran the business; billing, purchasing and often driving at night to Sayville and Babylon where pictures were processed for printing- an enormously time-consuming effort. It was under the Gunnison’s that the technology of print changed dramatically.

What was once a three-day printing operation became something that could be done in an afternoon. Computerized typesetting equipment replaced the molten lead of the ancient Intertype that clanked in the composing room. Handset type virtually vanished. The Gunnison’s lived in a red house at 81 Union Avenue, where Jessie Gunnison loved working in the swampy stream next to her home taking away trash that kids left behind. The land was donated to the Village in the name of her father, who died in 1964, and is now known as the Delano Trail. Lida Hawkins Delano died in 1971.