Having spent 1955 through 1979 as a resident of East Williston, as a past president of the Oyster Bay Historical Society, and as a person whose father once maintained his law practice across Sagamore Avenue from the historic LIRR station in East Williston, I was shocked when I heard that the East Williston LIRR station had been demolished.

If the MTA did affirmatively demolish this station or through malfeasance let it collapse, in my personal opinion, at first blush, it borders on further evidence of the somewhat obvious mismanagement at the MTA.

The MTA is just one of several seemingly unaccountable public authorities in New York, led by gubernatorial appointees who, in the case of the MTA, are laboring under the weight of last year's fare increases and their proposed new increases for the riding public combined with cuts in existing services. Only in the world of public authorities like the MTA could the LIRR's old "Dashing Dan" logo now be seen to be hawking "Pay More for less ... and you'll either enjoy it at best or forget about it at the least!"

On an overtaxed Island increasingly filled with blacktop and strip-malls, the destruction of an architecturally historic link to our shared past is an event worth note and mourning. The loss of the East Williston LIRR station is also an event that should result in a clarion call for increased oversight over - and heightened accountability from - the MTA and its subdivisions.

Edward B. (Woody) Ryder IV

(Mr. Ryder is a former resident of East Williston, an alumni of the East Williston Public Schools and is now a resident of Greenlawn.)