They brought Jim Hanstein home last week. Funeral services were held Saturday morning at St. Joseph’s Church in the Stockade District. With little advance word of the event, a word-of-mouth crowd of some 250 mourners packed the church.

Hanstein, a former sheriff’s deputy and warden and a retired FBI agent, had moved with his wife to Plymouth, Mass. about five years ago to be with their daughter and grandchild.

He was killed in the driveway of his home last May shortly after his 70th birthday when a large tree fell on his vehicle.

His eulogy was delivered by Bill Weishaupt Jr., a childhood friend and fellow FBI member. For several years, Weishaupt has been the chief investigator in the district attorney’s office.

Weishaupt recalled that he and Hanstein as kids used to ride around Kingston on their bikes “looking for crime.” They usually wound up at the parking lot of the old jail on Wall Street “where the real criminals were.” Little did they know that both would make law enforcement their profession.

Hanstein’s father, also James, died at an early age, after which his mother, Dorothy (Dorty), married Frank Vogt, the resident FBI agent in Kingston. Vogt, who later became a county district attorney and judge, treated his stepson like his own, Weishaupt said. After college, Hanstein, who wanted to work in law enforcement, joined the Ulster County sheriff’s office as a correction officer and was later assigned to the road patrol. Weishaupt had joined the FBI a few years earlier and urged his friend to take the entrance exam for the bureau. At that point, Hanstein was a detective lieutenant in the sheriff’s road patrol.

“He hesitated to take the exam, Weishaupt said, “worried that if he failed, the judge (Vogt) would find out.”

“I told him he wasn’t going to fail, and if he did, the judge would never know about it,” Weishaupt said, to laughter from the crowd.

Hanstein went on to a 20-year career in the Bureau where he rose to the level of senior investigator. He also served as a training officer for other FBI agents.

While in the sheriff’s department he met and married his wife, Sandy. They had two daughters and two grandchildren.

Upon retirement, Hanstein was quickly hired by then-sheriff Paul Van Blarcum as warden of the county jail. After retiring from that job, Hanstein and his wife moved to Plymouth.

Weishaupt’s 30-minute eulogy to his friend gave mourners insight into a man they knew and admired.

It was an older audience, from a different era. Van Blarcum, who met Hanstein as a young police officer, was there, as were former district attorney and judge Mike Kavanagh and his son Michael. Uniformed sheriff’s deputies served as an honor guard.

Hanstein was laid to rest next to his stepfather and his mother in Hurley Cemetery.

Where's Josh?

I have called him “the invisible congressman,” but Rep. Josh Riley does make an occasional appearance in Ulster County. I mention this only because Riley has again refused to attend a Chamber of Commerce candidate breakfast scheduled for Oct. 27 at Best Western in Kingston. State Sen. Peter Oberacker, his Republican opponent, will attend.

The Shawangunk Journal reported on a Riley visit to Ellenville High School last spring, and last month he was a guest at a reception at the Boiceville Inn in the Town of Olive. Riley’s 19th CD includes the Ulster County towns of Denning, Hardenburgh, Marbletown, Olive, Rochester, Rosendale, Shandaken and Shawangunk, as well as the Village of Ellenville.

Boiceville innkeeper John Parete told me about 75 to 100 supporters turned out for Riley’s unannounced visit to his bistro. Some wrote checks, he said. These days, these kinds of seemingly public events don’t get announced, ostensibly for concerns about security.

Jackie, Oh

Even at this late date, with the midterms just about six weeks off, I’m still not sure what Jackie Auringer, Republican candidate for Congress in the 18th District, stands for. But she sure likes taking pot shots at Democratic incumbent Pat Ryan.

Auringer’s latest broadside claims that the incumbent doesn’t really live in Gardiner, his official residence since 2017, but in Washington, D.C. where his two young children go to school.

Ryan’s campaign, Himself never responding directly to Auringer, accuses Auringer of picking on his children. A neat evasion, that. I think we all should dismiss such silliness, but there was a nugget of interest in the challenger’s latest attack.

Members of Congress, she charged, are allowed a $60,000 yearly housing allowance to offset expenses of keeping a place near where they work. Apparently, she considered this “proof” that the congressman was spending more time in Washington than Ulster. An unidentified federal bureaucrat cited by “the campaign” confirmed that Ryan had submitted the necessary paperwork for this tax-free benefit and that everything was in order.

Funny, I’ve never seen anything about this housing allowance in the vast amount of literature issued by members of Congress about how great they are and what a fantastic job they’re doing.