Lake Ronkonkoma legend gets modern retelling in movie by Maria Capp

Filmmaker Maria Capp fondly recalls spending summers swimming at Lake Ronkonkoma and ice skating in the winter there as a young girl.

“The lake was always the center of our recreation,” she said. “It was our backyard.”

But the 243-acre lake — the largest on Long Island — has a darker history as well: Since the late 1700s, it is believed that more than 100 people have drowned there. Many area residents grew up hearing the legend of an Indigenous princess who, forbidden by her father from being with the man she loved, died in the lake. Every year, so the legend goes, her spirit returns to take the life of a young man as she seeks her lost love.

In her recently released film, “The Lady of the Lake,” which is available on several streaming services, Capp is bringing new attention to the old legend. The movie, loosely based around the tale, is a coming-of-age story about a modern family coping with the loss of a young man who drowned in the lake.

The cast features several Indigenous and LGBTQIA+-identifying actors. It's led by Seth Gilliam of the former TV series “The Walking Dead” as the grieving father and Nia Sioux of Lifetime’s “Dance Moms” as his daughter. Del Zamora (“True Blood”) plays the grandfather, and Taylor Red Fox, a member of the Shinnecock Nation making her film debut, portrays the princess. Larry Saperstein, of Islip, known for his work in “High School Musical: The Musical: The Series,” has a major role, but to say much more would be a serious spoiler.

Capp said she consulted with local Indigenous experts in an effort to represent the culture accurately.

“I’m not Native American,” she said. “I didn’t want to take advantage of stereotypes.”

WITNESS TO TRAGEDY

Christopher Roach, an actor and comedian who grew up in Lake Ronkonkoma and plays a volunteer firefighter in the film, said he learned about the legend as a young boy.

“I don’t know if we take it seriously, but we embrace it as our history,” said Roach, who still lives in the hamlet when he’s not on the road.

He is aware of the lake’s dangers, however, noting the sudden drop-offs that make it impossible to know “what’s up, what’s down.” While most of the lake is less than 15 feet deep, there are parts that can dip down to as much as 65 feet, according to the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

Roach said he himself has seen a body pulled from the lake.

“One Mother’s Day in the ’90s, we were eating at the Bavarian Inn and suddenly there was a helicopter hovering,” he recalled. “A diver pulled up a body.”

Artist Todd Arnett, 54, said he learned about the legend when he moved to Lake Ronkonkoma from Michigan in 2004.

“I heard so many versions of the story from hundreds of people,” he said. “There was a lot of doom and gloom.”

Arnett, who said he, too, has seen a body pulled from the lake, began work in 2015 on what would become a 32-foot-tall carving of the woman said to haunt the lake. The sculpture now towers over the lakefront. It is one of several depictions of the “lady of the lake” that can be seen around town. Another is a mural painted on the One Stop Deli on Rosevale Avenue.

Does Arnett think the legend is true? He hesitates before finally saying, “Very possibly.”

REAL DANGER

Ellyn Okvist, 68, chair of the local historic commission and a lifelong resident of the area, said she finds the legend dubious, but recognizes that it’s something locals love to talk about.

She said her parents made her stop swimming in the lake when she was 10 because “too many people were getting sick.” (According to Suffolk officials, the lake’s water quality is “impaired,” with pollutants such as cyanobacteria and phosphorous.)

The reality is that many people have died in Lake Ronkonkoma. The Suffolk County Police Department has recorded five drownings since 1995, which is as far back as its records go.

Okvist, meanwhile, said she has documented 126 deaths from the late 1700s to 2022. David S. Igneri, a lifeguard at the lake for 32 years, wrote in his book “Lake Ronkonkoma in History and Legend, The Princess Curse and Other Stories: A Lifeguard’s View” that his research found 160 drownings, most of them men, from the mid- to late 1800s to 1970.

VERSIONS OF THE TALE

Capp started writing the script for “The Lady of the Lake” while staying at her parents’ home in Lake Ronkonkoma during the pandemic. At the time, she was taking a virtual screenwriting class and she said the students were challenged to write a horror scene.

“I thought about today’s definition of commercially viable horror — slasher movies, stuff that makes viewers jump out of their seats,” she said. “I don’t watch them. I couldn’t get my mind to go there.”

Instead, Capp said she thought about focusing on something horrific and the first thing that came to her mind “was losing a child.”

While the movie focuses on the death of a young man, played by Sheldon True, the legend is woven into the storyline.

The specifics of the legend vary depending on who’s telling it, but in the most common version, the lover is an English settler who eventually returned home. There’s also the “Romeo and Juliet” version, in which the lover was a member of a rival tribe.

For her film, Capp uses the “Romeo and Juliet” variation of the folk tale. She calls her character Princess Tahoma, while in other versions she’s known as Tuskawanta or Tongawanga. Actor Miles Roe plays the princess’ lover.

INDIGENOUS CONSULTANTS

Dyáni Brown, a tribal enrollment officer for the Shinnecock Nation who writes about Indigenous life for several East End publications, and Shane Weeks, a Shinnecock writer and historian, were brought on as consultants for the film, which was shot in June 2022.

Brown, who portrayed Tahoma’s mother, said she worked to bring authenticity regarding Indigenous culture to the film. Especially powerful, she said, is a scene near the end of the film when the grieving family conducts a ceremony to honor its lost son, scattering some of his ashes in the lake. The ribbon skirts and shirts worn by the family, the personal artifacts displayed on the shore — his football jersey and childhood quilt — “are in keeping with the way we bury people,” she said.

Gilliam, who plays the father in the film, was among several cast members who attended the Aug. 4 premiere of the movie at Sayville Theater. Waiting for the movie to start, he said he had not known about the legend before filming. But after spending more than two weeks shooting the film in Lake Ronkonkoma and the surrounding area, he said, “I encountered more believers than nonbelievers. People wanted you to know this is their story.”

His character is adamant that the curse had nothing to do with the death of his son. In the film, he says, “It was an accident...Dark waters make it impossible to differentiate between up and down. Search-and-rescue can’t see more than six inches in front of them.”

As to whether his character believes that, he said, “I’m not sure. But he needs to believe it.”

“The Lady of the Lake” is Capp’s third feature film. It’s produced by Cappricielli Productions, the company she founded in 2012 and named for her great-grandfather, who changed his surname upon arriving at Ellis Island.

Capp said she studied computer science at Stony Brook University before switching to SUNY Old Westbury, where she earned a degree in psychology. But she said her heart was always in theater, having grown up performing in local productions, often alongside her mother, Millie D’Agostino.

Capp said she gravitates to writing “coming-of-age dramas about families healing from various issues.” Her new film begins on the one-year anniversary of the son’s death. The surviving daughter is speaking at her high school graduation, and her parents, overcome with grief, cannot muster the strength to attend.

FAMILIAR CAMEOS

Area residents will spot many familiar locations in the film — the family’s home is set at the Robert Hewlett Hawkins homestead, owned by the Yaphank Historical Society. Other prominent locations include the Parsnip Lake House, seen in the film as a gathering spot for the volunteer firefighters, and the Lakoma Delicatessen.

Seeing all these local spots was fascinating for Dorothy Knowlton Johnson, a Blue Point resident who grew up in Lake Ronkonkoma and attended the premiere. “As a kid, we were all aware of the legend,” she said, noting her parents never let her go into the lake past her waist.

She was excited to see it represented on the big screen: “This movie is going to put the town on the map,” Johnson said. She hopes Capp will consider a follow-up film that goes deeper into the legend, she added.

Capp does not dismiss the idea. She said she doesn’t know where the story will take her, but she has some thoughts.

“I don’t think I’m done telling stories about what it was like growing up on the lake,” she told the audience at the premiere. “I think there’s another movie in me.”