Joseph Kellard

Newspaper Story Reunites POWs

2011-12-04T08:00:00.000-08:00

Oceanside prisoners of war meet again at VFW 52 years after World War II.

By Joseph Kellard
They both crossed the sea to fight in history's most destructive war, saw action in a major battle, were wounded and taken captive by Nazis and lay bedridden in German hospitals before they met in a prison camp. Ed Hynes and Nat Glanz have lived in Oceanside during the same 52 post-World War II years, and belonged to the same veterans organization, yet these former prisoners of war just discovered all these facts last week — thanks to the Herald.

A chaplain at the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Oceanside, Hynes read the article in the Herald's Dec. 4 issue on Glanz, who recently submitted a documentary about his POW experiences to the Library of Congress. As Hynes read the article, certain words jumped out at him, and he pieced them together.

"I really got interested in the story when he mentioned Ludwigsburg," Hynes, 80, said about the German town where Glanz was hospitalized and later imprisoned. "That was where I was put into a camp. Then, when I read he was Jewish and shot in the right leg, I remembered that was probably the fellow I was talking to when I was there. It had to be him."

Fifty-eight years later, Hynes remembered how he and Glanz met and talked once for all of 10 minutes. Following these recollections, he walked his fingers through an Oceanside phone book. At first, Glanz, 82, thought Hynes' call was a gag. But over two phone conversations they spoke for hours, and decided to reunite last Thursday at the Oceanside VFW.

As "Little Drummer Boy" and other Christmas songs played in the VFW's lounge, the former campmates embraced and exchanged photos and other memorabilia from their military days. Hynes laid out a thermal shirt ridden with holes from the shrapnel that left him hospitalized, and he handed Glanz medals, just as he did at the camp, with the hope that they would help his fellow American get out alive.

"I knew he was Jewish, and when I, a Christian, went before the Germans to be interrogated, I was somewhat scared, too, not knowing what they would do," Hynes recalled. "I told him that being Jewish, the odds are against you. So in my own way I tried to help the guy, and giving him the medals was all I could think of."

Between the two men, Hynes had the better memory of their meeting. "One thing I remember about him," he said about Glanz, "was that he was extremely calm. He wasn't complaining."

Both men took up arms in the Battle of the Bulge in January 1945, Glanz with the 291st Regiment and Hynes under George Patton's 3rd Army. After the battle, as Hynes' outfit traveled through France, he and four other soldiers were sent to an outpost in Saarlautern to scout Nazis near the Zeigfried Line. Within a week, German troops attacked an abandoned factory where the small unit had hidden. While treating a fellow wounded soldier, Hynes was hit near the lower spine with hand-grenade shrapnel.

From the Bulge, Glanz's regiment traveled to Colmar, France, where he was shot by a German machine-gunner and repeatedly interrogated and beaten.

Following their capture by the Nazis, both men convalesced in German hospitals. While Hynes was put in separate rooms with Allied soldiers, Glanz spent time in two hospitals filled with Germans and did his best to hide his identity as both an American and a Jew.

During their reunion, Hynes and Glanz recalled the conditions at the prison camp where they ended up together, including the "food" they were fed, such as bread made with sawdust and soup with garbanzo beans as hard as pebbles.

"I think those beans and sawdust had their place, because they filled your stomach a bit and you didn't have this gnawing feeling all the time," Glanz recalled as Hynes nodded.

They discussed the guards' treatment of prisoners, which involved shooting men for no apparent reason, and traded memories of war-torn Europe after their liberation, particularly the homeless, desperate and starving civilians they encountered but were powerless to help. Both men were still at the camp when French soldiers liberated them. Hynes had been imprisoned for three weeks, and Glanz for over three months.

Both men moved to Oceanside in the early 1950s, Glanz from Brooklyn and Hynes from Rockaway Beach. Hynes worked then at the A&P supermarket (now the vacant Edward's on Long Beach Road), where Glanz and his wife, Muriel, shopped regularly. In the mid-1980s, both men joined the Nassau-Suffolk chapter of Prisoners of War. Glanz didn't attend meetings, but Hynes made the trips to Northport, though he stopped going and joined the local VFW in the early 1990s. That's when Glanz started trekking to the north shore to attend the POWs meetings.

"[Prisoners of War] really should have listed all the camps that our members were in," said Glanz, now a vice-commander of POW. "A number of men know they were in the same camp, but if we had listed their camps, this reunion could have happened 10 years ago. But how we did come to meet is just a fantastic story."

Glanz will invite Hynes to the YJCC in Oceanside, where the area Jewish War Veterans meet, to present him with a chai pendant, a Jewish symbol for good luck, and they both plan to stay in touch.

"I spoke to my daughter yesterday," Hynes said, explaining that he'd told her about the way in which he learned about Glanz, "and she said, 'Dad, it sounds like something that the good Lord did.' I called it a one-in-a-million shot, but she said it was more than that."

* This story originally appeared in the Oceanside-Island Park Herald on December 18, 2003.

Returning the favor
Glanz gives Hynes Jewish symbol of life

By Joseph Kellard

After nearly six decades, Nat Glanz returned the gesture.

When Glanz and Ed Hynes met and spoke briefly while imprisoned in a Nazi camp in 1945, Hynes handed him two Catholic miraculous medals, hoping they would help his fellow American get out alive. Last week, at the Jewish Community Center in Oceanside, Glanz presented Hynes with a chai, a Jewish symbol for life, a month after the POWs reunited since their first meeting 58 years before.

"May it bring you good luck and happiness," Glanz told Hynes when he handed him the chai, "and thank you for being such a mensch."

Their reunion was sparked by a story in the Herald after he showed the Jewish War Veterans in Oceanside a documentary on his war experiences that was recently archived in the Library of Congress. Hynes read the story and recognized certain details about Glanz that he recalled from their 10-minute meeting at the Ludwigsberg prison camp. After living in Oceanside for 52 years, both men finally reunited last month at the Veterans of Foreign War in Oceanside, where Hynes gave Glanz two more miraculous medals.

Prior to his presenting the chai at the ceremony last Sunday, Glanz recalled for all in attendance — including the JWV, several members of Hynes's family, Legislator Denise Ford, and Hempstead Councilman Anthony Santino — the circumstances leading up to their meeting in the camp. When they first met, there were rumors in the camp that allied troops were nearby, and Glanz was concerned the guards would do something drastic before they left the camp, especially to him because of his Jewish faith.

"Ed gave me two miraculous Catholic medals to help me through this dire situation," Glanz recalled.

On receiving his chai, Hynes thanked Glanz and vowed, "I will wear it with pride."

Hynes said he remembered his fellow American's wounded thigh that was riddled with German machine gun bullets, and recalled that Glanz said he hoped they wouldn't amputate his leg because he was a Jew.

"Being a prisoner myself, if they mistreated me or not, I was a soldier and I was prepared," Hynes said. "But I wouldn't want to be a prisoner in a German prison camp and be Jewish. I tried to think of something to help him, and I suggested the religious medal. I hope it worked. God bless."

A daughter of a World War II veteran herself, Ford told the audience, "I think this story of two men helping one another in trying times just brings out the importance of what brotherhood is."

Both the JWV and Santino presented both POWs with citations and plaques recognizing their heroic actions in war.

"This is an inspiring story that needs to be told again and again," Santino said, "because once we forget the sacrifices that were made for us, by our veterans, in order to keep us free, we will no longer be a great society."

* This story originally appeard in the Oceanside-Island Park Herald in January 2004.

Capturing a Terror-Filled Day

2011-09-10T17:34:00.000-07:00

Oceanside cameraman featured on Fox 9/11 special

By Joseph Kellard

With a TV camera on his shoulder, Keith Lane had been to Bosnia, Somalia, Haiti, Honduras and other war zones, and he videotaped the fear on the soot-covered faces of victims from the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. But nothing has ever disturbed him more than a particular seen from last September.

Lane, an Oceanside resident and cameraman with Fox News for 14 years, arrived at the WTC on September 11 just minutes after the second tower was hit, and while filming the chaos that unfolded before him he witnessed people leaping to their deaths.

"I just couldn't imagine what kind of hell on earth it was up there that their only choice was to jump 80 to 90 floors," Lane told the Herald. "It was hard to comprehend. I couldn't even come to terms with that until a week or two ago. I couldn't even talk about it without breaking down."

Recently, Lane was filmed voicing this sentiment in an interview for a half-hour special aired by Fox News on the one-year memorial of that horrific day. "Capturing 9/11 Stories from Behind the Lens" featured Lane and two of his colleagues, Dave Corporon and Jack Taliercio, who told their experiences videotaping the momentous event.

That day, on hearing that a plane had crashed into a twin tower, Lane bypassed the elevator at Fox's 67th St. headquarters, rushed down its stairs and drove his work truck along the FDR Drive to the WTC.

Once there, authorities stopped him from getting to the towers. Instead Lane planted himself in front of the nearby Millennium Hotel, where injured and distraught people were already being treated, and he began videotaping the shocked and crying innocents hurrying from the smoldering skyscrapers.

"I'm thinking to myself, 'How are they going to put this fire out? How are they going to put the fire in two buildings like this out?,'" he said in "Capturing 9/11 Stories."

Meanwhile, Taliercio worked his way down to the WTC, at one point filming the plaza, the once busy square between the towers. The speaker system continued to play a muzak version of Billy Joel's "She's Always A Woman" out on to a then eerily desolate area as debris rained down from the gapping black holes above. Taliercio noticed a man clutching to a window outside a floor just below where the flames and smoke were raging inside. Eventually, the man slid and fell.

"I'm shooting the most unbelievable thing that I will ever experience in my life," Taliercio said, recalling his thoughts at that moment.

Amid such surreal scenes the cameramen were unaware they were shooting the results of a terrorist attack, and never did they think the towers would collapse.

But as the first tower began to fall and rumble loudly, Lane, Corporon and Taliercio filmed the people running in terror as thick, tornado-like clouds of dust and debris barreled around buildings and chased them through the streets. They stuck around as long as they could to videotape these scenes. But when they finally ran it was too late; the ominous clouds had quickly surrounded them. The frames of their cameras turned pitch black.

"It was so black you couldn't see your hand in front of your face," Corporon recalled. "And, say, for the first thirty seconds to the first minute, when that cloud swallowed me up, I really thought I was going to suffocate."

Lane, who noticed that pieces of debris pelting him were getting larger, suffered from similar effects. "I just kept clearing my throat and saying, 'You've got to keep breathing. You've got to keep breathing,'" he said.

The quiet that ensued resembled that of a street after a heavy snowstorm, and the only sounds were muffled hollers for help or the cry of names. After they made their way out of their darkest experience, and after they came out from cover following the fall of the second tower, Lane and his colleagues kept working, wandering the war-torn streets. Among the many images they shot were survivors crawling out from underneath parked cars blanketed in ash.

Lane returned to his truck on Fulton and Broadway, one block from the WTC, and after digging it out of debris he parked it in front of Pace University, where firefighters had created a command station. Not wanting to leave an event of that magnitude, he lived out of his truck for four days. But thoughts of his family in Oceanside, his wife Susan and daughter Tara, 10, were most poignant the first day.

"I got a page about 8:30 that night that just said, 'Daddy, I Love You,'" said Lane as an emotional lump formed in his throat.

He returned home early that Saturday morning, but after just five hours, after showering and packing a bag with some needed materials, he returned to lower Manhattan for a week.

Professionally, the events of that infamous day culminated in Lane, Corporon and Taliercio being awarded "General Excellence in Photo Journalism" by the New York State Associated Press Broadcasters Association.

"It's an award I'm honored to win, but I wish it was a story I never had covered because of the terrible story it was and the number of people we lost," Lane said.

In addition to his work as a cameraman in dangerous circumstances, Lane has volunteered as a firefighter for 21 years, six of them with the Oceanside Fire Department. So since he has come face to face with fire and smoke often enough, he didn't fear for his life much when he was caught in the dust and debris from the fallen towers. But when he reflects on the day, when he thinks about what he went through as a cameraman to capture the destruction, chaos and victims on videotape, he realizes he was also one of them.

"I never considered any of us survivors of the World Trade Center collapse. But I guess we were." Lane said in the last frame of "Capturing 9/11 Stories. "I guess we were."

* This story was originally published in the Oceanside-Island Park Herald in September 2002.

Retired Firefighter's Values Reinforced Since 9/11

2011-09-10T16:12:00.000-07:00

Brother of fallen FDNY veteran reflects on the years after the terrorist attacks.

By Joseph Kellard

To Rob Carlo, it felt like September all summer.

His brother, Michael Carlo, 34, was a firefighter with Engine 230 in Bedford-Stuyvesant since 1994 when he was killed at the World Trade Center on 9/11, and Rob avoids any thought about that horrific day until the anniversary each September. But this year, with the heightened attention on the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks, and with many people calling him after Osama bin Laden was killed in May, Rob has relived 9/11 daily.

“I usually can put it off until September and then start worrying about it, but this year it’s just been overwhelming since then," Rob said.

A retired firefighter from Ladder 23 in Harlem who arrived at the WTC site later on Sept. 11, Rob said he's been mostly unaffected by post-9/11 events, from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to the memorial and mosque controversies at the site, to the death of bin Laden. He said he feels for the families of troops who were killed or wounded, and he finds it too stressful to get involved with any controversies.

“I can’t say anything has changed me or my values so much," Rob said about the aftermath of 9/11, "it just reinforced what I always knew and always believed in."

He and Michael always believed that they were never too busy to let anything interfear with what mattered most to them, from vacations to family.

“If we had an vacation we wanted to take, that was just as important as a job that we had to get done,” Rob explained. “So we put it on the calendar. We made sure we got it done. A family reunion that was coming up, it might not be the most convenient time, but if you don’t spend that time with family, you don’t know if you’ll ever be able to do it."

Rob recalled a deadly fire in Woodside on Father’s Day in 2001, a day he spent with his brother. “We talked about how we could walk out of there and get hit by a bus, or come down with a life-threatening disease, or something could happen at work on our jobs as firemen,” he said. “So we really did appreciate living life and we didn’t waste any time.”

Rob rented a house in Long Beach with Michael in 1999, after which he moved there permanently. Rob describes Mike as a life-of-the-party type who enjoyed socializing and spending his time on the water, kayaking and boating. They played volleyball together on the beach, between Grand Boulevard and New York Avenue, where Rob decided to buy a bench on the boardwalk in his brother's memory.

He chose his Michael's favorite quote, one by Mark Twain that he kept on a Post-It note over his desk, for the plaque inscription: “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones that you did. So throw off the bowline, sail away from the safe harbor, catch the trade wins in your sails. Explore, dream, discover.”

A few years ago on Sept. 11, Rob emerged from a swim in the ocean off Grand and noticed a crowd had gathered around his brother’s bench. They were Michael’s childhood friends from their native Whitestone, who since 2002 had made it a ritual to visit his bench before sundown on the anniversary.

Rob then had something else he would never miss each year. He joins Michael’s friend and his own friends there at sunset each 9/11, along with family members, fellow firefighters and neighbors from Tennessee Avenue. The crowd has grown each September, he said, and estimated that some 75 people attended last year.

“It’s the one time I get to see my brother’s friends,” Rob said, “and it always feels like he’s there, because when I see them all around we start sharing stories about him, and someone always has a new one.”

Remembering Ken Marino

2011-09-10T02:12:00.000-07:00

Firefighter swung for the fences with family and friends

By Joseph Kellard

Weeks after her husband, Ken Marino, was killed in the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center, Katrina Marino e-mailed his favorite baseball player, Ken Griffey of the Cincinnati Reds, requesting that he hit a home run for her husband that day.

Griffey followed through not only with this request, but also with his promise to meet Katrina and her two children when the Reds visited New York this summer to play the Mets.

"[Griffey] played ball with the children for a while and he talked to me for a while, and he let the kids climb all over him,” Katrina said about their meeting on Shea Stadium's baseball diamond. “He was great.”

This fulfilled promise was one bright spot for Katrina over the past year, a time that for her has felt, she said, "like a lifetime," and for Mary Ann Marino, Ken's mother, "like one long day that really hasn't ended," she said.

An Oceanside native and firefighter with the elite Rescue 1 in New York City, Marino was among the first firefighters at the World Trade Center after 8:45 a.m. on Sept. 11. Before that unthinkable morning, the Marinos, residing in their Monroe, New York home for two years, were awaiting approval of a variance to build a second-floor bedroom for their newborn boy, Tyler. If the variance was approved earlier, Ken would likely have been home on Sept. 11 building the new room.

"He was such a big part of my life and now I don't have him," Katrina lamented.

As a means of coping with her grief, she busied herself by cooking for the volunteer firefighters who did build Tyler's room, and by furnishing and decorating it, all of which took about 4 months.

Marino moved to Long Beach in 1987 and joined the city's fire department, but he always dreamed of becoming a New York City firefighter. That dream was fulfilled three years later, as Marino joined with Rescue 4 in Queens. Standing 6'5", he was known as "Little Ken," and fellow firefighters described him as "a kid at heart." In 1994, he began dating Katrina, a native of Massachusetts, who at the time was a TWA flight attendant living in Long Beach. The couple married three years later, started a family and moved to Monroe.

"If it wasn't for my children, I wouldn't know what to do," Katrina said about her son, now two years old, who responds happily to photos of Ken, and Kristine, 4, who understood early on that her father would never return home again.

In addition to her grandchildren, in whom she sees so much of Ken, Mary Ann said she and her family, daughter Lynda and husband Patrick, have derived a lot of strength from the "tremendous amount of support" from their family, friends and people in their community. "They have seen to it that they were there for us, and at times we didn't realize that we needed them," Mary Ann explained.

While she and Katrina tried counseling, they both found it did little to assist them in their grief. Instead, Katrina talks regularly with another widow whose husband worked and lost his life with Ken. She also consults a woman from Columbia University who conducted a pre-Sept. 11 study of over 200 young families who have lost loved ones.

"I think that to have someone who has numerous experiences with people like me, especially with children, has been very helpful," Katrina said. "She's explained to me the different stages that widows like me go through and she believes I'm right on track."

Mary Ann derives emotional fuel to carry on by remembering Ken's strength of character in hard times and by living out his wishes.

"I know that he would want us to be there for Katrina, and he would definitely want us to be in his children's lives," Mary Ann said. "And keeping that in mind, we know that we somehow have to make a go of this because we would be letting him down if we weren't there for his children."

* This story was originally published in the Oceanside/Island Park Herald in September 2002.

'The Best of the Best'
Marino remembered for his unmatched passion for firefighting

By Joseph Kellard

If its dimensions could have been quantified, Ken Marino's love for firefighting was an Empire State Building among skyscrapers. His interest in the profession was sparked at the time when young boys begin thinking about what they want to be when they grow up. But for Marino, the interest developed into a passion that he carried into adulthood.

"Ever since I could remember, ever since Kenny was very, very young, he always wanted to be a fireman," said Mary Ann Marino, Ken's mother, during a street dedication ceremony last Saturday in honor of her son, who died while saving people at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

From the corner of Weidner Avenue and Frank Street in Oceanside, where Marino played fireman with his friends, and before some 200 people, including firefighters from the Oceanside, Long Beach and New York City departments, Mary Ann recounted her son's passion for his career.

As soon as he turned 18, Marino joined Hose Co. One in Oceanside, and went on to departments in Long Beach, Mineola, Monroe and New York City. Spending 11 years in the city department, Marino served for the last two with Rescue One Co., an elite FDNY unit. When he joined the city department, Mary Ann and her husband, Pat, were nervous, and asked Ken why he'd want to take on a job that involved the danger of fighting fires in tall buildings.

"He'd say, 'You don't understand,'" Mary Ann told the crowd under a cloudless sky and a large American flag ruffled by a cool breeze. The flag hung above an arch formed by two stately fire engine ladders. "He was right, we didn't understand. And we still don't understand. But what we do understand is the strength, bravery and heroism that was Kenny. … What we also understand is that to be a firefighter is not a job, it's a calling. It's to be a very special person, and that was Kenny -- very, very special."

Anthony Granice, a friend of Marino's when he was growing up on Weidner Avenue, recalled that his friend had never stopped talking about becoming a firefighter since he was 6.

"His firematic skills were second to none," Granice said about the fireman Marino became. "This passion to save lives eventually led Kenny to Rescue One. Not just anyone could be a member of Rescue One. It was an elite unit that requires a unique individual who has excellent physical skills, drive and dedication. Kenny was the best of the best."

"Where do we get such heroes?" Hempstead Councilman Anthony Santino asked. "They come from places like Oceanside, streets like this. Ordinary men and women, growing up in this great country and community, living their lives, learning their lessons, being led on the path of life that leads to tremendous things."

The most important lesson of Sept. 11, said Marino's sister, Lynda, is to remember the tremendous things people like her brother did — namely, "that when disaster strikes, there are people in this world who defy the human instinct to flee and conversely run in the direction of danger in order to help."

Lynda characterized her brother as a valiant, strong, smart, funny and hardworking man who "cared deeply for his family and absolutely loved his job."

While it's painful for her to imagine what he saw and felt while doing that job at the WTC inferno, Lynda continued, "I seek comfort in knowing that he lost his life doing what he loved to do most."

Marino's father, Pat, stood between his wife and daughter and laid a comforting hand on their shoulders throughout the ceremony, as Marino's wife, Katrina, held their son, Tyler, 3, and daughter Kristin, 5, stood close by.

"I truly believe that by remembering and celebrating the lives of [heros like Marino], we weave grief, pain and sorrow into strength, courage and connection," said Supervisor Kate Murray before she lifted Tyler and Kristin to pull the rope and unveil the street sign that reads, "Kenneth J. Marino Avenue."

Granice told the crowd that just as the twin towers should be rebuilt to remind future generations of what originally stood at the WTC site, this sign will remind kids that heroic men have come from the streets where they play.

Katrina said after the ceremony that it held a lot of meaning, having taken place on the street where her husband was raised. "He always bragged about us, so it was great that we got the chance to brag about him," she said.

Marino's mother, who said that holding the ceremony just days before the second anniversary of the terrorist attacks made the memorial more meaningful, implored the crowd to "never forget" 9/11, the bravery of the men and women who ran into the towers to save lives, the innocent people who were killed that day, "and Kenny."

One of Marino's buddies who will never forget him is Frank Corona, an Oceanside native who fights fires with Ladder 119 in Williamsburg. After the ceremony, Corona recalled how Marino exhibited unusual confidence when he played softball in Oceanside, and how he always had a smile on his face and a positive attitude. Corona's fondest memory of Marino, however, is of when Corona was in the fire academy and was having trouble tying knots for rescue procedures, a requirement for becoming a firefighter.

"Ken took the time out of his schedule and invited me over to his house, and he had the whole entire course laid out in his backyard," Corona recalled. "And station by station, he took me and taught me, and he showed me a video. The next day was the test, and I aced it. He gave me the confidence. He was just so into the job. There weren't enough days in the week for the fire department. Even on his off time, he was learning how to be a better fireman. He was an awesome fireman."

* This story was originally published in the Oceanside/Island Park Herald in September 2003.

Remembering Laura Marchese, 35

2011-09-08T16:58:00.000-07:00

WTC victim memorilized by friends and family

By Joseph Kellard

For Anthony and Lorraine Marchese, it was like reliving Sept. 11 all over again.

Last month, the Freeport couple learned that the remains of their daughter, Laura Merchese, an Oceanside resident and a victim at the World Trade Center, were identified through DNA as being at the devastated site.

"I guess a person tends to fantasize, 'Oh, they never found her, maybe she got away,'" Lorraine said. "And I think just the confirmation gave us that bang all over again, because you realize she was there. And it's very hard, very hard dealing with that, and not to have a body is overwhelming."

On Sept. 11, Marchese, 35, had been working for about a year on the 102 floor of the WTC as an executive assistant with Alliance Consulting Group. For 12 years before that, she had worked with Reliance National, an insurance company in Manhattan, where she elevated herself from a ground-floor position to executive assistant. Less than two weeks before the terrorist attacks, Marchese, a life-long Freeport resident, and her fiancé, Joseph Mendez, a life-long Island Park resident, had moved into their new home in Oceanside, happily nestled between their families.

"Laura was a very special person and one of a kind: successful, intelligent, caring, and she touched a lot of people's lives," Mendez said. "It's hard to lose a loved one who you are planning to spend your whole life with and they are just taken away. But what keeps me going is I knowing that she's in a better place and some day I'll see her again."

Echoing similar thoughts about coping with the loss of Laura, Lorraine said, "I pray and I have faith that she is with family members who have passed. I think that's what truly keeps me going. I believed Laura's remains would be found. I never gave up hope."

To assist them in their ongoing grief, the Marcheses attend counseling sessions at South Nassau Communities Hospital's World Trade Center Child and Family Counseling Program in Rockville Centre, where they meet with other parents whose children perished at the WTC.

"If it was not for the wonderful people who are a part of this group, I don't know how we would have managed," Lorraine explained. "It helps to know that we are not the only people who are suffering like this."

Not a big believer in counseling, Mendez has found comfort and strength in his family and friends and through other means.

"I keep working and I keep on moving, and that's how I deal with it," he said. "I keep Laura in my memory every day, and that's what gets me through."

Laura will be remembered by loved ones as someone who was enormously considerate of others, and who gave much of her time volunteering for certain causes, such as the Make-a-Wish Foundation.

"She was the kindest, sweetest person I'd ever met,” Mendez said. “She would do anything for anyone she or I knew.”

A testament to the many lives that Laura deeply touched is the many dedications that have been made in her memory. A group of her closest friends dedicated a bush and a plaque at Holy Redeemer Parish in Freeport, which they all attended while growing up. The Freeport Memorial Library, where Laura worked for five years while attending Freeport High School and Nassau Community College, dedicated a tree in her name. And Laura's sister, Cathy Collins, recently held a ceremony and unveiled a wall comprised of six ornamental pear trees and a plaque on a rock before them in her backyard in West Babylon.

Marie Thomas, Laura's other sister, has had Masses said in her honor at her local parish in Pleasentville. Others who knew Laura — from people who rode the train with her to work each day to past co-workers — gave donations in her name to the Make-a-Wish Foundation.

Presently, the Marcheses are unsure what they will do on Sept. 11, but attending the ceremony planned for New York City will probably be too emotionally overwhelming for them, Lorraine indicated. One thing is for sure, however. They will continue to pray for what they still have.

"I pray for the good health of my two girls that are alive and my husband," Lorraine said." I think that's basically truly what keeps me going."

* This story was originally published in the Oceanside-Island Park Herald in September 2002.

Remembering Tim Haviland, 41

2011-09-07T18:10:00.000-07:00

'He absolutely loved New York'

By Joseph Kellard

His profession didn't lead him to New York, but his heart did. Tim Haviland moved to the Big Apple after meeting his wife, Amy, on the Internet. He loved New York, and when he had the opportunity to work in the Twin Towers he glowed, said Amy Haviland.

Tim died during the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. He was vice-president and project manager for insurance brokerage Marsh McLennan, a company that lost many employees in the attacks.

"He was on top of the world,” Amy said. “He'd go to the windows every day and watch the ferries and all the people below. He loved the hustle and bustle and the people. He loved talking to the people."

Haviland was born in Bar Harbor, Maine, in 1960. He moved with his family to Ames, Iowa, at age 2, graduated from Ames High School in 1978 and relocated to Minneapolis-St. Paul, where he attended Macalester College.

After graduation, he landed a job with Lawson Computer Associates, a software firm in St. Paul, where he started in the mailroom, and while he was a manager in that department, he introduced many computer programs to make it operate more efficiently. After 12 years, he left the company and returned to school to learn computer programming.

Amy and Tim originally came to know each other through an Internet matchmaking web site in April 1996. They had much in common, except their locations. Living a thousand miles apart, they nevertheless decided to remain Internet friends and corresponded with each other often.

In August of that year, Tim decided to accompany a coworker who was flying to New York on a business trip, and he arranged to meet Amy at LaGuardia Airport. After spending some time with each other, Tim returned two weeks later to attend the christening of Amy's niece.

"I thought he was the most wonderful person I'd ever met," Amy recalled. "He was kind, generous, loving, honest."

In October, Tim set up a series of job interviews in New York and was hired by Avis to run their computer program department at twice the salary he was making in Minnesota. In January 1997, he moved to Oceanside with Amy and her two children, Nicholas, 14, and Jesse, 12. They were engaged in November 1998 and married in August 1999.

"He took over managing my children's lives and became their financial supporter and their homework man," Amy said. "He was very devoted to me and my children."

By September 11, Haviland had been working for Marsh McLennan for more than three years and he expected to be promoted to vice president in October. He started at the company's headquarters at 1166 Avenue of the Americas, and later his office was switched to the 96th floor of the North Tower at the World Trade Center.

"He absolutely loved New York and working in the city to begin with, but when he transferred to the Twin Towers he glowed," Amy said.

The day before the attacks, Amy had returned home from the hospital after undergoing abdominal surgery. The next morning, the couple performed their usual routine, which included driving Tim to the Oceanside Long Island Rail Road station each morning.

"I said to him before we left that morning, 'do you want to go vote now?' He said, 'I would but, you know how Jesse gets if she can't push all the levers for me. I'll come home early and we'll all go vote.'"

After dropping him off, Amy returned home and went back to bed to convalesce. The bedroom phone rang and woke her from her sleep. It was Amy's sister Christine.

"She tried to be very calm," Amy explained. "She said, 'Amy, I think you should put on the TV because they think a plane just flew into the World Trade Center.' I put on Channel 4 immediately and started screaming, because I could see it was his tower."

When Tim failed to call her, Amy knew he was in trouble.

"He would have called me if he could have, even if he were choking with smoke,” she said. “I called his voice mail and then his cell phone. And I kept calling his cell phone. He never answered."

Amy also characterized her husband as someone who always walked around with a smile.

"Our neighbors, who took the train with him in the morning, miss him so much because he always lightened up their morning."

Haviland was someone who was passionate about his interests, whether it was studying computer books to increase his knowledge in his profession, politics or the Minnesota Vikings, Amy said.

Tim once brought Amy to the Metrodome in Minnesota to watch the Vikings play the Green Bay Packers. "I knew nothing about football, but instead of shushing me because he wanted to watch the game, Tim explained the rules and every detail,” she recalled. “He was a very patient man."

Haviland was also a Knicks and Yankees fan, but Amy and her children were Met fans. "Last year's World Series when the Yankees played the Mets was a big deal in our house,” she said.

For Amy, what makes coping with her husband's loss most difficult is seeing her children's suffering. Amy said she feels "very depressed" and wants to "hide under the covers and not come out," but that she has to take care of her family.

"To sit at our dinning room table at night and try to have dinner without Tim, I haven't been able to eat,” she said. “My kids are destroyed. It's just an awful, awful feeling."

Amy and her family's saving grace have been their relatives, who were with her at every moment in the wake of the attacks and the search and rescue efforts.

"I don't think I would have survived this without them," Amy said.

A memorial service was held for Haviland last Sunday at Vanella's Funeral Chapel in Oceanside.

* This story originally appeared in the Oceanside/Island Park Herald in November 2001.

Walks Home Retains Vintage Features

2011-08-05T00:54:00.000-07:00

The couple that bought the bungalow, built in 1922, decorated it in retro style.

By Joseph Kellard
Glyn and Kelly Jaime were living in their new summer home, a 1922 single-level bungalow, only a month before it was included on the Long Beach Historical & Preservation Society’s annual Heritage House Tours in June 2008.

When the Manhattenites bought the home on October Walk it had been vacant for two years and was filled with cobwebs and sheet-covered furniture, including a vintage 1950s Herman Miller kitchen table and chairs that the Jamies kept, since it fit their retro style.

“We just had time to get it cleaned up and organized for the tour, which was a bit of a challenge, but we loved it,” Glyn recalled.

The bungalow has three small bedrooms, a living room, dining room, kitchen and bathroom, and it retains many original features: a white stucco exterior, a brick fireplace, a claw-foot cast iron bathtub, beaver-board walls and linseed linoleum floors.

A description of the home in the house tours' booklet reads: “This bungalow truly exemplifies the long-ago and continuing charm of Long Beach as a vacation locale.”

Other original features that drew the Jaimes to the house are its kitchen sink, which Kelly estimates it weighs as much as 800 pounds; windows with wavy panes that look out onto the enclosed front porch; and an outdoor shower at the home’s rear, where the fenceless property mingles with their neighbors’ concrete plots.

While the Jaimes were house-hunting they looked at some 25 Long Beach properties before discovering the Walks, a neighborhood where homes are divided only by a sidewalk and are without street access. The couple was instantly sold on the area and bought a bungalow that was built by a Brooklyn lumber producer, Louis Bossert, after World War I.

Of course, as with any dated home, it needed upgrades. The 1940s toilet had a crack that was not fixable, so they had to change it along with the lead pipes, and they painted the outside, a task that was last performed in 1976.

“This was one of the first things on our to-do list,” Glyn said about the repainting. “We wanted to bring the house back to its original vintage beauty.”

Glyn knows these all these details because the home’s second and last owner, Lydia Leiner, left behind impeccable records of everything she bought. The first owner was a barrister from Brooklyn who bought the house for his wife.

The Jaimes have added their own touches that include a wall adorned with a mid-century street map of the Columbus Circle area, framed black-and-white vintage photos of Manhattan and replicas of the Statue of Liberty (since they were married on Liberty Island).

They have only been to the house from late spring to early fall, so they’ve never had to shovel snow there.

“It’s instant relaxation,” said Kelly about their sojourns to Long Beach from their Manhattan apartment. “It’s like a vacation every weekend we come out here.”

Kelly works in Levittown as vice president of sales for Premier Merchant Processing, a company specializing in credit card processing for businesses, and Glyn owns a packaging design company in Manhattan.

Having a yard is something new for Glyn, who was born and raised in Greenwich Village and has always resided in Manhattan. In the seven years she and Kelly have lived together in their Manhattan apartment building, they’ve never seen any neighbors on their floor. But they know all the families around them on the Walks. One of their young neighbors even waters their flowers and lawn during the week.

“It’s a whole different speed in New York City,” Glyn said. “I look forward to coming to Long Beach all week long.”

Walks Neighborhood Had Military Beginnings

2011-08-05T00:49:00.000-07:00

Historic community had mostly year-round residents by the 1970's.

By Joseph Kellard
What residents of the Long Beach’s historic Walks neighborhood lack in asphalt and yard space, they make up for in neighborly intimacy, whether it’s picking up groceries for one another or shoveling snow together to clear the sidewalk that separates their homes to get to surrounding streets.

The 10 blocks of Walks have no direct street access, driveways or garages. The bungalows on each walk face east and west and are sandwiched behind homes facing north and south from West Park Avenue, the neighborhood’s northern border, to West Beech Street to the south. Named for the months of the year, the walks themselves run north-south, from Lindell Avenue, the eastern border, to New York Avenue.

The homes are little more than arm-spans apart, and their “yards” are best described as patches of grass. Homeowners make the most of their small properties, though, lining their front picket or chain-link fences with flowers, while some leave their backyards barrier-free, blurring the property lines.

“I love it because it has so much charm,” said Roberta Fiore, a Long Beach historian who calls the Walks the city’s most distinct neighborhood. “It’s a cute little community with a lot of creativity.”

The neighborhood was first developed in 1917 and 1918, when the U.S. military took over the Nassau Hotel and Long Beach became a military settlement like Camp Yaphank in Suffolk County, where pre-fabricated bungalows were built for $2,500. They were shipped to Long Beach and installed barracks-style on property owned by Brooklyn developer and former State Sen. William Reynolds. The uninsulated pre-fabs were meant for summer use, but for $500 more a chimney could be built.

Louis Bossert, a Brooklyn lumber producer, developed the second wave of homes there starting in the late 1920s. By the mid-1950s, tenants started to live in them year-round. “The expression then was, ‘Throw some heat in the bungalows,’” Fiore said.

By the 1970s, half the homes became permanent dwellings, said Jim Hennessy, a former City Council president who was raised on January Walk. Hennessy fondly remembers the closeness not only of the neighborhood, but also in his family’s bungalow: He was one of nine children. He and a younger sister, two older brothers and single mother occupied the standard three bedrooms, and his five other sisters shared the attic-turned-bedroom.

Fun for Hennessy meant running with friends through stretches of then mostly wide-open yards, throwing a football across a few lawns and jumping from one rooftop to the next while playing hide-and-seek.

“There was a house across from ours where two elderly French-Canadian women lived,” Hennessy said in an interview in 2009. “If I had to go to the bathroom and one of my other siblings was in our bathroom, I would just run outside my house and use Jean and Isabella’s bathroom. That’s what it was like. It was really close and a lot of fun.”

One typical and long-time feature of the neighborhood homes are the front porches, many of which are now enclosed but were once open to catch breezes from the ocean a few blocks south.

“The whole design of the Walks,” Fiore said, “was to build houses without street access, but an aside was the terrific breezes.”

Birders Break Out the Binoculars

2011-04-10T16:40:00.000-07:00

The South Shore Audubon Society take a nature walk at Point Lookout Town Park.

By Joseph Kellard

Irwin Zuckerman’s devotion to bird watching has its origins in baseball and city life. As a boy growing up in lower Manhattan, he played the outfield so that he could watch seagulls soar along the neighboring East River.

“I always liked being outdoors and I always liked watching birds,” Zuckerman said.

The Port Washington resident recalled his early fascination with birds while on a trek along the beaches of Point Lookout with fellow members of the South Shore Audubon Society on Sunday morning. Like most birders, Zuckerman straps a pair of binoculars around his neck and pockets a field guide. His is a Peterson 1980 edition, complete with illustrations of bird species and nationwide residence maps.

“I’m looking for a Harlequin duck,” he said on Sunday. “It’s a very pretty duck.”

He did spot an Oystercatcher and turned to its illustration in his guide, pointing out its long, orange beak that he said is powerful enough to crack open oyster shells.

While Zuckerman heads out weekly on bird walks, among the nearly two-dozen people at Sunday’s excursion was novice Lillian Baum of Long Beach.

Baum read about the walk in a newspaper and thought it would be good exercise. She followed the experienced birders who stopped about every 30 yards to plant their tripod telescopes in the sand and point them out to sea. Like them, Baum was eager to get outside after a long, cold winter.

“I’m also here to be out in nature,” she said.

While it was sunny and temperatures were expected to climb into the mid-50s, a stiff wind forced Baum and others to wear winter coats and hats. “Just smell that fresh air,” she said while inhaling deeply.

Baum may become one of the South Shore Audubon Society’s 1,500 members. The Freeport-based organization gathers for nature walks (not just bird walks) at many locations. If they’re not meeting at Point Lookout Town Park or Lido Beach Preserve, then they may be found at the Marine Nature Study Area in Oceanside, Mill Pond Park in Seaford-Wantagh or Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge and Central Park in New York.

John Gaglione, a board member and event organizer, said that each walk typically attracts between 20 to 35 members, and their monthly meetings up to 60 members.

Gaglione was a Boy Scout leader on a trip with his troop through the woods when he first learned about the Audubon Society's bird walks. They crossed paths with birdwatchers who were members and they handed him a newsletter.

“I always enjoyed communing with nature, and through the seasons you get to see the beautiful landscapes,” said Gaglione, a Bethpage resident. “But I also enjoy the people in the organization, who are of like mind in conservation.”

During Sunday’s walk with Gaglione, Rick Kopitsch, a Massapequa resident, spotted a Common Loon when the group first reached the beach from the parking lot.

“That’s one of the oldest birds chronologically,” said Kopitsch, a 17-year veteran of birding.

His daughter, Stacey, now a wildlife biologist, got him hooked on the hobby. On his first walk with her, he was lucky enough to spot what he called two “vibrant” birds: the Scarlet Tanager and American Redstart.

Like others, Kopitsch's love of birding grew once he got involved with South Shore Audubon Society, citing past president, Elliot Kutner, now in his 80s, as an important influence.

“His enthusiasm for birding was contagious,” he said.

Bridge Renaming Ceremony Attracts Hundreds

2011-03-28T18:14:00.000-07:00

They honored Michael Valente, Long Beach's only Medal of Honor recipient, at City Hall on March 25.

By JOSEPH KELLARD

Ralph Madalena wrote one letter last spring and that was all it took.

Madalena requested the renaming of the Nassau County-owned Long Beach Bridge in honor of his grandfather, World War I veteran Michael Valente, and mailed the letter to County Executive Ed Mangano and County Legislator Denise Ford, as well as other government officials and local veterans groups.

On Friday, less than a year later, Long Beach City Hall played host to the official bridge re-naming ceremony, with hundreds of people packed into the sixth-floor chambers, after the County Legislature last July voted unanimously to rename the bridge to Michael Valente Memorial Bridge.

“Many cultures believe that you never die, so long as you are remembered, and people like my grandfather live on,” said Madalena with his wife, Francesca Capitano, a former Long Beach City Council member, and his daughter, Katherine Madalena, by his side.

Private Valente, an infantryman, rescued his regiment from disaster in France on Sept. 29, 1918, and for his heroic acts he became Long Beach's lone recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor — the highest award for valor given to a member of the U.S. Armed Forces for actions against an enemy force. More than 3,440 medals have been awarded since its inception in 1861.

Friday’s ceremony featured several speakers, including former U.S. Senator Alfonse D’Amato, Assemblyman Harvey Weisenberg and Long Beach City Manager Charles Theofan, as well as Joe Sciame, chairman of Conference of Presidents, David Laskin, author of the book The Long Way Home, which features a passage on Valente, and Stella Grillo from the New York State Order Sons of Italy in America. Everyone from local to national veterans groups to Long Beach students to Valente’s family, who travelled from as far as Florida to California, attended the morning event.

The formal ceremony for the renaming was originally planned for Sept. 29, a date the city council designated Michael Valente Day in Long Beach in 2008. It was postponed to March 25, which is designated Medal of Honor Day nationwide. Ford was instrumental in spearheading and organizing the event.

“He put himself in great danger to save so many,” Ford said about Valente in her opening remarks.

The legislator and other speakers, some of who were friends with Valente, remembered and honored a man whose courageous acts came when his regiment, Company D of the 107th Infantry, was suffering heavy casualties during operations against German forces at the Hindenburg line near Ronssoy, France. Alongside a fellow soldier, Valente rushed forward through intense machine gun fire directly on an enemy nest, killing two gunners and capturing five enemy soldiers.

Discovering another machine gun nest nearby that rained heavy fire on American forces, Valente and his companion charged it, killed the gunner, jumped into the enemy trench, killed two more soldiers and captured 21 others. Valente's actions represent the first penetration of the Hindenburg line, Madalena said.

Nearly 11 years later to the day, on Sept. 27, 1929, President Herbert Hoover decorated Valente, then a retired sergeant, with the medal in Washington. "It's the proudest moment of my life," Valente said, according to a New York Times account dated the day after.

On Friday, Sciame, who chairs an Italian organization, said it was not just a proud day for his fellow Americans of Italian heritage, but also for the children of Long Beach.

“Every time they go over that bridge, they’re going to see the name of a man who … came to this country, worked hard, fought in a war, as many of us have done, but he was a hero. And so, I say Michael Valente was a positive role model who we should emulate, refer to and study him, and let’s get his name in the history books.”

From Italy to France to the Long Beach Boardwalk

Valente emigrated from his native Italy to Ogdensburg, N.Y., in 1915, and three years later he entered Company D of the New York National Guard, which was later incorporated into the 27th Division. In May of 1918, he was deployed to France to fight on the front lines.

After the war, Valente married Margareta Marchello and moved to her hometown, Newark, N.J., before the couple settled in Long Beach around 1919, eventually buying a home on West Walnut Street where they raised three children. Valente was a contractor and real estate agent who built houses in Long Beach, but he eventually gave up the business to work as the city marshal at City Hall.

“When I look back at Michael Valente, I remember this giant of a man,” Weisenberg said about the veteran who stood 6 feet tall with blond hair, blue eyes and a barrel chest. “… He was like a John Wayne, only quiet. He was giving. He was loving. He was a model.”

After Valente retired in 1965, he greeted people at La Serenata, a restaurant at the original Long Beach Library, now the site of Sutton Place on West Park Avenue. Among the local veterans groups, Valente was most active in the VFW Post. He was always active, particularly in his garden, and he rode his bike on the boardwalk regularly right up until his final years. Valente died in 1976 at age 80.

The city named one of its senior apartments, on National Boulevard near City Hall, after Valente, as did the Sons of Italy lodge he attended.

City Manager Charles Theofan asked the audience not to lose sight of the symbolism of a bridge.

“A bridge takes us to another place,” he said. “Let us hope that one day mankind will take us to a better place, where peace between nations will rule the day.”

2010-07-20T17:47:00.000-07:00

Before this past spring, I hadn't written a sports story in a few years. The newspaper company I worked for had hired a team of sports reporters to cover mainly high school sports. I missed covering that beat because I love sports and always enjoy writing about baseball and especially football.

So when I got the opportunity in April to do some freelance writing for Ultimate Athlete Magazine, a publication that covers high school sports across Long Island, I jumped at it. The following are stories I wrote about two Levittown baseball teams. You can also read them in PDF format online by clicking on the link above. The first story starts on page 52; the other on page 60. And if you go there, you'll see the magazine does a great job with its photography, graphics and layout.

Island Trees: Roller Coasters to Playoffs

By Joseph Kellard

Before this baseball season’s first pitch, Island Trees coaches handed their players custom-made red shirts to wear under their uniforms, which read “Finish It.” The words serve as an inspiring anthem for them to rally around after a narrow, heartbreaking loss to Clarke in last year’s County championships.

“We just have to go out there and put everything on the line,” said senior Bryan Verbitsky when asked what it will take for his team to finish as champions this season. “We have the talent this year to go do it, so hopefully we can.”

The Nassau County Player of the Year in 2009, Verbitsky is among the talented players on a team that has nonetheless navigated something of a roller coaster ride of wins and losses while guaranteed a playoff spot in Conference A-1. But Verbitsky, a pitcher and centerfielder, and his teammates cited their 4-3 comeback over Division on May 5 as a pivotal game, especially after falling to that cross-town rival 15-4 the week before.

“There was a lot of adrenaline going there,” Verbitsky said after he struck out the final two batters with the bases loaded. “Division beat us when I was in 10th grade in the semi finals, and just whipped us pretty bad last week, so this was a big one for us. We needed to go out there and get it done.”

Verbitsky, who smacked a two-run homer in the game, came in for relief after starter Brandon Garcia relinquished four hits and three runs over six innings. “Today was the biggest game all year,” said Garcia, who earned All Conference Player in 2009. “Yesterday, we had a tough game, losing 2-1 to Clarke. But today, after bouncing back from a loss, and how we came out and fought for the lead, we came out awesome today. Best I’ve seen this team all year.”

Against Division, Verbitsky and Garcia were making their return after suffering injuries earlier in the season. Head Coach Joe D’Auria regards their absence, as well as injuries to other players, as a factor playing into their up-and-down season in which they’ve won or lost by two runs or less in eight games.

“There’s been a lot of bumps and bruises, more so than any year I can remember,” said D’Auria, Island Tree’s head coach for the past six years.

Another factor has been ability grouping, in which teams of equal status are pitting against one another throughout their schedules. “We beat the hell out of each other and every game is a grind,” D’Aura said. “They’re all playoff games.”

After winning a county championship in 2007 and coming close to another title last year, Island Trees lost some of its offensive power this season but retained all of their main arms. “The strength of our team is going to be our pitching,” D’Auria said.

Behind Verbitsky and Garcia in the rotation is Dan Bartlett, who also said his team’s defeat of Division was a defining game that could help propel the team back to the county championship series. “This was a big win we just had,” Bartlett said. “After this win, I think we’re going to be alright the rest of the season. We have a lot of momentum going into the rest of the season.”

The game after Division, on May 6, Island Trees defeated South Side 12-6, with Verbitsky batting 3-for-5 with a homer, a double and two RBIs, as winning pitcher Matt Bowen allowed one earned run, to brining their record to 9-5.

But since every team in their conference makes the playoffs, what counts is not so much your record but rather how you play each game, particularly at the end of the season.

“You have [to] take it game by game and you have to forget about what happens in your losses and look ahead,” said Mike Manganiello, a junior third baseman and pitcher.

Manganiello watched as his brother [helped] Island Trees to their country championship in 2007, and he got a taste of what it’s like to play in title series last year.

“Unfortunately we lost but it’s beautiful, being in that atmosphere and being involved is good,” Manganiello said. “Some guys say when they look back that you want to win the counties, but you have to realize what you have done and what you can do and look toward the future.”

Verbitsky knows what winning a county championship taste like and he savors another taste.

“It was incredible that year, it was one of the best years of my life,” Verbitsky said about winning the counties. “This year’s getting there though. We’re just trying to get on a roll … Hopefully this one will get us back on a roll like we had in 2007.”

MacArthur: Pitching Powerhouse

By Joseph Kellard

For a perennial baseball powerhouse, finding defining distinctions between each team from one season to the next can be a tall task. Once again, MacArthur entered the season a top-seed that fields talented, hard-working players who are expected to earn a playoff berth.

But Coach Steve Costello is quick to note that the strength of this season’s squad is the quality and depth of its arms. Through its first 11 games, MacArthur went 9-2 with pitchers throwing four shutouts and in three other victories surrendering a mere four runs.

“Maybe our pitching is a little deeper,” Costello said when asked what distinguishes his team. “We’ve always had good pitching, but we have a lot of guys that throw really well.”

Leading the rotation are seniors Frankie Vanderka and Josh Barry. The All-County League MVP and an All-State player last year, Vanderka started the season with a 3-0 record, allowing just one run over three games.

“After the first two starts, I know I didn’t have my all today,” Vanderka said after his third win, 8-0 against Freeport on April 28. “I went out, trying to hit spots. They’re a good-hitting team. Can’t take anything away from them. The other pitcher, Alejandro Marine, threw great. But I just had to go out there and keep battling.”

Also at 3-0 through the end of April, Barry tossed a 12-stikeout complete game shutout over Baldwin, winning 5-0 on April 15, struck out 10 over six innings in an 11-3 rout in Oceanside on April 29, and has been solid in relief. “He’s pitched really, really well for us,” Costello said.

But when asked to pick a highlight this season, Barry cited his team’s 10-inning battle against Bellmore-JFK on April 12, when Vanderka dueled with pitcher Kevin Archibold, whom Barry called possibly the two best pitchers in the state.

In a 1-1 tie, Vanderka went nine innings, struck out 10 batters while allowing three hits and two walks. “We stuck it out, we got a big win,” Barry said about the 5-1 victory. “It’s games like that, which go into late innings, that can turn a season, and instead of a loss it’s a momentum booster.”

While Vanderka and Barry, who have accepted scholarships to play at Stony Brook next season, have been standouts, other key MacArthur players are shortstop Nick McQuail, who batted 3-for-3 with two runs in the Oceanside game, centerfielder Mike Scrow, and third baseman Sal Sanquini, who has pitched well at the back of the rotation.
“A lot of guys have been contributing,” said Costello, who has coached [in] MacArthur’s baseball program since 1993 and earned two Nassau County and Long Island championships and one state title.

Last year, MacArthur showed all signs that they could cruise to another championship, going 19-0-2 on the regular season, but come playoff time the team was thrown an unexpected curveball. Their high school was closed for a week due to a swine flu scare, but the playoffs continued without them.

“We just got backlogged, had to make it up and we just got caught,” Costello explained. “Our bats slowed up and we got knocked off in the semifinal round. It was a huge disappointment.”

Although several seniors departed last year, MacArthur remains a senior-heavy squad, and perhaps the discouragement over letting a possible undefeated season and championship slip away is what ultimately distinguishes this team.

“We just have a desire, you know,” Barry said when asked to compare the two teams. “We’re always top ranked, and we want it a lot this year. A lot of the seniors have gone on, but we still have a pretty filled senior lineup this year, and we really want it this year.”

Barry said that one important lesson he and his teammates have learned is to enjoy themselves more while they’re out on the diamond casing down balls and running the bases. “We just don’t want to be tense, we want to stay relaxed and have a good mentality when we’re out there,” he said. “Think, but also don’t think at the same time. You want to be loose and you want to love the game. If you have a bad at bat, you wanna come back and say ‘I’ll get ‘em next time.”

Next up for MacArthur are games against Oceanside, Massapequa, East Meadow and Mepham, some of the best teams in the county, a schedule that is a consequence of ability grouping, in which similarly-talented teams are pitting against one another.

“It’s like the old Doors’ lyrics, “no one hear gets out alive,” Costello said about the remaining schedule. “You don’t highlight any one game because you highlight them all. Any team can beat you because they’ve set it up that the good teams beat the hell out of each other. We have Oceanside, East Meadow, Mepham and Massapequa and they’re all good. They’re no gimmes on the schedule. That’s the way it’s designed.”

Four New Books I’m reading

2010-07-11T04:29:00.000-07:00

By Joseph Kellard

On Saturday, I stopped by Barnes & Noble and bought three books: “Neoconservatism” by C. Bradley Thompson, “The Logical Leap” by David Harriman and “The Sea Wolf” by Jack London.

A few week ago I ordered “Nomad” by Ayaan Hirsi Ali from Amazon.com, but I only read the first chapter or two before I had to put it down to invest much more time and effort writing a 6,200-word essay on the fundamental cause of the Catholic Church’s sex scandals and complete it before deadline. Before this stage, I had kept my book reading to a minimum (I finished reading both Andrew Bernstein’s “Capitalism Unbounded” and John David Lewis’s “Nothing Less Than Victory”), and now that I’m finished with the essay I want to return to reading more often, especially as I prepare to start writing at my new job with Patch.com, a new news division of America Online.

So what motivated me to pick up these four books? Let’s start with “Nomad.” I bought it because I loved Ali’s biography “Infidel,” which is about Ali’s strict Muslim upbringing in Africa and the Middle East, and her break from her religious family after he father arranged her to marry a man she had never met. I’ve written about an interesting aspect of that book -- how reading Western novels and romance books in particular helped sustain the spirit she needed in order to run away from her family. In “Nomad,” Ali writes about her time living in what she calls her last and final home, America, and about Muslims living in the West. If this book is anything like “Infidel,” I expect to be more enlightened and happy with my purchase.

And that purpose, to be more enlightened, is the purpose of buying any book, isn’t it? That is definitely what drove my interest in “The Logical Leap” by David Harriman. Sure, I’m buying the book, in part, because Mr. Harriman is an Objectivist, but I’ve not been motivated to read every book written by my philosophical brethren. I need to be particularly interested in the subject. Well, this book is on physics, a field I actually know little about but would love to learn much more. But more specifically this book is about methodology in thinking, about applying Ayn Rand’s theory of concepts to physics, and, more fundamentally, about inductive reasoning. I know that after I had read Tom Bowden’s excellent book “The Enemies of Columbus,” as well as hearing him talk about this book on a radio show, I learned not only about the history behind the heroic explorer and how multiculturalists have distorted the objectivity of his life and accomplishments, but also how to think about historical subjects and events in general, based on the objective methodology that Bowden employed in this book. I eagerly expect the same results from reading “The Logical Leap,” in that I hope to learn to be able to think more effectively about scientific issues in general.

The full title of C. Bradley Thompson’s new book is “Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea,” and based on the table of contents it looks like it explores both the historical and, mainly, the philosophical right-wing political movement. Dr. Yaron Brook, the president of the Ayn Rand Institute, is a co-author, and if this book is anything like the excellent essay that Mr. Thompson wrote about conservatism a few years ago for The Objective Standard, I expect to learn much more about the political right. I’ve always had a strong interest in politics, and it’s exciting to o see an Objectivist write a new book on the subject, just as exciting as when I read Thompson’s excellent book on John Adams's political thought “John Adams and The Spirit of Liberty.”

Lastly, I decided to pick up a fiction book, which I read little of last year. I’d like to return to reading novels on a more regular basis, and so I bought “The Sea Wolf” by Jack London at the recommendation of Objectivist Diana Hsieh.

I’ve come across her praises of London’s novels at her NoodleFood website, and it interested me enough to give this short book a shot. About “The Sea Wolf,” Hsieh wrote: “My favorite Jack London is The Sea Wolf. It's the Nietzchean ubermensch versus the civilized Christian. It's phenomenal. Ever since reading that, I've been reading Jack London regularly. I definitely like some works more than others, but overall, I'm entranced.”

Here's hoping I become entranced!

Cash with no questions asked

2010-05-27T20:04:00.000-07:00

In wake of shooting, Christian Light hosts second gun buyback program

By Joseph Kellard

Wearing T-shirts with the image of a relative who was shot dead in Long Beach, Lisa Cummings and Deanna Cruse greeted men who passed through the doors of the Christian Light Missionary Baptist Church on a recent Saturday. The men entered the house of worship with guns.

The church was hosting its second gun buyback program, after a shooting at nearby East Hudson Street in March, when, police say, Casey Fitzgerald, 20, gunned down fellow Long Beach resident Ernest Cummings, 40, after the men argued over their pit bulls. Cummings and Cruse, Ernest's mother and aunt, were among the church's congregants, alongside the Rev. Isaac R. Melton Jr. and Deacon Cecil Garrett, who helped at the May 15 program, which was dedicated to the murder victim.

"We wanted to do another program before Memorial Day, to make sure nothing like that happens again," said Marcus Tinker, president of the church's Boys to Men Ministry, who organized both events. "That was in honor of Ernest."

The program, a joint effort between the church, the Nassau County district attorney's office and the Long Beach Police Department, invites owners of illegal guns to turn them over in exchange for $200 in cash. The only questions the plainclothes police officers asked were, "How are you doing?" and "How many guns do you have?" In all, 133 firearms were collected, 13 more than were turned in at the first program last September, according to Chris Munzing, a spokesman for the D.A.

While New York City has run gun buyback programs for years, Nassau County kicked off its first program in December 2008, with pickup points in Hempstead, Uniondale and Freeport. To date, the program has gathered 1,609 illegal guns.

"We tweaked it a little bit from the New York City program, using cash rather than vouchers or ATM cards," said Chuck Ribando, the D.A.'s chief investigator, who runs the program.

The cash the police dole out is forfeiture money from people who were arrested for crimes. Using cash is one way to make the program as anonymous and comfortable as possible for those who turn in the guns. "People are more likely to hand the guns in if they get cash," Ribando explained. "They come in, hand in their guns and leave with cash in less than a minute."

Other tactics used to assure the program's anonymity include using places of worship as turn-in points and keeping local police officers away.

"It would be much easier for us not to take our show on the road and have it right here at the D.A.'s office," Ribando explained. "But I think people are more apprehensive about coming to any law enforcement facility to turn in an illegal gun."

Christian Light contacted the district attorney's office about holding the first buyback in Long Beach. To help promote it, Tinker and other church members handed out hundreds of fliers around town, and used Facebook, Twitter and the Herald.

Tinker said that at both events, he noticed that people who turned their guns in were a mix of Long Beach residents and out-of-towners. "Long Beach police know the people in the neighborhood, so to prevent anyone from being scared off, the county people are there, not the local government or police who know the people," Tinker explained. "That's how every community does it."

Tinker had said previously that he wanted to bring the program to Long Beach in part because there is a lot of drug dealing around the neighborhood, in which guns can come into play, he believes the program makes the community safer.

Some critics argue that the gun users can simply use the $200 to buy other guns. "Most people think it's a joke," said one Long Beach resident. "It's like playing musical guns. If it worked, how come they come back every year and find more guns to buy?"

But while the gun-owners can do whatever they want with the $200 they get for each gun, that doesn't necessarily mean they take that money and get a new piece, Ribando said. "If anyone who knows anything about street guns, there's not much you can buy with $200, especially to upgrade," he added. "To say they're going to upgrade with $200 is ludicrous, because you can't even buy one for $200, let alone upgrade."

Others question why police don't use the program as a way to observe the gun-owners coming in and out to see if they fit the descriptions of any wanted criminals and to potentially track down and arrest them. But Ribando said emphatically that this tactic would defeat the purpose of the program.

"No, the whole point of this is to get the illegal guns off the street, not to make an arrest for the gun," he said. "Not that you don't want to make an arrest — you do. But out of the 132 guns we collected, if one of those guns was to be used to shoot someone, then we've done our job."

All serial numbers on the guns are checked, and if any guns is connected to a crime, all police know is that they've gotten that gun off the streets. "We wouldn't try to back search to find out who handed that gun in," Ribando said. "It's totally anonymous."

Tinker said the church is working on organizing other events with the city and the Police Department to make the community safer and to strengthen relationships with elected officials.

Celebrating a Transplant Milestone

2010-04-24T18:32:00.000-07:00

Kidney recipient honors donor’s gift

By Joseph Kellard

When Liz Stark walked into the Middle Bay Country Club in Oceanside on April 3, she was surprised to see a poster-sized, decade-old Herald article and a photo of her and her father-in-law, Eli, on an easel.

Liz was led to believe she was attending a party celebrating her in-laws' wedding anniversary a few days earlier, but instead she found the club's dining room filled with her friends and family, there to celebrate the 10th anniversary of her donation of a kidney to her father-in-law.

While Liz said she was "very surprised" and "extremely grateful" for the acknowledgment, she did her best to deflect the spotlight. "It's really about him," she said of Eli, "and it's funny because he probably thinks it's the other way around, but it's really about 10 more years of life for him."

Eli's long road to the anniversary began in 1999 with unnerving uncertainty. A longtime diabetic, Eli, then 67, had developed kidney problems due to his disease. From his Long Beach home he traveled to North Shore-LIJ Hospital a few days a week. Although he was eventually treated at a dialysis center in Lynbrook, Eli still had to rise before dawn for his treatments before teaching a 6 a.m. math class at Nassau Community College, where he has been a professor since 1966.

"Occasionally I think of what I had to do for almost a year on
dialysis," said Stark, a former vice principal at Long Beach High School and Board of Education president. "You had to do it at least three times a week."

Eli's wife, Susie, and sons Mark and Scott wanted to be his donors, but they didn't share his blood type, and although his brothers were good matches, their advanced age and frail health made them undesirable candidates.

His only recourse was to get a new kidney from a cadaver — and to mark time on a list where the average wait was five to six years. But then Liz stepped forward. "Finally, Liz, my lovely daughter-in-law, said, 'I want to give you my kidney,'" Stark recalled.

For Liz — then 32 and a mother of a 4- and 2-year-old, Elyse and Brendan — the decision was a no-brainer. "People always told me, 'I don't know if I would have done the same thing,' but for me, at the time, it wasn't even a question in my mind," said Liz, whose blood type is O, which makes her a universal kidney donor — anyone can use her blood.

A decade ago, doctors still had to operate on both the donor and the recipient, but the Starks agreed to try an emerging new method, laparoscopic surgery. On March 7, 2000, at New York University Medical Center, Dr. Michael Edye removed one of Liz's kidneys, and Dr. Thomas Diflo performed the transplant.

Susie recalled that her son, Mark, Liz's husband, felt a mix of emotions in the waiting room. "It was so painful to watch his angst, waiting for his wife to come out of surgery," Susie said. "It was the hardest for him, I think. It was the love of his life and the mother of his children and his father — what do you do?"

To this day, Liz has never been adversely affected by the surgery, and thanks to her, Eli got a new lease on life — along with two new grandchildren, Owen and Nate, Scott's kids.

"He's gotten to see my brother-in-law's two kids that he probably would have never seen," said Liz, who grew up in Long Beach and now lives in Lido Beach. "So he has double the number of grandchildren that he had at the time I gave the kidney. And that's the milestone that I keep in my head. That's a big thing."

These days, Eli has problems with his knees, and other ailments have sidelined him from playing racquetball, one of his favorite pastimes. But he still reads voraciously, mostly historical fiction, and teaches three days a week at NCC. "I have no plans to retire, not if I can help it," he said. "I'm more concerned about keeping my mind."

Every year on their special anniversary, Eli has always done something for Liz, buying her flowers or taking her out to dinner. He took her to Jimmy Hays Steak House in Island Park on March 7, one of the ways he kept her from knowing that a much bigger celebration was in store.

"It was outrageous — it was wonderful," Susie Stark said about the anniversary celebration at Middle Bay. "She was wonderfully surprised."

To Liz, who lost her father at a young age, Eli is like a father. Now, to further commemorate their anniversary, she will take part in her first walk for the National Kidney Foundation at Hofstra University on May 23.

"Everything worked out beautifully," Susie said. "My husband was so thrilled to honor her. What can I say? She saved his life. I cannot thank her enough. She's like the daughter we never had."

* Photo Courtesy of Arthur Findlay

‘Our family is incomplete without her’

2010-03-31T17:31:00.001-07:00

L.B. parents talks about daughter’s heroin addiction, overdose

By Joseph Kellard

The beach had a significant role in Holly Prussman’s life — and death.

When she was a girl, Holly enjoyed playing on Roosevelt Boulevard beach, and she developed into a top Long Island swimmer at age 6. In January the beach was the site of a memorial service for her, as lifeguards paddled surfboards out to sea to place a wreath in her memory and 19 balloons, one for each year of her short life, sailed skyward.

On Jan. 12, Holly died of a heroin overdose at her parents’ home in the Canals. Early that morning — a week after she had checked herself out of a drug rehab center after a few months’ stay — her father, Mitch, saw light under her locked door. Mitch and Holly’s mother, Julia, found their daughter lying dead in her bedroom.

Holly had injected herself with the usual amount of heroin that she took before the rehab stint, her mother explained, but because she had been clean for three months, her detoxified system couldn’t handle the normal dosage. “She didn’t mean to kill herself,” Julia said.

Growing up in Long Beach, Holly cultivated many interests and developed into a top athlete. Thanks to her early success in swimming, she made the high school varsity swim team when she was just a seventh-grader. Her mother was a swimming instructor, and Holly taught alongside her. She surfed with her father, and became a lifeguard at several Town of Hempstead pools and beaches as well as in Long Beach. She also excelled at track, soccer, gymnastics and dance.

At Long Beach High School she was an honors student, earning a 98.6 average, excelling in math, chemistry, earth science and meteorology, faring well at school science fairs and earning a $10,000 scholarship to C.W. Post. She loved going to movies, especially comedies, tending to her chihuahuas and riding roller coasters. Her parents took her on multiple trips to Busch Gardens and Disney World.

In her late teens, however, her life changed. One day on the boardwalk, her mother recalled, Holly met her future boyfriend, a Freeport man who, her parents said, introduced her to heroin. Eventually the Prussmans started to notice things missing from the house: cash, blank checks, jewelry. At the time they had no clue that these were the first signs of Holly’s addiction.

There were other red flags. “Holly had always been a good friend to her friends,” Mitch said, but, Julia explained, her daughter began shutting her friends out, isolating herself with her boyfriend. The Prussmans were aware that she had done some drinking in high school, but that stopped cold. “You see, alcohol and heroin don’t mix,” Julia said — one of the many things she came to learn about heroin users.

There were also the many lies. Julia dismisses the claims of those who insist that you must trust your drug-addicted children. “They’ll earn your trust to get you to believe them and then they’ll lie to you,” she said. “So you never knew when she was being truthful and when she was lying. She was very smart and knew how to manipulate you.”

One day, Holly’s boyfriend was at her home and appeared to her parents be under the influence of something, but when they later confronted Holly about it, she lied, telling them he was high on marijuana. They told her not to bring him around anymore. Then Holly’s older sister, Sarah, found heroin bags in Holly’s clothes, and her boyfriend explained to the Prussmans what they were.

Finally, last June, Holly came clean. “She told me one morning, ‘Mom, I’m in a lot of trouble,’” Julia recalled. Her parents took her to the detox unit at Long Beach Medical Center, and the time she spent there made her eligible for the Dynamite Youth Center, a drug rehabilitation facility in the Catskills, which she entered last October.

But it wasn’t long before she started to think about leaving the center. One January day, a week before her fatal overdose but months before her treatment was scheduled to end, she checked out. The next day she took two trains back to Long Beach. “That was a bad sign when she came home,” Mitch said, citing statistics about relapse rates.

Hours before her parents found her dead, they tested Holly for heroin, and the test turned up positive. After the family went to bed the night of Jan. 11, Holly got up and injected herself with more heroin. “Heroin addicts will do drugs at any time,” Julia said.

Mitch said that what makes his daughter’s death so hard to accept is how sudden it all seemed. “We lost her to a severe sickness — drug abuse, a sickness she couldn’t control,” said Mitch, a high school teacher, who recalled his bring-your-child-to-work days with Holly.

“I’ll miss her affectionate ways,” he added. “If something was bothering you, she would rub your shoulders and your back.”

The Prussmans are heartened by the outpouring of support from the Long Beach community, particular their fellow parents and officials at the high school, who helped pay the funeral expenses. With Sarah, 24, and their son, Jacob, 14, still to look after, they want to find some way to help the parents of other drug-addicted children avoid the pain and heartache they have endured.
“She was a good kid ... the one we had the highest hopes for,” Julia said. “Our family is incomplete without her.”

Did Students Heed My Career Advice?

2010-03-17T18:01:00.000-07:00

By Joseph Kellard

When I was editor of the Oceanside-Island Park Herald, I gave talks to students from fourth grade up to the high school level on Career Day. I eagerly agreed to talk to students about my career and to offer them advice that would have served me well when I was their age.

While I spoke briefly about my work as a journalist, I spent most of my talk emphasizing to students that they should choose a profession that they can enjoy and love. I believe a long-range, productive career is the cornerstone of self-confidence, pride and happiness, and that an individual can't fully achieve these values stuck in a job they don't like.

To get them to understand this fact, I asked them to imagine being stuck each day, every week, in a class they disliked, whether it's math or English or science. With my analogy, some students gave a knowing groan.

I told each class my own story to give them an example of someone finding a career they loved. When I was in grade school, I was a poor student with a mild form of dyslexia, so my biggest problems were with reading, writing and spelling. Knowing I loved sports, however, my parents bought me a subscription to Sports Illustrated, believing, correctly, that this would motivate me to read. Immersing myself in stories of my sports heroes, my reading proficiency soared.

Through my teen years, I expanded my reading to include encyclopedias and works by writers ranging from Shakespeare, Dickens and Tolstoy to Hemingway, Capote and Joyce Carol Oates. I made lists of unfamiliar words and historical and mythological figures that had me reaching for my dictionaries and Britannica. During those years, I had become so fascinated with the many ways to use the English language that I began to write short stories and poems. I had decided I wanted to be a fiction writer.

My deeper purpose in telling students all of this was to get them to take my experiences as a guide for how to start thinking about their own potential careers and career choices. Specifically, I wanted them to consider some activities they enjoy, and to think about applying these to the seemingly countless career choices they have in this land of opportunity.

"Maybe you love animals and have always been intrigued by doctors," I explained to them, "so why not think of becoming a vet? Perhaps you like to talk a lot and enjoy athletics, so being a sports announcer might be your bag. Are you a numbers person? If so, maybe your calling is to teach math, be an accountant or work with statistics."

I made sure to tell them that I had left college to work at a well-paying, full-time "job" with a medical company. But within a few years I realized that this was not my field. I was bored and felt stuck, as if I were in a dreaded algebra class each day. But I noted that I never gave up on my writing and self-education, reading writers on subjects ranging from philosophy, history and art to politics, American culture and sports. I began to write some opinion columns that were published in a few semi-prominent newspapers, and this led me to try my hand at freelance reporting and, eventually, a career in journalism.

I also stressed to students that it's not enough to just dream about a particular career, but that they must take the necessary steps to attain their ideal. It's one thing to for someone to say "I want to write a novel," and another to have the motivation and commitment to invest the countless hours and enormous effort — researching information, striving to find the precise words and write perfect sentences, re-editing one draft after another — to become a published fiction writer.

When one fourth-grader told me that he would like to be the next Derek Jeter, I asked him if he played Little League and practiced baseball even during the winter. One girl told me she wanted to be a lawyer. I told her that, in part, she'll have to learn how to speak well to present her cases, and that she should take some public speaking classes when she gets to high school.

The last time I talked on Career Day, at Hegarty Elementary School in Island Park, when I left the classroom that day to head back to my office, I had hoped that at least a few students had learned a lesson that I didn't fully understand in my youth: Making a career choice is one of the most important decisions an individual will ever make — and is crucial to his or her happiness. If the students followed this advice, then they likely won't have to struggle unnecessarily for several years and through a string of dead-end jobs before finally finding a profession to be passionate about.

Building From Scratch

2010-03-12T06:02:00.000-08:00

Homeowner talks about life after fire

By Joseph Kellard

Standing barefoot in the street in mid-January, watching her Tennessee Avenue home go up in flames, Cheryl Ennella ran back inside to try to rescue her three cats.

"I was really concerned about getting my cats out," Ennella recalled. "I went in the house twice. The second time, I was trying to get in my front door and a man pulled over in a truck and pulled me out."

The fire that ripped through the bungalow she had lived in for 25 years destroyed everything inside — including her and her husband's life savings, which they did not trust to banks. "There was nothing salvageable," Ennella said. "Nothing."

When a stranger led her to one dead cat during the fire, she passed out and was treated by EMS workers at the scene. For three weeks afterward, she returned to the charred ruins of the house with food for her other two cats, hoping to find them. One eventually came to her; her son found the other hiding under what was left of the house.

Since the fire, Cheryl and her husband, Silvio, and their son, Silvio Jr., have had to start from scratch. Their neighbors and friends immediately offered help, giving the family clothing, and the Red Cross gave them debit cards to buy shoes.

"It's been a lot of paperwork and a lot of legwork and a lot of heartache," said Cheryl, who on Tuesday took a bus to the Nassau County Department of Social Services for the first time to seek public assistance.

Meanwhile, she remains out of work due to poor health, but Silvio continues to work as a salesman for Drake's Bakeries in Hicksville. The Ennellas now occupy a home on West Penn Street at Grand Boulevard, but initially they had to split up, each living in a friend's house. They wanted to stay local because their only relatives are in the Bronx. "I even stayed in the Long Beach Motor Inn for three days," Cheryl recalled.

The family was at first unable to find a permanent place to stay, due in part to issues with their home insurance company, which is still investigating the fire. Cheryl fears that delays could keep her family from building a new home for at least another year.

When the fire started, at around 1 p.m. on Jan. 15, Ennella said she was home with her son and his girlfriend, who were playing cards. Suddenly she heard her son shout to call 911.

"I went to open the door from my living room to my hallway and I saw the smoke coming in from the back of my house," she said. "My son proceeded to open the back door, and the flames just flew through the house. And we ran out with no shoes on."

Ennella learned later that the man who stopped her from going back in was Gregg LePenna, owner of the Whales Tale restaurant on West Beech Street. LePenna was leaving work that day, driving down Tennessee, when he spotted Ennella in the middle of the street, shouting that her cats were inside. He pulled over to help her.

"I walked about three feet into the front of the house and I saw a big black cloud of smoke coming towards me, and I turned back around because there was no going in there," LePenna recalled. "She tried to go back in but I grabbed her."

The fire ignited in a shed at the rear of the house, which housed a washing machine and a boiler. Vincent McManus, a division supervisor at the Nassau County fire marshal's office, said the cause remains unknown, and that insurance companies will hire a mechanic to investigate equipment like the boiler to determine exactly how it malfunctioned.

Some 100 firefighters from eight companies helped battle the blaze, which they brought under control in about 40 minutes, but not before it damaged the exteriors of three neighboring homes.

Long Beach City Council members Len Torres and Mike Fagen have assisted Ennella's family since the fire. John Merit, owner of Buddy's Bike on West Beech Street, offered her a new bike, her favorite mode of transportation. Brendan Costello of the city's Transportation Department gave her a Metro card so she could use buses for free. And Fran Barden, director of the outreach program at St. Ignatius Church on Broadway, bought the family new clothes, bed linens and gift cards.

"Once in a while we get fire victims and try to get them to the Department of Social Services," Barden said. "We encourage them to go there first to see what they provide, and then, if I can afford it, I go and see what else I can do for them."

A Book of Historical 'What Ifs'

2010-03-08T03:17:00.000-08:00

East Atlantic Beach author writes time-travel novel

By Joseph Kellard

What if the Hindenburg had never exploded over Lakehurst, N.J.? If President Lincoln had been unable to deliver the Gettysburg Address, would the Confederacy have won the Civil War? How might history be different if Amelia Earhart had completed her ill-fated Pacific flight?

These are just some of the 10 scenarios Robert McAuley, an East Atlantic Beach resident, plucks from history and develops in his first book, “The 1800 Club,” published by Publish American last month.

If the Wright Brothers hadn’t invented a man-powered and controllable flight system that is heavier than air, McAuley posits that the Germans could have, particularly for military purposes. “That would mean Germany wins World War I through their innovative use of air power,” McAuley said.

As the recently retired art director of Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine at McGraw-Hill, McAuley understandably has a particular interest in writing about aeronautic figures in his 500-pages-plus time-travel book, but he knew enough not to pack them all into his first book of a planned trilogy.

“In each scenario I ask, What if this or that didn’t happen?” McAuley explained. “In so many cases, it changes the power structure of the world.”

To thicken his plots, McAuley conjures up an 1800 Club that is set in the present and whose members go back in a time portal to fix history so that it turns out as it did, to keep his tales historically accurate.

Members are unaware that the club was started by people from the future. These guardians of history discover that famous figures from the past strayed from their well-known decisions and actions, which makes it necessary for the members to guide them back, unbeknown to the subjects.

“What I’m doing throughout is looking at and teaching history in a different manner,” said McAuley, who is quick to point out that seeded throughout his book are little-known facts about each subject.

In “The 1800 Club,” McAuley postulates that if Ronald Reagan had never been born — if his great-great-grandfather had been pressed into the British Royal Navy and died before fathering his children — the Soviet Union might not have fallen when it did.

“Many believe that Reagan was the president who shut down Russia,” McAuley said. “In my scenario, if another president took his place, maybe he would have been too soft and the Soviets would have been here occupying the U.S.”

Throughout his book, McAuley fictionalizes people he knows, from former coworkers to childhood friends, into club members who go back in time. Rocko Terna, a friend of McAuley’s from his native Park Slope neighborhood, goes back to fight the Royal Navy, then the world’s most powerful fleet. “How he does it by stealth and subterfuge I think is amazing,” he said.

The figure he most enjoyed writing about was Mark Twain, who dies in a steamboat explosion that destroys a levee and causes Katrina-scale flooding in New Orleans, leaving unwritten such classic American novels as “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.”

“If he passed away before he wrote most of his stories, imagine what would have happened,” McAuley said. “He wouldn’t have inspired so many great writers in the literary field, and he was also such a fair person and gave the black man a chance.”

McAuley found inspiration for his trilogy in Jack Finney’s “Time and Again,” a 1970 novel whose modern characters travel back to the 1880s, which he calls one of the best books he ever read. After he retired from McGraw-Hill, McAuley discovered that he wanted to try his hand at writing. He started working on “The 1800 Club” about two years ago, for Publish America, a company that publishes first-time authors.

He is also a landscape and portrait painter whose work adorns the walls at his Clayton Avenue home. He aims to attract readers to his trilogy in the same way he attracted readers of the magazine he worked on for 17 years.

“My job as the artist was to stop readers from going past a particular page and bringing them into that page, and as a writer I found I was doing the same thing, writing intelligently but descriptively,” McAuley said.

He’s hard at work on his second book, averaging about a chapter every two weeks, which will feature scenarios involving the Titanic, the 1849 gold rush and Judge Joseph Force Crater of New York, who disappeared in August 1930. He expects most of his figures will be from the 1800s, a century that he likes to honor.

“That’s the age of the Industrial Revolution, and is what freed up enough creative time for the average person to come home, at least when it was light out, and work on their creations,” McAuley said.

* Photo by Joseph Kellard

Redrawing Their Plans

2010-02-26T06:47:00.000-08:00

Architects reflect on careers changed by housing crisis

By Joseph Kellard

Since the 2008 financial collapse, architect Mark Geiselman has had to go back to the drawing board — literally. The Long Beach resident, who has owned the Islip-based firm OCJ Architects for 11 years, had to cut his already small staff a year ago and become reacquainted with a T-square and a drafting pencil.

“I’ve absolutely had to start drawing again,” Geiselman said of blueprints he would otherwise pass off to an apprentice. “And that’s always difficult to do because you’re always trying to run the business and draw up work. I just sit at the drafting table all day.”

Since the nation’s sub-prime mortgage crisis began in 2007 — before which housing prices were generally increasing yearly — architects, the first link in the chain of new construction, have been hit as hard as real estate agents and contractors. Geiselman, whose firm draws an even mix of residential and commercial clients from Suffolk County to Connecticut, started to feel the pain in early 2008, and a year later he began laying off workers.

Today, he said, his firm is seeing a slight uptick on the commercial side, since depressed prices have made leasing space more affordable. But in general, he added, greater restrictions on bank loans have impacted both categories, but especially residential. This is particularly an issue in areas like Nassau County, where architects and contractors deal mostly with developed acreage and existing homes.

During the pre-2007 seller’s market, homeowners capitalized on rising property values and built up substantial equity, while banks lent freely for home additions. Now, with the bursting of the housing bubble, buying a home is no longer seen as a guaranteed investment.

“One reason people are hesitant do anything is the difficulty in getting the financing, and the other is that they’re not sure they’re going to get the equity out of it when it’s all done,” Geiselman said of homeowners looking to build in the current buyer’s market. “People are concerned about their home values, and that’s severely affected us.”

Monte Leeper, an Oceanside architect who has owned a firm for 25 years and writes the Ask the Architect column for the Herald, said he believes the housing crisis has led more homeowners to go forward with work on their houses — usually interior work that can not be seen from outside — without obtaining the necessary permits or hiring licensed engineers and architects, whether to save time, money or taxes. As a result, Leeper said, he and other architects have seen all kinds of defective work and safety issues.

“People go out and buy tools and start to do work or they hire a contractor who really isn’t qualified,” he said. “There’s a lot of people who call themselves licensed and qualified, but they end up using the wrong materials or tools for the problem you’re trying to correct ... We’re not a necessary evil. We’re actually a contributing factor to saving people money, yet the average person doesn’t even know that.”

The Town of Hempstead, which oversees county building and zoning issues, reports a marked downturn in building permit applications, which are issued for any plans from the foundation up as well as variances for existing structures. In 2005, the town received and processed 6,819 building applications. In 2008 there were 5,734. And from October 2008, following the financial collapse, through December 2009, a 15-month span, there were 6,226 applications.

“It would be purely speculative to make guesses as to why applications are down,” said town spokeswoman Susan Trenkle-Pokalsky, “but it’s a reasonable thought that the downturn in the economy has impacted that.”

Architect Robert Hochberg of East Meadow said homeowners have long skirted building permits to keep extensions, dormers and other additions out of town records in order to save on taxes. But with the microscope on assessments this past decade and homeowners trying to sell their houses in a down market, Hochberg said, he does more work drawing plans for additions that homeowners now looking to sell failed to file with the Building Department.

“People think, If I don’t get a permit, the assessors won’t know about it and so my assessment won’t go up,” said Hochberg, who has been in business since 1970. “But that’s not necessarily true.”

For George Bella, who has owned GWB Architect in Long Beach since 2001, and who has seen an increased in business from sellers looking to legalize previous construction, the past 18 months have been mainly about homeowners looking to build out of necessity rather than luxury. “Your family is getting bigger and you need an extra bedroom -- you still have to do those projects,” said Bella, who drafts mostly residential and public projects. “What’s different now is that people aren’t looking to do more than what is minimally required for their own purposes.”

Unlike architects who try to keep an even mix of residential and commercial projects, about 80 percent of the plans Henry Monteverde was drawing before the downturn were residential, and he has since lost about 25 percent of his business. “We’ve been affected because with the mortgages being so tight and no money available, projects aren’t going ahead,” said Monteverde, who opened a firm in Island Park in 1991. “Therefore, everything is curtailed.”

Monteverde added that because he has a small firm, with just two employees, and little overhead, he has been able to weather the financial storm and has been fortunate enough to switch to mostly commercial projects, including offices, medical facilities and retail stores. But that hasn’t necessarily been by design, so to speak.

“That’s just want came in,” he said.

Mixing Pleasure with Business

2010-02-26T06:43:00.000-08:00

Networkers relax at event held at Allegria lounge

By Joseph Kellard

Guests sipped wine more than they handed out business cards and engaged in personal conversations more than they talked shop. This relaxed atmosphere was what hosts of a business networking event were aiming for at the Allegria Hotel last week.

While a fireplace roared and a pianist played dinner tunes on a white Steinway in a lounge, hosts Janet Slavin and Alice Leybengrub, two local businesswomen who sponsored the evening event, mingled and schmoozed with dozens of businesspeople from Long Beach and neighboring towns.

“It’s about getting people to come in, have a good time, have some drinks, meet each other without the pressure of these networking groups,” said Leybengrub, who owns an accounting firm in Long Beach.

The mix of enterprising men and, mostly, women rubbed elbows on white sofas in the candle-lit room with a sky-blue carpet and an octagonal skylight that looked out onto the Long Beach night sky. The elegant setting was a far different from the first meeting Slavin and Leybengrub hosted at the narrow, seatless Evers Place art gallery in the West End last fall, when some 30 people stopped by.

After declaring it a success, the duo wanted to try something more spacious and upscale. For some, the allure of the second meeting wasn’t just the luxury hotel.

“I went to the last networking event they had and I just fell for Alice, because she’s such a mover and a shaker,” said Dr. Jo Eisman, whose chiropractic office is on East Park Avenue. “She’s young and energetic and she’s a doer. So anything Alice does I want to go to. She’s like a magnet.”

Eisman, a member of the Long Beach Chamber of Commerce for 25 years, is a regular at the networking events. But networking for her now is as much about socializing as it is about business. “I’m at a point in my career where I don’t really need to do anything,” Eisman said about promoting her business. “It’s fun to come to the hotel and I love to meet new and interesting people. There are a lot of interesting people here tonight — I can hardly get past the door.”

Both Leybengrub and Slavin cited building relationships as the purpose of their gatherings. “It’s to get business owners more acquainted with each other, because I guess we feel that the Chamber of Commerce is all well and good, but it doesn’t really suit everybody’s needs in the community,” said Slavin, an attorney with offices in Long Beach and Manhattan.

A hypnotist who opened an office on West Park Avenue two years ago, Bernadette Martin met a man at the get- together who owns a solar panel company, and they chatted about possible ways their businesses could mesh.

“Coming here is really about getting your message out, and talking to people and letting them know where you are and what you’re doing and how you might work together,” said Martin, who is involved with Long Beach’s newly formed environmental committee.

Alisa Bracksmayer, a Long Beach resident who works with a mortgage company in Rockville Centre, had attended a networking event hosted by the Rockville Centre Chamber of Commerce the night before. Living down the block from the Allegria, she decided to take up the e-mailed invitation to the Jan. 13 meeting at the hotel.

Bracksmayer said that networking helps her get referrals and lets her know what’s going on in other businesses. Admittedly frightened by the still gloomy economy, she said that when she drives around town these days, she doesn’t notice what stores are in business, but rather those that are vacant and for rent. “I see it in the mortgage business, I see it in people calling up who want help but can’t get help,” Bracksmayer said. “It’s sad, so why wouldn’t you want to help promote business within the community where you live?”

Slavin and Leybengrub quieted the din to speak to the crowd for a few minutes, explaining and promoting their businesses and speaking briefly about the reasons behind their meetings.

When asked about their next steps, the duo said they weren’t necessarily forming a networking group or business organization.

“We’re trying to get local business owners to really get to know and build relationships with one another, in any economy but especially now,” Leybengrub said. “I think these are the type of events that are going to help bring more business to Long Beach ... I think people are tired of going to all these structured events with long speeches.”

Another Heroin Death

2010-02-26T06:36:00.000-08:00

Experts voice concern as use increases in L.B.

By Joseph Kellard

While no one may be dealing heroin in Long Beach, some local people are overdosing on the drug.

“Our intelligence tells us that to get heroin, you have to go outside Long Beach,” said Inspector Bruce Meyer, a Police Department spokesman. That conclusion is based in part on police interviews with the handful of people who were arrested last year for heroin possession, and said they scored the drug elsewhere.

That was also the LBPD’s finding when it investigated two recent heroin-related deaths in the city.

On Dec. 11, police found a 23-year-old woman dead in her home, and on Jan. 12, they found a 19-year-old woman in the same circumstances.
Both appeared to have injected themselves, and investigators
determined that they had purchased the heroin in either Queens or,
more likely, Brooklyn, Meyer said.

The deaths are signs of an upswing in heroin use, not just in Long
Beach but county- and nationwide, and local authorities are stepping up prevention efforts to try to quell the potential epidemic. In recent years, use of the drug, particularly among young people ages 16 to 19, has been on the rise.

With some 400 people arrested for possession or distribution around Nassau County in 2009, the theory that the drug is confined to urban areas and a narrow demographic has been discarded. Heroin was once sold openly on street corners in crime-ridden neighborhoods, but now it is crossing all ethnic, economic and racial lines, and is bought and sold in restrooms at fast-food restaurants, gas stations and schools.

“These were your average people who go and buy their drugs in New York City and then they come back and, in the privacy of their homes, they’re injecting themselves with heroin,” Meyer said of the two Long Beach victims.

People involved in treating heroin addicts say the gateway to the
drug is right in their family bathroom. Patricia Hincken, director of alcohol and substance abuse at the Long Beach Medical Center, said that the volume of prescription painkillers being prescribed to
people statewide has increased more than 150 percent over the past decade.

“There are so many of them now, and doctors have a tendency to write very big scrips in order to save people potential co-pays they might have,” Hincken explained. “Where they might have given someone eight pills in the past, they’re now giving them 100. And they have them lying around medicine cabinets and kids are aware of it.”

Hincken described how young people take their parents’ OxyContin or other prescription opiates along with tranquilizers, such as Xanax or valium, bring them to “pharm” parties and put all the pills in a bowl where users take handfuls of them as if they were M&Ms. But these drugs have become prohibitively expensive on the street, with some single pills going for as much as $40, and teenagers are looking for a cheaper high and find it in heroin, which can sell for as little as $5 for a small packet.

“The dealers move in and it’s so highly addictive that the users
start spinning out of control, especially the younger kids who aren’t long-term, experienced users of heroin, so they’re more likely to make a mistake in how much they take and they overdose,” Hincken said.

But Hincken is quick to note that alcohol and marijuana are still
the main drugs of choice among Long Beach’s youth and adults.
Dr. Joseph Smith, director of Long Beach Reach, a state- and county-funded community agency, said that while heroin use has increased in Long Beach, it does not approach the level of an epidemic in town.

“It’s here, it’s not that we’re immune from it, but it’s not been a
dramatic or significant increase,” said Smith, who described Long
Beach Reach’s outpatient chemical dependency treatment program its largest program.

The medical center, which has an in-patient detox facility and
outpatient substance-abuse services, was working with the Police
Department to assemble a packet of information on heroin that they planned to make available to the community this week. Similar efforts will continue right up to the annual coalition-sponsored National Town Hall Meeting on Underage Drinking, on March 16 at 7 p.m. at the Long Beach Library, which will highlight prescription drug and heroin abuse as well as underage drinking. The event will feature Dr. Stephen Dewey, a leading researcher on the effects of alcohol and drugs on the adolescent brain.

“What we want to make sure is none of the main message gets lost, because it’s all connected,” Judy Vining, coordinator of the Long Beach Coalition to Prevent Underage Drinking at the medical center said. “It’s very easy to wrap your brain around how horrible heroin is, and I’m not minimizing that in the least. But alcohol is still the number one killer of kids, and it’s all connected in some ways.”

Hincken also chairs a subcommittee on the treatment of heroin
addiction for a heroin treatment task force run by the Nassau County district attorney’s office. The LBPD’s Narcotics Task Force and School Resource Unit will work with the schools and medical center to keep heroin use from spiraling out of control, Meyer said. The police also look to partner with the Drug Enforcement Administration to educate youth about the dangers of the drug.

And as always, Meyer said, detectives are running down every lead related to heroin possession and dealing. “We have confidential informants working out there,” he said. “The information that we’re getting is that it’s not of epidemic proportions.”

Taking Great ‘Panes’ to Attract Patrons

2009-12-27T19:47:00.000-08:00

Rose & Eye windows spruce up West End

By Joseph Kellard

Michael Muratore and Stefano Malluzzo have brought a bit of Fifth Avenue to the West End. Each month, the owners of Rose & Eye, a women’s boutique on the corner of West Beech Street and Wyoming Avenue, dress up large display windows with a fresh theme according to season, anniversaries and the hottest fashions.

In July, their summer-clad mannequins stood with surfboards, a theme they based on “Beach Party,” an early 1960s Annette Funicello movie. They rang in 2008 celebrating the 50th anniversary of the peace sign, with T-shirts emblazoned with the symbol popularized by hippies. This summer they displayed maxi dresses and jumpsuits, two of the season’s biggest trends, and used poster-sized photos of colorful hot-air balloons as background art.

Muratore and Malluzzo have noticed that their windows sometimes stop traffic, as curious drivers gaze in from their cars on West Beech, and during the holidays children who get off school buses at a nearby stop run up to get a better look at their festive displays.

“One of the ways we attract our customers is through the windows,” Muratore said about his moderately priced store, which offers everything from jeans to wrap sweaters to party dresses. “It causes them to want to stop and look in. They may get the impression that we’re real expensive, but really we’re not.”

This month, Rose & Eye’s windows are split between Christmas and New Year’s Eve themes, with hand-made snow girls, a takeoff on Frosty the Snowman, sporting a variety of Long Beach sweatshirts with starfish images. Their carrot-nosed faces were sculpted in a storage room where the owners prepare the window displays, mounting and dressing the mannequins, painting the backgrounds and printing the eye-catching art and photos that they order.

It took Muratore and Malluzzo almost two weeks to complete all the prep work for this month’s windows, and another two days to put everything on display.

In October 2008, the shop displayed the artwork of West School students to complement Halloween-themed windows. Denise Collins, the art teacher at the neighborhood school, was shopping at the boutique one day when Muratore, whose two sons are students there, approached her with an idea.

“He asked if we could get the kids to create some artwork to feature it in the windows,” Collins recalled. “The kids loved the idea. It’s nice for them to see their work on display.”

Her second- to fifth-graders supplied some 40 pieces of artwork, including skeletons, collage masks and pumpkins with paints and pencils. Now Collins’s students are working on a Valentine’s Day theme for the windows, recreating the 1973 “LOVE” stamp by Robert Indiana and creating “fabulous fictional couples,” from Popeye and Olive Oyl to Homer and Marge Simpson.

“Pretty much they’re doing the artwork, and will build elements around the art,” said Muratore, who worked in department stores for 20 years but never dressed windows.

Soon after he and Malluzzo bought their original, empty West End store in March 2007, they installed the display windows. They put in even larger windows when they expanded twice, to spaces previously occupied by a scooter shop and a law office.

“Basically the two of us, who had worked at other stores, we dreamed that one day we’d have our own store and have these great windows,” Muratore said. “We stepped forth and did it and it worked.”

Photos by Christina Daly and Courtesy Rose & Eye

‘He Never Stopped Trying to Help The Vets’

2009-12-27T19:39:00.000-08:00

William Green, VFW commander, dies at 66

By Joseph Kellard

It was a minor change among the many William Green brought to the Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Long Beach. As its commander from 2000 to 2004, Green began displaying on the walls two framed photo collages of members during their youthful days in combat zones, from Europe to Afghanistan, that became conversation pieces at parties and allowed the vets to brag.

During his term, Green also increased the post’s membership by about 50 percent, and the number of active members more than doubled thanks to his efforts, according to long-time member Ed Grant, who served in the Army in Vietnam and was deployed to the demilitarized zone in Korea in the late 1960s. “Billy reached out to everybody by not trying to make it a private club,” Grant said of Green’s recruiting philosophy.

Joseph Clarino is a Vietnam veteran who was among Green’s recruits. “He was relentless on me to join the VFW,” Clarino recalled. “It took him quite a while but he got me. He convinced me that we could do more things together and get involved in the community.”

Clarino read a eulogy at Green’s funeral at Christopher Jordan’s Funeral Home in Island Park on Monday. Green died last Saturday at South Nassau Communities Hospital in Oceanside. He was 66.

Alice Green, his wife of 36 years, said he held strong to his commitment to never turn away a veteran who wanted to join the VFW, and he always stood up for them. “Even before he became commander, he always tried to find out what veterans were and weren’t getting from the Veterans Affairs,” Alice said.

Her husband believed he was right in everything he did, she said, and Grant characterized him as a man who was persistent and insistent in his convictions. “With Billy it was often the my-way-or-the-highway attitude,” Grant said, “and that could create some divisiveness, but he had the strength to keep pushing for things that he wanted.”

One of the most important things Green wanted — and got — was tighter relationships among his members. He brought together members from different age groups and combat theaters, taking them on bus trips to West Point for football games and lunches at German and Italian restaurants from Manhattan to Suffolk County, Grant said.

“Very often there was a dichotomy between the Vietnam vets and World War II vets,” he explained, “and Billy was instrumental in getting everybody together to share the experiences we had.”

The camaraderie regularly inspired a group of 25 or more members to trek to the V.A. Medical Center in Northport to run an annual July barbecue and a Christmas party for disabled veterans, and members attend a half-dozen other functions throughout the year, all of which Green started.

“Billy was a very good and active commander,” said current VFW Commander John Zimmerman. “He was very passionate about being the commander. He just wanted to do a lot for veterans.”

Born on Flag Day, June 14, 1943, Green grew up in Manhattan, where he met Alice. He was drafted in 1963, became a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division and was stationed at Fort Bragg, N.C. He jumped into the Dominican Republic on a mission to avert a communist takeover there in 1965.

Before the unit returned to Vietnam, Green was discharged, and he joined the reserves, in which he was active until the mid-1980s. He rose to the rank of sergeant and joined the Green Berets.

After he and Alice married in 1973, they had two children, Michael and Jennifer, and moved to Long Beach in 1984. Among Green’s hobbies was skydiving, until an accident sidelined him.

“He was a very giving person,” Alice said. “He loved his family and loved life — definitely. And he never stopped trying to help the veterans until he couldn’t do it anymore. They were his mission in life once he got started on it.”

Green is survived by his wife and children as well as three grandchildren, Michael, Sean and Joseph. He was buried at Calverton National Cemetery in Calverton.

Photo Courtesy Green Family

Yes, But Would They Still Jog in Siberia?

2009-12-27T19:28:00.000-08:00

Long Beach runners don’t let cold weather stop them

By Joseph Kellard

One day when Larry Moriarty took his routine run along the length of the boardwalk, he crossed paths with just five people — which including motorists on Broadway and a maintenance man picking up garbage. Moriarty recalled that the temperature that day was 8 degrees.

Moriarty is among the Long Beach residents who exercise on the boardwalk all year, undeterred by frigid temperatures and the Atlantic’s piercing winds. What’s more, he is among a handful of runners who hit the wooden slats as early as 5 a.m., from three to six days a week, usually totaling five miles each outing.

“You get warmed up fairly quickly and it really is quite a nice experience because it’s so quiet,” said Moriarty, 40, who dresses in layers, including a balaclava covering his head and face.

A forensic accountant who often travels for his job, Moriarty first laced up running shoes about three years ago to burn some calories and maintain his health. When asked why frigid weather fails to deter him, he matter-of-factly replied, “Why would it?”

Then there are Long Beachers like Nancy Koff. She has run all year long, on and off, since she moved to Long Beach in 1985, and there was a time when she didn’t blink when the cold and snow arrived. But now, at 55, she takes a different approach.

In the summer, Koff and her iPod reach the boardwalk around 8 a.m., and in the winter she has the luxury of starting even later, since she is a family therapist and doesn’t open her Bellmore office until 1 p.m.

“I’m older now and it’s just kind of disgusting and miserable running in the snow and rain,” Koff said. “Even if it’s just a very strong wind I might not go. It just gets a little bit harder to deal with the elements as you get older.”

Depending on how she’s feeling, she generally tries to get in four runs a week, starting at Neptune Boulevard, on the east end of the boardwalk, and running to the west end, at New York Avenue, and back, 4.4 miles in all. When the weather is particularly nasty, Koff will run just half the distance, to around Magnolia Boulevard.

And on the worst days she heads to New York Sports Club on East Park Avenue or Pure Fitness in Island Park, where she works with a personal trainer. But compared with the boardwalk, the gym treadmills are drudgery. “I hate it,” she said. “I’m counting every minute that goes by and the calories I’ve burned. The time really flies when you’re outside, especially on the boardwalk because the scene is so beautiful.”

Part of what pushes Koff to run in the cold is a philosophy, one she imparts to her clients in therapy, that says to get up and move move every day, whether to run, skip rope or just walk.

Having the right gear, especially the right hat and gloves, she said, is key to exercising outside when the mercury heads south.

Katie Sell, an exercise physiologist at Hofstra University and a Long Beach resident, concurs. In cold weather the body directs blood and heat to vital organs such as the brain, heart and liver, Sell explained, so wearing the proper hat, gloves and even socks becomes especially important. Dressing warmly protects runners not only from frostbite, but also from decreased sensory ability, she said.

Sell suggested that cold-weather exercisers like Moriarty and Koff wear materials that “wick” sweat away from the skin, which is especially important in the cold, and that they dress in layers.

“Advanced runners know to wear a long-sleeved shirt and a T-shirt, and then another long-sleeved shirt, while a new runner will put on a T-shirt and a big heavy fleece,” she said. “But you can shed the layers as your body temperature goes up, and also they don’t get damp from sweat so you can put them on afterwards.”

Sell, a native of England, is used to exercising in cold weather, though a bum knee has sidelined her running routine, so she plays tennis in the winter.

She makes sure that she always has water, even in sub-freezing weather, to stay hydrated. “You should bring a bottle of water with you, but not ice-cold water,” Sell said. “You have very delicate tissue in the back of your throat, and in the cold air it needs to be warmed a whole bunch more. Tap water is good.”

While Nat Cooper rides his bike each spring and summer day with his 4-year-old son, he runs on the boardwalk only when it snows. A former amateur bodybuilder on whose knees heavy lifting has taken a toll, Cooper finds that the snow cushions his knees as he runs just a few blocks — usually from Neptune to Monroe Boulevard — and he also
enjoys the scenery.

“There’s something about being out in the crispness and the coldness that I look forward to,” he said. “In the wintertime there’s just something so beautiful about it when there’s that little bit of snow.”

Photo by Arthur Findlay

Lido Beach Real Estate Holds Its Own

2009-12-27T19:15:00.000-08:00

Dune-front home sells for $3.3 million

By Joseph Kellard

Home sales in Lido Beach are up and inventory is down since the housing market crashed last year. Early last December there were 37 listings in Lido Beach, and as of last week there were 18, according to real estate agents who sell in the area.

Broker Thomas Tripodi said that his group of agents at Prudential Douglas Elliman, on West Park Avenue in Long Beach, closed 10 of the 20 homes sold in the past year, which ranged in price from $419,000 to $3.3 million. The biggest sale was a house on the dunes at Prescott Street, which sold for $300,000 less nearly three years ago, during a sellers’ market.

“The owner sold it for 10 percent more at the bottom of the market,” Tripodi said. “It wasn’t upgraded [with renovations] at all. It’s about location. There are only 12 houses directly on the ocean in Lido.”

Pat McDonnell, owner of Lido Beach Realty on Lido Boulevard, said that the homes for sale now range from $519,000 for a home on Lido Boulevard to $3.2 million for a house on Blackheath Road on Reynolds Channel.

Tripodi and McDonnell agreed that while the weak economy has hurt the local market, Lido Beach has not been hit as hard as other Long Island communities, which have seen many more foreclosures. They point to Lido’s well-maintained beaches, golf course, tennis courts and luxury condos, the Lido Towers, all of which help keep prices stable, giving brokers the luxury of being able to wait for buyers.

“I think, reflective of the economy, the market has been a little down, but I don’t think we will ever, ever be as affected as other areas are,” said McDonnell, who has worked in Lido Beach for 30 years.

The hamlet has about 860 homes and nearly 3,000 residents, and owners tend to be doctors, lawyers and financiers with similar incomes. Many of the people who have moved there in recent years have come from Manhattan, the North Shore and Garden City, but particularly from Atlantic Beach and the Hamptons.

Tripodi said that most buyers are people who otherwise would have bought homes in the Hamptons — including the buyer of the oceanfront home on Prescott — because they find the beaches comparable and like the fact that they are just 28 miles from Manhattan. And homes in the distant Hamptons or Montauk can cost many millions more.

McDonnell has seen the same trend. “Believe it or not, there are still people who say, ‘How did we not know Lido Beach was here?’” she said. “We’re getting people coming in from the East End who don’t want the commute [or are] deciding to give up the second home and make a permanent home here, where they can commute easily to Manhattan.”

Due to the interest in the dunes area, where there are 283 homes, Tripodi said, prices have seen the smallest declines there in the market downturn. Before last fall, sale prices were all $1 million and above, whereas now some are as low as $800,000. “Because it’s a special area and it has location, a lot of people buy it as a second home,” Tripodi said. “There weren’t a lot of desperation homes.”

McDonnell pointed out, however, that for the first time in years, there is a foreclosure in Lido Beach, on Luchon Street in the dunes, a house that she said is selling for $1.2 million.

In the neighborhoods north of Lido Boulevard, in between Lido Beach and Long Beach on the channel, colonials and split-levels are going for $650,000 to $1.2 million. Tripodi said that he recently sold one house on the bay for almost $2 million.

Miriam Gold, of Paul Gold Real Estate on West Beech Street in Long Beach, who has sold homes throughout the barrier island for 46 years, said that in a decades-long trend, residents have migrated from west to east — from the West End to Westholme, a neighborhood east of New York Avenue, and from the East End, east of Long Beach Boulevard, to Lido Beach.

“They’re still selling in the Canals neighborhood to move into Lido because that’s the next jump for a bigger home,” Gold said. “So there’s that bit of migration that has helped some business. But the prices aren’t as strong as they used to be. But any place that is in great condition and is in a spectacular location like Lido, it sells.”

Gold said that most sales on the barrier island this year have been in the lower price ranges, and she expects that some sellers will look for more expensive homes as in Lido, particularly now that the $8,000 Federal Housing Authority tax credit that once applied only to first-time home buyers has been extended. The extension not only increases the credit’s availability to single purchasers with a maximum income of $125,000, but it now also applies to people who have owned a home for at least five years and provides a $6,500 credit for a new home.

“The million-dollar price range, I feel, is going to open up in the coming year,” Gold said. Tripodi said he believes it is impossible for buyers not to find a good deal in the Lido market right now. But he tempers this confidence when he considers the future. “I think we’ve pretty much hit the bottom,” he said, “but I don’t know if it’s going to turn back right away.”

Tripodi believes the forecasters who say interest rates will have to climb back to 8 percent. “So if you take out a $1million mortgage,” he said, “it will be $30,000 extra for the same exact house.”

Photo by Arthur Findlay

Lies from Southeast Asia

2009-11-18T03:30:00.000-08:00

Vietnam vet writes book on war correspondence with anxious family

By Joseph Kellard

When Howard Kalachman was a soldier on sandbag duty at a U.S. army base in Vietnam, he was struck by a 200-pound piece of pressed steel plate flung from a helicopter propeller that, had it hit him differently, might have decapitated him.

“I was actually dead, but was brought back,” said Kalachman, whose neck still bears a scar from the accident. “I’m glad I was, because I have a beautiful daughter.”

A month later, after his hospital stay, Kalachman did something unusual: he told his parents the truth about his injury and the circumstances surrounding it. “They wouldn’t believe me, no matter how many times I wrote to them about it, and figured I was injured in combat,” said Kalachman, who served in Vietnam for 13 months in 1967 and 1968, while the Tet Offensive raged on.

Now Kalachman, 65, the new commander at the Long Beach American Legion, is publishing a book about his correspondence with his family during the war. While he sent letters about the war’s harsh realities to his brother, Marvin, his letters to his parents stressed only the positives. Hence the book’s title: “Hi Mom, I’m O.K.! And Other Lies from Vietnam.”

“My mother was a worrier and my father had a heart condition, so I couldn’t tell them what was really going on,” Kalachman said. “So I fudged my letters to them a bit, just told them the good stuff, and was basically writing to my brother some of the facts about what was really going on.”

Kalachman said he had several brushes with serious injury or death, both in and out of combat, including his fall into a hole, an underground tunnel in which he stopped his slide before he crashed to the bottom.

While in a war zone, he was ordered to destroy his letters from home after he read them so there would be no chance that they would fall into the wrong hands and be used against him. Near the end of his tour in Southeast Asia, he became a clerk and composed letters to the next of kin of dead soldiers.

“Hi Mom” consists mostly of his letters to his parents and his brother, along with present-day commentary and some 100 photographs. Published by Trafford Publishers, the book is due to hit Amazon.com and the online bookstore at Barnes & Noble next month. Depending on how well it sells online, it could wind up on bookstore shelves.

“I consider it a thoughtful, poignant and often humorous book about the complexities of writing home from a war zone to an anxious family,” reads Kalachman’s synopsis.

He started writing the book about three years ago, after he retired as an educator and administrator the New York City’s public schools — about the time he moved to Island Park after living in Long Beach for 26 years. “It was really very cathartic writing it, because I really had forgotten a lot of what had happened, and this forced me to think about it,” said Kalachman, who also volunteers with Big Brothers Big Sisters and Island Harvest and speaks publicly on behalf of the Make A Wish Foundation.

As the American Legion’s new commander, Kalachman wants to focus on recruiting younger veterans into an otherwise graying organization of 100 members. He also hopes his book reaches a younger audience doing battle overseas today. “I think the climate for this book is very good right now, due to our ongoing involvement in two wars,” he said. “So I’m hoping what I wrote will resonate with either those who are in the service or have loved ones in it and can understand what’s going on.”

Photo courtesy Howard Kalachman

Signs of Life in Long Beach Real Estate Market

2009-11-18T03:21:00.000-08:00

By Joseph Kellard

Long Beach broker Joyce Coletti has had more closings since January, 45 in all, than she has had in many years in Long Beach. About 60 percent have involved first-time home buyers who have taken advantage of an $8,000 tax credit made available through the economic stimulus bill that President Obama signed in February, which he extended by signing another $24 billion stimulus package on Nov. 3.

“I’m seeing more Federal Housing Authority loans than I’ve ever seen before,” said Coletti, who works for Prudential Douglas Elliman on West Park Avenue. “They’re for people who really don’t have much money but have good credit. So they can put down three percent, which is nothing.”

But while Coletti and other Long Beach real estate agents report a slight surge in home sales due in large part to the tax credit, they acknowledge that the market has otherwise stagnated since the financial collapse last fall, and they express a mix of uncertainty and cautious optimism about an economy in which the unemployment rate continues to climb.

“I’m not finding the market is otherwise getting any better,” Coletti said. “I’m seeing it getting slower.”

Karen Adamo, a broker with Petry Realty in the West End, said that because of the slight surge from the home buyer’s credit, Long Island real estate agents had been pushing the federal government to extend it beyond its Nov. 30 deadline.

“That’s because we did see sales go up, we did see a surge, but in the lower-priced homes, in the $300,000 to $400,000 range,” Adamo explained.

According to the terms of the extension, a first-time home buyer must sign a contract on a home by April 20, 2010, and close by June 30. The extension also increases the credit’s availability to single purchasers with a maximum income of $125,000, up from $75,000, and to couples with a top income of $225,000, up from $150,000, and those who have owned a home for at least five years a $6,500 credit for a new home.

The Windward, a condominium complex at 251-255 W. Broadway, between Laurelton and Lafayette boulevards, is one building where the developer is not accepting federal loans, but its condos are selling just the same. The three-story, 29-unit building offers 400-square-foot studios and 800-square-foot one-bedroom units that sell for $229,000 to $369,000.

Coletti has sold all but five of the condos since July 2008, mostly to teachers, police officers and firefighters who took out conventional loans and put 10 percent down. “It’s carrying my salary,” Coletti said of the building, which has accounted for a majority of her closings. “I’m having a very good year from that building.”

Adamo, Coletti and Neil Sterrer, owner of Sterrer Realty on West Beech Street, all said that the lower-priced homes, $400,000 and under — particularly studios and one-bedrooms in co-op buildings — as well as homes priced at $800,000 and higher, including the most expensive waterfront homes, are selling the most, although the latter are not moving as quickly. “There is an implication that those two markets are OK,” said Sterrer, who is the co-chairman of the Long Beach-Island Park Brokers Council.

At the Aqua, an eight-story luxury condominium complex overlooking the ocean on Shore Road, 14 of 36 units have sold, with seven in contract and seven closed, according to Jan Burman, president of Engel Burman Group, a Garden City-based developer of properties from Montreal to Miami. Among the units that have sold were three of the building’s six penthouses, the most expensive condos in town.

“We’re doing good and we still have a tremendous amount of interest,” said Burman of the condos, which range in size from 1,730 to 2,400 square feet and in price from $1.3 million to $3.3 million.

In May, when the building was completed, Burman said, he started closing on units that were in contract from last year. “Having sold 14 since May we’re pretty happy,” he said.

Asked to project six months to a year down the road, Burman said, “I guess I’m cautiously optimistic. Obviously, a better economy would mean better sales across the board.”

Sterrer noted a virtual shutdown in sales of mid-priced homes in Long Beach and across Long Island, a trend that began about three years ago, when the real estate market started its downturn. “The $400,000 to $800,000 homes are taking 30 percent hits in order to sell,” he said. “The only people willing to do that are the people with no mortgages.”

Meanwhile, home prices have dipped as much as 15 percent since last year in Long Beach, and from January 2008 to January 2009, the Nassau County Department of Assessments reduced the assessed value of homes county-wide 17 percent, which will be reflected in homeowners’ school tax bills next October, according to County Assessor Ted Jankowski. “We’ll be doing a new assessment for this coming year on January 2, and we anticipate that, again, assessments will continue to go down,” Jankowski said.

One constant in Long Beach is the inventory of rental units, which remains among the highest in the county, Sterrer said. Generally, studios run from $900 to $1,000, one-bedrooms from $1,100 to $1,300, two-bedrooms from $1,300 to $1,700 and three-bedrooms from $1,600 to $2,500. “The lower end,” Sterrer said, “is selling right now — the singles and the two people getting together to save money.”

Photo by Joseph Kellard

Bars Suit Up for Football Season

2009-09-24T14:36:00.000-07:00

By Joseph Kellard

For Long Beach sports bars, the football season offers a profitable segue from the busy summer months. When the NFL kicks off in September, establishments are quick to fly Jets and Giants flags, dress employees in team jerseys and serve drinks in football-shaped cups, all while showing a dizzying variety of games each Sunday on multiple high-definition or plasma flat screens.

“We try to recreate the stadium atmosphere,” said Tom Corning, who has owned Minnesota’s on West Beech Street for 15 years. “And people will come off the beach in flip-flops and their beach chairs, wearing a football jersey.”

Last Sunday featured two top early-season matchups, Jets-Patriots and Giants-Cowboys. “Having those two biggest rivalries on the same day, it’s just going to be a very good crowd for the whole day,” said Ben Fraiser of the Beach House on West Beech Street.

Both Corning and Fraiser, who managed sports bars for many years before opening the Beach House three years ago, said the crowds at their bars on Sundays are diversifying, as more hard-core male fans come out to watch the games with their girlfriends or wives. “Not anymore is it just guys coming out to watch the game,” Fraiser said. “The crowd now includes couples and families — it’s groups of girls in their Jets jerseys.”

While buffalo wings, sliders and other finger foods are the rage on Sundays, Minnesota’s looks to tap into the growing number of female fans by highlighting brunch and more health-oriented foods, with 30 new items, including Latin lettuce wraps with sautéed chicken. “The whole menu is geared toward women because they’re becoming just as big fans as their boyfriends and husbands,” Corning said.

On Sundays, the Beach House offers beer and wings samplers, quesadillas, fried calamari, slider burgers and crab cakes, and runs drink specials all day. “Football skyrockets the brunch business, and brunch really brings the women out,” Fraiser said.

Meanwhile, at Billy’s Beach Cafe on West Park Avenue, owner Billy Romm estimates that about 25 percent of his football Sunday business is takeout. “A lot of food goes out on Sundays just to homes,” Romm said.

The owner of his establishment for 23 years, Romm said his average patron is middle-aged or older — and that the greater affordability of flat-screen TVs has put a dent in his business. “It’s not like it was 15 years ago,” he said. “Now it’s a lot easier for the public to do this in their own home.”

Romm also believes that stricter DWI laws and the ban on smoking in bars, as well as the ailing economy, have negatively impacted his business. “The crowds have diminished, and I’m really caught for a way to bring them out again,” he said.

Beside the food, Romm said, he believes that one reason people still come to his bar is to watch all the games at once, which some home television packages don’t offer. “That’s an advantage for some crazy sports fanatic degenerate gambler,” he said.

With mostly 20-somethings populating West End bars, fantasy football, in which fans form their own leagues and teams and draft pro players, also factors considerably into their crowds.

“They’re not just watching their teams anymore; they’re watching to see which ones of their fantasy players are scoring points,” Fraiser said.

Changes in the NFL’s television schedule have also affected bars. This season marks the third year that the premier nationally televised game takes place on Sunday night, starting at 8:30, instead of the once more highly rated “Monday Night Football,” which kicks off after 9 p.m. “Go back 15 or 20 year ago, people on Monday would stay out to 1 a.m. if the game was still going on,” Romm said. “It’s not like that anymore.”

In an effort to make up for the drop in business on Mondays, Fraiser runs all-you-can-eat wings specials during the game, and Corning keeps most of the same Sunday specials on Mondays.

As winter approaches, bar owners keep their fingers crossed that the Giants and Jets will be playoff contenders. But even if those prospects are dim, the fans still come to watch the games.

“It’s not as if you see less people,” Fraiser explained. “You see less people coming in dressed in their jerseys and really chanting.”

Of course, if the Jets and/or the Giants make it to the postseason, business will reach a cold-weather peak. “So by December or January, it’s crazy,” Corning said. “It’s like being at the stadium each Sunday.”

Photo Courtesy Arthur Findley

Finding Solace By the Sea

2009-09-10T19:38:00.000-07:00

9/11 boardwalk benches serve as memorials for families

By Joseph Kellard

“It’s the right spot to be,” Mary Ann Marino said of a bench on the Long Beach boardwalk that she and her family dedicated to her firefighter son, Ken, soon after he was killed at the scorched World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

Ken’s remains were never found, and although his name and image are part of many memorials, from his native Oceanside to Manhattan, the bench has come to symbolically substitute as his final resting place. “We don’t have any place to go,” said Mary Ann. “We never found Kenny.”

While the gold lettering of the bench plaque’s inscription has faded after nearly eight years, the words remain: “Love is eternal. It has no beginning and no end.” Like other families who have dedicated benches to their loved ones killed on 9/11, Mary Ann and her husband, Pat, as well as Ken’s widow, Katrina, their children, Tyler and Kristin, and his sister, Lynda — who are all listed on the plaque — continue to visit his bench throughout the year to remember him.

His parents recall that Ken carried his boyhood dream to fight fires into adulthood, when he grew into a burly 6-foot-5 man who earned a reputation as a serious, knowledgeable firefighter passionate about his job. He moved to Long Beach in 1987, volunteered at the city’s fire department and earned his keep at the post office. Three years later he joined the New York City Fire Department, but continued to volunteer in Long Beach until 1997. After he moved his family to Monroe, N.Y., he rose through the FDNY ranks and eventually joined Rescue 1, an elite Manhattan unit that was among the first to arrive at the World Trade Center on 9/11. Marino died at age 40.

Each Sept. 11, the Marinos head to the boardwalk with flowers in hand after they attend the morning ceremony in lower Manhattan. They had Ken’s bench placed as far west on the boardwalk as possible, near Grand Boulevard, to be near the West End apartments he rented as a bachelor.

“We put the bench there, and it’s a place that gives us a little solace,” Mary Ann said. “On Christmas and Thanksgiving sometimes, and certainly always on Sept. 11, we’ll sit there and look at the ocean, because Kenny loved Long Beach and the ocean and he would ride his bike on the boardwalk.”

Fellow Oceansider Arlene Nussbaum visits two benches dedicated to her son, Jeff. She bought a bench for him at Lafayette and the boardwalk, near where his brother, Craig, has lived for many years, and Craig got one for him at National beach.

“There’s a closeness there,” Arlene said when asked to distinguish between visiting Jeff’s benches and Beth Moses Cemetery in Farmingdale, where he is buried next to his father, Jerry. “He loved the ocean and would meet his brother and friends on the boardwalk at National when they went to the beach. I feel he’s living there now.”

Jeff was 37 and a senior vice president of foreign currency for Carr Futures Associates at the Trade Center when he was “murdered,” as his mother puts it. When Arlene learned of the bench dedications, which were offered in the months right after 9/11, she quickly got one for Jeff. But it took her 10 heart-wrenching days to compose the inscription: “When we look at the sand we see your footprints. When we see your pictures, your eyes look into ours — Your voice is in the wind whispering to all. When our eyes fill with tears, we are holding the joy of your love. You may not be here today but you will always live in our hearts. All our love forever & ever.”

Jeff had a fun-loving personality that drew people to him, his mother said, and he had many friends who he liked to head out to the Hamptons with each summer.

Each Sept. 11, when Arlene and Craig visit Jeff’s benches, they adorn them with balloons, flowers and American flags. This year they have decided not to attend the annual 9/11 Sunrise Memorial in Point Lookout. “I’m reliving everything and it’s very, very difficult,” Arlene said. “Craig and I both felt that it’s putting too many knives in our hearts.”

She added that she doesn’t know what to expect when she visits Jeff’s benches on Friday, after an eerie experience she had last year. Someone had planted a row of American flags on the boardwalk guardrail at Lafayette, and all of the poles were straight except for one, directly in front of Jeff’s bench. “A gentleman went over and straightened out the flag pole, and two minutes after he left, again it moved to an angle,” Arlene recalled. “This happened four times! Jeff was there. It wasn’t even windy, and if it was, why only one out of 25 moved? … If you believe in that, this is what keeps many of us going on with day-to-day life. That’s important.”

Long Beach resident Rob Carlo found it unusual that a crowd had gathered around his brother Michael’s bench as Rob emerged from a swim in the ocean off Grand Boulevard on Sept. 11 a few years ago. They turned out to be Michael’s childhood friends from their native Whitestone, who since 2002 had made it a ritual to visit his bench before sundown on the anniversary. Mike had been a firefighter with Engine 230 in Bedford-Stuyvesant since 1994, and was killed at the World Trade Center at
age 34.

His brother has joined his friends ever since, along with as many as 30 other family members, fellow firefighters and neighbors from Tennessee Avenue. “It’s the one time I get to see my brother’s friends,” Rob said, “and it always feels like he’s there, because when I see them all around we start sharing stories about him, and someone always has a new one.”

Rob, a retired firefighter from Ladder 23 in Harlem who arrived at “the pile” in lower Manhattan later on Sept. 11, rented a house in Long Beach with his brother in 1999, and in subsequent years moved there permanently. They played volleyball together on the beach where Michael’s bench is today.

“I just thought it was a good idea to better the boardwalk and to remember Michael,” Rob said about buying the bench. He visits it each Christmas to hang a wreath, and on Friday he may decorate it with an American flag during the annual gathering.

Rob described Mike as a life-of-the-party type who enjoyed socializing and spending his time on the water, kayaking and boating. Rob chose his brother’s favorite quote, one by Mark Twain that he kept on a Post-It note over his desk, for the plaque inscription: “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones that you did. So throw off the bowline, sail away from the safe harbor, catch the trade wins in your sails. Explore, dream, discover.”

History Book in the Making

2009-09-07T19:04:00.000-07:00

Historians compiling a pictorial tome on Long Beach

By Joseph Kellard

Did you know that Sutton Place restaurant-bar on West Park Avenue was once a library? Or that the Magnolia condos across the street were an elementary school? Perhaps you’re unaware that Lindell School was once the high school.

Well, there are pictures to prove it, and they are among hundreds of vintage snapshots now being considered for a pictorial book on Long Beach.

Next year, Arcadia Press, a publishing company specializing in regional histories, will release a Long Beach book as part of its Images of America series. Started in 1994, the series has published 4,300 titles that feature photos of towns nationwide, including Oceanside, Levittown, Hicksville and Syosset.

“I know Long Beach is a historically rich area, and we’ve gotten a lot of requests from readers and local retailers who’ve wanted a book on Long Beach,” said Rebekah Collinsworth, Arcadia’s acquisition editor.

About five years ago, Arcadia approached the Long Beach Historical Society about compiling a book, but the society’s trustees declined, wanting to create their own book. But last winter the company reconnected with the Historical Society, along with two other local historians, and thereby created a rare competition. The Historical Society’s application was chosen.

“Sometimes it’s tricky trying to find somebody who is qualified and interested, and everything kind of fell into place with this group,” Collinsworth said. “They’ve been wonderful to work with and are super-enthusiastic.”

The Historical Society was given the task of submitting 220 carefully chosen, pre-1960s photographs, complete with descriptive and anecdotal captions, by November. Long Beach families and individuals of note, buildings and houses long gone or still standing, landscapes, sports teams, schools, firehouses and places of worship are some of the many subjects Arcadia wants for its books. The publisher also wants enough intriguing information, capturing the goings-on in towns at important times in the nation's history, to attract a wider readership.

Carole Geraci, president of the Historical Society, said the book, in part, will center on Long Beach’s various neighborhoods and the variety of people who have settled in the city. “We’re looking for pictures that tell a story, that highlight how Long Beach started as a summer resort on a barrier island and developed into a very diverse city,” Geraci explained.

Arcadia requires original photos, not the many photocopies that comprise most of the Historical Society’s archives. So in addition to its own collection, the organization must look to the public to help provide some pictures from yesteryear.

David Roochvarg, a Historical Society trustee, said the best part of being involved in the project is the ability to sift through and scan all these photos for Arcadia. “What’s most gratifying is learning more about Long Beach history, which I have an interest in already, and just combing through the museum’s archives,” Roochvarg said. “I have to be careful about wasting too much time reading about the fascinating history. You get caught up in all these great stories.”

In addition to the many photos that are due by November, the society had to come up with five photographs as potential cover shots by this month. Both Roochvarg and Geraci said the project’s downside has been the stress of meeting such deadlines.

In the end, though, the beneficiary of the book’s royalties will be the Long Beach Historical Museum, and there will finally be a comprehensive book on Long Beach from its early days to today.

“It’s been done in bits and pieces, but never in one book.” Geraci said. “And even though this book will be done mostly in picture form, there will be enough text to connect the dots.”

Photo: Courtesy Long Beach Historical Society

Indy Bookshops Face Tough Struggle to Survive In a Digital World

2009-08-21T02:36:00.000-07:00

By Joseph Kellard

“Do you have any James Patterson?” a customer asked Matt Schab, owner of Lazy Days in Long Beach, last Saturday afternoon.

“I don’t think so — you’ll have to search around,” said Schab, whose independent bookstore has been looking rather disheveled since he announced it will close later this month.

Neon-colored sales signs adorn the store’s front window, and once well-stocked shelves are now much less crowded with books. Lazy Days is the latest casualty among independent booksellers that once peppered the South Shore. Just as record-and-CD stores have been done in by iTunes, book stores have been undercut by the likes of Amazon.com.

Schab, who managed the now nonexistent National Books in Kew Garden Hills before he opened Lazy Days in 2002, admitted that he knew what he was getting into even then, as online bookstores were burgeoning. Few of his early customers went online for books, but as the years passed, fewer of them browsed in his store and schools stopped coming in with reading lists. Schab said that losing half of his special-order business to Amazon.com and eBay hurt his bottom line.

“You do it because you love books,” he said of the store, which offers used books, records, VHS movies, antiques and framed artwork.

While Schab said he will dearly miss his customers, some of whom have become friends, he expressed some relief that he will be taking his books home to sell them online, on Web sites such as abe.com and half.com, while he works at the Long Beach Library and studies for a master’s in library science.

“There’s more money on the Net, and it means less hours for me and more time with my family,” said Schab, who works alone almost daily from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

But despite the e-book business and Google’s blossoming online library, other independent stores, new and old, are finding ways to survive. Last summer, Tim Schmidt took the 15,000 books he had stockpiled in his Oceanside home, where he ran an online business, and put them in the basement of his new store, Village Book Shoppe in Rockville Centre, where he sells new and used books.

“The business just outgrew my house, and I figured the next step to grow was maybe get a retail store and run the online stuff from the basement,” Schmidt said.

His used books — everything from Harlequin romances to histories — sell at half the retail price, and his online business allows him to have a large bargain book section upstairs, with new releases and New York Times bestsellers. “The online and retail store play off of each other,” Schmidt said. “If I have a book that’s not selling on the retail end, I’ll bring it downstairs and sell it online. If I get some cheap online book, I can bring it upstairs and offer it to retail customers at a discount.”

Schmidt’s shop replaced one called Barely Bent Books, and now his is the only bookstore left in Rockville Centre after the Odyssey Book Shop closed in January.

Meanwhile, the closest major chains are Borders in Westbury, Barnes & Noble in Carle Place and Waldenbooks in the Roosevelt Field and Green Acres malls. Schmidt said their distances work to his advantage. “A lot of the customers want to stay local,” he said. “They don’t want to drive up to the big guys at the malls.”

His closest competitor is Chapter One Books in neighboring Oceanside. Owner Arlene Toback said that while she must contend with the distant discount chain stores and Amazon.com, they are only indirect competitors. “Does it hurt you? Ultimately yes, because you’d have more traffic,” said Toback, who opened her store six years ago and sells only new books. “But do I consider that my competition? No, because people who are going to shop that way are going to shop that way. People who come in here want to get things at the moment.”

Toback said her store emphasizes customer service. She provides a one-day book-delivery service, has a reading list section for Oceanside and many neighboring school districts and parochial schools, and hires people who read and know the books her customers typically enjoy. "I want to be able to talk to my customers about the books we’re selling," said Toback. “... And getting to know your customers is a great part of it, too. It’s key.”

With established bookstores, like Booklovers Paradise in Bellmore, the allure for many customers is their old or rare volumes and their ambiance. On a recent Friday afternoon, Sarah Tamsuy of Malverne stopped in at Paradise for the first time, asked owner Amnon Tishler if he took credit cards and browsed for classic novels that are on her college reading list for next semester. She walked carefully around the shop, which overflows with 50,000 books, many of them stacked waist-high on the floor. “I kind of like this atmosphere,” Tamsuy said. “I feel like there’s more to find and you can spend all day here.”

Tishler, who opened Paradise in 1990, said his store stays afloat because it is the only one of its kind for miles around, especially now, with the demise of Odyssey Books and Lazy Days. “I own the store now — I don’t pay rent,” Tishler added. “My daughter is out of college; I don’t need tons of money to make a living anymore. But for a young person to open a retail used, rare bookstore, it’s almost impossible.”

Like Lazy Days, Tishler’s walk-in business has shrunk dramatically, since virtually all the books in his store can be found for much less online. Many customers are looking for sports books, and military and history books about World War II and the Civil War are also big sellers. Half his sales now are through abe.com.

Tishler started his online business in 1998. “I kind of saw the writing on the wall,” he said. He competes online by providing precise descriptions of his books, including the number of pages and their conditions, which outlets like Amazon.com often lack. “But there are still people who like to look and touch and smell the book before they buy,” he said.

While he is sad about the decline of the used bookstore, Tishler has resigned himself to the online world. “You have to go with the flow and the changing times,” he said.

‘He was absolutely a leader’

2009-08-12T14:33:00.000-07:00

Lewis Harris, innovative firefighter, dies at 87

By Joseph Kellard

Lewis Harris and Stanley Hirschfield had much in common, starting with their boyhoods in the Bronx. The same age, the cousins were Boy Scouts and lifeguards together. During World War II they enlisted in the military. And they followed their fathers’ bootsteps into the New York City Fire Department.

But in his poetic eulogy to Harris, a Lido Beach resident who died at 87 after a lengthy illness on Aug. 6, Hirschfield underscored his cousin’s distinctions throughout their lives.

“Lew would study, I would play and our differences in a way brought us both together, closer every day,” Hirschfield, 87, a retired mechanic from Massapequa, read to some 500 mourners at Harris’s elaborate, firematic funeral at Congregation Beth Shalom in Long Beach last Sunday.

“He went the way of scholars, I dickered with machines, I enlisted in the Navy, he entered the Marines.”

Harris and Hirschfield joined the FDNY in the late 1940s, with a company in Harlem. He went on to a distinguished career with various companies throughout Manhattan, marked by leadership, mentoring and innovation.

“When it came to firefighting, Lew was one of the best, and it didn’t take him long to rise above the rest.”

Harris developed and patented fire equipment. Because a 2-inch hose was too powerful to hold and a 1 1/2-inch was too small, he created a 1 3/4 -inch line that enhanced speed and mobility, according to PLLFD Chief Dennis Collins, a retired FDNY firefighter. “He was just the best,” Collins said of Harris’s devotion to his work. “He was all fire department.”

Harris became the FDNY’s chief of training, communications and operations at Randall’s Island, where he built a new training center and developed and patented two types of nozzles and a pull-down alarm box system. His other contributions were the Starfire System, which computerized the fire department in the 1970s, and the introduction of the Jaws of Life to the PLLFD, which, according to Collins, may have been the first company in Nassau County to use this tool, which helps extract motorists from cars involved in serious accidents.

“When I first met him, I was a teenage lifeguard down at the beach in Lido,” Collins recalled. “And most guys who came down would take shoes to hold down their blankets. He would come down with Local Law 5, a big building code book which was about the size of three Bibles. And that was his reading for the day.”

A graduate of George Washington High School in Manhattan and NYU’s College of Engineering, Harris was a fire science instructor for 15 years at the Delahanty Institute, a now defunct civil service school, and taught fire administration at Queens College.

“He served his country well in that vast Pacific hell, and did his duty on Okinawa. For his actions and his skills, and his leadership in the hills, he was awarded the military medal Bronze Star.”

Born May 11, 1922, in the Bronx, Harris grew to 6 feet 2 and 220 pounds, and was a lifeguard at Rockaway Beach, where Hirschfield introduced him to his future wife, Soni Silver, before he enlisted in the Army in 1940. He was soon transferred to the Marine Corps, which needed engineers, and became a demolition officer and an expert in mine disposal. First Lt. Harris served in the Tinian Unit in the Northern Mariana Islands during the invasion of Okinawa. After Japan’s surrender, he and his unit went to China to help repatriate the Japanese.

When he came home, Harris returned to lifeguarding and, with Hirschfield as his best man, married Soni in 1945. The couple moved to Lido Boulevard in Lido Beach, where they raised three children, Glenn, Heidi and Stefanie, and Lewis volunteered for the PLLFD.

“As a father, as a son, as a leader, he was one who inspired every person that he met.”

Glenn Harris, a Lido Beach resident and an FDNY firefighter, remembered that his father took him on fire calls when he was a boy. “Whenever any crisis happened and I would go to fires with him, just watching how my father would lead the men and doing what they did, he was such an inspiration,” Glenn said.
His father was a tough firefighter who was otherwise quite gentle with his children and grandchildren, Glenn added.

Heidi Harris Weitz's daughter, Samara Weitz, 21, said that her grandfather’s dedication to the fire department was equaled only by his dedication to his family. “Nicole, his other granddaughter, was a gymnast who was internationally ranked and actually made it all the way to the Olympic trials but broke her ankle there,” Weitz recalled. “He was so dedicated to her and pretty much paid for her whole gymnastics career. He would drive her to practice all the time. And he would pay for my dance classes. He was a second father to both of us.”

Her grandfather, Weitz recalled, loved the beach and sailing boats from Maine to the Caribbean, and was an avid lifeguard, swimmer and runner.

Mindy Warshaw, a Long Beach resident and a close friend of the Harrises, called Lewis an icon and a giving person whose mission in life was to save lives. “He had integrity and was a man you had a lot of respect for,” Warshaw said. “He was just an awesome and amazing man.”

Warshaw said that in recent years, as his health declined, Heidi Weitz converted part of her Blackheath Road home into an apartment for her parents, where her father died.

“There are very few people you will meet in your life like Lew,” Hirschfield said. “Anything good, he did. He was a straight shooter, he was a good athlete, and anyone had a problem, they went to him. He was absolutely a leader.”

Harris is survived by his wife, 85, his son, 55, and Weitz, 53, all of Lido Beach, and seven grandchildren. The Harrises’ daughter Stefanie pre-deceased her father. He was buried at Beth Moses Cemetery in Farmingdale.

Locals React to Iranian Unrest

2009-06-24T17:41:00.000-07:00

By Joseph Kellard

The Lido Beach woman insisted on anonymity, fearing repercussions against her or her relatives in her native Iran — whom she lost contact with when the government began blocking phone lines there.

As hundreds of thousands of Iranians have poured onto Iran’s streets to protest the controversial June 12 presidential election, clashing with the Islamic regime’s armed forces, and as images of gunned-down demonstrators have filtered from YouTube and Facebook to CNN and Fox News, the Lido woman has watched both networks almost nonstop — though from time to time she cries so hard that she must turn off her television.

“They’re killing innocent people on the street who didn’t do anything,” the woman, 55, told the Herald. “They just want their voice to be heard. It’s not a crime to want to know where their votes went.”

While protesters charge the regime with rigging the election in favor of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the woman believes that, at this point, nothing less than a revolution will matter. “I think all the people responsible for killing those people, they should be hanged,” she said of the ruling Islamic clerics. “Or they should pack their bags and leave.”

The woman and her husband left Iran for Queens in 1979, just before the Islamic revolution. They settled in Lido some five years later and are among a small number of Iranians on the barrier island. But just over the bridge, in Island Park, there are Iranians who are not only voicing their outrage online, but taking part in demonstrations overseas, along with a Long Beach attorney.

Manaz Ramani, 53, who moved to Island Park four months ago from Canada, is posting daily messages on Twitter about the election and Neda Agha-Soltan, the 26-year-old Iranian woman who was shot to death during a Tehran protest. Cell-phone video of her dying in her father’s arms have gone global.

“When a regime like this does this to their people,” Ramani said, “imagine if they have nuclear weapons what they going to do. These are just the new Hitlers.”

Ramani, who fled Iran after the regime’s first five years in power, believes the demonstrators are using the turmoil over the election as a pretext for regime change. “They are using this to show their overall anger with what has been going on all these 30 years,” Ramani explained. “The jailings, the torture, their not being able to dress or listen to music they want. Just simple rights they can’t do.”

While Ramani said she understands President Obama’s non-meddling approach to the unrest, she feels that he is not doing enough. She said his diplomatic approach with the ruling mullahs “won’t work,” and called on the U.S. government to go so far as to use armed force to help the protesters oust the regime.

“This is the best time to do it,” she said, “because now they have the support of the Iranian people. They need help, even just to have communication tools open.”

Others are calling for something different. Max Saatchi, a jewelry store owner in Island Park, has demonstrated for regime change since he was jailed and his store in Tehran was confiscated after he took part in a mass rally there in 1981. He and his wife, Amy, fled with fake passports and ultimately settled on Long Island with their sons, but still have more than 100 relatives in Iran.

Last week, Saatchi flew to Paris with Long Beach resident and attorney Frank McQuade to attend an annual conference to discuss Iran with American and European delegates and Iranian expatriates.

Coinciding with the upheaval in Iran, the event featured a 90,000-person rally in solidarity with the protesters, similar to other demonstrations staged last week in European capitals from London to Stockholm.

“In Europe they are more active and there are more people,” said Amy Saatchi, who noted that local Iranians rarely come forward to protest like her husband, who has demonstrated at many rallies outside the United Nations when Iranian officials have visited.

Max has remained in France this week, but McQuade returned home on Monday. “The agenda quickly became proactive,” he said of the conference, “as the expatriate leadership shifted to plans on how to use the crisis in Tehran to accelerate the push for democratic reform and regime change.”

The conference was sponsored by the People's Mujahadeen of Iran (PMOI), an organization that seeks European and American support of its effort to bring about change in Iran without U.S. troops or funding in order to restore a secular democracy, according to McQuade. The PMOI, he said, is waiting for the protest movement to gain strength and attempt to topple the government. “If the time is right,” McQuade said, “guns, fighters and organizers will slip into Iran to direct the popular protest towards regime change.”

The U.S. State Department, however, lists the PMOI as a terrorist group. In past interviews with the Herald, Saatchi has said that label is misleading because the PMOI’s aggression in Iran has only targeted the regime in order to replace the theocracy with a secular democracy, and that the Clinton administration had the PMOI put on the list to support and appease the "moderate" government elected in 1997.

McQuade said he participated in the conference primarily to lobby for U.S. support of the PMOI’s goals and its removal from the State Department list. And while, for now, he supports the Obama administration’s low-key reaction to the unrest in Tehran, he believes Obama ultimately doesn’t have the stomach to take on the Iranian regime. “His response to the protests, while prudent,” McQuade said, “does not come from a clever mind but from a timid heart.”

Hindu Temple Welcomes Worshipers Of All Varieties

2009-05-10T02:53:00.000-07:00

By Joseph Kellard

Each Sunday morning, several minivans and SUVs are parked around the median outside 610 Laurelton Blvd. The unassuming two-story white house there is a Hindu temple, where sitar sounds from a Casio keyboard may be foreign to those of other faiths, but not the Hindu priest’s altruistic ethics.

“Rise to help those who are less fortunate than ourselves,” said Rory Ram, the 40-something priest who sat on the floor lotus-style at a service in March. That day, some 45 worshipers sat shoeless on white linen sheets that covered the living room-turned-sanctuary’s carpet, as the smell of curry from the kitchen permeated the house.

Later, during the standard two-hour Sunday service, a pre-teen boy who sat beside Ram echoed his message: “Service to others is service to God.”

Founded in 1989, the Maha Shiva Mandir — Temple of Great Lord Shiva — is one of only a few Hindu temples in Nassau County. Its congregants live mostly in Long Beach, but many come from throughout Long Island and as far away as the Bronx and New Jersey.

Jennifer Harricharran, an accountant and the temple’s secretary, lived and worshiped in Queens before she moved to Long Beach 19 years ago and helped found the temple. “It’s the only one for a few miles around, so it’s a little community,” she said. “In Queens they have about 30 and anyone can go to any of them. Here you basically have one place, so you have to be a family.”

Harricharran, the other founders and many worshipers are native to Guyana, South America, and they practice Sanatan Bharma, which means “an eternal way of life” and that their temple is open to all comers. “Because of the tolerance that we preach,” Ram said, “we’re able to accommodate everybody.”

As proof, he mentioned the temple-goers who come from many walks of life — lawyers, doctors, teachers, sales reps, the unemployed — and explained that some are of difference races.

Katrina Meyer of Oyster Bay first attended services at Maha Shiva Mandir last year with her boyfriend, and was made to feel very welcomed, she said. Meyer has since visited other temples in Nassau and Queens, some of them much larger. “It’s very intimate, the Long Beach gathering,” she said, “and I think it’s beautiful like that, and I really enjoy it because you really are coming together and you feel part of it.”

On Sunday, March 15, the temple emptied out early, because congregants were headed to a parade in Queens that celebrates Phagwah, the festival of colors, a holiday that ushers in spring and the Hindu New Year, and highlights the tolerance that is a central tenet of Hinduism.

“We cannot say there are certain hard and fast rules, that this is what you have to follow and do as an individual to be a part of this group,” Ram said as he prepared to leave. “It’s like many different colors: You have to appreciate each color for what it is, and you cannot say because I like red that red is the best color or higher than anyone else.”

Yet Ram indicated that courage, truth and helping others were attributes that makes followers more devout Hindus. And the temple’s elder priest, Ramnarine Tiwari, 78, suggested that Hindus face judgment days. As he described reincarnation, perhaps the religion’s most widely known belief, he said that at death, before a believer’s soul can live on in another body, the lord Shiva analyzes and assesses his actions on earth.

“Based on your merits, you may come back as a human being, the highest order of animal,” Tiwari explained. “... So you have to do your best to carry the right deeds — if you don’t, you will not be able to come back as a human being, but as a lower creature.”
Against a wall in the temple stand statuettes of several gods. Worshipers pray to them through another major god, Shiva, who represents peace and tranquility, said Ramcharran Harricharran, a co-founder of the temple. “Shiva shows you that you can control everything by controlling the mind,” he said. “If your mind is out of control, your life is out of whack.”

When regular temple-goer Ramrattie Persaud, a Long Beach resident and a phlebotomist at Nassau University Medical Center, was going through tumultuous times, she prayed to Durga Mata, the matriarchal power behind Shiva. “I was devoting more time to Durga Mata because I believe she is the destroyer of all evil,” Persaud said.

The temple’s services are filled with music. Congregants young and old play an array of instruments, from the dholak (a drum) and the dhantal (a medal rod that sounds like a triangle) to the mandolin and dish-sized gongs.

Ramcharran Harricharran chiefly plays the harmonium, an accordion-like organ, but during one service he handed it over to a young girl. Giving children the opportunity to take part is seen as a form of passing the Hindu culture from one generation to the next, said Ram, who added that music is among the most effective ways for people to understand the concepts he preaches.

“It is through participation, not through lectures, that one learns best,” he said. “The first form of devotion that a person can have is the ability to listen, and Hinduism provides this ritual of listening through music.”

When the temple was first established, the services were held in the basement of another home on Laurelton. Tiwari, a retired sugar chemist who arrived in Long Beach from Guyana 30 years ago, bought the house the worshippers now use with donations from congregants, and took out a mortgage with another founder.

“We had a handful of Indians living in Long Beach, so we thought of mobilizing ourselves together in order to offer prayers at large and to keep the community together so that they can remember where they came from,” he said.
The temple’s president, Mahadeo Persaud, said that the number of worshippers has never been higher, estimating that there are 150 in all.

“Right now,” he offered as an explanation, “people enjoy our priests.”

Meyer, who was raised a Lutheran but was also exposed to Judaism and Catholicism, said she believes that because people are taught from an early age to hold to one faith, they fear exploring other religions, but she likes to attend services of different beliefs. “When you go in there,” she said of the temple, “it feels very exotic, and it’s like you’ve entered into another country or realm.”

The Piano Is An Afterthought

2009-05-10T02:46:00.000-07:00

Local church organists love their instrument

By Joseph Kellard

One wears worn, special dance-like shoes so he can shift his feet on the pedals more easily. The other, nearly six decades his junior, doffs his dress shoes to play in his socks. But while Dr. Denis Nicholson, 77, and Andrew Clavin, 19, prefer different footwear, they share a passion for the organ.

Nicholson has been the head organist at St. Ignatius Church, on West Broadway, since the Kennedy administration. Clavin earned the same title at St. Mary of the Isle Church across town last September. While the two men do not know each other, both said they prefer the organ to the piano, and both offered the same explanation why.

“The organ is a much more colorful instrument,” Nicholson said after playing at a recent Sunday Mass. “With all the different possible combinations of sound, you can more or less orchestrate the music.”

Calling the organ “the king of instruments,” Clavin said, “There’s just so many sounds and registrations to it.”

Nicholson plays a three-keyboard electric Rogers organ that overlooks the St. Ignatius sanctuary from its perch in the choir loft. He presses large buttons, called stops, that light up as they feed the organ’s mix of sounds, from flutes to violins to oboes. The console of his instrument bespeaks a musician at home in his element, with stacks of well-thumbed sheet music, a dusty lamp and a strategically placed mirror that he uses to get his cues from Msgr. Donald Beckmann on the altar below.

When Nicholson, a still-practicing internist in his West Penn Street home office, sets his stethoscope aside, he’s likely at St. Ignatius, whether practicing with the choir on Friday evenings, accompanying the choir at Sunday masses or preparing for the church’s seasonal concerts, such as Handel’s “Messiah” at Christmastime.

At a recent Sunday noon Mass, as always, Nicholson played his favorite Renaissance and Baroque pieces. “Those composers knew how to write for the human voice,” he said.
As worshipers filled the main aisle below, receiving Communion, he led the choir through “Prayer for Jesus.” Later, as the service ended and as congregants filed out of the church, Nicholson and the choir began “Take Up Your Cross.”

The music he plays, Nicholson said, is tied to his spirituality. He fondly quoted St. Augustine: “He said, ‘He who sings prays twice.’”

Across town at St. Mary’s, Clavin plays a two-keyboard Allen electric that stands beside the altar. In contrast to Nicholson’s clutter, Clavin’s instrument bears just a bottle of Poland Spring and a few song books he used during a recent Sunday noon service. At one point, his cell phone vibrated, and he padded off in his socks to a back room to take the call.

The cantor was absent that day, and Clavin has no choir, so he led the hymns himself, summoning his best baritone. He played “O God, Our Help in Ages Past,” a hymn based on Psalm 90, and, being that it was Lent, his recessional hymn was “Lord, Who Throughout These 40 days.”

In the past four years, Clavin has played at a number of congregations in and around his native New Hyde Park and beyond. He carries a business card and isn’t shy about handing it out. Last year, through a recommendation, St. Mary’s asked him to play at a funeral. He was later invited to play at all of the church’s funerals, weddings, and weekend services.

Nicholson, too, got off to an unusually early start as an organist, playing for the first time at St. Ignatius when he was 17. He grew up in Manhattan, visited Long Beach with his family each summer and sang in the St. Ignatius choir before playing the parish’s original pipe organ at Sunday Masses.

From 1957 to 1960, Nicholson served in the U.S. Public Health Service and was stationed in Boston, but he drove to Long Beach each weekend to perform at St. Ignatius. “This is where I used to come and worship, but I also love the acoustics in this church — they’re tremendous,” he said. “I’ve sung in many other places, but the acoustics here are unreal.”

The day after he finished his medical residency at a Bronx VA hospital in 1963, Nicholson moved to Long Beach, opened a practice and has been working — and playing at St. Ignatius — ever since. Among his most memorable performances with the choir was a 9/11 ceremony a few years after the attacks, when they performed Brahams’s “Requiem.”

Clavin’s experience is measured not in years, but in the many places of worship he has played. What distinguishes St. Mary’s? “It’s a very homey parish,” he said.

His parents bought him a keyboard when he was 9, and he taught himself to play after Sunday church services. Now he’s learning piano as well, but not because he is switching allegiance. A sophomore liberal arts major at Nassau Community College, he is studying piano to help him with his music-reading skills.

And while not settled on a career just yet, he is certain where he wants to go musically. “I definitely want to see myself playing organ for the foreseeable future,” he said.

Businesses must court the Millennials

2009-05-10T02:45:00.001-07:00

Marketing instructor stresses embracing interactive media

By Joseph Kellard

Leone Baum has problems with the way younger people are communicating, with text and instant messages, MySpace postings and Twitter updates. “I don’t think it’s helping our social situation by never looking at or touching people,” said Baum, vice president of the Hempstead Chamber of Commerce.

While some sociologists may agree with Baum, Mitch Tobol, a partner in the Amityville-based marketing firm CGT Marketing, sees that attitude toward interactive media as bad for business. “Instead of trying to push it away, embrace it,” Tobol stressed to Baum and some 70 other businessmen and women at a seminar on March 12, titled “Successful Marketing in Challenging Times,” at Hofstra.

Tobol’s oft-repeated theme is that there are always business opportunities, regardless of the economic conditions, and one of the places to find them is the rapidly expanding world of blogs, iPhones and Google alerts.

“It’s not just about the economy,” he said. “If you want to market successfully, you need to understand the environment you’re in.”

While Tobol’s PowerPoint presentation touched on everything from branding to pricing to purchasing patterns, he tied it all to what has become the marketing world’s major focus: the Internet and youth. As the relevance of the baby boom generation and traditional marketing methods — particularly advertising — wanes, interactive technology, and the new generation of “millennials,” are on the rise. By 2015, this generation, generally acknowledge to have begun in 1977, will become the U.S.’s largest demographic segment.

This has already caused seismic shifts in marketing, with tech-savvy consumers who can instantly find competitive services and products, Tobol explained. “The marketing message is now in the hands of the consumers,” he said. “They are all-powerful.

Technology allows them to send and receive messages in seconds, and they tell everybody — everybody — what they are thinking. This is a totally new dynamic in marketing. If you are not aware of it, you need to be.”

Today, consumers can register their evaluations of businesses and their products and services on Epinions.com, which offers “unbiased reviews by real people,” and similar Web sites. “When someone writes something bad about your business, engage that person,” Tobol said, noting that complaints are a window into a company’s weaknesses.

He talked about how CEOs of major companies, including General Motors, keep daily blogs, making it possible for consumers to write to them — access those consumers have never had.

Tobol stressed that in the age of the Internet, it is critical for businesses not only to have a Web site, but make it distinct from those of their competitors. “It’s where more and more people, every single day, will experience your firm for the very first time,” he said.

Gary Curley, a plumber from Suffolk County who attended the seminar, said he is “old school” when it comes to his Web site. “He mentioned constantly updating your site and being interactive with it,” Curley said. “That kind of put the light on me a little bit there.”

After listening to Tobol, Curley said, he understood that he needed to make better use of social and business networking sites to promote himself as an extension of his company. “He really opened my eyes to the fact that using them could be a good marketing strategy,” he said.

Tobol described Facebook, MySpace and other networking sites as the “new frontier” in marketing. He cautioned that while some people successfully use Facebook for business, the site focuses primarily on social networking. “If you go full force in business on it,” he said, “a lot of people are bound to turn you off.”

Many merchants fail to take advantage of the business-to-business sites LinkedIn and Plaxo, Tobol said. Another attendee, Carine Ulano-Firestone, who sells jewelry, gifts and accessories online from her Bellmore home, said she was in the dark about these sites until she attended Tobol’s marketing courses at Hofstra’s Entrepreneurial Assistance Program.

Another member of the audience, Pat Savella, who owns a decorating business, said she plans to take Tobol’s advice to nurture existing clients — the people most likely to do business, who he termed “low-hanging fruit” — because they are the best return on any company’s marketing dollar. “I’m going to try go back to those customers instead of trying to deal with the ones who are always trying to lowball everything,” Savella said. “I’ve learned to appreciate the clients I have and work with them more.”

Baum, who regularly attends business-related seminars and relays what she learns to the Hempstead Chamber, said that Tobol had impressed on her the importance of business Web sites and interlinking them. “A lot of our businesses in our chamber already do have Web sites,” she said, “but some are terrible, and I do think that they should be linking their sites with our Chamber and other Chambers.”

Home Sweet First Home

2009-05-10T02:42:00.000-07:00

Rookie buyers crowd Long Beach housing market

By Joseph Kellard

In January, Ray Sackman closed on his first home, a one-bedroom, one-bath condo on West Broadway. The 28-year-old mortgage trader — who has an apartment in Rego Park and splits time between the two —is part of a nationwide trend that has not escaped Long Beach.

That is, a growing number of home buyers are first-timers, many of them 20- and 30-somethings capitalizing on lower prices and interest rates in the wake of the mortgage and banking crisis. According to the National Association of Realtors, 41 percent of buyers in 2008 were first-timers, up from 36 percent in 2006.

Although local real estate agents have no precise data on this trend in the city, some of them said that over the past six to nine months, first-timers have mostly snatched up condos or co-ops at prices ranging between $250,000 and $400,000 with interest rates at around 5 percent, down from the pre-crisis 6 to 6 1/4 percent rates.

“People who have something to sell must wait until they’ve freed up their cash before they do something,” said Miriam Gold, owner of Paul Gold Real Estate. “So the first-time home buyer is really in a good position.”

Sackman said that in addition to the favorable market, he wanted to buy in the community where he has been surfing for many years. “I just decided that it was time to get a place of my own and that I also get a place where I can escape,” he said. He looked at many homes on the Internet before contacting a broker, and viewed six condos in Long Beach before deciding on his new home. He took out a loan on the $340,000, 700-square-foot unit and put down 40 percent.

Joyce Coletti, a broker with Prudential Douglas Elliman, said that most new buyers are taking out loans, but banks now want to see anywhere from 20 to 40 percent down, when a few years ago the average was 10 percent or less — even zero. Coletti said that business has picked up considerably with the federal stimulus package offering home buyers an $8,000 credit.

Gold said that new buyers are moving in all around town, and Coletti said that at the Windward condos on West Broadway, where Sackman lives, 14 out of the 28 units have been sold to first-time owners at prices ranging from $199,000 to $399,000. Teachers, firefighters and police officers, she said, are buying one-bedroom, studio and Junior 4 units, the last having a separate dining area that can be converted into a second bedroom.

One New York City police officer, Lou Casto, said he didn’t need a loan, and put 23 percent down on a $220,000 oceanfront studio with a terrace at 250 Shore Road. Single, living in Bayridge and prepared to close on his new unit by next week, Casto, 39, had already rented two other places in Long Beach. After much research, he decided to buy in the city, and took the first place Coletti showed him.

“I like the beach, I like that it has the railroad with direct access to the city, and I like the gyms and movie theater,” Casto said of Long Beach. “It’s like a Bayridge on the ocean.”

Coletti noted that a comparable unit in Casto’s building sold for $260,500 in April 2006. She said the market began to fall in Long Beach around September 2007, and since then prices are down on condos and co-ops by 15 percent, and on houses by 20 percent.

According to sales data collected by the New York State Association of Realtors, the median sales price of single-family homes in Nassau County in the fourth quarter of 2006 was $480,000, and for the same quarter of 2008 it was $425,000, an 11.5 percent drop.

Josephine Lobel owns a home in Island Park that her husband, Adam, rebuilt when they bought it three years ago, but they recently bought their first home on the barrier island. The couple moved quickly to buy another fixer-upper, a split ranch with four bedrooms and two baths on Regent Drive in Lido Beach, and is still trying to sell their Island Park home. They paid $460,000, putting 20 percent down on their new home, which, Coletti said, would have sold for $500,000 just a couple of years ago.

“This house really was a no-brainer for us,” said Josephine. “It’s a big corner lot at a really good price for Lido Beach. We jumped on it because whatever condition a house is in, my husband can fix it up.”

Josephine, who grew up in the close quarters of Long Beach’s West End but wanted to raise her family in a home with more property, said she looked at many homes on the Internet before visiting about five.

Gold and Coletti said that in the recent past they would only have to show three to six homes to prospective buyers, but these days they show as many as 15 to 25 before customers make decisions. “People are being cautious and just being certain about what they want,” said Gold, adding that she has seen two buyers’ markets in her 45 years in Long Beach real estate. “A lot of people don’t know exactly if they want a home, a condo or a co-op, so it’s been a little bit of an educational process.”

Coletti, who is recognized for selling the most homes on the barrier island each year for the past decade, said today’s buyers are showing considerably more discretion, especially when it comes to price. “In 2006, if you showed them a nice apartment, they bit on it right then and there,” she said “Now they want to see 15 other one-bedrooms before they make up their mind because they need the lowest price possible.”

Coletti noted that what’s also new is that some potential buyers are bidding on two or three units at a time. “It doesn’t matter if they like a place a lot or not,” she said. “They’re all looking for the best deal first.”

Spin Drills Replace Depositions

2009-05-10T02:41:00.001-07:00

Point Lookout attorney closes law books to train triathletes

By Joseph Kellard

Kerry Simmons grew tired of figuratively banging her head against the wall as a civil defense attorney. So now her energetic voice bounces off the walls of the Hofstra swim center, where she trains triathletes full-time.

With stopwatch in hand, in sneakers and an oversized T-shirt, Simmons trotted back and forth along the length of the pool on a recent Tuesday evening, instructing and encouraging 13 triathletes in the water below her. Simmons directed the mix of men and woman to swim at full speed while crowded together, to simulate the chaotic start of a triathlon.

“Ready, go!” she yelled repeatedly, and as her charges churned through the water, she counted the seconds aloud: “... 34, 35, 36, 37…”

Meanwhile, her husband of three years, Kevin, an attorney, a triathlete and her business partner, worked poolside with a quickly winded newcomer, Joe DeSimone, demonstrating proper freestyle stroke technique. “The quick drills were just too fast for me,” said DeSimone, a Williston Park resident training for his first triathlon this summer.

Kevin Simmons explained that the drills he and his wife use on their trainees are designed to fatigue the swimmers from the start. “The race starts fast, you get tired and then you have to learn how to relax and change your pace for the middle of the race,” he said.

The Point Lookout couple started their new business, First Wave Tri, in January with six triathletes. Since then they have recruited some 40 more students of varying skills, ranging in age from their 20s to their 60s. Kerry Simmons’s success in the sport has been a major draw: She is well known in the rapidly growing triathlon community in the metropolitan area and beyond, a three-time USA Triathlon All-American and a three-time Team USA national and world team member. She is ranked among the top 10 triathletes in the nation in her age group, 40 to 44.

Kevin, 57, a 25-year veteran of the sport, is ranked No. 1 in his age group in the Northeast. He is also the senior attorney at a practice in Syosset whose clients include Fortune 500 companies --- and where Kerry worked briefly after a 10-year stint as a prosecutor for the Nassau County District Attorney’s Office.

Most recently, she spent four years working for a civil law office, and that experience was the springboard to her new life as a triathlete trainer. “With civil law, it was just two opposite ends always butting heads,” Simmons said. “It just got difficult to spend your days fighting all the time.”

In what she calls her “aha! moment,” Simmons was working on a case in which her female client was suing a store where she injured her toe. Simmons was one of eight attorneys in a room taking her deposition while they argued among themselves. “I remember looking around the table and thinking, What are we all doing here?” she said, her voice as high-energy as her poolside demeanor. “What’s the point of this? It just seemed like an odd way to spend your life and career, fighting over a stubbed toe, on a case costing thousands and thousands of dollars that clearly could have been resolved on the first court appearance. At that moment I thought, I have to do something else. I have to do something I’m passionate about.”

In January 2008, after a long career as a competitive swimmer and seven years of competing in triathlons, Simmons earned her certification as trainer. A year later, as far as she and Kevin know, they are the only full-time triathlon team on Long Island.

“Our goal is to have a very close-knit group of athletes that get a lot of personal care and attention, that we coach on a really one-on-one basis — and that they know they’re getting from us a quality program,” Simmons said. “We’re very hands-on. We know all our athletes.”

In addition to their Tuesday swim drills, the group bikes together in a spin class on Sundays at North Shore Fitness in East Meadow, after which they run together in neighboring Eisenhower Park.

When Jennifer Morrissey of Williston Park joined First Wave Tri in January, she couldn’t finish a lap in the pool, stopping four times along the way. A runner, Morrissey was looking for a new challenge, and now she is training for her first triathlon, in Pawling this June.

“They’re great, very encouraging,” she said of the Simmonses, then added, with a laugh, “And they’re not mean.”

The couple train athletes mostly for short, sprint-style triathlons that include a half-mile swim, a 12-mile bike leg and a 5K run. But others are advanced enough to compete in an Ironman, the sports’ most demanding event: a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile second leg on a bike and a full 26.2-mile marathon.

Rob Kolb, a Long Beach resident and an educator in Lynbrook, is preparing for his first Ironman in Lake Placid this July. Kerry Simmons listens and leads better than anyone else he has worked with, he said. “I’ve had coaches with tons of experience, but it’s all about the person, it’s all about the character, it’s all about who you want to associate yourself with, who you want to emulate,” Kolb said. “That’s what I tell my kids: The person you want to emulate is the person who you want to coach you.”

The First Wave Tri training plan includes a detailed description of every workout, a nutrition plan, a focus on race goals, and Kerry’s high-energy, personalized feedback. “We bike, swim and run with them,” Roberta Leventhal of Roslyn, one of the elder trainees, said of the Simmonses. “They care more than anyone in the world and they’re fun. They’re a great duo.”

Leventhal has competed in a few triathlons, but didn’t fare too well. Now, under the tutelage of her new trainers, she anticipates better results, and her newfound confidence is obvious. “This year,” she said about her upcoming races, “I’m going to kick butt.”

Reviving the Walks

2009-05-10T02:37:00.000-07:00

New civic association to address neighborhood neglect

By Joseph Kellard

Call it the second coming of the Walks Neighborhood Association. The Long Beach civic group, established in 1998 but disbanded a couple of years later, has been resurrected by a group of newer residents.

According to President Allison Kallelis and grant officer Jamie Lynch, the first association fizzled out because City Hall was unresponsive to its calls for neighborhood improvements. The new officers, however — who have recruited some original members — hope to turn the page and begin a new chapter with the city.

Kallelis and other Walks residents have met several times with City Manager Charles Theofan since last summer to discuss their concerns about the historic 10-block neighborhood that is without street access, driveways or garages. Most problems relate to parking, sewage and homes that are expanding or subdividing properties.

Kallelis said that the city’s zoning board has made some favorable decisions on development and other building issues in their neighborhood. The association leadership was scheduled to meet with Theofan again this week to discuss parking, and it has invited the City Council to its May 4 meeting.

“The meetings with the city so far have been very productive,” said Lynch, who has lived on May Walk with his family for five years.

At the March 17 City Council meeting, Lynch, Kallelis and some 25 fellow Walks Association members joined other city residents seeking to obtain funds through the city’s community development program. The Walks Association wants the city to install new decorative street signs and light posts. They have planned fundraisers to pay for other beautification projects.

The neighborhood is bounded by West Park Avenue to the north and West Beech Street to the south. A total of 10 walks run north-south, paralleling Lindell Avenue, the eastern border, and New York Avenue to the west. There are about 28 houses per walk, and 300 in all.

Kallelis, who moved from Yonkers to September Walk with her husband, Alex, eight years ago, said that residents began building new, larger homes or expanding existing ones about four years ago, during the housing boom. But the neighborhood had no representation on the zoning board.

“Some of the neighbors and I were talking and we were saying, ‘This is ridiculous, we have no power. If we had a bigger voice, maybe we could get some things changed here,” Kallelis recalled.

Last year she talked with Jim Hennessy, a former City Council president who grew up and still lives in the Walks, and other long-time residents. They organized a meeting last fall, and Kallelis estimated that about 10 percent of the neighborhood attended. In December the group elected a five-member board, and they have been holding periodic meetings since.

“There were a lot of people eager to be involved,” Kallelis said, adding that there are some 50 association members who participate to varying degrees.

Bob Reed, a board member who has lived on September Walk for a year, said he believes that a key to the association’s success is to generate good will among neighbors. “It’s important for residents to get to know each other, and the best way to do that is through courteousness,” said Reed, who lends a hand in shoveling snow from the narrow sidewalk. “From this, you’re likely to get more participation and representation.”

Focusing first on beautification projects, the group would like to replace the 50 street signs that are bent, rusted or have been vandalized, at a cost of about $35,000. Members also want to install light posts, but Theofan said that project may not materialize for another year or longer.

Each year the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development provides grants to Long Beach’s Community Development program, a portion of which can go to nonprofits like the Walks Association to fund improvements.

“The Walks have been a much-neglected neighborhood in our community,” Theofan said. “It’s about time we give them the attention that they deserve.”

Beyond beautification, the neighborhood faces some large-scale infrastructure issues attributable to long-term neglect. The aging sewage system needs to be replaced, but its pipes run through residents’ yards because of the absence of streets. Further complicating matters in a neighborhood known for its tight quarters are state health regulations that require sewer pipes be a certain distance from water pipes.

“So you have to figure out the practical problems of where you’re going to put things,” Theofan said. “These items need to be tended to, and it’s just a matter of when. But we’re starting the process of seeing what needs to be done, accessing it and looking at the cost and trying to put it into the capital improvement plan.”

Lynch said he understands that some projects may take some time to get under way, particularly in a struggling economy. If the city is not responsive, however, as some walks residents have complained in the past, “Then we’ll have to make monthly visits up to City Hall,” Lynch said. “Maybe even weekly, if need be.”

The Walks’ military beginnings

The historic Walks neighborhood was first developed in 1917 and 1918, when the U.S. military took over the Nassau Hotel (now the Ocean Club condos) and Long Beach was turned into a military settlement.

The original uninsulated, prefabricated bungalows were built for $2,500 by Milton Kolb, who also developed the first three blocks on the West End: New York, California and Pennsylvania. The prefabs were installed on property owned by Brooklyn developer and former State Sen. William Reynolds. The homes were meant for summer use, so they
came with front porches and faced either east or west so they could capture the breezes from the ocean and the bay to the south and north.

“The whole design of the walks was to build houses without street access, but an aside was the breezes,” said Roberta Fiore, a Long Beach historian, who noted that for $500 more than the selling price, a chimney could be built for winter use.

In 1928, single-level bungalows were built alongside the original homes by Louis Bossert, a Brooklyn lumber producer who developed the future city’s second wave of homes after World War I. St. Ignatius Church on West Broadway was built for the Walks community in 1926.

In the mid-1950s tenants began living in the Walks year-round, and by the 1970s, by most accounts, a majority of residents did so. “When the Walks became an all-year-round community, the expression then was, ‘Throw some heat in the bungalows,’” Fiore said. — JK

Tea Time

2009-04-22T16:47:00.000-07:00

Local taxpayers join nationwide series of protests

By Joseph Kellard

For Frank McQuade, it was a tough decision to skip his annual trip to the gala dinner at the New York State Republican Convention in Manhattan last week and instead have some tea. The Long Beach attorney joined about 350 protesters who lined the sidewalks of Sunrise Highway at the Massapequa train station in a Tax Day Tea Party, one of hundreds held across the country.

The sign-wielding, American flag-waving Nassau County protesters voiced their discontent with what they called government’s burdensome taxes, ongoing bailouts, massive spending and pending inflation, as rush-hour motorists honked in solidarity.

“Duty really calls to be at the tea party, because the answer at this point is not parties, not the entrenched,” said McQuade. “… Taxation is choking off initiative, watering down the free market system and is going to burden us with debt that is going to change the face of this country not as we anticipated when [President] Obama was elected.”

For the protests, tea became TEA, standing for “taxed enough already,” and the gatherings — on April 15, for obvious reasons —were likened to the Boston Tea Party of 1773. There were some 25 protests on Long Island alone, from Hicksville to East Hampton, and according to one estimate, there were more than a half-million participants nationwide.

In Massapequa, some voiced their concern with what they described as their fellow Americans’ loss of personal responsibility and can-do spirit, while others characterized Obama, former President George W. Bush and Sen. John McCain as fundamentally alike on economics, and a few expressed alarm that Obama had pushed out General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner.

Many flashed hand-made signs reading, “No taxation without representation,” “Dump the tea, dump the tax,” “We the people, not we the government,” “Foreclose the White House,” “I am not your ATM” and “No socialized medicine.”

Mike Friechter, a Bellmore attorney who held a sign that said “Obamanomics: Trickle up poverty,” said he believes the president is governing as a socialist.

“Growth is unlimited by imagination, hard work and the American spirit,” Friechter said. “The idea of punishing people for being successful in life is counterproductive. It just makes everyone equally poor, and that’s what we’re protesting against. We want the politicians to know that we won’t be silent about this outrageous spending.”

Tom Walsh, owner of a home-inspecting business, called politicians at all levels “tax crazy,” and said that while he is forced to cut back, they continue to expand government budgets. “We’re committing suicide and they’re spending us into oblivion,” said Walsh, a Syosset resident. “People have no idea what a trillion is, and we’re never going to pay this money back.”

While a few politicians were in attendance, including the Nassau County Legislature’s minority leader, Republican Peter Schmitt, the Massapequa organizers made it a point not to invite government officials. “This is not an affiliation with any political party,” said organizer Laura Gill. “This is really just American taxpayers on Long Island coming together who are just looking to be really vocal about our displeasure with what is going on.”

Gill, who works in insurance, said she organized the event mostly through word of mouth and a Web site, and got involved because Obama’s stimulus bill “will take a heavy toll on hardworking American taxpayers,” she said. “They feel that their American dream and the future of their children is going to be gone.”

Another party-goer, Charles Hapaey, said he is most concerned about the impact increased government spending will have on future generations. “We have to stop it now,” said Hapaey, noting that his property taxes have risen $9,000 since he bought his West Islip home in 2002. “Otherwise they’re going to have a problem that they’re not going to be able to deal with in the years to come.”

Hapaey, who was holding a “Don’t punish success” sign, said his wife works as many as 70 hours a week on her own local newspaper, and he fears that Obama will reverse President Clinton’s “workfare” programs, which took people off the welfare rolls. “If she’s going to put in that time and be successful, why should I be paying for someone who wants to put in 30 hours a week, not put in the time and do just enough to get by, and then I have to supplement their income?” Hapaey said. “I’m not happy with that.”

A nationwide protest is planned for July Fourth. Gill said she plans to keep in touch with other participants, and discuss ways to effect change, from becoming watchdogs of Washington to voting together. “I think what the tea parties will do is make people realize that this is not what the American people want, and nobody is behind it except for the very small few who are going to benefit from it,” she said. “Let’s get back to the American dream. You reap the benefits of working hard, and no more handouts.”

Allegria Hotel Holds Job Fair

2009-03-01T07:16:00.000-08:00

By Joseph Kellard

Although the job fair was scheduled to start at 9 a.m., some prospective employees demonstrated their punctuality by lining up on the sixth floor of Long Beach City Hall an hour early on Tuesday.

The Allegria, the luxury hotel that is replacing the King David Manor on the boardwalk at National Boulevard, held a two-day job fair Tuesday and Wednesday, looking to fill 100 start-up positions, from dishwashers to concierges to accountants.

Just after 9 there were already some 70 job-seekers seated on benches or standing on line, filling out applications or waiting to be interviewed, some dressed in business suits and pearl necklaces, others in jeans and wool hats.

“They hit me a little sooner than I was ready for this morning,” said Mark Lahood, president of Access Hotels and Resorts, who was hired to oversee the pre-opening process for the Allegria. Lahood expected some 2,000 applicants in two 12-hour days.

Among Tuesdays early birds was John Gyulay of Valley Stream, who had been laid off a week earlier from a health care company in Manhattan, which he said was downsizing due to the faltering economy. “A lot of people are not working, so whatever job they can get, they’ll take,” said Gyulay, who was looking for a maintenance or security job at the hotel.

In line behind Gyulay was Andre Morris of Long Beach, who hoped to get a full- or part-time custodial job. “Right now I’m doing construction, but it’s seasonal and there’s not always work,” Morris said.

The Allegria promoted the job fair with fliers and posters, and advertised in local papers, including the Herald. “We’re really trying to embrace the Long Beach community,” Lahood said.

Long Beach resident Margaret Famigoietti said she learned about the hirings from her children. She lost her job of 12 years at a Brooklyn nursing home in October 2008, in economy-driven layoffs.

“We all have bills to pay,” said Famigoietti, who is collecting unemployment. “It’s getting tough. My savings is going way down.”

A certified nursing assistant, she said she enjoys working with people and wanted to land a job at the hotel’s front desk or in reservations. “They told me they’d call me for an interview,” she said. “I don’t know if that’s a great sign or not.”

The hotel is focusing on finding service-oriented, personable people, Lahood said. “In a hotel environment, we hire a lot based on personality,” he explained. “It’s the one thing we can’t train for.”

Lahood pointed out that people can expect the hotel to add as many as 60 more positions once it is in full seasonal swing this summer.

“Just because someone doesn’t make it this first round doesn’t mean there aren’t future opportunities,” he added.

The hotel expects to have a staff hired by early April, and to open its doors sometime later that month or in May, Lahood estimated.

Danielle Bivens, a Long Beach resident who works in the cafeteria at East Elementary School, said she would take any part-time position.

“I need something for the evenings and when school is over, something for the summer,” Bivens said.

While waiting to be interviewed on Tuesday, Gabrielle Rios of Valley Stream said she has spent the past two years earning an associate’s degree in hospitality from New York City College of Technology. Now, she said, she is eager to work at the hotel, whether in the kitchen or at the front desk. “Whatever position is available now, I’ll take it,” Rios said.

The hotel’s developer, Allen Rosenberg, president of the Manhattan-based Alrose Group, showed up at the job fair on Tuesday morning. Rosenberg bought the King David Manor property for $21 million in August 2007. He was unsuccessful in his bid to buy the Garden City Hotel last year, but opened a Wild By Nature supermarket and a Walgreens on his property on Long Beach Road in Oceanside.

The Allegria is touted as a high-end luxury hotel that will feature 143 rooms -- 31 of them suites -- as well as a rooftop pool, a spa run by the Long Beach salon Joseph Christopher, and meeting rooms for corporate and catered events. It will be the first luxury hotel in Long Beach since the mid-20th century.

“Creating a forum that provides job opportunities will help foster optimism in a gloomy economy,” Rosenberg said, “and will give gifted individuals a chance to grow with a hotel that is the first of its kind in the neighborhood.”

Asked why the Allegria was holding its job fair at City Hall, Lahood said that in addition to the fact that the hotel itself is still a construction zone still, there was no better place in Long Beach.

“We are going to be a long-term fixture in this community,” he said, “so we need to start off in a way that’s going to meld the two together.”

Once All White, Now Full Of Color

2009-03-01T06:40:00.000-08:00

L.B. historian details Long Beach's early black history in North Park

By Joseph Kellard

One particular moment from the day in 1958 when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. took part in the ceremonial opening of the Christian Light Baptist Church remains etched in Roberta Fiore’s memory.

The media and many Long Beach politicians gathered for a photo op in front of the new church, in the city’s predominantly black North Park community, but King suggested another backdrop: the neighboring homes with no front doors.

“What I remember distinctly was that across the street from the church was the worst section in Long Beach,” said Fiore, who was then 18 and is now a Long Beach historian. “Dr. King had Newsday take photos of those houses instead of the church. He knew enough to say, ‘I don’t want my picture taken in front of this new building. I want it taken showing how blacks live.’”

Still, a new church in the black community was a far cry from Long Beach’s beginnings. William Reynolds, a former state senator who since 1906 had owned most of Long Beach island, sold property exclusively to the wealthy. “The laborers — the Italians, the Greeks, the blacks — were escorted out of town at night to Barnum Island,” Fiore said.

But before his business went belly-up in 1918, Reynolds asked the City Council to allow a black man named Ben to stay overnight. Ben was a servant for a woman who owned an estate on Edwards Boulevard that became a boarding house. She demanded that Reynolds accept him, and the council voted unanimously in Ben’s favor. Thereafter his black brethren called him “King Ben.”

Fiore described Ben not only as “a colorful character” who led the annual Memorial Day parade, but as one of the first influential blacks in Long Beach. “He became a very respected person in town,” she said.

Other early black influences were Dan and His Boys, a jazz quartet that entertained at Long Beach establishments and traveled with Reynolds, and James Reese Europe, an internationally known conductor and writer for Vernon and Irene Castle, a ballroom dance duo who owned a nightclub on the boardwalk. “Long Beach had an early history of music that was given by the African-American people,” Fiore said.

Throughout the 1920s and ’30s, as entertainment thrived and Long Beach developed homes and industry, Southern black migrants worked at the hotels lining the boardwalk or as domestic servants. While some lived in the stately homes where they worked, a handful began renting and even buying homes, many of which were converted garages, in what is now North Park, the area north of Park Avenue between Magnolia Boulevard and Long Beach Boulevard.

“The political idea back then was to keep the blacks concentrated on the other side of the tracks,” Fiore said. “North Park was where the railroad and the more industrial section of the city were located, and the blacks didn’t have cars, so they traveled by train.”

During the summers, fishermen stayed at the Bayview Hotel on Reynolds Channel, and black laborers moved into the dilapidated structure the rest of the year. Around World War II, a wealthy black woman, a Mrs. Reeder, invited them to board in the garage of her nearby stucco estate. “She gave these domestics comfort, warmth and clothing,” Fiore explained. “This was the beginning of the black community in Long Beach.”

During the 1940s, however, the Ku Klux Klan was active on Long Island, and when a black woman moved into a home on Pine Street, Klansmen burned a cross on her lawn, according to Fiore. The woman soon left town.

But around the same time, one of Long Beach’s most celebrated African-Americans, the Rev. Jesse Evans, moved with his family to an estate house that he rented in North Park. An Army chaplain who became the spiritual leader at Christian Light, Evans originally traveled from Jackson Heights, Queens, on Sundays to preach to the black laborers at the former First Baptist Church. Evans and his first wife were acquaintances of Dr. King and his wife, Coretta. “Evans was a good man who believed in peaceful resistance,” Fiore said. “Some thought he was too nice.”

In 2000, Fiore, then the president of the Long Beach Historical Society, interviewed Evans’s two daughters; the then 20-year-old organization had no documented history of North Park, and Fiore thought it important to create an oral record. That same year, the Long Beach NAACP Youth Council learned that a community journal created for the city’s 75th anniversary made no reference to their neighborhood. They responded by making a video documentary called “Long Beach in Color.”

Among the many black elders and leaders the young people interviewed was Hazil Garrie, who moved to Long Beach in the 1950s. On the video, Garrie called King’s visit to Long Beach the most significant event during her years in the city. “That was a happy day in my life,” Garrie said, “to see him in person, and he was very, very charming.”

In 2002, Patrick Graham, who was raised in Long Beach and is a former director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center on Riverside Boulevard, completed his doctoral thesis on the growth of the city’s black community. “The majority of African-Americans in Long Beach, from 1940 to 1980, were migrants from the South,” said Graham, who is now a college professor and president of the Urban League of the Central Carolinas in Charlotte, N.C. “Southern migrants in Long Beach and other parts of Long Island used their cultural knowledge of the civil rights movement to pursue human rights initiatives in Long Beach.”

Bill Owens arrived in Long Beach in 1960, and found that housing for blacks was scarce. He joined the local NAACP and took part in the organization’s sit-ins in the lobbies of apartment buildings that refused to admit blacks. Others picketed on the streets.

“Police came and arrested some of our people and took them to jail,” Owens recalled in “Long Beach in Color.” But after the demonstrations, inter-racial relations gradually improved, and, Owens added, “Things did start to open up.”

Honest Abe Turns 200

2009-02-12T03:28:00.000-08:00

City celebrates Lincoln bicentennial

By Joseph Kellard

As several new books on Abraham Lincoln appear at book stores and libraries and as the media highlight the 200th birthday of the 16th president, Long Beach residents will help commemorate the historical milestone.

The Long Beach Library booked actor David Houston for Presidents’ Day on Monday, when he will don a stovepipe hat and read from Lincoln’s letters, essays and speeches. Reading with radio-style drama and musical accompaniment, Houston will focus on Lincoln’s wit and draw parallels between his era and today.

Houston, who has performed 20 different shows spotlighting a variety of historical figures, describes this production as “lighthearted,” avoiding mention of slavery or the Civil War. While studying for the part, Houston said, he found Lincoln to be “very human.”

“He admitted mistakes,” the actor said, “and he had a reputation for being almost a stand-up comedian, as being the funniest of all the politicians of his day.”

Throughout the month, the library will display its entire collection of books on Lincoln, which includes some 90 biographies and histories published in the past 24 months alone. “It’s like trying to choose between A and A,” library Director George Trepp said about the many new titles.

The parallels some have drawn between President Obama, a former Illinois senator, and Lincoln have served to further spotlight Lincoln, who is already the subject of some 16,000 books, according to Frank Williams, chairman of the Lincoln Forum, a national assembly of Lincoln and Civil War devotees.

Myrnissa Stone, director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center, said she wanted to bring a historian to the center on Presidents’ Day to speak on the similarities and contrasts between the Civil War era and the present.

Long Beach historian Roberta Fiore said she knows of no connections between Lincoln and Long Beach, which during the Civil War was part of Queens County, as was the present-day Town of Hempstead, which sent many soldiers into battle, Fiore said. “After Lincoln was assassinated, Mary Todd Lincoln did visit the famous Hog Island Hotel in Rockaway Beach,” Fiore noted.

The Rev. Tom Donohoe, pastor of St. Mary of the Isle Church on East Walnut Street for 27 years, said he often visits Civil War battlefields. His most recent trips, last fall, were to Antietam and Gettysburg.

“Lincoln is important because he got us through a war that divided the nation, and saved our country,” Donohoe said. “We tend to forget now our founding fathers like Washington, as well as Lincoln. It’s important to take days to remember them.”

The city’s elementary schools will touch on Lincoln through biographies some students have written, and read Lincoln-related poems and riddles, and a few teachers who stress character education will underscore his honesty, hard work and perseverance, the district’s director of social studies, Sean Hurley, said. He added that high school teachers would likely take a day or two this week to revisit Lincoln’s role in and views on the important issues of his day — slavery and emancipation — and discuss links between Lincoln and Obama.

The district’s social studies curriculum, Hurley explained, takes a neutral approach toward historical figures. “You present the facts: We had a division in the country, and it was based on this issue of slavery and race and the economic issues tied to that,” he said.

“It’s easy to sit back now and look at it from a 21st century perspective, but try and put yourself in his shoes, and do you think you could have made the same difficult decisions?”

At Long Beach Catholic School, Marie Palmieri, a seventh- and eighth-grade social studies teacher, said she constantly stresses the presidents when teaching American history — and Honest Abe is her favorite. “He was honest, and I highlight his success story: He was born into nothing, so how did he get to be president?” Palmieri said.

“He worked hard and was able to see how valuable education was. He was passionate about education, which made him extremely unusual in his time, especially coming from a rural environment.”

Palmieri said she most admires Lincoln’s integrity when it came to saving the Union and abolishing slavery. “He wouldn’t fall away from our core values,” she said, “that all people are created equal.”

Jennifer Fleischner, an English professor at Adelphi University and the author of “Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly,” said today’s scholars generally view Lincoln as a complex man who lifted himself from poverty and a limited education, and focus on his views on race and slavery. “Lincoln was always against slavery, but he was not an advocate early on of abolition or equal rights for African-Americans ...” Fleischner said from her car on Tuesday, as she drove to Washington, D.C., to attend Lincoln bicentennial ceremonies. “... But what’s important to recognize about Lincoln was the difference between him and practically everyone around him, which was that he was capable of being educated and growing.”

Polar Bears Give Businesses A Boost

2009-01-29T18:55:00.000-08:00

By Joseph Kellard

Andrew Loucas, who bought the long-established Laurel Luncheonette, at 300 W. Park Ave., three years ago, is getting accustomed to a certain ritual.

Each Super Bowl Sunday, participants in the Long Beach Polar Bear Club’s annual ocean plunge show up at the diner before their frigid swim to load up on carbohydrates, ordering stacks of pancakes and waffles —and lots of hot chocolate to go.

“Then the place empties out for about an hour before we get a few cold, wet people in here,” Loucas said, referring to the post-plunge diners.

The event, which benefits the Make-A-Wish Foundation, is now in its 12th year, and draws a crowd of thousands. Its success has created something of a one-day business boom in the dead of winter, and more Long Beach business owners are looking to capitalize on it.

The restaurant-bar Sutton Place is abuzz with customers from 11 a.m. to the end of the Super Bowl, according to its owner, Rob Richards. The ocean swim allows Richards to extend an already busy day by hosting a pre-lunge breakfast with complimentary bagels, coffee and hot chocolate.

“We pack the place early with kids, wives, husbands, grandmothers and grandfathers to meet and greet before they head to the beach,” Richards explained. “Then they come back immediately after and start getting ready for the game. By 1 or 1:30 the place is jamming.”

It doesn’t hurt that the restaurant, on West Park Avenue, is just a few blocks from where the crowd gathers, at Riverside Boulevard beach.

The Beach House, a sports bar and grill on West Beech Street, makes up for its distance from the event by providing swimmers transportation to and from the beach, after offering them bagels and coffee.

Ben Freiser, who co-owns both the Beach House and Speakeasy, which is also in the West End, said he has seen an increase in business as the number of participants in the ocean swim has grown.

Last year at the Beach House, Freiser said, his pre- and post-swim parties were unexpectedly crowded. “It used to be on Super Bowl Sunday in daytime, I had a skeleton crew on,” he explained, “and the last few years I didn’t have enough staff, because usually you don’t see any customers until close to game time, and now 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. you have a nice crowd.”

One group of West End polar bears gather at Speakeasy before and after the swim, when Freiser hosts a “more quaint, less raucous” post-plunge party. He said that more people appear to be incorporating the event into their other plans for the day, which has become a quasi-national holiday on which the volume of food consumed nationwide trails only Thanksgiving.

For the past five years, longtime Long Beach resident Mark McCarthy has jumped into the ocean before the game. After he opened Lola’s, on West Park Avenue, last January, he decided to get his business involved in the event after talking to two regular customers, the swim’s founders, Peter Meyers and Kevin McCarthy (no relation).

“They said that some people who had no place to go afterwards would go to the VFW hall, but people like the volunteers from Make-A-Wish and others would just wander around,” Mark McCarthy said. “So I said, let’s bring them all back to Lola’s, and whatever money we raise, we’ll give it to Make-A-Wish.”

So, from 1 to 4 p.m., McCarthy will host an unlimited buffet brunch — charging $20 for adults and $10 children — with the proceeds go to the foundation. “Times are tough out there in the world,” he said, “but they’re never too tough that we can’t help out other people.”

Other business are taking a more proactive approach by heading to the boardwalk. Swingbellys Beachside BBQ, another West Beech Street establishment, will offer swimmers and spectators an ounce of chili for the second straight year.

“The customers loved it,” said Brian Berkery of Creative Vibe, an advertising agency that promotes Swingbellys. “It was a huge hit.”

Audrey Remo

2009-01-25T03:21:00.000-08:00

Teacher, avid walker, dies at 87

By Joseph Kellard

Audrey Remo often put one purposeful step in front of the other.

Each weekday, the Long Beach woman hiked two lengths of the boardwalk with her walking club. She walked home from work at the middle school every day. Her vacations usually involved trekking in some corner of the globe. And she particularly enjoyed making shoeprints in the virgin snow outside her West Walnut Street home.

A snow-lover, Remo would forgo trips to Florida because she never wanted to miss a winter in Long Beach.

“It was always fun for her to get up early enough to make sure that, if there was a good amount of snowfall, she wanted her footprints to be the first in the snow,” said Lenny Remo, her son and a Long Beach City Council member.

Remo walked until a problem hip sidelined her at age 85. Two years later, on Dec. 29, she died of natural causes.

She and Eve Epstein formed a walking club in 1991. At one point, it numbered 11 members, and they covered the 4.2 miles of wooden planks Monday through Friday, every week, even in winter.

“Audrey was one of the fastest in the group and was always out front,” said Epstein, who noted that the club often paused so that Remo could greet her many friends.

“Everyone liked her,” Epstein added. “She was an outstanding woman:
bright, kind and very thoughtful and insightful.”

In May 2004, the club caught the attention of Newsday, which published a story on them, and Channel 21 picked up on it, doing its own feature.

For the past 10 years, Remo taught at the middle school — driving to work each morning with her husband of 59 years, the late Leonard C. Remo, and walking home each afternoon.

Rita Smith, who taught with Remo and joined her walking club, said, “She was a wonderful person who was exceptionally bright, and everyone loved her.”

Born in 1921, Audrey Gray moved to Long Beach from Manhattan with her parents and older sider to the W. Walnut Street home that she would live in the rest of her life. She graduated from Long Beach High School and New York University, where she met her future husband, Leonard. They married in 1943, before Leonard joined the U.S. Army and saw action in Sicily, Africa and France during World War II. She served in the True Sisters, an organization that rolled bandages during the war.

Once the couple settled down they raised their children, Lenny and Kathy, and taught together at Long Beach schools for more than 30 years. Remo spent most of them teaching reading at the middle school.

“She had a very good rapport with the children, and many of them were reluctant learners,” Smith said. “But she was very well liked by kids.”

Barbara Ruderman, who first met Remo in 1965 when their sons were in the same third-grade class at Central School, recalled that when a black family moved with several children into a two-family home on W. Hudson Street, Remo learned from one of their sons at her school that they all slept on the floor.

“And there she was carrying up mattresses, that she rounded up from her huge circle of friends in town, up the stairs into their apartment,” Ruderman said.

When on vacation Remo became a world traveler whose next adventure was always a previously uncharged locale, from Japan to Egypt to the Oregon Trail. She once caught a glimpse of Haley’s Comet while sailing through the Panama Canal. In addition to travel, Remo loved to read and enjoyed theater and art museums.

“This was a woman who, for the majority of her life, woke up every day and said I want to see what today has to bring, what’s going to be new and different, what am I going to learn or what am I going to teach,” Lenny said. “She was always positive and always looking to tomorrow.”

While still a teacher, Remo was a Pink Lady volunteer in the gift shop at Long Beach Memorial Hospital (now Long Beach Medical Center).

In retirement, she also gave her time to sit on the board of directors at the Long Beach soup kitchen, and was involved in the Long Beach Historical Society and the local Haddasha. About eight years ago, Nassau County named Remo their Senior of the Year.

“There was nothing that my mother would ask somebody to do that she
would not do herself,” Lenny said.

Ruderman described Remo as “a very generous spirit” who was always ready to lend a helping hand, and remembered how when Ruderman’s husband was on his deathbed at LBMC, Remo sat at his side each day.

“She was there on the day he died and sat with him the whole day until it was over,” Ruderman remembered.

Remo is survived by her son Lenny Remo and daughter-in-law Julie, daughter Kathy Remo and son-in-law David Kee, and her two nieces and two nephews. A memorial service will be held for her this summer. Remo dedicated her body to medical science.

'60 Minutes' Features Flynn Family

2009-01-11T05:38:00.000-08:00

DWI Tragedy Revisited

By Joseph Kellard

“I wanted that courthouse on top of him, I wanted him buried under the jail, I want him dead," Neil Flynn, of Lido Beach, said on “60 Minutes” last Sunday.

Flynn was referring to Martin Heidgen, the Valley Stream man who killed his 7-year-old daughter, Katie, in a horrific drunk-driving accident on the Meadowbrook Parkway three and a half years ago.

Flynn appeared in the opening segment of CBS's top-rated news show, which focused on Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice and her crusade to more severely penalize drunk drivers, and especially those who kill other drivers. The Flynn-Heidgen case was the centerpiece of the report.

Seated beside his wife, Jennifer, Flynn told “60 Minutes” correspondent Bob Simon, “I relive the crash, I think about it every day, I have nightmares about it every night, and I live my life without my daughter because of it.”

The crash Flynn relives occurred early on the morning of July 2, 2005. Driving north in a Chevrolet pickup truck at high speed in the southbound lanes of the Meadowbrook with a blood-alcohol content three times the legal limit, Heidgen slammed into the limousine that was taking Katie and her sister, parents and grandparents home from a wedding reception in Bayville, where she had been a flower girl at her aunt's wedding. While Heidgen suffered only wrist and ankle injuries, the limo driver, Stanley Rabinowitz, 59, of Farmingdale, was crushed to death, Katie was decapitated, and other passengers were severely injured.

Instead of manslaughter, the typical charge for a DWI fatality, Heidgen was charged with murder. So instead of facing a sentence ranging from probation to 15 years in prison, he was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 18 years to life in October 2006.

“The statute under which he was charged required us to prove that, through his actions, he had a completely depraved indifference to human life,” Rice explained to Simon. “His actions made the deaths of Katie Flynn and Stanley Rabinowitz inevitable. It was as inevitable as taking a gun and firing it at an individual who is standing five feet away from me.”

Heidgen's attorney, Stephen Lamagna of Garden City, told Simon that charging his client with murder instead of vehicular homicide was akin to treating him like a cold-blooded killer on a par with serial murderer Jeffrey Dahmer. “Are we as a society ready to water down what murder is and turn our sons and daughters into murderers who go out and drink and drive and cause a fatal accident?” Lamagna said.“No matter how tragic these cases are ... they're an unintentional act that was caused by the alcohol. But for the alcohol, this wouldn't have happened.”

Rice responded that being drunk should not absolve Heidgen of responsibility for his actions.

“What kind of lawlessness would you have if intoxication excused that kind of behavior?” she said.

Catherine Olian, the producer of the “60 Minutes” segment, told the Herald that the main reason the show's producers decided to spotlight this case was its groundbreaking outcome.

“There are very sad deaths from drunk driving all the time, and that wouldn't make us do a story,” Olian explained. “It was the fact that [Heidgen] was convicted of murder that made us interested in the story. That's when we thought how drunk-driving deaths are treated in the courts. Was this usual or unusual?”

The show began researching the story last spring, Olian said, interviewing prosecutors and defense attorneys in several states and looking into the range of laws dealing with drunk driving. “60 Minutes” staffers found that while some states —most notably, Texas — have tried drunk drivers for murder, no one had ever been convicted on a murder charge.

“I think it's about something that hits most people's lives in some way or another,” Olian said of the story, whose airing was delayed last fall due to constantly breaking news on the economy and the presidential election. “And I think it's a societal problem that people don't really know how to deal with.”

Simon told the Herald that what he took away from the story was that the tragedy had two sides — Katie Flynn's horrific death and her family’s agony over it, and Heidgen's future. “He's also dead because he'll be in prison the rest of his life,” Simon said. “That's also a tragedy and a waste, even though I think he deserves it.”

While Lamagna declined comment on the report, Rice said that the show “did an exceptional job of showing the inevitable consequences of drunk driving. It highlighted a life-and-death issue that's happening in every community across the country.”

Asked why she thinks her campaign to more severely punish drunk drivers attracted so much attention, Rice said she believes that, historically, prosecutors have been reluctant to push the envelope on the issue.

“I think that's because there are still so many people who sympathize with the drunk driver,” she said, echoing a point she made on the show. “That is the mindset we are trying to change here, and that's why I think it has a national appeal.”

On Tuesday afternoon, less than 48 hours after the show aired, Rice said her office had received hundreds of calls and e-mails. “They were thanking us for our leadership on this issue,” she said, noting that the volume of comments was unusually high.

Within 24 hours of the broadcast, there were some 500 comments posted on the “60 Minutes” Web site. Olian said that most were from viewers who disagreed with Rice’s stance.

“People who disagree tend to post more on any story,” she said.

Neil Flynn did not return a call for comment, and Heidgen declined to appear on “60 Minutes” because his case is under appeal.

Retailers Look Back on Holiday Season

2009-01-11T05:23:00.000-08:00

Days before Christmas saved some Long Beach business owners

By Joseph Kellard

Fledgling retailers in Long Beach reported mixed results for a holiday shopping season marked by nationwide stores offering steep discounts, some as high as 75 percent off, while the economy sank further into a recession.

Some business owners were concerned as they struggled with poor sales and scrambled to adjust, while others told of a December that started slow but picked up just before Christmas.

“Basically what happened to me is that people started to shop much,much later, when they came under the gun to start shopping,” said Melissa Barnett, owner of Lil' Towhead, a children's boutique store on E. Park Avenue.

Thanks to this last push, Barnett said, her holiday season went better than expected.Of course, it doesn't hurt that Barnett's boutique sells ever-popular children's clothes and toys, particularly Melissa & Doug, a brand of wooden “learning” toys — puzzles, arts and crafts and blocks. In December, Barnett sold mostly accessories, such as scarves and gloves, as well as T-shirts and sticker books, all for $30 or less.

“I was stocking toys like every three days; they did really well for me,” she said.

Michael Muratore, co-owner of Rose & Eye, a West End boutique where all clothes are under $100, said business was steady throughout the holiday shopping season, but things took a turn for the better later on. “The last eight days were very, very strong days,” he said about the week before Christmas.

With just 27 days between Thanksgiving and Christmas, five fewer than in 2007, Muratore predicted a rush late in the shopping season.

“I thought that would make a huge difference and push people to shop later,” he said, explaining that he worked at department stores for 20 years before opening his boutique in March 2007.

Another factor may have been the coupons for 20 to 50 percent off that he e-mailed to loyal customers 10 days before Christmas. Muratore also said he believes the reeling economy worked to his advantage. He expected shoppers to turn away from the mall stores selling T-shirts for $175 and venture into stores like his, where he sells similar styles for an average of $40. From Black Friday to Christmas, Rose & Eye sold mostly key items, from wrap sweaters to party dresses, he said.

At Frock, a women's clothing store across the street from Muratore’s shop on West Beech Street, owner Stephanie Thornton said the last couple of weeks in December were better than the first weeks.

“And I have to say that January is starting out a lot better than December,” Thornton added. “ ... Maybe it's that people who didn't get what they wanted for Christmas are coming out and buying it for themselves now.”

While Thornton's store highlights cocktail dresses for about $300, which she cut by 20 percent, Gracia dresses at $100 or less, and formal gowns ranging from $200 to $400, she said she sold lots of jewelry, which ranges from $15 bracelets to $200 designer gold-plate necklaces, as well as sweaters, scarves and other accessories. While Thornton, who opened her store in November 2007, began to bring in less expensive products before the holiday season kicked off, other retailers are only now taking this tack.

“I bought merchandise I had always bought, and somehow it isn't working,” said Susan Gelfand, owner of Josef ~ Rose, an East Park Avenue boutique specializing in fine handbags, belts and wallets.

Gelfand, however, is among the newest retailers in Long Beach, having set up shop late last summer. For 16 years, Gelfand, a Lawrence resident, operated her store in Deal, N.J., a heavily Sephardic Jewish community, where her clientele included people from surrounding towns wealthy enough to own horses.

“This is the first time I had what you would call a Christmas season,” she said. “Let's just say it was different.”

Gelfand said she has now learned to offer a more diverse price range, and she started the New Year by attending a trade show at the Javits Center to buy newer wares. She bought more non-leather bags that start at $40 than she stocked in her New Jersey store. And while most of her (non knock-off) designer bags, which include Isabella Fiore, Lockheart and Francesco Biasia, go as high as $700, most are in the $300 to $400 range.

Gelfand's neighbor, Roz Sterling, owner of Phoebe's, which specializes in handbags that sell for $50 to $300 and shoes that go for $40 to $300, said that after a rough holiday season, she plans to readjust her inventory by carrying more accessories and some novelty clothing items like tank tops and leggings. “I'm definitely carrying more pick-me-ups just to get people in the store,” Sterling said. “Hopefully that will be enough.”

Sterling started the holiday season by reducing virtually all her merchandise to half price, but since last September, business has remained way down from when she first opened in July 2007.

“It's definitely scary times,” she said. “We're 'on sale' like everyone else in the world and we're just plugging along. Hopefully there will be a change in the economy and in the consumer mindset. If consumers aren't spending money, nothing else matters.”

Struggling To Stay In The Black

2008-12-06T18:52:00.000-08:00

New businesses try to survive in recession

By Joseph Kellard

At Pheobe's, a women's shoe and accessory store, a sign in the window reads, “Up to 50% off on selected items.” But on Black Friday last week, owner Roz Sterling said that with business down dramatically from last year at this time, nearly all merchandise is half price.

Cost-cutting is distinguishing this Christmas season from years past, as retailers both big and small offer high-percentage discounts, some up to 75 percent, as the economy falters. Some predict the slowest December in years.

Sterling, who opened her doors in the East Park Avenue shopping district in July of 2007, is among the new, small businesses that set up shop in Long Beach just as the mortgage crisis hit last year and that now face a continuing recession. In this “perfect storm,” as Sterling described it, they are reporting mixed results.

“It's like a light switch,” Sterling said of the difference between the two years. “Business is way down.”

Pheobe's specializes in handbags, which sell for $50 to $300, and shoes that go for $40 to $300. Sterling's lines include Old Gringo, Ed Hardy and Seychelle. Initially, her offerings garnered a “very quick following,” she said, but by September, sales dropped just as quickly. “I think people are being very, very cautious,” she said.

“Statistics on the news show people spent an average of $800 [during the holidays] last year, and this year they’re going down to $200 and $300.”

A few doors down, at Lil' Towhead, owner Melissa Barnett described business as “fair” at her boutique. She attributes this in part to her product, children's clothes and toys, which remain popular, along with her prices. Her toys generally sell for $30 or less, and most are Melissa & Doug, a brand of wooden “learning” toys — puzzles, arts and crafts, blocks — sold only by boutiques. The best-selling items, however, are accessories, particularly scarves, gloves and small watches, all priced under $30.

But many of Barnett’s customers' husbands work in finance. “So they're starting to pull back a little bit,” she said. “... I find that people are shopping, but they're looking to keep things at $20 and $30.”

Both Sterling and Barnett said that Black Friday — the day after Thanksgiving — is typically when shoppers head to the malls rather than local shops. Yet at about 1 p.m. last Friday, the Rose & Eye clothing boutique on West Beech Street was abuzz with shoppers, ranging from high school students to middle-aged women, trying on the store’s non-designer clothes.

Michael Muratore, who co-owns Rose & Eye with Stefano Malluzzo, expects business this year to be as good as or perhaps even better than it was last year, despite the fact that there are just 27 days between Thanksgiving and Christmas, five fewer than in 2007. So Muratore e-mailed his loyal customers monthly savings passes earlier, and even added outerwear, sweaters and other selected items for 30 percent off.

“No matter what’s going on right now economically, the holiday season will happen regardless,” said Muratore, who worked in department stores for 20 years. “You just have to be prepared if business happens today or two weeks before Christmas.”

Rose & Eye, which has expanded twice since it opened in March 2007, can be described as a $99 store, since no item exceeds that price and the average runs about $55. With shoppers looking to spend less, Muratore actually sees the lousy economy as working to his benefit.

“Maybe they won't buy a $175 T-shirt at the mall, but they will buy a $40 one from me,” he said.

Across the street, at Frock, owner Stephanie Thornton last month offered everything in her women's clothing and accessory store for 20 percent off in honor of its first anniversary. Over the Thanksgiving weekend, she marked down some items by 30 percent. “I've been telling people about the sales all week, so I'm hoping that's going to bring them in,” Thornton said on Friday.

While Tribute, a sportswear line, has sold well for Thornton at an average price of $200, her store highlights cocktail dresses for about $300, which she cut by 20 percent, Gracia dresses at $100 or less, and formal gowns ranging from $200 to $400.Accessories include wool and silk scarves and hats, evening bags and jewelry —everything from $15 bracelets to $200 designer gold-plated necklaces.

Like Sterling, Thornton said sales were good when she first opened, but are now lagging. “But you just have to pull through it,” she said. “I think that's everyone's attitude right now.”

Thornton is adjusting by bringing in less expensive products, and this week she plans to meet with other local business people about starting a retailers' association. “Especially now, with the economy as it is, I think that it's important that we in the community kind of band together,” she said.

Michael Kerr, president of the Long Beach Chamber of Commerce, said new businesses have it rough because they have a lot of start-up costs, including security deposits on rent, renovations and initial inventory. “People I speak to say business is down ... but basically they're making a living, which is the most important thing in this economy,” Kerr said.

He finds that many people go into business lacking capital, and the fact that bank loans are not readily available now makes things even more difficult. “I've seen people take a home equity or mortgage against their home to go into business,” Kerr said.

Thornton said it has been a struggle to build a loyal clientele. By contrast, long-established businesses in town, such as Unsound Surf and Jewelry by Steven, can rely on their steady customers to see them through a bad economy.

Dave Juan, co-owner of Unsound on East Park Avenue for 10 years, said business is down some, but the relatively mild weather is keeping his customers from traveling.

“A girl who works here, her father is a dentist, and he's not going away this winter, so he came in and bought himself a new board and wetsuit,” said Juan, who said this season's hot items are winter wetsuits ($405), Skullcandy headphones (from $20 to $100) and Emu boots for women ($65, with 20 percent off).

Steven Leibstein said that the jewelry store on East Park that he has owned for 16 years has seen a slight downturn. This time of year, his regulars look to buy their wives necklaces or rings, but this year they're bringing him old gold instead to be remade into new pieces. “And that's been a very big part of what's going on right now,” he said.

Otherwise, Leibstein has no shortage of customers, virtually all of whom he knows on a first-name basis. “Chances are, they pop in earlier and they tell us they want this, this, this and this, and we put it on their wish list,” he said.

Living, Breathing History

2008-11-16T04:46:00.001-08:00

Veterans share war experiences with 7th-graders at LBMS

By Joseph Kellard

During his three tours of duty with the Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan, having seen his share of enemy fire as a rifleman on the front lines, Cpl. Michael Panza received many care packages from students. On Monday, he had his first opportunity to speak to a group of seventh-graders, fielding a wide range of questions about his military experiences.

“The questions they had were amazing,” Panza, 29, a Valley Stream native, said on Monday, when Long Beach Middle School honored more than a dozen veterans of wars beginning with World War II.

More than 100 seventh-grade students wanted to know everything from whether the veterans had ridden in tanks to what kind of weather they had to endure. More personal questions drew strong, emotional reactions from some of the men.

“Has the war affected you positively or negatively?”

A student addressed this question to Panza, who at first hesitated, perhaps considering the most appropriate answer to give to schoolchildren. “I made some good friends over there,” he said about his time in the Middle East, “but I also lost a lot of those good friends and will never see them again because of the war.”

Panza added that while he never attended college, being in the military gave him the credentials to become a New York City police officer.

He shared the spotlight in one of four classrooms devoted to specific wars with Frank Ciccone, a Navy instructor and trainer, and Sgt. Steven Paul, a substitute teacher at LBMS who served in the Army during the Gulf War. “When you return home,” said Paul, 39, who wore his sand-colored uniform for the occasion, “you realize more what's important in your life.”

“If you do have children, would you send them to sign up for a war?”

Panza, who wore a red sweatshirt sporting a Marines logo, said he would support his children’s decision if they opted to join the military. “I don't want them to go through what I went through,” he was quick to add after describing his difficulties with readjusting to civilian life. “But that's their own choice. It's not for me to decide.”

Ciccone, who comes from a military family, said he, too, would fully support his children if they followed in his GI-issued bootsteps.

“Because if we don't do it, then we don't have the life we have today, or tomorrow, for your children ... It's a necessity for our country to survive,” Ciccone said.

Each classroom was devoted to a particular war, and students rotated from room to room every 20 minutes, watching slide shows and asking questions. In the room hosting Vietnam veterans, there were slides ranging from swarms of helicopters above American soldiers on an open battlefield to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C.

“What was war like?”

This simple question was posed to Ron Amato, 59, a friend of math teacher Kerri Rhenback, who spearheaded the effort to bring the veterans to the school.
Amato, who has had a tracheotomy and speaks with an amplifier held to his throat, said, “That's a hard one.” He paused for several seconds, seemingly trying to rein in his emotions. “War is not good,”
he said finally.

Ed Grant, who served in the Army in Vietnam, talked about the 58,000 Americans who didn't come home alive from Southeast Asia. “There wasn't much we questioned about the war then,” he acknowledged. “It was hard to know anything about it.”

Grant, who was also deployed to the demilitarized zone in Korea in the late 1960s, joined Donald Sondergaard in another classroom to talk about the Korean War.

“Is there anything you are proud of that happened during the war?”

Sondergaard, a Long Beach native who enlisted in the Marines and saw combat for nearly two years in Korea, said the fact that he survived was enough. “The proudest thing is that I came home and got to see my family again,” he told the students.

Grant — whose son Keith, the former editor of the Long Beach Herald, led an Army platoon in Baghdad — offered his thoughts on what made him proudest about his military career. “It's the whole feeling that you are serving your country in an honorable effort,” he said.

“Was basic training hard?”

This was asked of the World War II veterans. “Training is to teach you how to survive in very arduous circumstances,” said Thomas Thornton, who during the war joined the Navy, where he had a 30-year career as a master chief air traffic controller. “... And you have to make your situation one hell of a lot better. If not, you're not going to be coming back. That's the secret of training.”

With cane in hand, Lenny Cherlin, 89, of Long Beach, talked about how he was the lead clarinet player in the 273 Army Ground Forces Band at Camp Blanding in Florida, which helped boost the morale of soldiers ready to be deployed overseas.

“Having him shows a different aspect of war for the students,” said Buddy Hoffman, a social studies teacher who helped organize the event, along with Rhenback, Judy Knoop, Wendi Klein, Lauren Harold, Jill Cherlin and Janna O'Brien — a group known as Team 7-1.

“Now I know what they had to go through when they were in the war,” student Casiahn Castro said afterward, “and I can appreciate what they did to protect us.”

In the opening ceremony, Castro and her classmates lined a hallway decorated with American flags and flags representing each branch of the armed forces, where they applauded the veterans as they paraded through and the school band played “Anchors Aweigh” and “Over There.”

“I learned that as kids, we take things for granted, especially when they told us about what they went through and the conditions in the wars,” said student Jessica Shreck. “We at home are so comfortable, and they were sleeping in tents on the ground.”

Rhenback said her father was sickened by Agent Orange while serving in Vietnam and died of cancer four years ago. Last year she invited some of his fellow veterans to speak at the school, and her students asked many informed questions. So she and her team decided to stage a larger event before Veterans Day this year, with students and staff inviting relatives, who are veterans, to speak.

“Everyone should thank a vet, every day, not just on Veterans Day, and we try to impress that here,” Rhenback said. “My father, the only thing he loved more than his family was his country. I'd like these kids here to feel that too.”

“The goal of the day was to give the kids an experience that they can't get in a textbook,” Hoffman said. “This was definitely accomplished.”

Quietly Keeping Their Charm

2008-10-25T14:59:00.000-07:00

Are the Canals still the Venice of Long Island?

By Joseph Kellard

When Joe Lehr returned to the classrooms he attended at East School to speak to elementary students during the school’s 80th anniversary two years ago, he found that all that had changed was the blackboards. “Now they're green,” Lehr said.

The school, at Neptune Boulevard on the west edge of the neighborhood know as the canals, is perhaps reflective of the general area: It has changed some, but retains certain distinct qualities from decades past.

The most defining, of course, are its four canals (named Sarazen, Ouimet, Hagen and Bob Jones) and three arched bridges. The canals are named after pro golfers from the era when they were built, the 1920s. So are nearly all the streets, which are characterized by long, narrow one-ways and dead-ends.

All this contributes to keeping the canals area — nestled in the northeast corner of town and bordered by Reynolds Channel to the north and Bob Jones to the east — relatively secluded and serene, a contrast to the bustling neighborhoods along the beach on the city’s south side.

“There are a lot of people in Long Beach who are truly not even aware of the canals area,” said Karen Adamo, a Long Beach real estate agent who has lived at the end of East State Street since 1991. “There's really no reason to come back here.”

Yet one 40-year resident of Heron Street, who preferred to remain anonymous, said that at least in some areas, traffic has increased considerably, including beach-goers who now park their cars there and walk across East Park Avenue to the boardwalk.

“It’s not nearly as quiet as it used to be,” the longtime resident said. “Drivers try to avoid Park Avenue, so they use East Chester. It's become like a highway. It's the same thing that happens over at Olive and Walnut streets.”

With more two-family homes and illegal mother-daughter apartments on some streets, lack of parking has become an issue, too, she noted.

“Parents who have two children, they have two cars, and that’s the case all over Long Beach,” she said. “And when you add on the illegal tenants, you add to the problem, and it's happening here, too.”

The demographics demonstrate another way in which the relatively quiet neighborhood has changed, yet stayed the same. There are two predominant types of residents: married 20- or 30-somethings who work in Manhattan and have young children, and retirees who have lived in the canals for decades.

Lehr, 77, and his wife, Bobbi, moved into their Doyle Street home, which faces the Sarazen canal, in 1960. They paid $21,000 for the four-bedroom ranch, where they raised three daughters and added eight rooms.

Expanded homes are common in the city, but in the canals most have remained legal single-families. Despite small properties, their proximity to the canals and the bay has given much of the otherwise middle-class neighborhood upper-class property values. Homes with their backyards on the canals begin at $850,000 or higher for those north of the bridges (allowing for larger boats).

“It's an area where you can get away from the craziness near the ocean and the congestion,” Adamo said, “and is more for people who are ready in their life for a little more quiet and where it's safer for their kids to play in the streets. ”

The original homes were Moorish in style and, later, sand castles, and served as second dwellings for the upper middle class. William Reynolds, Long Beach's founder and a former state senator, used his own money, as well as that of his millionaire friends Otto Kahn, Cornelius Vanderbilt and Payne Whitney, to build the waterways in the mid-1920s, calling the project “the canals of Lido.”

They were intended to complement the adjacent original Lido golf course Reynolds had built a decade earlier, all part of his vision to turn Long Beach into “the future Venice of America,” as he advertised it. Canals then, from Venice Beach, Calif., to Boca Raton, Fla., were a new resort concept, and Reynolds aimed to attract his rich and famous friends to the barrier island.

“People wanted an international feel,” Roberta Fiore, a city historian, explained.

In 1928, Reynolds razed the Lido Hotel, originally called the Lido Golf and Country Club, after which the Depression hit and shattered his master plan. (When he attempted to reimburse himself for his project from the city coffers, he was charged with misappropriation of funds and jailed.)

After World War II, more homeowners began to live in the canals year-round. At the time, flat-roofed bungalows (dubbed “daylight homes” for their picture windows) made up the majority of homes. Lehr's was originally built in 1945, and sold for $5,500 to veterans returning from World War II. When Lehr was a boy, he lived on Shore Road, but docked his rowboat on the canals.

The 1950s saw the canals become the least expensive area in the East End, attracting many blue-collar workers, who shopped at the supermarket that was always part of the strip of stores on East Park Avenue. Other notable businesses were O'Rourk's hardware and the Cozy Nook, a luncheonette where East School students could buy candy for a nickel. They played at the Clark Street playground near the bay.

“One of the things we loved about living in the canals is that you can do your life in whatever social fashion you choose,” Lehr said. “You can do it in black tie or jeans or shorts. It's a phenomenally mixed community where you can have a major head of a hospital live next door to a policeman. ”

The area drew the interest of the city's politicos, with Kerrigan Street turning into something of a “who's who” block in the 1960s, its residents including the likes of Larry Elovich and Arthur J. Kremer. Elovich, an attorney and Long Beach's former Democratic Party leader, bought his first home in 1963 on Kerrigan, across the street from Kremer, who, two years later, was elected to the state Assembly and became chairman of its Ways and Means Committee. Their annual summer block party included political dignitaries from around the state, including Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.

“We would have this huge party every year where literally a couple of thousand people would come,” Elovich recalled.

At the end of Kerrigan, where former county Legislator Michael Zapson lives today, is a house overlooking the bay that was once owned by Joseph Ehrenreich, who had the exclusive rights to market Nikon products in the U.S.(Fiore said, however, that silent screen star Clara Bow neither honeymooned nor lived in a Moorish house on East Pine at Vinton Street, as is widely believed.)

During the 1960s and ’70s, waterfront property became more desirable. “I think more families who liked boating recognized it, and the property values weren't really escalating at that time,” said Joe Ponte, a real estate agent who was raised on Barnes Street and attended East School with Billy Crystal.

Lehr's house, like most “upland” homes on the canals’ east side, has a grassy strip of city-owned land between the street and the bulkhead — another feature that distinguishes the neighborhood, where residents typically put their lawn furniture and hammocks and build picket fences around the plots.

When he moved to the canals, the original bulkheads were in terrible disrepair, said Lehr, the longtime president of the East End Civic Association. From 1970 to 1972, the city installed steel bulkheads, dredged the canals and overhauled the bridges. For 30 years, until 2000, upland homeowners paid a portion of the cost of the rebuilt bulkheads —about $550 annually — as well as a dollar a foot to lease the property lining the canals, according to Lehr.

Today, the bulkheads have deteriorated considerably in some areas, including the Clark Street playground and on East State Street, where Adamo lives, and where the topsoil has sunk into the canals and bay water creeps into the park. In August, the City Council voted to approve an $8 million bond, a portion of which fund repairs of the city-owned bulkheads in the canals and at the park.

Nef Albergo, a 15-year resident of the landlocked Kirkwood Street, hopes that when the city refurbishes the park, it will also create a pier for avid kayakers like him. “My biggest problem is that if you don't live on the water, you don't have access to it,” Albergo said.

Albergo and Lehr were among the residents who were up in arms when the state ordered the city to reconstruct the bridges earlier this decade. Lehr argued that their cracks could have been easily repaired. “It was just a phenomenal waste of taxpayer money,” Lehr said of the project.

Albergo said that the new walls built on the bridges, which obstruct views of the canals, created more controversy. “They weren't what we wanted,” he said. “... They're more or less highway bridges.”

But the 40-year Heron Street resident said she speaks for others who believe the reconstructed bridges are a great new change to the area. “I think they came out good,” she said.

Prefabs Made To Order

2008-10-25T14:42:00.000-07:00

Lido couple builds custom-made modular home

By Joseph Kellard

One day in late September, Michael Longworth found his future home spread down his block, Nantwick Street in Lido Beach.

Each of the modular home’s five sections rested on separate trailers lined up along the narrow street in the order that a stationary crane waited to piece them together.

Unlike the construction of standard skeletal homes, modular builders must measure the streets and other potential obstacles before the choreographed construction of their factory-built sections can unfold. And the Lego-like building of Longworth’s boxy, modern-style home became a spectacle for his neighbors.

“They were standing by the crane during the whole process,” he said. “We had a crowd.”

While modular home construction is something different in Lido, Longworth’s modern, custom-made dwelling remains a relatively new, evolving feature in the world of prefabricated homes, since most maintain a certain generic, cookie-cutter style. Even more individualized homes like Longworth’s are constricted by certain prefab parameters, never deviating too radically from the standards of the factories where they are built, and shaped also by local zoning codes.

Enter Paul Coughlin, a prefab architect with the Manhattan-based Resolution: 4 Architecture, who works with homeowners to fulfill their particular needs, from their home’s basic structure to the door hinges or pivots.

“I think what makes this house distinct is that everything in here was designed for Michael and [his wife] Victoria, right down to the sink and faucet and how they want their vanity to work and whether they want a window next to the tub,” Coughlin said. “All those features are what make it unique.”

Coughlin also tries to further distinguish each home by upgrading the quality of its features, including the Longworths’ large, high-end Andersen windows, bamboo flooring, Merillat Masterpiece cabinets and Corian kitchen counters.

The more fundamental challenge is how to build from the foundation. In Longworth’s case, his previous home, a one-story, 1929 bungalow, abutted the flora-thick dunes that blocked his family’s view of the beach and ocean. “For Michael, it was really important to engage the beach,” Coughlin said.

So Coughlin designed the house upside down, in that the bedrooms are on the ground floor and the kitchen, living room and dining room are on the top section, overlooking the ocean, where, along with a roof deck, the Longworths and their two daughters, ages 11 and 9, spend most of their waking hours.

“We obviously wanted the view,” said Longworth, who moved with his wife from Manhattan into their former bungalow in 1997.

Their kids’ bedrooms share the ground floor with the master bedroom and bathroom, and the Longworths wanted and got a dressing room with closets that divide the two areas. The master bathroom features a sauna in addition to the bathtub and a separate shower. A thick door with milky, laminated glass is just one of the home’s many upgrades.

The middle section has a playroom and guest room, and two smaller decks on the north and south sides. The ceilings on one level, however, don’t serve as the floor for the level above — each section has its own ceilings and floors.

“I think that adds to the stability,” said Matt Henry, owner of HKH Construction in Long Beach, who will complete the building.

The home’s five sections are tied together with steel-threaded rods. And while the transport can stress a prefab’s structure, Coughlin argues that modular homes are not the house of cards that has been their stigma, but are actually more stable than stick homes, with potentially just as long a shelf life. “The fact that it’s built in a factory in a dry, controlled environment makes a big difference,” he said.

After Longworth wrestled for two years through bureaucratic red tape for zoning variances and permits, he had the bungalow demolished in late August and, two months later, the house is on its way to being completed by year’s end.

“It went from knock-down to having a structure in less than a month,” said Longworth, who owns a Web site development company. “It saved us a hell of a lot of time.”

The prefab philosophy is that homes are typically constructed much more quickly than standard homes, and can be less costly. Coughlin said it usually takes about 16 months from the time a homeowner signs a contract to when the house is completed.

At first, he had five meetings on design with the Longworths, after which the architect submitted the custom layout to Resolution: 4’s factory in Scranton, Pa. There, the five sections take about two weeks to build, and some three months of prep time.

Once the house is set on site, about four months are allowed to complete two stages: first, tying together the exterior features, including the cedar siding and trim, and then installing the electric, floors, plumbing and roofing. With standard homes, this process usually takes between eight months and a year, Henry said.

“It’s exciting for people to see how fast their home can go up,” he added.

“My wife and kids are completely stoked,” Longworth said about the prospect of moving in around Christmas.

While he declined to reveal the cost of his new home, upgraded prefabs are generally comparable to site-based homes, but usually are less expensive in areas with more open space for transport and construction, and an average of 20 percent can be saved on building costs, Henry said.

Coughlin said that around 80 percent of Resolution: 4’s business is in the New York metropolitan area (including the Catskills), with the majority of the homes raised in Nassau and Suffolk counties. While the company has been building prefabs for some 25 years, from Maine to Hawaii, the Scranton warehouse has turned out more modern and custom homes in the past decade.

Henry said that prefabs are seeing greater exposure now, and their negative image — particularly that they are identical homes with cheap fittings aimed at a mass housing market — is changing for the better. “And the way they used to come together, and the way they looked in the end,” he said, “you most likely could pick out the modular home on the block. Now, I know for sure that people never expected modular could be done like this.”

Economy Slows Real Estate Sales

2008-10-25T14:30:00.000-07:00

By Joseph Kellard

Developer Jan Burman expressed cautious optimism about the Long Beach real estate market after Congress approved a $700 billion bailout bill last week.

The president of Engel Burman Group, a Garden City-based developer of properties from Montreal to Miami, is in the midst of building the Aqua, an eight-story, 36-unit luxury condominium complex overlooking the ocean on Shore Road. So far, Burman has sold six units, including two penthouses that went about $3 million each.

Despite the faltering economy, interest in the Aqua has been “pretty good,” Burman said, particularly among Manhattanites seeking beachfront property closer than the Hamptons, as well as retired homeowners from the North Shore, Five Towns and the boroughs of New York City. Next month Burman plans to display the development’s sales model — featuring units that range in size from 1,730 to 2,400 square feet and start at $1.3 million — and he believes he will have the building fully occupied within a year to 18 months.

“The hope is that once this economic crisis gets resolved, the mortgage money will open up,” Burman said, “because a lot of people who would like to move have to sell their first house to buy the second house, and they can’t sell the house unless there’s some way to get mortgages.”

Like Burman, Long Beach real estate agents who spoke with the Herald last week said the city’s real estate market remains generally stable, but some confessed to uncertainty.

“The Realtors are definitely concerned that they are going to lose buyers,” said Karen Adamo of Century 21 Petrey in the West End. “... The buyers are going to have to be what I would call super-qualified: very good credit, a good percent down and their closing costs.”

Joe Ponte, an agent at Prudential Douglas Elliman on West Park Avenue and a former director of the South Shore Chapter of the Long Island Board of Realtors, called Burman’s 18-month forecast a safety zone. “In 18 months the whole world can change,” Ponte said. “But if I had to predict, the whole market should be robust in that time, because everything should be straightened out within six months to a year.”

Though the mortgage crisis remains headline news, New York state’s foreclosure rate, as of August, ranked 33rd among the 50 states, according to RealtyTrac, an online site listing available foreclosures. Adamo said that while some areas of Nassau County have seen many foreclosures, such as Baldwin and Freeport, the South Shore is otherwise “not so bad,” and on Long Beach island “it’s not terrible” — though those words hardly inspire confidence.

Today, Long Beach island homes are on the market much longer — an average of about six months — before they sell, most for between $450,000 and $699,000. Ponte said the trend is that people who bought homes before 1980 are holding on to them.

“They’re retirees who find there’s no reason to sell, because they’re all going to relocate to Florida and they’re waiting for a better day,” he said. “They want top dollar.”

Although housing prices have dipped about 6 percent since 2007 in Long Beach, real estate agents are finding that sales of lower-priced condos — and particularly co-ops — are on the rise. “What is not selling in Long Beach are homes, but what are holding their own are condos and co-ops, especially on the ocean,” said Joyce Coletti of Prudential Douglas Elliman.

Many lower-priced condos and co-ops — studios and one-bedrooms — are selling in the $275,000 to $400,000 range, mostly to singles and young couples. “They’re selling because they’re lower than buying a house,” Adamo said.

The Windward, at 251-255 W. Broadway, between Laurelton and Lafayette boulevards, is a newly renovated, less-costly co-op development. The three-story building has 29 units, either studios (400 square feet) or one-bedrooms (800 square feet), that sell for $219,000 to $400,000, Coletti said. She has sold 11 of the pet-friendly units since they were first offered in July. “Really, if someone is looking for a place just to hang their hat for the summer, this is perfect,” she said.

Meanwhile, agents say that higher-end condos aren’t selling as well as their lower-priced counterparts. A case in point is the Riverside, at 125 E. Broadway, between Riverside and Long Beach boulevards.

According to a few agents, the 50-unit Riverside was unable to show a high enough percentage of sales for owner David Shokrian to close on the building, and he has started to put most of the units on the market for rent. Shokrian declined to comment.

Ponte attributed part of the slower sales in high-end buildings to once-willing buyers with $300,000 to $500,000 nest eggs who were wiped out in the Wall Street-mortgage meltdown.

“That money was their money to buy a home or condo,” Ponte said. Ponte compared the Riverside to the Avalon Towers, at 10 W. Broadway, which was built in 1991 as a condo complex but had to turn to rentals when the economy teetered on recession.

“This is history and economics repeating itself almost 20 years later: overbuilding in Long Beach and they couldn’t sell anything,” he said. “They were building all these condos in the late 1980s and there was a boom and then the market fell out.”

Nevertheless, Ponte and other real estate agents believe that despite the present difficulties in the local market, Long Beach remains an attractive locale for many people looking to move. The agents note that the city is rare among Long Island communities not only because of its beachfront property, but also because it has a vibrant downtown with many restaurants and shops, as well as convenient transportation.

“It is still the hot place to move,” Adamo said. “People on the North Shore used to look down on Long Beach, and now they’re selling their big homes and downsizing because they want to be directly on the ocean, and this is what they can afford.”

Gallery Opens By The Sea

2008-10-02T15:30:00.000-07:00

By Joseph Kellard

“Oh, when did this open?” a woman asked with pleasant surprise while biking past a West End storefront two Saturdays ago. Her discovery was of a rare species on the South Shore: an art gallery.

“Today at 11 o’clock,” answered Scott Evers, owner of Evers Place, sub-named “A gallery by the sea.”

“It’s beautiful — I’ll have to stop back when it’s not so crowded,” the cyclist said. Sept. 20 was the gallery’s grand opening, and it was abuzz with caterers, curious art lovers and artists eager to sell their works. An estimated crowd of 450 passed through the gallery’s doors that afternoon, some 300 more than Evers had bought food and drink for.

Despite the initial excitement, however, Evers said he understands the risk he is taking in transforming his late father’s home-improvement repair shop, Dan Evers, a fixture at 949 W. Beech St. since 1949, into the first West End gallery in memory. Recent history shows that art galleries have had a short life span, at least in some neighboring towns. Around mid-decade, an Oceanside gallery devoted to Southeast Asian art closed its doors after about two years in business, and a studio in Island Park, which featured local artists, opened last December but is already out of business.

Evers, however, expects that his gallery will avoid the endangered species list. Since it is smack in the middle of the West End’s booming restaurant and bar scene, and with a wealth of artists living in town, he believes he’ll have no shortage of either customers or artists willing to display their paintings, drawings, photographs, collages and sculptures. It also helps that there are a few local groups that promote the arts, including the Long Beach Art League and West End Arts, both of which Evers belongs to, as well as other smaller, niche organizations such as the Artist Mothers Group.

“We have almost an art underground here in Long Beach,” said Evers, a native who was inspired by his father’s World War II snapshots to pick up his first camera at age 6. “We have so many good artists.”

Artists are attracted to the city by its lengthy stretch of seascape as well as Reynolds Channel, which is an “undiscovered country,” Evers explained. Landscape artist Kathleen Regan used to visit a friend in Long Beach and set up her easel on the beach before she moved to the West End 12 years ago and joined the local art group.

At Evers’s grand opening, Regan displayed some of her paintings, including one of a sand dune on the Georgia Avenue beach in 1980 titled “Chauncey’s,” named for and featuring the legendary former bar. “I feel that this is such a blessing for us,” Regan said of the gallery. “I mean, we have so many artists on this barrier island, and this is the first fine arts gallery that I know of.”

Regan and many other local artists have displayed their work in the halls of the Long Beach Public Library or at local gift shops and restaurants, as well as at annual arts fairs around town. When they do get an opportunity to show their work in galleries, typically they have to trek to Manhattan or the Hamptons.

At the grand opening, Michael McLaughlin, a native West Ender who often paints Southwestern scenes, displayed a painting titled “Mermaid,” which shows the sea creature lounging on a crescent moon with a star in hand.

“We’ve never really had something where the artists had a venue to promote their work,” said McLaughlin, whose works have been exhibited in restaurants. “We artists feed off each other, and with Scott doing this it’s a really great endeavor.”

By day, Evers is a corporate consultant who travels nationwide. When his father died last year and left him the shop, he finally had the opportunity to pursue his dream of opening a gallery. He renovated the 1,200-square-foot shop and opened Evers Place with Amy Castillo, who owned Listen To Your Art, a gallery and picture frame shop on Park Avenue.

The works on display range from $40 to $7,500. For $750 a customer can own an impressive piece by Long Beach photographer Jonathan Spector, a poster-size image of a boardwalk bench looking out onto a gold-tinted, desolate winter beach and ocean illuminated by a bar of sunlight piercing through clouds as icicles form on the guardrails.

Evers has also hung some of his own pieces, including “Wharfside,” a digitally enhanced photo of fishing boats lined up at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco.

Also on display are the collages of Long Beach resident Veronica Schliemann. One consists of torn colored paper in the form of a muscular man lying by a river, titled “Sleeping Giant.” Another, “Nature And Her Vista,” shows a similar giant sitting in a gorge that was created by puzzling together sectional photos of Utah’s Bryce Canyon.

And what would a West End gallery be without an artful surfboard on display? One board sports a painting of a tropical beach, a typical scene by Dan Macken, an international artist who collaborates with Brian Wilson of Beach Boys’ fame. Evers met Macken at an art expo at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in Manhattan last year, and invited him to his grand opening.

That kind of networking is part of Evers’s long-range plan to keep his gallery not only breathing, but thriving. He also hopes to attract more Manhattanites, who come to Long Beach on the Long Island Rail Road, to the West End. “A lot of them don’t even know the West End exists,” he said. He plans to focus on Web marketing on Craigslist and other sites aimed primarily at New York City audiences.

“Really, one of the big untapped resources out here is the city,” Evers said.

To learn more about Evers Place, visit the gallery’s Web site, eversplace.com, or call (516) 729-3168 or 208-7000.

City Council creates Michael Valente Day

2008-09-26T23:43:00.000-07:00

Salutes Long Beach’s lone Medal of Honor recipient

By Joseph Kellard

Nearly 90 years to the day after World War I veteran Michael Valente rescued his regiment from disaster in France, the Long Beach City Council on Tuesday voted unanimously to designate Sept. 29 as a day in his honor.

Valente, who died in 1976, is Long Beach’s lone recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor — the highest award for valor given to a member of the U.S. armed forces for actions against an enemy force — which the infantryman, then a private, earned for heroic acts on Sept. 29, 1918. Just 3,446 such medals have been awarded since its inception in 1863.

“In the City of Long Beach, we want every September 29 to be a day for people to reflect and honor the life and accomplishments of Michael Valente,” said City Manager Charles Theofan, who noted that the council heeded President Bush’s nationwide call to honor the memory of all recipients of the prestigious medal. “… This is the very least we can do to honor him.”

At a May council meeting, Al Symons, a retired engineer who worked for the Department of Defense, requested that the council designate Sept. 29 as Michael Valente Day, to honor Long Beach’s only recipient of the medal. Tuesday night, Symons read to the council a citation from President Herbert Hoover when he decorated Valente, then a retired sergeant, with the medal in Washington on Sept. 27, 1929.“It’s the proudest moment of my life,” Valente said, according to a New York Times account dated the day after.

Valente’s courageous acts came when his regiment, Company D of the 107th Infantry, was suffering heavy casualties during operations against German forces at the Hindenburg line near Ronssoy, France. Alongside a fellow soldier, Valente rushed forward through intense machine gun fire directly on an enemy nest, killing two gunners and capturing five enemy soldiers. Discovering another machine gun nest nearby that rained heavy fire on American forces, Valente and his companion charged it, killed the gunner, jumped into the enemy trench, killed two more soldiers and captured 16 others.

On Tuesday, Symons thanked the council for creating the day to honor Valente. “You have no idea how happy I am that you are taking this resolution at this time,” Symons said to the applause of the crowd. Among those in attendance were Valente’s great-granddaughter, Danna Cuneo-Wojcieski, who was born two years after he died at age 80 on Jan. 10, 1976. “I think it’s an amazing honor,” she told the Herald.

“He was obviously a courageous man in World War I, and we’re so proud that he’s part of our family.” Francesca Capitano, a former councilwoman, remembered growing up two house down from Valente on Walnut Street — before she married his grandson, Ralph Madalena.

“He was a great man, a kind man, a good father, a good grandfather,” she told the council with her husband and daughter, Katherine Madalena, at her side.

Valente emigrated from Italy to Ogdensburg, N.Y., in 1915, and joined the New York Guard. In May of 1918, he was deployed to France to fight on the front lines. After the war, he married Margareta Marchello and moved to her native Newark, N.J., before the couple settled in Long Beach around 1919, where they raised three children.

Valente became a contractor and real estate agent who built houses in Long Beach, but eventually gave up the business to work in City Hall as the city marshal. When he retired in the 1960s, he greeted people at La Serenata, a restaurant at the original Long Beach Library, now the site of Sutton Place.

Standing 6 feet tall with blond hair, blue eyes and a barrel chest, Valente was always active, particularly in his garden, and he rode his bike on the boardwalk regularly right up until his final years.

“My father was very proud, but he didn’t talk about it much,” Valente’s daughter, Lido Beach resident Josephine Cuneo, said of the Medal of Honor. “He was wonderful, kind and soft-spoken. Unless other people told us about the medal, we would never have known.”

Frank Cuneo, Valente’s grandson, said he could not recall his grandfather ever talking about the war or his medal. He said he believes that Valente’s legacy was never properly passed down, and he was satisfied that a Long Beach resident like Symons spearheaded an effort to create a day honoring his grandfather.

The Long Beach Public Library used to display a facsimile of Valente’s medal (Madalena has the original), and a portrait of Valente wearing it hangs in City Hall.

“I remember as a kid I used to march and ride in a car with him in the Memorial Day parade,” said Cuneo, who now lives in Manhattan. “Everyone would stop and greeted him. He was well known in town.”

The city named one of its senior apartments, near City Hall, after Valente, as did the Sons of Italy lodge he attended. Some of the lodge’s members attended the meeting to thank the council for recognizing him.

Before the council voted on the resolution, its members consulted with some local veterans’ organization to get their input. Valente was most active in the VFW Post in Long Beach. “I think it’s fabulous to have the day named after him,” said Scott Castillo, the VFW’s senior vice commander. “He’s the only Medal of Honor winner in Long Beach, and it brings all veterans recognition. I’m all for it.”

Joseph Kellard is a journalist and commentator living in New York. Contact him at Theainet1@optonline.net.

Blending Fires, Fact and Fiction

2008-09-11T08:19:00.000-07:00

West End man writes first novel, dedicated to Long Beach 9/11 victim

By Joseph Kellard

Gene Welischar has quite an imagination.

In his soon-to-be-published first novel, "If You Play With Fire," the retired FDNY chief and longtime Long Beach resident puts himself in a fantasy romance with an ex-nun-turned FBI agent. The two meet when she visits his Manhattan firehouse to investigate a real-life arsonist who burned buildings for hire.

Much of Welischar’s story, which explores how firefighters battled blazes in Brooklyn and Queens in the 1960s and ’70s, is based in fact. During those turbulent decades he was in the midst of a 33-year career with the FDNY in a city threatened by political, economic and physical collapse. He writes of the riots and fires that followed Martin Luther King’s assassination; "Jewish Lightning," a variety of arson that lined the pockets of failing businesses with insurance payouts; and "Danny O," a professional, mob-connected arsonist who torched apartments for property owners unable to get ride of stubborn tenants so they could build high-rises.

"Danny O has had a lot of work from the new builders who want fast access to the space occupied by these old buildings for their business ventures," Welischar, 78, writes in the novel’s prelude. "… He prefers that no deaths or injuries will result from the fire, but only because that could bring serious investigation." During one arson in 1978, Danny O, who stood on rooftops to watch his blazes rip through buildings as fire units arrived, observed from a distance as a firefighter was loaded into an ambulance on a stretcher.

Eventually — and, again, factually — the FBI sent agents to the firehouse where Welischar was captain from 1976 to 1983, Ladder 13 on 85th Street, to look up records on recent arsons. One of the real-life federal agents, Marita Lorenz, had reportedly been sent to Cuba in 1960 to attempt to seduce and then poison Fidel Castro in 1960. Welischar dated her a few times, he said.

In the book, Lorenz morphed from fact into fiction, becoming, in Welischar’s imagination, an agent who grew up Catholic and became a nun. But her father, a Protestant policeman, wanted grandchildren, so she left the clergy to start a family. "But she couldn’t," Welischar explained, "so then she looked for a surrogate father and she happened to pick me, the captain of the firehouse." At this he laughed mischievously. "I have a great imagination. My daughter said, ‘Dad where did you get all this stuff from?’"

The real-life FBI agents were pointed to a certain management company that was eventually prosecuted, but Welischar’s search to find out how the investigation unfolded hit a dead end, because the company had changed its name.

For years, Welischar, who retired in 1991, had rehashed those eventful decades, and three years ago he decided to explore them again. He began writing "If You Play With Fire," with editorial help from his wife, Patricia. Welischar took his completed novel to Florida and enrolled in a writing course given by Patrika Vaughn, owner of A Cappela Publishing. Vaughn found his story intriguing enough to print 3,500 copies.

"I thought it would be extremely interesting to the lay person to see how firefighters operated, especially with the malfeasance of the city government during the ’60s and ’70s," Vaughn told the Herald. "I found it a wonderful story."

While the novel is populated with corrupt government officials, unscrupulous businessmen seeking shortcuts to obtain prime real estate, and arsonists, Welischar also profiles a few heroic life- and property-saving characters, the informal leaders who train and inspire their fellow firefighters. "They’re like the unsung heroes of the fire department," Welischar said. "They’re like the infantrymen of the firehouse. They’re teachers who break in the new men and shape the character of a firehouse."

Welischar dedicated the novel to the late Greg Stajk, a probationary firefighter whom he mentored at Ladder 13 in 1982. While still with the company on Sept. 11, 2001, Stajk, then a 14-year resident of Long Beach, was killed at the World Trade Center.

Welischar got to know Stajk through his daughter, Mary, calling him a big brother to her. "He was a low-profile guy who was nice to be around," Welischar recalled. "All the guys loved him. And I found out later that he was a terrific artist."

Stajk’s mother, Marge, who lives in Florida, said she was honored and surprised by Welischar’s tribute to her son, and read a rough copy of "If You Play With Fire." "It was interesting to see how the novel switches back and forth between real-life human-interest stories and fiction," Marge said.

Welischar began his career as an NYPD street patrolman when he came home from the Korean War, before joining Ladder 116 in Long Island City in 1958. From there he went to Engine 218 in Bushwick, where he became a lieutenant, and then to Ladder 13. In 1983 he transferred to Engine 264 in Far Rockaway, where he retired eight years later.

Welischar moved to Long Beach in 1977, and in 1989 he bought The Inn on West Beech Street, where he held fundraisers for veterans at Northport Hospital. The generosity of his adopted hometown figures in the novel.

"Whenever someone is in trouble, they have benefits at bars and raise thousands and thousands of dollars for people who have gone through tragedies," Welischar said of Long Beach, where he will sell and sign copies of his novel at the Irish Day Parade next month. "There are at least 20 that I can remember in which money was raised for people in distress. And that’s something about Long Beach: It’s a very tight-knit neighborhood."

For information or to purchase "If You Play With Fire," go to www.ifyouplaywithfire.com.

Joseph Kellard is a journalist and columnist living in New York.

Please post comments about this article. For inquiries about Joseph Kellard’s writing services, email him at: Theainet1@optonline.net.

Close In More Ways Than One

2008-08-18T18:17:00.000-07:00

Walks residents say area is tight-knit, safe

By Joseph Kellard

On a sun-soaked July afternoon, Matt Mariano and a friend tossed a football around outside Mariano’s July Walk bungalow. A game of catch was about all there was room for, since a narrow sidewalk is all that divides the houses in Long Beach’s historic Walks community.

The 10 blocks of walks have no street access, and Mariano’s lawn spans perhaps 5 yards, much too small for a scrimmage. But what Mariano and fellow homeowners lack in asphalt and backyard space, they make for up in neighborly intimacy, whether it’s picking up groceries for one another or shoveling snow together to clear a path to the surrounding streets.

“It’s a little more communal because of the close proximity of the homes,” said Mariano, a 20-something who grew up in Levittown, teaches in Amityville and moved to July Walk two years ago. “And that makes for a better neighborhood.”

The bungalows on each walk face east and west and are sandwiched behind homes facing north and south from West Park Avenue, the neighborhood’s northern border, to West Beech Street to the south.

The walks themselves run north-south, from Lindell Avenue, the eastern border, to New York Avenue. The homes are little more than arm-spans apart, and their “yards” are best described as patches of grass.

“You really become very friendly with your neighbors,” said Allison Kallelis, who moved from Yonkers to Long Beach with her husband, Alex, six years ago and bought a September Walk home for $260,000. “I know everyone in the surrounding area. So you have to be extremely friendly to live here. If you’re not, then it’s not for you.”

A changing neighborhood

Kallelis said she can’t imagine ever selling their bungalow, where they will raise Kaleb, their 9-month-old son. When they first arrived, their neighbors were mostly retirees, many of whom have since left the neighborhood, replaced by other young couples.

Kallelis finds the walks safe, and said that children can play along the sidewalk without worrying about cars, and strangers rarely wander through the neighborhood. But above all, she said, she cherishes the neighborly camaraderie.

“As people walk down the walk, they yell out, ‘I’m going to the grocery store, what do you need?’” Kallelis explained. “That’s very common here. We borrow eggs and everything from each other. It’s a godsend to have the neighbors so close and so friendly.”

Homeowners make the most of their small properties, lining their front picket or chain-link fences with flowers while leaving their backyards barrier-free, blurring the property lines. Glyn and Kelly Jaime, who live on October Walk, have a fenceless backyard that mingles with their neighbors’ concrete plots. Having a yard is something new for Glyn, who was born and raised in Greenwich Village and has always lived in Manhattan, where she and her husband work.

“In our building in the city, we have about five apartments in our own little corner,” said Glyn, who owns a package design company. “We don’t even know those people. I’m not kidding, we’ve been there five years and I’ve never even seen them. Here we know the families around us, we know everybody. The neighbors here are incredible. It’s a real sense of community, but it’s not like people are in your face.”

While they were house-hunting, the Jamies looked at some 25 Long Beach properties before discovering the Walks. They were instantly sold on the area, and bought a single-level bungalow built in 1928 by Louis Bossert, a Brooklyn lumber producer who developed the second wave of homes there after World War I.

The Jamies’ bungalow is typical, with three small bedrooms, a living room, dining room, kitchen and bathroom. It retains many of its original features: a white stucco exterior, metal awnings, a brick fireplace, a four-legged, cast-iron bathtub, linseed linoleum floors and beaver-board walls. “All these things are what drew us to the house,” Glyn said.

When she and Kelly moved in, the house had been vacant for two years but was filled with cobwebs and sheet-covered furniture, including a vintage 1950s Herman Miller kitchen table and chairs that the Jamies kept, since it fit their retro style. The walls are adorned with a weathered 1938 New York license plate, a midcentury street map of the Columbus Circle area and framed black-and-white vintage photos of Manhattan.

The Jamies have another typical feature: an enclosed front porch that was once open, and caught breezes from the ocean a few blocks south. “The whole design of the Walks was to build houses without street access, but an aside was the terrific breezes,” said Roberta Fiore, a Long Beach historian.

Fiore regards the Walks as the city’s most distinct neighborhood. “I love it because it has so much charm,” she said. “It’s a cute little community with a lot of creativity.”

Military beginnings

The neighborhood was first developed in 1917 and 1918, when the U.S. military took over the Nassau Hotel and Long Beach became a military settlement like Camp Yaphank in Suffolk County, where pre-fabricated bungalows were built for $2,500. They were shipped to Long Beach and installed on property owned by Brooklyn developer and former State Sen. William Reynolds.

The uninsulated pre-fabs were meant for summer use, but for $500 more a chimney could be built. By the mid-1950s, tenants started to live in them year-round. “The expression then was, ‘Throw some heat in the bungalows,’” Fiore said.

By the 1970s, half the homes became permanent dwellings, said Jim Hennessy, a former City Council president who was raised on January Walk. Hennessy fondly remembers the closeness not only of the neighborhood, but also in his family’s bungalow: He was one of nine children. He and a younger sister, two older brothers and single mother occupied the standard three bedrooms, and his five other sisters shared the attic-turned-bedroom.

Hennessy’s mother worked the midnight shift at Long Beach Hospital, and he and his siblings slept around the kitchen oven on winter nights. In the tight-knit neighborhood, the family left their front door unlocked.

“There was a house across from ours where two elderly French-Canadian women lived,” Hennessy said. “If I had to go to the bathroom and one of my other siblings was in our bathroom, I would just run outside my house and use Jean and Isabella’s bathroom. That’s what it was like. It was really close and a lot of fun.”

Fun for Hennessy meant running with friends through stretches of then mostly wide-open yards, throwing a football across a few lawns and jumping from one rooftop to the next while playing hide-and-seek.

In 1984, Pat Redinger moved to June Walk because it reminded her of the old Courts community in the Rockaways, where she spent her summers as a girl. She and her mother paid $100,000 for a pre-fab bungalow that still looks out onto an open yard. To create more space, Redinger converted a boiler room into a storage closet, and she uses corner-fitting furniture.

Another challenge that comes with living in the Walks is parking. The neighborhood is without street access, driveways or garages, so it can sometimes be “impossible to have company over,” Redinger said.

“And to move the car, you feel you may never find another spot.” The Walks also has periodic water pressure, drainage and sewage problems.

Looking to the future

While the parking headaches have led Redinger to contemplate a move, others who plan to stay, such as the Kallelises and Hennessy (who lives with his wife and children on West Beech Street, off February Walk), want to lobby City Hall to improve their community. They are hoping to revive the Walks Association, a civic group established in the early 1990s that flourished but disbanded after its founder moved.

“Everyone has their own neighbors association, and we want to have our own, too,” Hennessy said, “because we have to lobby for the things that we need.”

Allison Kallelis is on the same page of what may become a new chapter for the walks. “We’re trying to start up the association again just to get a stronger voice in the city when different planning issues come up, and we’re trying to get more money allocated to the Walks,” she explained. “We’re kind of like the forgotten neighborhood.”

Joseph Kellard is a journalist and columnist living in New York.

Please post comments about this article. For inquiries about Joseph Kellard’s writing services, email him at: Theainet1@optonline.net.

Taking To Two Wheels

2008-07-12T18:23:00.000-07:00

Use of bikes, mopeds on rise in Long Beach

By Joseph Kellard

Not everyone is upset with $4-plus gas prices. In fact, some not only welcome them, they actively root for them to rise fourfold.

“I’m the only guy who hopes gas goes up to $20 a gallon,” John Merritt, owner of Buddy’s Bikes on West Beech Street for the past 30 years, said half-jokingly. “Business has never been so good.”

Mark Marshak, a Long Beach resident who sells mopeds at Scooter City in Island Park, said, “I’m about the only person in town happy about gas prices.” Marshak opened his shop in June of 2006, and sold 15 mopeds by the end of that year. He sold 85 in 2007. In February, before gas hit $4 a gallon, he noticed that more people were buying his mopeds, and already this year he has sold 135.

“I knew this was going to happen,” Marshak said. “I felt it and made provisions and have stockpiles of mopeds in my warehouse.”

With its 2-mile boardwalk and stretches of straight streets, Long Beach has long been inviting to cyclists. And while bike shop owners like Merritt say higher gas prices have positively affected business of late, the city’s notorious problems with parking have made cycling nearly a necessity for many residents.

“I think people continue to buy bikes because it’s always been like this in Long Beach — that is, it’s just easier to ride a bicycle than to drive a car and try to find a parking spot,” said Ray Fusillo, who owns Long Beach Bicycle on East Park Avenue.

For the past two years, West End resident Peter Meyers had pedaled to the Long Beach train station on Park Avenue each weekday so that when he returns at night, he doesn’t have to circle his neighborhood looking for a place to park. He starts his day by riding his hybrid racing/mountain bike along the boardwalk on his way to the railroad station. “There’s nothing better than riding on the boardwalk each morning,” said Meyers, who works at Lincoln Center and catches the 8:08 train to Penn Station.

He and other cyclists have noticed that many more commuters are riding their bikes to the station each day, and that additional bike racks that have been installed around the station have filled up.

“The number of bikes out here is insane now,” said Jennifer Hicks, who has taken the 7:04 to Manhattan each morning for the past three years. “Now it’s hard to find a space on the bike racks.”

Like Meyers, Hicks rides her bike for both the convenience and the exercise. She also uses it on weekends to run errands to the post office, library and supermarket. “I grew up on Fire Island — you have to have a bike there,” she said, “so I’m used to riding.”

Roger Gengo, the head custodian at East School, who cycles to work every day, is among those who never lost his childhood interest in bike riding. “We all rode bikes as kids,” said Gengo, who lives in East Atlantic Beach. “It’s kind of part of everyone’s life. Some of us went back to it, others never try riding again.”

For years Gengo rode his bike in triathlons, and after he stopped competing he turned to cycling for transportation. Today he rides a Raleigh bike to the local supermarket and the beach, having built contraptions to hold his groceries and surfboard.

While Gengo drives a 1997 Ford Expedition, he uses his bike primarily because parking in his neighborhood is “horrendous,” he said. “Also, a lot of things annoy you on the road when you’re driving your car. The bike is heaven sent.”

Cosmo Donato, a general contractor who lives and works in Long Beach, bought a scooter from Marshak last year to do routine estimates and minor jobs instead of burning gas in his work truck.

“Especially from June to September, there’s no place to park,” Donato said. “So to go see a customer by truck is ridiculous. It doesn’t make sense.”

Donato also hops on his moped when he needs to buy small items that are easy to carry, and on weekends he rides it to Island Park, where he docks his boat. The moped gets 80 miles to the gallon and costs him $75 a year in insurance.

Marshak’s mopeds start at $1,300 and go as high as $5,000. Their top speeds rang from 30 to 80 mph, most of them get between 80 and 100 miles to the gallon, and insurance can run as low as $50 a year.

“It’s cost-effective when you think about what gas and insurance cost,” he said.

Marshak said that many Long Beach residents, from the West End to the canals, have bought mopeds from him to ride to the train stations in Long Beach and Island Park each morning. Mike Puma, an NYPD detective who lives on the Baldwin-Oceanside border, bought one a month ago to get to and from the train station, but on weekends he rides it to the West End beaches. Puma’s moped goes 100 miles on $5 worth of gas.

“When I went to register it,” he said, “the woman at the DMV said that she’s registering more scooters than cars right now.”

While the state Department of Motor Vehicles was unable to provide statistics on the number of mopeds registered so far in 2008, its data shows that Nassau County had 687 registered mopeds in 2007, the third-highest county total in the state, behind Suffolk (1,069) and Erie (741).

Long Beach restaurateur Tom Corning registered his first moped this year, retiring a Volkswagen Bug he used for deliveries. Corning’s drivers now use the moped at his Caffe Laguna in the West End and ride a three-wheel bike at Olive Oil’s, his other restaurant, in Point Lookout. He estimated that he saves hundreds of dollars on gas a month.

“It’s great on gas, and the biggest thing in the West End is the parking,” Corning said. “It’s really convenient. My delivery guys love it.”

West End resident Susan Hilberer said she has noticed that more delivery businesses and residents in her neighborhood are using mopeds. Hilberer is now on her third moped, having bought her first a few years ago from Black Ice, a shop on West Beech Street that has since closed, in order to avoid having to park her PC Cruiser.

“But it was so much fun to drive, I started taking it everywhere,” said Hilberer, who rides her moped to Waldbaum’s on Park Avenue, Roosevelt Field and even as far as Montauk. Its speedometer tops out at 50, and she gets 80 miles out of $6 in gas.

Does she ever drive her car anymore? “Yes, for long trips and car- pooling,” she said. “But if it means losing my parking space on the weekend, I’m not driving it.”

Despite the growing popularity of mo-peds, bikes are still king in Long Beach. While the Hampton cruiser-style models have been the rage with kids in the past few years, both Fusillo and Merritt said that more adults of varying ages are buying them, too.

“They’re just very comfortable, and they require less maintenance and are easier to ride,” Fusillo said about his cruisers, which start at $216.

Merritt said that most of the bikes in his shop are priced in the same range and go has high as $400, and that the cruisers remain the most popular model in town. “Everybody’s riding them now,” he said.

“There’s no maintenance, there’s no cables, it’s one speed, it’s got wide, comfortable handlebars so there’s no leaning over. It’s a perfect bike for Long Beach.”

Joseph Kellard is a journalist and columnist living in New York.

Please post comments about this article. For inquiries about Joseph Kellard’s writing services, email him at: Theainet1@optonline.net.

'He was a brave and fearless little boy'

2008-07-12T18:20:00.000-07:00

Tarantino Jr., 8, loses battle with leukemia

By Joseph Kellard

It turned out to be Thomas Tarantino Jr.’s last trip to his favorite restaurant, but it was the first time he walked in, ordered a Happy Meal and paid for it all on his own.

"He was so proud that he went and did it himself," Thomas Tarantino Sr. said about his 8-year-old son’s trip to McDonald’s on June 23. "It was a big deal to him.”

A few weeks earlier, Thomas’s parents had been told that their son had a month to live after a five-year battle with leukemia.

At McDonald’s, his father had sensed, from the boy’s rapidly deteriorating appearance, that day would be his last. That afternoon, Thomas went home, played cards with his uncle and sat in his favorite spot on the living room couch. After he fell into a deep sleep, his immediate and extended family sang his favorite songs, "Sweet Home Alabama," by Lynyrd Skynyrd, and "Take Me Out To The Ball Game," and his sister Michelle, 15, read him his most beloved book, "David Goes To School." Shortly after 8 p.m., Thomas took his last breath.

For the next three nights, his brother and two sisters slept on the couch together.

Thomas Matthew Tarantino Jr. was born with pervasive deficit disorder, a type of autism, at Mercy Medical Center in Rockville Centre on Nov. 16, 1999. Three years later he was diagnosed with leukemia. In the following years, he suffered two relapses that considerably reduced his chances of healing. He underwent "grueling treatments," his father explained, involving routine trips to the hospital for chemotherapy and various tests and operations.

"He was a brave and fearless little boy who taught us all how to appreciate our lives, our friends and family," Thomas Sr. said. "And I don’t know if he was that way because of his mental incapacity or because of all he went through since he was 3."

Thomas attended the Children’s Readiness Center in North Bellmore, but he could only say a few words at a time and couldn’t spell. Yet he was unusually adept with electronics. By age 4, he could access and operate any feature on any cell phone.

"He could take your cell and show you things on it that you never even knew you had," said his father, whose "Sweet Home Alabama" ring tone introduced Thomas to the song.

When the supermarket delivery man, Tony, came to the Tarantino home on East Hudson Street, Thomas routinely had him check his cell phone with him. "Thomas would call the man’s wife while he delivered our groceries," said his mother, Samantha.

Thomas would also text-message people, pressing successive rows of numbers or letters that instantly told them who it was. He would do the same with instant messaging on the computer to his siblings’ friends while he visited his favorite Web sites, including iTunes.com.

While the boy mostly kept to himself, he was still outgoing with strangers. "He was always friendly, always greeting people," his father recalled. "He wanted to congregate with you. It didn’t matter if you were white or black, young or old. He loved everybody."

Samantha said it didn’t matter who you were, Thomas would say hello to you. "If we were driving in the car and the windows were open and we pulled up to a red light, he would say hello to the people in the car next to us," she said.

Samantha said that her son taught her, above all, how to be kind and compassionate to others. "He had nothing to offer anybody but his gentle nature," she said. "And if you were kind to him, forget it; you had a friend for life."

When Thomas left his house, he particularly enjoyed going to Gino’s on Park Avenue, Adventure Land Amusement Park in Farmingdale, East Buffet restaurant in Huntington Station, and, most of all, any McDonald’s. His parents stepped up their trips with him to his favorite places when they were told in late May that his leukemia was terminal.

About 10 days before he died, Thomas rode with his father on his motorcycle, alongside his uncle and several others from a biker club. The armada of motorcycles roared along Park Avenue and West Beech Street to the Atlantic Beach Bridge, then back to East Hudson.

Thomas watched and rooted for both the Yankees and Mets, he attended Mass at Sacred Heart Church in Island Park with his grandmother, Sylberta Tarantino, and he could often be found playing with his siblings, Michelle, 15, Victor, 13, and Theresa, 5.

"He was an innocent little boy who offered a lot of love," Thomas Sr. said. "And I never knew I could love so much as I loved my son Thomas. “I love my wife and all my children. But Thomas was special because he had been through so much, and I had a deeper love for him because of what he had to endure."

At Thomas’s burial at Greenfield Cemetery in Hempstead, Rabbi David Rosenberg, of Shuvah Yisrael Messianic Synagogues in East Williston, sang the boy’s favorite song: "Sweet home Alabama/where the skies are so blue/... Lord I’m comin’ home to you."

But it was the lone bagpiper who played at his funeral at Sacred Heart, which was attended by more than 350 mourners, that hit his father the hardest. "It was so powerful — it was so beautiful," Thomas Sr. recalled.

His brother, Thomas’s godfather, Anthony Tarantino, a head usher at the church, hired the bagpiper, having been inspired by a scene from the movie "Braveheart."

"When the king died," Thomas Sr. explained, "there was a lone bagpipe. And Thomas deserved to be compared to a king."

Joseph Kellard is a journalist and columnist living in New York.

Please post comments about this article. For inquiries about Joseph Kellard’s writing services, email him at: Theainet1@optonline.net.

'Just the greatest guy you could ever meet'

2008-07-12T18:17:00.000-07:00

Family, friends say goodbye to Leo Vann Jr., 14

By Joseph Kellard

“His smile — that’s all you needed to know about him,” Chris Ferrante said before the funeral service for his friend, 14-year-old Leo Vann Jr., at the Christian Light Missionary Baptist Church.

Inside, that smile — along with Vann’s benevolent, optimistic spirit — figured prominently in speeches the drowning victim’s family and friends gave at the two-hour service on July 3. They remembered that Leo was full of joy, excitement and jokes, and some likened him to the sun or a rainbow that shone through dark clouds.

Lakesha Thomas, Leo’s mother, highlighted her son’s smile and his upbeat personality when she stood beside his gray casket, microphone in hand, in front of hundreds of mourners who packed the church’s pews, lined its walls and spilled outside the front doors.

“Whenever I was down,” said Thomas, who wore a button sporting her son’s image on her black blouse, “Leo would always say to me ‘Ma, it’s not that serious. We don’t have time for that.’”

Even in a remembrance piece she wrote about her son that appeared in the service’s program, Thomas mentioned his pearly whites and his carefree attitude. “Although you were only 14,” she wrote, “you taught me how to relax and enjoy life.”

Wayne Vann, a deacon at Christian Light, called his nephew “one of God’s instruments,” and said, “Leo’s smile — that smile — changed complexions in people … If you didn’t have love in your heart when you met him, you certainly did after that.”

“That Leo is gone just really breaks my heart,” said his younger sister, Zariah Simone Vann. “He was just the greatest guy you could ever meet. It seemed like he never had a bad day in his life.”

But Leo’s worst day came on June 27. That afternoon, while skateboarding with friends at a park near the Recreation Center on Reynolds Channel, he jumped into the bay to cool off and never resurfaced. His body was found later by rescue personnel, but they could not revive him.

Leo was born April 12, 1994 at South Nassau Communities Hospital in Oceanside, on the birthday of his aunt, LaSheena Neals, who recalled that day.

“‘I don’t want this,’ I said,” Neals joked about being presented with Leo for the first time, and the mourners managed a collective laugh despite their sorrow. “But he was the best birthday present that I ever got.”

Leo’s father, Leo Vann Sr., taught him how to shoot a basketball and throw a fastball. His son developed into a versatile athlete who played football, volleyball and soccer and ran track.

A week before he drowned, Leo graduated from Long Beach Middle School, where he was honored with the Mags Humanitarian Award, presented by teachers to “a student who goes out of his way to help people and tries their best,” said Keith Biesma, the school’s assistant principal.

During his power-charged eulogy, the Rev. Isaac Melton told the mourners — a racially mixed crowd — that Leo didn’t treat others according to their racial group or other irrelevancies. Some mourners recalled that Leo liked to attend church, while others noted what he enjoyed most: riding his skateboard with his friends.

Kelli Ann Santaniello described how she was baffled when her daughter, Lauren, told her that she wanted to give her skateboard to Leo, who was without a board but would later collect 10. “‘If you knew Leo the way I know him, you’d understand,’” said Santaniello, quoting her daughter, a co-winner of the Mags Award. Santaniello said her daughter was glad that Leo died doing what he loved.

Leo Sr., who had planned to have his son visit him in Georgia this summer, was taken aback by the number of Leo’s friends who attended prayer vigils and other gatherings after his death. “Who knew that your charm and charisma would make you everyone’s star?” he wrote in a note about his first child.

Leo’s friends wore T-shirts, buttons and hats that featured his smiling image, and in unison they did his favorite rally-like clap during the service, which also featured his relatives singing gospel classics like “Walk With Me Jesus.”

“He was friends with the whole class,” said Caitlin O’Connell, who had graduated with Vann two weeks earlier.

“He was not mean to anyone,” said J.T. Forkin, another LBMS graduate. “He gave everyone a chance.”

Outside the church after the service, Coby Thomas told reporters that his cousin’s goal in life was to protect kids who were being beaten up. “How better can you get than that?” he asked. “You can’t get no better than that.”

Leo’s wake was held at Jordan’s Funeral Home in Island Park, and he was buried at Greenfield Cemetery in Hempstead. In addition to his parents and sister, he is survived by a brother, Quamel Dejuan Mclaurin of Long Beach; grandmothers Virginia Crawford of Long Beach and Yvonna Presley of Hempstead; grandfathers Shawn Presley of Hempstead and Harold Washington; a great-grandmother, Pinkie Vann- Williams; aunts LaSheena Neals and Shamona Crawford of Long Beach and Ayanna Vann of Dallas, Ga.; uncles Terrele Boyce of Denver and Larry Strevens of Long Beach; and cousins Jayden Serrano, Luvv Michee’ Scott and Zion Boyce.Joseph Kellard is a journalist and columnist living in New York.

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Tudor Stands Out

2008-06-27T15:40:00.000-07:00

Long Beach Family keeps upgrading home after 35 years

By Joseph Kellard

Last Thursday afternoon, 77-year-old Sam Arnone could be found lounging in shorts and a T-shirt on the newly renovated front porch of his home at 310 W. Olive St., at the corner of Laurelton Boulevard.

The Tudor, built in 1952, sports the exposed wood framing, white plaster walls, front and side gables with slate roofing, and dark-brick chimney with decorative gray stone typical of its architectural style. Yet Arnone’s home strikes a neat, high-maintenance look that makes it a standout in a neighborhood that includes other Tudors and a landmark Spanish-styled house next door.

Rising from a well-manicured, elevated lawn, the Tudor is surrounded by lush bushes of varying sizes and bordered by a thigh-high concrete wall that cleanly demarcates the treeless, sun-soaked property from the Laurelton sidewalk. That all the exterior features appear new on this classic-styled home is a testament to the many hours of sweat Arnone has invested in renovations since he and his wife, Carol, bought the three-bedroom, three-bath, 2,000-square-foot home in 1973.

“Every year I do something new,” said Arnone, a retired electrical engineer with Sperry Gyroscope, a company that developed navigation systems for the U.S. Navy. The brick and concrete front porch, with its granite steps and new awning, was his latest project.

Although Arnone now hires contractors to do such major work, over the years he and his son, Chris, renovated the kitchen, bathrooms and basement so many times, he’s unsure of the exact count. “Two or three times,” Arnone said about redoing the kitchen that now has a modern mica countertop and cream-colored cabinets.

He said he renovated often because the rooms got outdated, but Carol said the former rooms were just as functional. She claims her husband just has to keep working.

“He can’t stay still,” she said. “He’s very handy and he made this whole house all over. And when he retired, he didn’t know what to do with himself.”

When the Arnones had five cars, he widened the driveway. They also installed central air, and, five years ago, had the concrete wall along Laurelton set back three feet and replaced a nearby stretch of grass — between the sidewalk and curb — with red brick.

“I put brick there because I was tired of mowing the lawn,” Arnone said with a chuckle.

Inside, one of the few original features is an ornamental marble fireplace in the living room, along with cornices around the windows.

“The only reason we didn’t do anything with the fireplace is because it’s a beautiful piece,” he said. All the original windows were stained glass, and some 20 years ago he replaced them — except for the three that remain in the trio of bathrooms — with weather-proofed panes.

The Tudor’s original owner, whose name escapes the Arnones, held a prominent position at House Beautiful magazine, and they attribute to him the home’s fancier features that remain.

Carol, a Manhattan native, spent summers with her parents in a bungalow on Wisconsin Avenue in the West End. This is where she met Sam, who had lived in Long Beach since he was four. They bought their Tudor from the Brown family, and they rented it for a year before they moved in from Queens after their son graduated from elementary school. Carol recalled that she put a down payment on the home while her husband was on a business trip. “Boy, he flipped when he came back,” she said.

She remembered the asking price was $52,000, but she got the real estate agent to sell the home for $40,000 after it was on the market for an extended time and the Browns were also away.

“When I bought it, I told the realtor I wanted something distinct,” Carol said. “And when we passed this house, I took one look at it and said, ‘If you can get me inside this house, you have a sale.’”

Today, Carol said she believes she and her husband can get — in a healthy real estate market — up to $900,000 for their Tudor. But the Arnones have no intention of selling. “I love Long Beach,” Arnone said.

“What’s great about it is the beach and the boardwalk. You can’t beat the boardwalk, and the beach’s white sand is beautiful.”

Joseph Kellard is a journalist and columnist living in New York.

Please post comments about this article. For inquiries about Joseph Kellard’s writing services, email him at: Theainet1@optonline.net.

Property Owners Battle City

2008-06-22T13:18:00.000-07:00

Council holds hearing on West End eminent domain case

By Joseph Kellard

At age 93, East Atlantic Beach resident Hildegard Miller finds herself fighting City Hall's attempt to seize a parcel of West End commercial property that she has owned for more than 60 years.

With cane in hand, Miller came to Tuesday's Long Beach City Council hearing, at which City Manager Charles Theofan listened to testimony on the 5,400-square-foot parcel, at 1055 West Beech St. Theofan was trying to determine whether the city's plan to take over the property is justified under eminent domain, a government's power to seize private property for public use with monetary compensation. The city hopes to divide the property into 21 parking spaces for the parking-deprived West End neighborhood.

"We have a way to make things better, and that's what we are trying to do," Theofan said.

Under eminent domain proceedings, the government typically condemns the property, usually on grounds that it is "blighted" - dilapidated, contaminated or otherwise unfit for human use. In 2004, Sen. Dean Skelos (R-Rockville Centre) gave the city a $250,000 state grant to buy Miller's property, which once housed the West End Service Station, an auto garage that she and her late husband, George Miller, and their daughter, Wendy Hope, ran for decades. Miller discovered that the city was taking eminent domain-related steps only when she saw a photo in the Herald of Skelos and city officials posing with the check on her property, according to Hope.

Miller and her daughter had been trying to sell the property since 1999, and after learning of the city's intentions, Hope, the parcel's co-owner, said she was willing to sell it to the city, and she allowed city officials to perform an environmental study of the lot. They concluded that there had been a spill that contained high levels of volatile gasoline-related contaminants that seeped into the groundwater in and around the site.

Hope then had the property tested by LKB, a consulting engineering firm, which determined that the spill was likely a result of a leak from a gas line that was replaced 40 years ago, and that the contaminant and its spread posed no significant threat to public health. In a June 2007 letter to Miller's attorney, the state Department of Environmental Conservation confirmed LKB's conclusion, stating that no further environmental cleanup was needed.

Meanwhile, Miller, Hope and their broker, Joe Sinnona, of the Joe Sinnona Group/ReMax Shores in Long Beach, were still entertaining potential buyers, whose plans for the property ranged from convenience stores to a seafood restaurant. Sinnona said he had offers ranging from $800,000 to $1.2 million. But those offers have gone by the wayside, Sinnona and Hope claim, because the city is characterizing the property as contaminated so that it can afford to buy it.

"And rumors of contamination and condemnation effectively discouraged buyers," said Hope, who traveled from San Diego to attend the June 17 hearing. "We have verbal statements from people to confirm this. It looks like the goal is to bully my mother into accepting a fire sale price."

Theofan said he has thoroughly investigated those charges. "The accusation that the city building department purposely steered potential buyers away from this property is not true," he said.

Theofan also noted that the DEC's 2007 letter was only recently provided to the building department. He asked Hope why, if, under eminent domain law, she and her mother would be paid "fair market value," they did not welcome the offer. "When somebody has been trying to sell a property for nine years without success, then maybe - just maybe - they're asking too much for that property," he said.

Hope responded that she did not think a parking lot was the best plan for a property that could be used to create jobs and generate city taxes, and she objected to the city's "bullying" her mother to take over her property rather than allowing her to sell it on her own. "At this point," Hope said, "we have no faith in the City Council because my experiences have been that you are not to be trusted."

Hope asked why the council hadn't made her mother an offer, as it had with Temple Zion in the West End. At a June 3 hearing, the council voted unanimously to lease a parking lot from the temple, which is expected to provide spaces at no charge to residents, but will cost the city $30,000 to lease. "Why are you taking my property," Miller said to the council, "rather than making me an offer when I know the city buys and leases property all the time."

Theofan explained that he was following eminent domain law, which, at this point in the process, doesn't give him the authority to make an offer. "But I can assure Mrs. Miller that if the City Council does decide to go forward with this process, that offer will come sooner rather than later," he added.

Rick Hoffman, president of the West End Neighbors Civic Association, said that parking is the worst problem in the West End, and that the city is trying to do what is best for his neighborhood. "They are taking a legal route, which they can do," Hoffman said. "These folks have had ample opportunity, nine years, [to sell the property]. It's not like they're going to be robbed."

Hope said that the traffic congestion in the West End is due to crowded, illegal multifamily rentals, which the city should focus on instead.

“Eminent domain is a very, very powerful act by a municipality or other state agency to take property away from an individual," said Mrs. Miller's attorney, Jerome Reisman. "It should not be abused. [Mrs. Miller] should be able to continue to keep it on the open market free of any attempts by the city to take it by eminent domain."

Joseph Kellard is a journalist and columnist living in New York.

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Media Preps For McCain-Obama Debate at Hofstra

2008-06-11T15:09:00.000-07:00

University holds walking tour for press

By Joseph Kellard

There was talk of cable feeds and satellite truck parking, telephone and computer capacity, television camera positioning and space requirements — not to mention the Secret Service — at Hofstra University last week.

Joani Wardwell and Marty Slutzsky of the Commission on Presidential Debates, a nonpartisan organization that has sponsored and produced all of the presidential and vice-presidential debates since 1988, took press personnel on a site tour of Hofstra June 5, detailing plans for the third debate between presumptive presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama in October. Some 20 representatives of various media organizations, including ABC and NBC, learned about the commission’s logistics, production and rules for the debate. They toured the site, the David S. Mack Sports and Exhibition Complex on the north campus, and the adjacent Physical Fitness Center, which will serve as the media center and where hundreds of journalists from around the world will gather.

With their voices echoing inside the empty 5,000-plus sports arena, Wardwell and Slutzsky told the media that sections of the upper-level seats will go unused in order to keep the audience close to the candidates and create a more intimate atmosphere at the Oct. 15 debate.

One journalist asked how members of the audience, who will be let into the arena 90 minutes before the debate, will be selected. Slutzsky said this issue is still being bounced around. “There is never, ever enough seating at the debates,” he said, “and it becomes a somewhat contentious issue.” He explained, “A certain percentage of the seats go to each candidate’s party. A certain percentage goes to the commission, and the commission’s segments of the seats are shared with the school.”

The arena doors will be open to local media in the days leading up to the debate, on Oct. 13 and 14, but as the hours tick down that access will become more restricted, and the only media allowed inside for the debate will be the White House press pool and six networks: ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, CNN and C-SPAN. “There will be no cabling — it will have to be done with hand held-cameras,” Wardwell said, listing one of several Secret Service rules.

“We’re all going to want to have our anchors out here from our morning shows — this is a huge thing for everyone,” said a representative of WCBS-TV. “We just went though the pope’s visit and the Secret Service was telling us all about where we couldn’t stand or shoot our cameras.”

Wardwell assured the local media, such as News 12, that they would still have opportunities at multiple locations around the debate hall, including the media center and surrounding parking lots. “So you should not think there will be a lack of space, but it’s going to be a challenge,” she said. Since the final debate traditionally gets the most media coverage, and because it will be held in New York, Wardwell noted, “We expect to draw a lot of attention, so the ‘local’ definition has been expanded.”

Both she and Slutzsky reiterated that in order to earn a spot on the Hofstra grounds during the three days of coverage, press outlets must file for and get credentials through the commission’s Web site. “Get your credentials in by August 15,” Slutzsky stressed, “which might be problematic for some people, but these are the rules laid down to us by the Secret Service, and we have to go with that. Anyone who needs to be at the debate site has to be in the system.”

In the parking lots outside the debate hall, Wardwell and Slutzsky provided the media with a host of other information: selections for exterior stations will be made by lottery; different lights and banners will be used on the arena’s façade to give it a particular “feel”; trees will be uprooted and temporarily relocated; frequent shuttles will be available to transport media personnel to and from the site; and news organizations must complete their cabling by 4 p.m. the day of the debate or risk being shut out entirely.

For about two hours after the debate, the media center at the Physical Fitness Center will be open for press to conduct interviews, Slutzsky said.

Arrate Reich, a senior producer for WNJU Telemundo, a Spanish- language NBC affiliate based in Fort Lee, N.J., said she was glad the walk-through was conducted early in the process. “Because it takes a long time to set up for an event of this magnitude,” she said. “So I think it’s helpful to know from the get-go exactly where we need to be.”

When Pope Benedict XVI visited the U.S. in April, Reich planned the events for her station, including the pontiff’s visit to Washington D.C., ground zero, a seminary in Yonkers and Yankee Stadium. “Of course, there were a lot of issues to cover with security for those events,” she said.

Last November, Hofstra was selected to host the 90-minute presidential debate, whose topic is foreign policy. Wardwell said the commission surveyed 19 sites, and reacted positively to Hofstra since it showed “an attitude of enthusiasm that we were particularly excited about,” she said.

Hofstra President Stuart Rabinowitz, who accompanied Wardwell and Slutzsky on the tour, welcomed the responsibility of hosting the debate, primarily to get students more involved in the political process, and, secondarily, to bring attention to the university and the surrounding suburbs, he said.

This spring, Hofstra began hosting a year-long series of programs, lectures, conferences and exhibitions, dubbed Election ’08, offering its students, as well as some area high school students, lessons in the major issues of the debate, presidential politics and history. The programs included talks by political consultants Mary Matalin, James Carville and David Gergen and New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. This fall, John Edwards, “Meet the Press” host Tim Russert and former White House press secretaries Dee Dee Myers and Ari Fleisher are scheduled to speak.

“We believe that our university has an ethical obligation to try to encourage our students to engage in the democratic process,” Rabinowitz said. “They need to pay attention to it, they need to vote, they need to know that they can be active participants in the democratic process ... It’s for them that we decided to host the debate.”

Joseph Kellard is a journalist and columnist living in New York.Please post comments about this article.

For inquiries about Joseph Kellard’s writing services, email him at: Theainet1@optonline.net.

Finally, A House He Can Call His Own

2008-05-21T09:18:00.000-07:00

Architect builds California-style home in Long Beach

By Joseph Kellard

At around 9 a.m. on Mother’s Day, guests arrived at the Henrys’ residence on East Walnut Avenue. The group of four didn’t even know Kathy Henry, mother of four, or her husband Matt.

But the Henrys are used to having uninvited guests. This quartet was the latest group to stop by to get a closer look at their new, five-bedroom California-style home, still under construction at the corner of East Walnut and Roosevelt Boulevard.

"This should be in Architectural Digest," one woman half-joked as she greeted Matt where the backyard L-shaped pool wraps under the house.Passers-by and friends alike have told the Henrys that their flat-roofed, sand-colored home seems more suited to the beach or the Hollywood Hills than this neighborhood of older homes, some 1930s Spanish-style — like the one the Henrys tore down to build their new one.

"We get that all the time," said Matt, 39, standing in his yard, which was crammed with ladders, scaffolding, wheelbarrows and a large green dumpster. "Some people stop and talk and ask what kind of home is it. Others say thank you. They tell me, ‘I want to see it when it’s done.’ People just show up. It’s really been exciting."

Henry, a general contractor trained as an architect and a lifelong Long Beach resident, owns HKH Construction, a design company that focuses on residential remodeling. But he has never built his own home, which, he says, has been much more daunting and nerve-racking than building houses for others. But it has also brought him closer to his growing family.

"He waited a long time to do this," said Matt’s wife, Kathy, 41, who is six months pregnant. "When someone mentions the house, I say it’s all Matt. He’s had the ideas for years and they’re his drawings.

We’ve been in the house over 10 years, and we’ve waited a long time to do it. So it’s a testament to his patience and hard work."

In 2002, Matt drew up the plans for the house while coloring with his children. He was inspired by books on Richard Neutra, a prominent architect of the 1940s who was famous for his California moderns. "He did a modern style with a natural feel," Henry explained.

When he began mulling the details of a design, Henry, a graduate of New York Institute of Technology, brought sand from the beach to match a stucco exterior to give the house the appearance of emerging from the sands.

Although the house is modern, he explained, he and Kathy are striving to give the interior a natural but old feel. They hope to achieve this effect not only with the architecture, but also with the materials they’ve chosen: stone-like tiles in the bathrooms instead of porcelain, and walk-in closets on the second floor with sliding doors made of wenge, a dark-grained wood that contrasts with the blond maple floors.

Henry also designed parts of the exterior to integrate with the interior. Each projected, block-shaped section outside the house is paneled in rustic cedar, which in one area will extend onto a broad white wall in the living room.

"Exterior walls pulling in aren’t characteristic of modern design, which has more of a streamlined, sanitary look, whereas the cedar kind of warms it up," Henry said, citing the influence of architect Richard Meier for these touches.

The high-ceilinged living room will have a staircase and a balcony, and a large picture window looks south down Roosevelt Boulevard toward the ocean. A triple-sided fireplace divides the living room and the family room.

In the basement, Henry plans a kids’ playroom that may double as his office, and a staircase will spiral up three floors. The master bedroom has a three-level ceiling ranging from eight to 10 feet high, and the master bath has a special feature: shower heads in the ceiling that project water like rain.

For Matt, the most difficult part of the project was making this house different than anything he’s built before. "When you’re in the industry for 20-something years and you work on enough houses, you kind of get into this track where you don’t want to do what you did at someone else’s place," said Henry, who worked for architect Mike Burkhold, an NYIT professor, in Seacliff and developer Alexander Wolf & Son in Manhattan before starting HKH Construction in 1998.

"At every turn I was stifling myself by saying, ‘you can’t do that because you did that at so-and-so’s house,’" Henry continued. "But that’s silly because there are always going to be some similarities between the houses you build. And what I’ve done for other people has been beautiful, so why not celebrate that and take advantage of that a little bit?"

Henry periodically took his plans to the city’s building department and architect committee to find out what exactly city code permitted. He had to ensure that his home fit the character and style of the neighborhood — including the Congregation Beth Shalom building, which abuts his property and also has a flat roof and square structure.

"In the end, taking up the property and doing this house like we did, for me it’s a love, and I’m inspired by my wife and kids," said Henry, whose family is living temporarily in a home in East Atlantic Beach until mid-summer, when they hope to move into their new digs. "But more than anything, it’s also almost a love or trust and confidence in Long Beach. It’s the town as well, and I wouldn’t make this investment if it weren’t that."

Joseph Kellard is a journalist and columnist living in New York.

Please post comments about this article. For inquiries about Joseph Kellard’s writing services, email him at: Theainet1@optonline.net.