Lies from Southeast Asia

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

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

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

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

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

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’

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.