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.”
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Spin Drills Replace Depositions
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.”
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
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
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
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Tea Time
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.”
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.”
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Allegria Hotel Holds Job Fair
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.”
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
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.”
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.”
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Honest Abe Turns 200
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.”
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.”
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