City Council creates Michael Valente Day

Salutes Long Beach’s lone Medal of Honor recipient

By Joseph Kellard


Nearly 90 years to the day after World War I veteran Michael Valente rescued his regiment from disaster in France, the Long Beach City Council on Tuesday voted unanimously to designate Sept. 29 as a day in his honor.

Valente, who died in 1976, is Long Beach’s lone recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor — the highest award for valor given to a member of the U.S. armed forces for actions against an enemy force — which the infantryman, then a private, earned for heroic acts on Sept. 29, 1918. Just 3,446 such medals have been awarded since its inception in 1863.

“In the City of Long Beach, we want every September 29 to be a day for people to reflect and honor the life and accomplishments of Michael Valente,” said City Manager Charles Theofan, who noted that the council heeded President Bush’s nationwide call to honor the memory of all recipients of the prestigious medal. “… This is the very least we can do to honor him.”

At a May council meeting, Al Symons, a retired engineer who worked for the Department of Defense, requested that the council designate Sept. 29 as Michael Valente Day, to honor Long Beach’s only recipient of the medal. Tuesday night, Symons read to the council a citation from President Herbert Hoover when he decorated Valente, then a retired sergeant, with the medal in Washington on Sept. 27, 1929.“It’s the proudest moment of my life,” Valente said, according to a New York Times account dated the day after.

Valente’s courageous acts came when his regiment, Company D of the 107th Infantry, was suffering heavy casualties during operations against German forces at the Hindenburg line near Ronssoy, France. Alongside a fellow soldier, Valente rushed forward through intense machine gun fire directly on an enemy nest, killing two gunners and capturing five enemy soldiers. Discovering another machine gun nest nearby that rained heavy fire on American forces, Valente and his companion charged it, killed the gunner, jumped into the enemy trench, killed two more soldiers and captured 16 others.

On Tuesday, Symons thanked the council for creating the day to honor Valente. “You have no idea how happy I am that you are taking this resolution at this time,” Symons said to the applause of the crowd. Among those in attendance were Valente’s great-granddaughter, Danna Cuneo-Wojcieski, who was born two years after he died at age 80 on Jan. 10, 1976. “I think it’s an amazing honor,” she told the Herald.

“He was obviously a courageous man in World War I, and we’re so proud that he’s part of our family.” Francesca Capitano, a former councilwoman, remembered growing up two house down from Valente on Walnut Street — before she married his grandson, Ralph Madalena.

“He was a great man, a kind man, a good father, a good grandfather,” she told the council with her husband and daughter, Katherine Madalena, at her side.

Valente emigrated from Italy to Ogdensburg, N.Y., in 1915, and joined the New York Guard. In May of 1918, he was deployed to France to fight on the front lines. After the war, he married Margareta Marchello and moved to her native Newark, N.J., before the couple settled in Long Beach around 1919, where they raised three children.

Valente became a contractor and real estate agent who built houses in Long Beach, but eventually gave up the business to work in City Hall as the city marshal. When he retired in the 1960s, he greeted people at La Serenata, a restaurant at the original Long Beach Library, now the site of Sutton Place.

Standing 6 feet tall with blond hair, blue eyes and a barrel chest, Valente was always active, particularly in his garden, and he rode his bike on the boardwalk regularly right up until his final years.

“My father was very proud, but he didn’t talk about it much,” Valente’s daughter, Lido Beach resident Josephine Cuneo, said of the Medal of Honor. “He was wonderful, kind and soft-spoken. Unless other people told us about the medal, we would never have known.”

Frank Cuneo, Valente’s grandson, said he could not recall his grandfather ever talking about the war or his medal. He said he believes that Valente’s legacy was never properly passed down, and he was satisfied that a Long Beach resident like Symons spearheaded an effort to create a day honoring his grandfather.

The Long Beach Public Library used to display a facsimile of Valente’s medal (Madalena has the original), and a portrait of Valente wearing it hangs in City Hall.

“I remember as a kid I used to march and ride in a car with him in the Memorial Day parade,” said Cuneo, who now lives in Manhattan. “Everyone would stop and greeted him. He was well known in town.”

The city named one of its senior apartments, near City Hall, after Valente, as did the Sons of Italy lodge he attended. Some of the lodge’s members attended the meeting to thank the council for recognizing him.

Before the council voted on the resolution, its members consulted with some local veterans’ organization to get their input. Valente was most active in the VFW Post in Long Beach. “I think it’s fabulous to have the day named after him,” said Scott Castillo, the VFW’s senior vice commander. “He’s the only Medal of Honor winner in Long Beach, and it brings all veterans recognition. I’m all for it.”


Joseph Kellard is a journalist and commentator living in New York. Contact him at Theainet1@optonline.net.

Blending Fires, Fact and Fiction

West End man writes first novel, dedicated to Long Beach 9/11 victim


By Joseph Kellard


Gene Welischar has quite an imagination.

In his soon-to-be-published first novel, "If You Play With Fire," the retired FDNY chief and longtime Long Beach resident puts himself in a fantasy romance with an ex-nun-turned FBI agent. The two meet when she visits his Manhattan firehouse to investigate a real-life arsonist who burned buildings for hire.

Much of Welischar’s story, which explores how firefighters battled blazes in Brooklyn and Queens in the 1960s and ’70s, is based in fact. During those turbulent decades he was in the midst of a 33-year career with the FDNY in a city threatened by political, economic and physical collapse. He writes of the riots and fires that followed Martin Luther King’s assassination; "Jewish Lightning," a variety of arson that lined the pockets of failing businesses with insurance payouts; and "Danny O," a professional, mob-connected arsonist who torched apartments for property owners unable to get ride of stubborn tenants so they could build high-rises.

"Danny O has had a lot of work from the new builders who want fast access to the space occupied by these old buildings for their business ventures," Welischar, 78, writes in the novel’s prelude. "… He prefers that no deaths or injuries will result from the fire, but only because that could bring serious investigation." During one arson in 1978, Danny O, who stood on rooftops to watch his blazes rip through buildings as fire units arrived, observed from a distance as a firefighter was loaded into an ambulance on a stretcher.

Eventually — and, again, factually — the FBI sent agents to the firehouse where Welischar was captain from 1976 to 1983, Ladder 13 on 85th Street, to look up records on recent arsons. One of the real-life federal agents, Marita Lorenz, had reportedly been sent to Cuba in 1960 to attempt to seduce and then poison Fidel Castro in 1960. Welischar dated her a few times, he said.

In the book, Lorenz morphed from fact into fiction, becoming, in Welischar’s imagination, an agent who grew up Catholic and became a nun. But her father, a Protestant policeman, wanted grandchildren, so she left the clergy to start a family. "But she couldn’t," Welischar explained, "so then she looked for a surrogate father and she happened to pick me, the captain of the firehouse." At this he laughed mischievously. "I have a great imagination. My daughter said, ‘Dad where did you get all this stuff from?’"

The real-life FBI agents were pointed to a certain management company that was eventually prosecuted, but Welischar’s search to find out how the investigation unfolded hit a dead end, because the company had changed its name.

For years, Welischar, who retired in 1991, had rehashed those eventful decades, and three years ago he decided to explore them again. He began writing "If You Play With Fire," with editorial help from his wife, Patricia. Welischar took his completed novel to Florida and enrolled in a writing course given by Patrika Vaughn, owner of A Cappela Publishing. Vaughn found his story intriguing enough to print 3,500 copies.

"I thought it would be extremely interesting to the lay person to see how firefighters operated, especially with the malfeasance of the city government during the ’60s and ’70s," Vaughn told the Herald. "I found it a wonderful story."

While the novel is populated with corrupt government officials, unscrupulous businessmen seeking shortcuts to obtain prime real estate, and arsonists, Welischar also profiles a few heroic life- and property-saving characters, the informal leaders who train and inspire their fellow firefighters. "They’re like the unsung heroes of the fire department," Welischar said. "They’re like the infantrymen of the firehouse. They’re teachers who break in the new men and shape the character of a firehouse."

Welischar dedicated the novel to the late Greg Stajk, a probationary firefighter whom he mentored at Ladder 13 in 1982. While still with the company on Sept. 11, 2001, Stajk, then a 14-year resident of Long Beach, was killed at the World Trade Center.

Welischar got to know Stajk through his daughter, Mary, calling him a big brother to her. "He was a low-profile guy who was nice to be around," Welischar recalled. "All the guys loved him. And I found out later that he was a terrific artist."

Stajk’s mother, Marge, who lives in Florida, said she was honored and surprised by Welischar’s tribute to her son, and read a rough copy of "If You Play With Fire." "It was interesting to see how the novel switches back and forth between real-life human-interest stories and fiction," Marge said.

Welischar began his career as an NYPD street patrolman when he came home from the Korean War, before joining Ladder 116 in Long Island City in 1958. From there he went to Engine 218 in Bushwick, where he became a lieutenant, and then to Ladder 13. In 1983 he transferred to Engine 264 in Far Rockaway, where he retired eight years later.

Welischar moved to Long Beach in 1977, and in 1989 he bought The Inn on West Beech Street, where he held fundraisers for veterans at Northport Hospital. The generosity of his adopted hometown figures in the novel.

"Whenever someone is in trouble, they have benefits at bars and raise thousands and thousands of dollars for people who have gone through tragedies," Welischar said of Long Beach, where he will sell and sign copies of his novel at the Irish Day Parade next month. "There are at least 20 that I can remember in which money was raised for people in distress. And that’s something about Long Beach: It’s a very tight-knit neighborhood."

For information or to purchase "If You Play With Fire," go to www.ifyouplaywithfire.com.


Joseph Kellard is a journalist and columnist living in New York.

Please post comments about this article. For inquiries about Joseph Kellard’s writing services, email him at: Theainet1@optonline.net.

Close In More Ways Than One

Walks residents say area is tight-knit, safe



By Joseph Kellard


On a sun-soaked July afternoon, Matt Mariano and a friend tossed a football around outside Mariano’s July Walk bungalow. A game of catch was about all there was room for, since a narrow sidewalk is all that divides the houses in Long Beach’s historic Walks community.

The 10 blocks of walks have no street access, and Mariano’s lawn spans perhaps 5 yards, much too small for a scrimmage. But what Mariano and fellow homeowners lack in asphalt and backyard space, they make for up in neighborly intimacy, whether it’s picking up groceries for one another or shoveling snow together to clear a path to the surrounding streets.

“It’s a little more communal because of the close proximity of the homes,” said Mariano, a 20-something who grew up in Levittown, teaches in Amityville and moved to July Walk two years ago. “And that makes for a better neighborhood.”

The bungalows on each walk face east and west and are sandwiched behind homes facing north and south from West Park Avenue, the neighborhood’s northern border, to West Beech Street to the south.

The walks themselves run north-south, from Lindell Avenue, the eastern border, to New York Avenue. The homes are little more than arm-spans apart, and their “yards” are best described as patches of grass.

“You really become very friendly with your neighbors,” said Allison Kallelis, who moved from Yonkers to Long Beach with her husband, Alex, six years ago and bought a September Walk home for $260,000. “I know everyone in the surrounding area. So you have to be extremely friendly to live here. If you’re not, then it’s not for you.”


A changing neighborhood

Kallelis said she can’t imagine ever selling their bungalow, where they will raise Kaleb, their 9-month-old son. When they first arrived, their neighbors were mostly retirees, many of whom have since left the neighborhood, replaced by other young couples.

Kallelis finds the walks safe, and said that children can play along the sidewalk without worrying about cars, and strangers rarely wander through the neighborhood. But above all, she said, she cherishes the neighborly camaraderie.

“As people walk down the walk, they yell out, ‘I’m going to the grocery store, what do you need?’” Kallelis explained. “That’s very common here. We borrow eggs and everything from each other. It’s a godsend to have the neighbors so close and so friendly.”

Homeowners make the most of their small properties, lining their front picket or chain-link fences with flowers while leaving their backyards barrier-free, blurring the property lines. Glyn and Kelly Jaime, who live on October Walk, have a fenceless backyard that mingles with their neighbors’ concrete plots. Having a yard is something new for Glyn, who was born and raised in Greenwich Village and has always lived in Manhattan, where she and her husband work.

“In our building in the city, we have about five apartments in our own little corner,” said Glyn, who owns a package design company. “We don’t even know those people. I’m not kidding, we’ve been there five years and I’ve never even seen them. Here we know the families around us, we know everybody. The neighbors here are incredible. It’s a real sense of community, but it’s not like people are in your face.”

While they were house-hunting, the Jamies looked at some 25 Long Beach properties before discovering the Walks. They were instantly sold on the area, and bought a single-level bungalow built in 1928 by Louis Bossert, a Brooklyn lumber producer who developed the second wave of homes there after World War I.

The Jamies’ bungalow is typical, with three small bedrooms, a living room, dining room, kitchen and bathroom. It retains many of its original features: a white stucco exterior, metal awnings, a brick fireplace, a four-legged, cast-iron bathtub, linseed linoleum floors and beaver-board walls. “All these things are what drew us to the house,” Glyn said.

When she and Kelly moved in, the house had been vacant for two years but was filled with cobwebs and sheet-covered furniture, including a vintage 1950s Herman Miller kitchen table and chairs that the Jamies kept, since it fit their retro style. The walls are adorned with a weathered 1938 New York license plate, a midcentury street map of the Columbus Circle area and framed black-and-white vintage photos of Manhattan.

The Jamies have another typical feature: an enclosed front porch that was once open, and caught breezes from the ocean a few blocks south. “The whole design of the Walks was to build houses without street access, but an aside was the terrific breezes,” said Roberta Fiore, a Long Beach historian.

Fiore regards the Walks as the city’s most distinct neighborhood. “I love it because it has so much charm,” she said. “It’s a cute little community with a lot of creativity.”


Military beginnings

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

The uninsulated pre-fabs were meant for summer use, but for $500 more a chimney could be built. By the mid-1950s, tenants started to live in them year-round. “The expression then was, ‘Throw some heat in the bungalows,’” Fiore said.

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

Hennessy’s mother worked the midnight shift at Long Beach Hospital, and he and his siblings slept around the kitchen oven on winter nights. In the tight-knit neighborhood, the family left their front door unlocked.

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

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

In 1984, Pat Redinger moved to June Walk because it reminded her of the old Courts community in the Rockaways, where she spent her summers as a girl. She and her mother paid $100,000 for a pre-fab bungalow that still looks out onto an open yard. To create more space, Redinger converted a boiler room into a storage closet, and she uses corner-fitting furniture.

Another challenge that comes with living in the Walks is parking. The neighborhood is without street access, driveways or garages, so it can sometimes be “impossible to have company over,” Redinger said.

“And to move the car, you feel you may never find another spot.” The Walks also has periodic water pressure, drainage and sewage problems.


Looking to the future

While the parking headaches have led Redinger to contemplate a move, others who plan to stay, such as the Kallelises and Hennessy (who lives with his wife and children on West Beech Street, off February Walk), want to lobby City Hall to improve their community. They are hoping to revive the Walks Association, a civic group established in the early 1990s that flourished but disbanded after its founder moved.

“Everyone has their own neighbors association, and we want to have our own, too,” Hennessy said, “because we have to lobby for the things that we need.”

Allison Kallelis is on the same page of what may become a new chapter for the walks. “We’re trying to start up the association again just to get a stronger voice in the city when different planning issues come up, and we’re trying to get more money allocated to the Walks,” she explained. “We’re kind of like the forgotten neighborhood.”


Joseph Kellard is a journalist and columnist living in New York.

Please post comments about this article. For inquiries about Joseph Kellard’s writing services, email him at: Theainet1@optonline.net.

Taking To Two Wheels

Use of bikes, mopeds on rise in Long Beach

By Joseph Kellard


Not everyone is upset with $4-plus gas prices. In fact, some not only welcome them, they actively root for them to rise fourfold.

“I’m the only guy who hopes gas goes up to $20 a gallon,” John Merritt, owner of Buddy’s Bikes on West Beech Street for the past 30 years, said half-jokingly. “Business has never been so good.”

Mark Marshak, a Long Beach resident who sells mopeds at Scooter City in Island Park, said, “I’m about the only person in town happy about gas prices.” Marshak opened his shop in June of 2006, and sold 15 mopeds by the end of that year. He sold 85 in 2007. In February, before gas hit $4 a gallon, he noticed that more people were buying his mopeds, and already this year he has sold 135.

“I knew this was going to happen,” Marshak said. “I felt it and made provisions and have stockpiles of mopeds in my warehouse.”

With its 2-mile boardwalk and stretches of straight streets, Long Beach has long been inviting to cyclists. And while bike shop owners like Merritt say higher gas prices have positively affected business of late, the city’s notorious problems with parking have made cycling nearly a necessity for many residents.

“I think people continue to buy bikes because it’s always been like this in Long Beach — that is, it’s just easier to ride a bicycle than to drive a car and try to find a parking spot,” said Ray Fusillo, who owns Long Beach Bicycle on East Park Avenue.

For the past two years, West End resident Peter Meyers had pedaled to the Long Beach train station on Park Avenue each weekday so that when he returns at night, he doesn’t have to circle his neighborhood looking for a place to park. He starts his day by riding his hybrid racing/mountain bike along the boardwalk on his way to the railroad station. “There’s nothing better than riding on the boardwalk each morning,” said Meyers, who works at Lincoln Center and catches the 8:08 train to Penn Station.

He and other cyclists have noticed that many more commuters are riding their bikes to the station each day, and that additional bike racks that have been installed around the station have filled up.

“The number of bikes out here is insane now,” said Jennifer Hicks, who has taken the 7:04 to Manhattan each morning for the past three years. “Now it’s hard to find a space on the bike racks.”

Like Meyers, Hicks rides her bike for both the convenience and the exercise. She also uses it on weekends to run errands to the post office, library and supermarket. “I grew up on Fire Island — you have to have a bike there,” she said, “so I’m used to riding.”

Roger Gengo, the head custodian at East School, who cycles to work every day, is among those who never lost his childhood interest in bike riding. “We all rode bikes as kids,” said Gengo, who lives in East Atlantic Beach. “It’s kind of part of everyone’s life. Some of us went back to it, others never try riding again.”

For years Gengo rode his bike in triathlons, and after he stopped competing he turned to cycling for transportation. Today he rides a Raleigh bike to the local supermarket and the beach, having built contraptions to hold his groceries and surfboard.

While Gengo drives a 1997 Ford Expedition, he uses his bike primarily because parking in his neighborhood is “horrendous,” he said. “Also, a lot of things annoy you on the road when you’re driving your car. The bike is heaven sent.”

Cosmo Donato, a general contractor who lives and works in Long Beach, bought a scooter from Marshak last year to do routine estimates and minor jobs instead of burning gas in his work truck.

“Especially from June to September, there’s no place to park,” Donato said. “So to go see a customer by truck is ridiculous. It doesn’t make sense.”

Donato also hops on his moped when he needs to buy small items that are easy to carry, and on weekends he rides it to Island Park, where he docks his boat. The moped gets 80 miles to the gallon and costs him $75 a year in insurance.

Marshak’s mopeds start at $1,300 and go as high as $5,000. Their top speeds rang from 30 to 80 mph, most of them get between 80 and 100 miles to the gallon, and insurance can run as low as $50 a year.

“It’s cost-effective when you think about what gas and insurance cost,” he said.

Marshak said that many Long Beach residents, from the West End to the canals, have bought mopeds from him to ride to the train stations in Long Beach and Island Park each morning. Mike Puma, an NYPD detective who lives on the Baldwin-Oceanside border, bought one a month ago to get to and from the train station, but on weekends he rides it to the West End beaches. Puma’s moped goes 100 miles on $5 worth of gas.

“When I went to register it,” he said, “the woman at the DMV said that she’s registering more scooters than cars right now.”

While the state Department of Motor Vehicles was unable to provide statistics on the number of mopeds registered so far in 2008, its data shows that Nassau County had 687 registered mopeds in 2007, the third-highest county total in the state, behind Suffolk (1,069) and Erie (741).

Long Beach restaurateur Tom Corning registered his first moped this year, retiring a Volkswagen Bug he used for deliveries. Corning’s drivers now use the moped at his Caffe Laguna in the West End and ride a three-wheel bike at Olive Oil’s, his other restaurant, in Point Lookout. He estimated that he saves hundreds of dollars on gas a month.

“It’s great on gas, and the biggest thing in the West End is the parking,” Corning said. “It’s really convenient. My delivery guys love it.”

West End resident Susan Hilberer said she has noticed that more delivery businesses and residents in her neighborhood are using mopeds. Hilberer is now on her third moped, having bought her first a few years ago from Black Ice, a shop on West Beech Street that has since closed, in order to avoid having to park her PC Cruiser.

“But it was so much fun to drive, I started taking it everywhere,” said Hilberer, who rides her moped to Waldbaum’s on Park Avenue, Roosevelt Field and even as far as Montauk. Its speedometer tops out at 50, and she gets 80 miles out of $6 in gas.

Does she ever drive her car anymore? “Yes, for long trips and car- pooling,” she said. “But if it means losing my parking space on the weekend, I’m not driving it.”

Despite the growing popularity of mo-peds, bikes are still king in Long Beach. While the Hampton cruiser-style models have been the rage with kids in the past few years, both Fusillo and Merritt said that more adults of varying ages are buying them, too.

“They’re just very comfortable, and they require less maintenance and are easier to ride,” Fusillo said about his cruisers, which start at $216.

Merritt said that most of the bikes in his shop are priced in the same range and go has high as $400, and that the cruisers remain the most popular model in town. “Everybody’s riding them now,” he said.

“There’s no maintenance, there’s no cables, it’s one speed, it’s got wide, comfortable handlebars so there’s no leaning over. It’s a perfect bike for Long Beach.”


Joseph Kellard is a journalist and columnist living in New York.

Please post comments about this article. For inquiries about Joseph Kellard’s writing services, email him at: Theainet1@optonline.net.

'He was a brave and fearless little boy'

Tarantino Jr., 8, loses battle with leukemia

By Joseph Kellard


It turned out to be Thomas Tarantino Jr.’s last trip to his favorite restaurant, but it was the first time he walked in, ordered a Happy Meal and paid for it all on his own.

"He was so proud that he went and did it himself," Thomas Tarantino Sr. said about his 8-year-old son’s trip to McDonald’s on June 23. "It was a big deal to him.”

A few weeks earlier, Thomas’s parents had been told that their son had a month to live after a five-year battle with leukemia.

At McDonald’s, his father had sensed, from the boy’s rapidly deteriorating appearance, that day would be his last. That afternoon, Thomas went home, played cards with his uncle and sat in his favorite spot on the living room couch. After he fell into a deep sleep, his immediate and extended family sang his favorite songs, "Sweet Home Alabama," by Lynyrd Skynyrd, and "Take Me Out To The Ball Game," and his sister Michelle, 15, read him his most beloved book, "David Goes To School." Shortly after 8 p.m., Thomas took his last breath.

For the next three nights, his brother and two sisters slept on the couch together.

Thomas Matthew Tarantino Jr. was born with pervasive deficit disorder, a type of autism, at Mercy Medical Center in Rockville Centre on Nov. 16, 1999. Three years later he was diagnosed with leukemia. In the following years, he suffered two relapses that considerably reduced his chances of healing. He underwent "grueling treatments," his father explained, involving routine trips to the hospital for chemotherapy and various tests and operations.

"He was a brave and fearless little boy who taught us all how to appreciate our lives, our friends and family," Thomas Sr. said. "And I don’t know if he was that way because of his mental incapacity or because of all he went through since he was 3."

Thomas attended the Children’s Readiness Center in North Bellmore, but he could only say a few words at a time and couldn’t spell. Yet he was unusually adept with electronics. By age 4, he could access and operate any feature on any cell phone.

"He could take your cell and show you things on it that you never even knew you had," said his father, whose "Sweet Home Alabama" ring tone introduced Thomas to the song.

When the supermarket delivery man, Tony, came to the Tarantino home on East Hudson Street, Thomas routinely had him check his cell phone with him. "Thomas would call the man’s wife while he delivered our groceries," said his mother, Samantha.

Thomas would also text-message people, pressing successive rows of numbers or letters that instantly told them who it was. He would do the same with instant messaging on the computer to his siblings’ friends while he visited his favorite Web sites, including iTunes.com.

While the boy mostly kept to himself, he was still outgoing with strangers. "He was always friendly, always greeting people," his father recalled. "He wanted to congregate with you. It didn’t matter if you were white or black, young or old. He loved everybody."

Samantha said it didn’t matter who you were, Thomas would say hello to you. "If we were driving in the car and the windows were open and we pulled up to a red light, he would say hello to the people in the car next to us," she said.

Samantha said that her son taught her, above all, how to be kind and compassionate to others. "He had nothing to offer anybody but his gentle nature," she said. "And if you were kind to him, forget it; you had a friend for life."

When Thomas left his house, he particularly enjoyed going to Gino’s on Park Avenue, Adventure Land Amusement Park in Farmingdale, East Buffet restaurant in Huntington Station, and, most of all, any McDonald’s. His parents stepped up their trips with him to his favorite places when they were told in late May that his leukemia was terminal.

About 10 days before he died, Thomas rode with his father on his motorcycle, alongside his uncle and several others from a biker club. The armada of motorcycles roared along Park Avenue and West Beech Street to the Atlantic Beach Bridge, then back to East Hudson.

Thomas watched and rooted for both the Yankees and Mets, he attended Mass at Sacred Heart Church in Island Park with his grandmother, Sylberta Tarantino, and he could often be found playing with his siblings, Michelle, 15, Victor, 13, and Theresa, 5.

"He was an innocent little boy who offered a lot of love," Thomas Sr. said. "And I never knew I could love so much as I loved my son Thomas. “I love my wife and all my children. But Thomas was special because he had been through so much, and I had a deeper love for him because of what he had to endure."

At Thomas’s burial at Greenfield Cemetery in Hempstead, Rabbi David Rosenberg, of Shuvah Yisrael Messianic Synagogues in East Williston, sang the boy’s favorite song: "Sweet home Alabama/where the skies are so blue/... Lord I’m comin’ home to you."

But it was the lone bagpiper who played at his funeral at Sacred Heart, which was attended by more than 350 mourners, that hit his father the hardest. "It was so powerful — it was so beautiful," Thomas Sr. recalled.

His brother, Thomas’s godfather, Anthony Tarantino, a head usher at the church, hired the bagpiper, having been inspired by a scene from the movie "Braveheart."

"When the king died," Thomas Sr. explained, "there was a lone bagpipe. And Thomas deserved to be compared to a king."



Joseph Kellard is a journalist and columnist living in New York.

Please post comments about this article. For inquiries about Joseph Kellard’s writing services, email him at: Theainet1@optonline.net.

'Just the greatest guy you could ever meet'

Family, friends say goodbye to Leo Vann Jr., 14

By Joseph Kellard


“His smile — that’s all you needed to know about him,” Chris Ferrante said before the funeral service for his friend, 14-year-old Leo Vann Jr., at the Christian Light Missionary Baptist Church.

Inside, that smile — along with Vann’s benevolent, optimistic spirit — figured prominently in speeches the drowning victim’s family and friends gave at the two-hour service on July 3. They remembered that Leo was full of joy, excitement and jokes, and some likened him to the sun or a rainbow that shone through dark clouds.

Lakesha Thomas, Leo’s mother, highlighted her son’s smile and his upbeat personality when she stood beside his gray casket, microphone in hand, in front of hundreds of mourners who packed the church’s pews, lined its walls and spilled outside the front doors.

“Whenever I was down,” said Thomas, who wore a button sporting her son’s image on her black blouse, “Leo would always say to me ‘Ma, it’s not that serious. We don’t have time for that.’”

Even in a remembrance piece she wrote about her son that appeared in the service’s program, Thomas mentioned his pearly whites and his carefree attitude. “Although you were only 14,” she wrote, “you taught me how to relax and enjoy life.”

Wayne Vann, a deacon at Christian Light, called his nephew “one of God’s instruments,” and said, “Leo’s smile — that smile — changed complexions in people … If you didn’t have love in your heart when you met him, you certainly did after that.”

“That Leo is gone just really breaks my heart,” said his younger sister, Zariah Simone Vann. “He was just the greatest guy you could ever meet. It seemed like he never had a bad day in his life.”

But Leo’s worst day came on June 27. That afternoon, while skateboarding with friends at a park near the Recreation Center on Reynolds Channel, he jumped into the bay to cool off and never resurfaced. His body was found later by rescue personnel, but they could not revive him.

Leo was born April 12, 1994 at South Nassau Communities Hospital in Oceanside, on the birthday of his aunt, LaSheena Neals, who recalled that day.

“‘I don’t want this,’ I said,” Neals joked about being presented with Leo for the first time, and the mourners managed a collective laugh despite their sorrow. “But he was the best birthday present that I ever got.”

Leo’s father, Leo Vann Sr., taught him how to shoot a basketball and throw a fastball. His son developed into a versatile athlete who played football, volleyball and soccer and ran track.

A week before he drowned, Leo graduated from Long Beach Middle School, where he was honored with the Mags Humanitarian Award, presented by teachers to “a student who goes out of his way to help people and tries their best,” said Keith Biesma, the school’s assistant principal.

During his power-charged eulogy, the Rev. Isaac Melton told the mourners — a racially mixed crowd — that Leo didn’t treat others according to their racial group or other irrelevancies. Some mourners recalled that Leo liked to attend church, while others noted what he enjoyed most: riding his skateboard with his friends.

Kelli Ann Santaniello described how she was baffled when her daughter, Lauren, told her that she wanted to give her skateboard to Leo, who was without a board but would later collect 10. “‘If you knew Leo the way I know him, you’d understand,’” said Santaniello, quoting her daughter, a co-winner of the Mags Award. Santaniello said her daughter was glad that Leo died doing what he loved.

Leo Sr., who had planned to have his son visit him in Georgia this summer, was taken aback by the number of Leo’s friends who attended prayer vigils and other gatherings after his death. “Who knew that your charm and charisma would make you everyone’s star?” he wrote in a note about his first child.

Leo’s friends wore T-shirts, buttons and hats that featured his smiling image, and in unison they did his favorite rally-like clap during the service, which also featured his relatives singing gospel classics like “Walk With Me Jesus.”

“He was friends with the whole class,” said Caitlin O’Connell, who had graduated with Vann two weeks earlier.

“He was not mean to anyone,” said J.T. Forkin, another LBMS graduate. “He gave everyone a chance.”

Outside the church after the service, Coby Thomas told reporters that his cousin’s goal in life was to protect kids who were being beaten up. “How better can you get than that?” he asked. “You can’t get no better than that.”

Leo’s wake was held at Jordan’s Funeral Home in Island Park, and he was buried at Greenfield Cemetery in Hempstead. In addition to his parents and sister, he is survived by a brother, Quamel Dejuan Mclaurin of Long Beach; grandmothers Virginia Crawford of Long Beach and Yvonna Presley of Hempstead; grandfathers Shawn Presley of Hempstead and Harold Washington; a great-grandmother, Pinkie Vann- Williams; aunts LaSheena Neals and Shamona Crawford of Long Beach and Ayanna Vann of Dallas, Ga.; uncles Terrele Boyce of Denver and Larry Strevens of Long Beach; and cousins Jayden Serrano, Luvv Michee’ Scott and Zion Boyce.Joseph Kellard is a journalist and columnist living in New York.



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For inquiries about Joseph Kellard’s writing services, email him at: Theainet1@optonline.net.

Tudor Stands Out

Long Beach Family keeps upgrading home after 35 years

By Joseph Kellard

Last Thursday afternoon, 77-year-old Sam Arnone could be found lounging in shorts and a T-shirt on the newly renovated front porch of his home at 310 W. Olive St., at the corner of Laurelton Boulevard.

The Tudor, built in 1952, sports the exposed wood framing, white plaster walls, front and side gables with slate roofing, and dark-brick chimney with decorative gray stone typical of its architectural style. Yet Arnone’s home strikes a neat, high-maintenance look that makes it a standout in a neighborhood that includes other Tudors and a landmark Spanish-styled house next door.

Rising from a well-manicured, elevated lawn, the Tudor is surrounded by lush bushes of varying sizes and bordered by a thigh-high concrete wall that cleanly demarcates the treeless, sun-soaked property from the Laurelton sidewalk. That all the exterior features appear new on this classic-styled home is a testament to the many hours of sweat Arnone has invested in renovations since he and his wife, Carol, bought the three-bedroom, three-bath, 2,000-square-foot home in 1973.

“Every year I do something new,” said Arnone, a retired electrical engineer with Sperry Gyroscope, a company that developed navigation systems for the U.S. Navy. The brick and concrete front porch, with its granite steps and new awning, was his latest project.

Although Arnone now hires contractors to do such major work, over the years he and his son, Chris, renovated the kitchen, bathrooms and basement so many times, he’s unsure of the exact count. “Two or three times,” Arnone said about redoing the kitchen that now has a modern mica countertop and cream-colored cabinets.

He said he renovated often because the rooms got outdated, but Carol said the former rooms were just as functional. She claims her husband just has to keep working.

“He can’t stay still,” she said. “He’s very handy and he made this whole house all over. And when he retired, he didn’t know what to do with himself.”

When the Arnones had five cars, he widened the driveway. They also installed central air, and, five years ago, had the concrete wall along Laurelton set back three feet and replaced a nearby stretch of grass — between the sidewalk and curb — with red brick.

“I put brick there because I was tired of mowing the lawn,” Arnone said with a chuckle.

Inside, one of the few original features is an ornamental marble fireplace in the living room, along with cornices around the windows.

“The only reason we didn’t do anything with the fireplace is because it’s a beautiful piece,” he said. All the original windows were stained glass, and some 20 years ago he replaced them — except for the three that remain in the trio of bathrooms — with weather-proofed panes.

The Tudor’s original owner, whose name escapes the Arnones, held a prominent position at House Beautiful magazine, and they attribute to him the home’s fancier features that remain.

Carol, a Manhattan native, spent summers with her parents in a bungalow on Wisconsin Avenue in the West End. This is where she met Sam, who had lived in Long Beach since he was four. They bought their Tudor from the Brown family, and they rented it for a year before they moved in from Queens after their son graduated from elementary school. Carol recalled that she put a down payment on the home while her husband was on a business trip. “Boy, he flipped when he came back,” she said.

She remembered the asking price was $52,000, but she got the real estate agent to sell the home for $40,000 after it was on the market for an extended time and the Browns were also away.

“When I bought it, I told the realtor I wanted something distinct,” Carol said. “And when we passed this house, I took one look at it and said, ‘If you can get me inside this house, you have a sale.’”

Today, Carol said she believes she and her husband can get — in a healthy real estate market — up to $900,000 for their Tudor. But the Arnones have no intention of selling. “I love Long Beach,” Arnone said.

“What’s great about it is the beach and the boardwalk. You can’t beat the boardwalk, and the beach’s white sand is beautiful.”

Joseph Kellard is a journalist and columnist living in New York.

Please post comments about this article. For inquiries about Joseph Kellard’s writing services, email him at: Theainet1@optonline.net.