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.”
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
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.”
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Polar Bears Give Businesses A Boost
By Joseph Kellard
Andrew Loucas, who bought the long-established Laurel Luncheonette, at 300 W. Park Ave., three years ago, is getting accustomed to a certain ritual.
Each Super Bowl Sunday, participants in the Long Beach Polar Bear Club’s annual ocean plunge show up at the diner before their frigid swim to load up on carbohydrates, ordering stacks of pancakes and waffles —and lots of hot chocolate to go.
“Then the place empties out for about an hour before we get a few cold, wet people in here,” Loucas said, referring to the post-plunge diners.
The event, which benefits the Make-A-Wish Foundation, is now in its 12th year, and draws a crowd of thousands. Its success has created something of a one-day business boom in the dead of winter, and more Long Beach business owners are looking to capitalize on it.
The restaurant-bar Sutton Place is abuzz with customers from 11 a.m. to the end of the Super Bowl, according to its owner, Rob Richards. The ocean swim allows Richards to extend an already busy day by hosting a pre-lunge breakfast with complimentary bagels, coffee and hot chocolate.
“We pack the place early with kids, wives, husbands, grandmothers and grandfathers to meet and greet before they head to the beach,” Richards explained. “Then they come back immediately after and start getting ready for the game. By 1 or 1:30 the place is jamming.”
It doesn’t hurt that the restaurant, on West Park Avenue, is just a few blocks from where the crowd gathers, at Riverside Boulevard beach.
The Beach House, a sports bar and grill on West Beech Street, makes up for its distance from the event by providing swimmers transportation to and from the beach, after offering them bagels and coffee.
Ben Freiser, who co-owns both the Beach House and Speakeasy, which is also in the West End, said he has seen an increase in business as the number of participants in the ocean swim has grown.
Last year at the Beach House, Freiser said, his pre- and post-swim parties were unexpectedly crowded. “It used to be on Super Bowl Sunday in daytime, I had a skeleton crew on,” he explained, “and the last few years I didn’t have enough staff, because usually you don’t see any customers until close to game time, and now 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. you have a nice crowd.”
One group of West End polar bears gather at Speakeasy before and after the swim, when Freiser hosts a “more quaint, less raucous” post-plunge party. He said that more people appear to be incorporating the event into their other plans for the day, which has become a quasi-national holiday on which the volume of food consumed nationwide trails only Thanksgiving.
For the past five years, longtime Long Beach resident Mark McCarthy has jumped into the ocean before the game. After he opened Lola’s, on West Park Avenue, last January, he decided to get his business involved in the event after talking to two regular customers, the swim’s founders, Peter Meyers and Kevin McCarthy (no relation).
“They said that some people who had no place to go afterwards would go to the VFW hall, but people like the volunteers from Make-A-Wish and others would just wander around,” Mark McCarthy said. “So I said, let’s bring them all back to Lola’s, and whatever money we raise, we’ll give it to Make-A-Wish.”
So, from 1 to 4 p.m., McCarthy will host an unlimited buffet brunch — charging $20 for adults and $10 children — with the proceeds go to the foundation. “Times are tough out there in the world,” he said, “but they’re never too tough that we can’t help out other people.”
Other business are taking a more proactive approach by heading to the boardwalk. Swingbellys Beachside BBQ, another West Beech Street establishment, will offer swimmers and spectators an ounce of chili for the second straight year.
“The customers loved it,” said Brian Berkery of Creative Vibe, an advertising agency that promotes Swingbellys. “It was a huge hit.”
Andrew Loucas, who bought the long-established Laurel Luncheonette, at 300 W. Park Ave., three years ago, is getting accustomed to a certain ritual.
Each Super Bowl Sunday, participants in the Long Beach Polar Bear Club’s annual ocean plunge show up at the diner before their frigid swim to load up on carbohydrates, ordering stacks of pancakes and waffles —and lots of hot chocolate to go.
“Then the place empties out for about an hour before we get a few cold, wet people in here,” Loucas said, referring to the post-plunge diners.
The event, which benefits the Make-A-Wish Foundation, is now in its 12th year, and draws a crowd of thousands. Its success has created something of a one-day business boom in the dead of winter, and more Long Beach business owners are looking to capitalize on it.
The restaurant-bar Sutton Place is abuzz with customers from 11 a.m. to the end of the Super Bowl, according to its owner, Rob Richards. The ocean swim allows Richards to extend an already busy day by hosting a pre-lunge breakfast with complimentary bagels, coffee and hot chocolate.
“We pack the place early with kids, wives, husbands, grandmothers and grandfathers to meet and greet before they head to the beach,” Richards explained. “Then they come back immediately after and start getting ready for the game. By 1 or 1:30 the place is jamming.”
It doesn’t hurt that the restaurant, on West Park Avenue, is just a few blocks from where the crowd gathers, at Riverside Boulevard beach.
The Beach House, a sports bar and grill on West Beech Street, makes up for its distance from the event by providing swimmers transportation to and from the beach, after offering them bagels and coffee.
Ben Freiser, who co-owns both the Beach House and Speakeasy, which is also in the West End, said he has seen an increase in business as the number of participants in the ocean swim has grown.
Last year at the Beach House, Freiser said, his pre- and post-swim parties were unexpectedly crowded. “It used to be on Super Bowl Sunday in daytime, I had a skeleton crew on,” he explained, “and the last few years I didn’t have enough staff, because usually you don’t see any customers until close to game time, and now 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. you have a nice crowd.”
One group of West End polar bears gather at Speakeasy before and after the swim, when Freiser hosts a “more quaint, less raucous” post-plunge party. He said that more people appear to be incorporating the event into their other plans for the day, which has become a quasi-national holiday on which the volume of food consumed nationwide trails only Thanksgiving.
For the past five years, longtime Long Beach resident Mark McCarthy has jumped into the ocean before the game. After he opened Lola’s, on West Park Avenue, last January, he decided to get his business involved in the event after talking to two regular customers, the swim’s founders, Peter Meyers and Kevin McCarthy (no relation).
“They said that some people who had no place to go afterwards would go to the VFW hall, but people like the volunteers from Make-A-Wish and others would just wander around,” Mark McCarthy said. “So I said, let’s bring them all back to Lola’s, and whatever money we raise, we’ll give it to Make-A-Wish.”
So, from 1 to 4 p.m., McCarthy will host an unlimited buffet brunch — charging $20 for adults and $10 children — with the proceeds go to the foundation. “Times are tough out there in the world,” he said, “but they’re never too tough that we can’t help out other people.”
Other business are taking a more proactive approach by heading to the boardwalk. Swingbellys Beachside BBQ, another West Beech Street establishment, will offer swimmers and spectators an ounce of chili for the second straight year.
“The customers loved it,” said Brian Berkery of Creative Vibe, an advertising agency that promotes Swingbellys. “It was a huge hit.”
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Audrey Remo
Teacher, avid walker, dies at 87
By Joseph Kellard
Audrey Remo often put one purposeful step in front of the other.
Each weekday, the Long Beach woman hiked two lengths of the boardwalk with her walking club. She walked home from work at the middle school every day. Her vacations usually involved trekking in some corner of the globe. And she particularly enjoyed making shoeprints in the virgin snow outside her West Walnut Street home.
A snow-lover, Remo would forgo trips to Florida because she never wanted to miss a winter in Long Beach.
“It was always fun for her to get up early enough to make sure that, if there was a good amount of snowfall, she wanted her footprints to be the first in the snow,” said Lenny Remo, her son and a Long Beach City Council member.
Remo walked until a problem hip sidelined her at age 85. Two years later, on Dec. 29, she died of natural causes.
She and Eve Epstein formed a walking club in 1991. At one point, it numbered 11 members, and they covered the 4.2 miles of wooden planks Monday through Friday, every week, even in winter.
“Audrey was one of the fastest in the group and was always out front,” said Epstein, who noted that the club often paused so that Remo could greet her many friends.
“Everyone liked her,” Epstein added. “She was an outstanding woman:
bright, kind and very thoughtful and insightful.”
In May 2004, the club caught the attention of Newsday, which published a story on them, and Channel 21 picked up on it, doing its own feature.
For the past 10 years, Remo taught at the middle school — driving to work each morning with her husband of 59 years, the late Leonard C. Remo, and walking home each afternoon.
Rita Smith, who taught with Remo and joined her walking club, said, “She was a wonderful person who was exceptionally bright, and everyone loved her.”
Born in 1921, Audrey Gray moved to Long Beach from Manhattan with her parents and older sider to the W. Walnut Street home that she would live in the rest of her life. She graduated from Long Beach High School and New York University, where she met her future husband, Leonard. They married in 1943, before Leonard joined the U.S. Army and saw action in Sicily, Africa and France during World War II. She served in the True Sisters, an organization that rolled bandages during the war.
Once the couple settled down they raised their children, Lenny and Kathy, and taught together at Long Beach schools for more than 30 years. Remo spent most of them teaching reading at the middle school.
“She had a very good rapport with the children, and many of them were reluctant learners,” Smith said. “But she was very well liked by kids.”
Barbara Ruderman, who first met Remo in 1965 when their sons were in the same third-grade class at Central School, recalled that when a black family moved with several children into a two-family home on W. Hudson Street, Remo learned from one of their sons at her school that they all slept on the floor.
“And there she was carrying up mattresses, that she rounded up from her huge circle of friends in town, up the stairs into their apartment,” Ruderman said.
When on vacation Remo became a world traveler whose next adventure was always a previously uncharged locale, from Japan to Egypt to the Oregon Trail. She once caught a glimpse of Haley’s Comet while sailing through the Panama Canal. In addition to travel, Remo loved to read and enjoyed theater and art museums.
“This was a woman who, for the majority of her life, woke up every day and said I want to see what today has to bring, what’s going to be new and different, what am I going to learn or what am I going to teach,” Lenny said. “She was always positive and always looking to tomorrow.”
While still a teacher, Remo was a Pink Lady volunteer in the gift shop at Long Beach Memorial Hospital (now Long Beach Medical Center).
In retirement, she also gave her time to sit on the board of directors at the Long Beach soup kitchen, and was involved in the Long Beach Historical Society and the local Haddasha. About eight years ago, Nassau County named Remo their Senior of the Year.
“There was nothing that my mother would ask somebody to do that she
would not do herself,” Lenny said.
Ruderman described Remo as “a very generous spirit” who was always ready to lend a helping hand, and remembered how when Ruderman’s husband was on his deathbed at LBMC, Remo sat at his side each day.
“She was there on the day he died and sat with him the whole day until it was over,” Ruderman remembered.
Remo is survived by her son Lenny Remo and daughter-in-law Julie, daughter Kathy Remo and son-in-law David Kee, and her two nieces and two nephews. A memorial service will be held for her this summer. Remo dedicated her body to medical science.
By Joseph Kellard
Audrey Remo often put one purposeful step in front of the other.
Each weekday, the Long Beach woman hiked two lengths of the boardwalk with her walking club. She walked home from work at the middle school every day. Her vacations usually involved trekking in some corner of the globe. And she particularly enjoyed making shoeprints in the virgin snow outside her West Walnut Street home.
A snow-lover, Remo would forgo trips to Florida because she never wanted to miss a winter in Long Beach.
“It was always fun for her to get up early enough to make sure that, if there was a good amount of snowfall, she wanted her footprints to be the first in the snow,” said Lenny Remo, her son and a Long Beach City Council member.
Remo walked until a problem hip sidelined her at age 85. Two years later, on Dec. 29, she died of natural causes.
She and Eve Epstein formed a walking club in 1991. At one point, it numbered 11 members, and they covered the 4.2 miles of wooden planks Monday through Friday, every week, even in winter.
“Audrey was one of the fastest in the group and was always out front,” said Epstein, who noted that the club often paused so that Remo could greet her many friends.
“Everyone liked her,” Epstein added. “She was an outstanding woman:
bright, kind and very thoughtful and insightful.”
In May 2004, the club caught the attention of Newsday, which published a story on them, and Channel 21 picked up on it, doing its own feature.
For the past 10 years, Remo taught at the middle school — driving to work each morning with her husband of 59 years, the late Leonard C. Remo, and walking home each afternoon.
Rita Smith, who taught with Remo and joined her walking club, said, “She was a wonderful person who was exceptionally bright, and everyone loved her.”
Born in 1921, Audrey Gray moved to Long Beach from Manhattan with her parents and older sider to the W. Walnut Street home that she would live in the rest of her life. She graduated from Long Beach High School and New York University, where she met her future husband, Leonard. They married in 1943, before Leonard joined the U.S. Army and saw action in Sicily, Africa and France during World War II. She served in the True Sisters, an organization that rolled bandages during the war.
Once the couple settled down they raised their children, Lenny and Kathy, and taught together at Long Beach schools for more than 30 years. Remo spent most of them teaching reading at the middle school.
“She had a very good rapport with the children, and many of them were reluctant learners,” Smith said. “But she was very well liked by kids.”
Barbara Ruderman, who first met Remo in 1965 when their sons were in the same third-grade class at Central School, recalled that when a black family moved with several children into a two-family home on W. Hudson Street, Remo learned from one of their sons at her school that they all slept on the floor.
“And there she was carrying up mattresses, that she rounded up from her huge circle of friends in town, up the stairs into their apartment,” Ruderman said.
When on vacation Remo became a world traveler whose next adventure was always a previously uncharged locale, from Japan to Egypt to the Oregon Trail. She once caught a glimpse of Haley’s Comet while sailing through the Panama Canal. In addition to travel, Remo loved to read and enjoyed theater and art museums.
“This was a woman who, for the majority of her life, woke up every day and said I want to see what today has to bring, what’s going to be new and different, what am I going to learn or what am I going to teach,” Lenny said. “She was always positive and always looking to tomorrow.”
While still a teacher, Remo was a Pink Lady volunteer in the gift shop at Long Beach Memorial Hospital (now Long Beach Medical Center).
In retirement, she also gave her time to sit on the board of directors at the Long Beach soup kitchen, and was involved in the Long Beach Historical Society and the local Haddasha. About eight years ago, Nassau County named Remo their Senior of the Year.
“There was nothing that my mother would ask somebody to do that she
would not do herself,” Lenny said.
Ruderman described Remo as “a very generous spirit” who was always ready to lend a helping hand, and remembered how when Ruderman’s husband was on his deathbed at LBMC, Remo sat at his side each day.
“She was there on the day he died and sat with him the whole day until it was over,” Ruderman remembered.
Remo is survived by her son Lenny Remo and daughter-in-law Julie, daughter Kathy Remo and son-in-law David Kee, and her two nieces and two nephews. A memorial service will be held for her this summer. Remo dedicated her body to medical science.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
'60 Minutes' Features Flynn Family
DWI Tragedy Revisited
By Joseph Kellard
“I wanted that courthouse on top of him, I wanted him buried under the jail, I want him dead," Neil Flynn, of Lido Beach, said on “60 Minutes” last Sunday.
Flynn was referring to Martin Heidgen, the Valley Stream man who killed his 7-year-old daughter, Katie, in a horrific drunk-driving accident on the Meadowbrook Parkway three and a half years ago.
Flynn appeared in the opening segment of CBS's top-rated news show, which focused on Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice and her crusade to more severely penalize drunk drivers, and especially those who kill other drivers. The Flynn-Heidgen case was the centerpiece of the report.
Seated beside his wife, Jennifer, Flynn told “60 Minutes” correspondent Bob Simon, “I relive the crash, I think about it every day, I have nightmares about it every night, and I live my life without my daughter because of it.”
The crash Flynn relives occurred early on the morning of July 2, 2005. Driving north in a Chevrolet pickup truck at high speed in the southbound lanes of the Meadowbrook with a blood-alcohol content three times the legal limit, Heidgen slammed into the limousine that was taking Katie and her sister, parents and grandparents home from a wedding reception in Bayville, where she had been a flower girl at her aunt's wedding. While Heidgen suffered only wrist and ankle injuries, the limo driver, Stanley Rabinowitz, 59, of Farmingdale, was crushed to death, Katie was decapitated, and other passengers were severely injured.
Instead of manslaughter, the typical charge for a DWI fatality, Heidgen was charged with murder. So instead of facing a sentence ranging from probation to 15 years in prison, he was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 18 years to life in October 2006.
“The statute under which he was charged required us to prove that, through his actions, he had a completely depraved indifference to human life,” Rice explained to Simon. “His actions made the deaths of Katie Flynn and Stanley Rabinowitz inevitable. It was as inevitable as taking a gun and firing it at an individual who is standing five feet away from me.”
Heidgen's attorney, Stephen Lamagna of Garden City, told Simon that charging his client with murder instead of vehicular homicide was akin to treating him like a cold-blooded killer on a par with serial murderer Jeffrey Dahmer. “Are we as a society ready to water down what murder is and turn our sons and daughters into murderers who go out and drink and drive and cause a fatal accident?” Lamagna said.“No matter how tragic these cases are ... they're an unintentional act that was caused by the alcohol. But for the alcohol, this wouldn't have happened.”
Rice responded that being drunk should not absolve Heidgen of responsibility for his actions.
“What kind of lawlessness would you have if intoxication excused that kind of behavior?” she said.
Catherine Olian, the producer of the “60 Minutes” segment, told the Herald that the main reason the show's producers decided to spotlight this case was its groundbreaking outcome.
“There are very sad deaths from drunk driving all the time, and that wouldn't make us do a story,” Olian explained. “It was the fact that [Heidgen] was convicted of murder that made us interested in the story. That's when we thought how drunk-driving deaths are treated in the courts. Was this usual or unusual?”
The show began researching the story last spring, Olian said, interviewing prosecutors and defense attorneys in several states and looking into the range of laws dealing with drunk driving. “60 Minutes” staffers found that while some states —most notably, Texas — have tried drunk drivers for murder, no one had ever been convicted on a murder charge.
“I think it's about something that hits most people's lives in some way or another,” Olian said of the story, whose airing was delayed last fall due to constantly breaking news on the economy and the presidential election. “And I think it's a societal problem that people don't really know how to deal with.”
Simon told the Herald that what he took away from the story was that the tragedy had two sides — Katie Flynn's horrific death and her family’s agony over it, and Heidgen's future. “He's also dead because he'll be in prison the rest of his life,” Simon said. “That's also a tragedy and a waste, even though I think he deserves it.”
While Lamagna declined comment on the report, Rice said that the show “did an exceptional job of showing the inevitable consequences of drunk driving. It highlighted a life-and-death issue that's happening in every community across the country.”
Asked why she thinks her campaign to more severely punish drunk drivers attracted so much attention, Rice said she believes that, historically, prosecutors have been reluctant to push the envelope on the issue.
“I think that's because there are still so many people who sympathize with the drunk driver,” she said, echoing a point she made on the show. “That is the mindset we are trying to change here, and that's why I think it has a national appeal.”
On Tuesday afternoon, less than 48 hours after the show aired, Rice said her office had received hundreds of calls and e-mails. “They were thanking us for our leadership on this issue,” she said, noting that the volume of comments was unusually high.
Within 24 hours of the broadcast, there were some 500 comments posted on the “60 Minutes” Web site. Olian said that most were from viewers who disagreed with Rice’s stance.
“People who disagree tend to post more on any story,” she said.
Neil Flynn did not return a call for comment, and Heidgen declined to appear on “60 Minutes” because his case is under appeal.
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