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Yearly Archives: 2016

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Maureen O’Leary on an expedition in Mali. Photo by Eric Roberts

By Daniel Dunaief

At their greatest depths, oceans hold onto their secrets. With layers of light-blocking water between the surface and the bottom, they hide the kind of clues that might reveal more about who, or what, lived or traveled through them.

What if a sea dried up millions of years ago? And, what if that sea left behind pieces of information — some of them small and subtle and others larger and easier to spot? That’s what happened in a part of Africa that long ago gave up any signs of flowing water. The Sahara desert was, millions of years ago, home to an inland sea called the trans-Saharan seaway.

Maureen O’Leary, a professor in the Department of Anatomical Sciences in the School of Medicine at Stony Brook University, has been to Mali, a country in the northwest of Africa, three times on expeditions, most recently in 2008. There, she collected fossils that are members of extinct groups that are part of larger evolutionary units with living members today.

O’Leary has explored and cataloged a number of remnants from the region, including a turtle and crocodile skull. She and her collaborators have also discovered sting ray fossils. Originally considered likely residents after an asteroid hit Earth that caused a massive extinction, these fossils now suggest that these sting rays lived in the area earlier than previously believed.

“This suggests that the sting rays did survive” the asteroid impact, said O’Leary. “Often extinction events are described in very broad terms but specific studies like this help us” hone in on the kind of species that survived.

She also found intriguing deposits in fossilized feces. Invertebrates burrowed through these fossilized remains, leaving a cast of the shapes of their bodies. The group that left traces of their activities in fossilized feces includes Pholadidae, which has living members. “A careful inspection of a whole fauna of fossils allows you to find invertebrates you had no record of,” said O’Leary.

Leif Tapanila, the director of the Idaho Museum of Natural History and an associate professor of geosciences at Idaho State University, joined O’Leary on an expedition to Mali in 1999, where he was the invertebrate expert. Tapanila said the feces of sharks, crocodiles and turtles have bone fragments that tend to preserve well. Some of these fossilized feces can be four- to five-feet-thick deposits. A prehistoric diver from 30 million years ago would have found that the bottom of the seaway, which was probably 50 to 70 meters at its deepest points, was covered in these hard feces, Tapanila said.

Tapanila described O’Leary as an effective collaborator who ensured scientists formed effective partnerships. “She brings people together,” Tapanila said. “One of her biggest strengths is that she finds pieces of the puzzle that are needed for a particular scientific question. She sets up the infrastructure to make a research project work.”

In one of the blocks of limestone recovered in 1999, O’Leary found a crocodile skull with well-preserved ear bones. That level of detail is unusual in a fossil because of the relatively small and fine nature of those bones. Robert Hill, who was a doctoral student in O’Leary’s lab and is now a professor at Hofstra University, noticed that the ear bones had bite marks on them. A closer examination suggested that the marks were made by a shark, either during a prehistoric battle or after the crocodile had died.

O’Leary is currently working with Eric Roberts, the head of Geoscience at James Cook University in Australia, to write a review paper on Mali that would contain some reconstructions of the region and the species. The paper would emphasize a big picture story using the specialized details she and others collected. This will not only help people see the world as it was but also may help them see the Earth as a changing place, where rising sea levels could cause another transition in a dry and arid region.

While O’Leary would like to return to Mali, she and numerous other scientists have kept their distance amid the political instability in the area. In 2008, Canadian diplomat Robert Fowler was taken hostage for 60 days. “There were some diplomats there who seemed unflappable and serious” who suggested that O’Leary and her colleagues return home during their expedition. “The American Embassy was instrumental in leaning on me to leave.” O’Leary said the politics of these areas, despite the rich story they may have to tell about the past, “can play into whether science can even be done.”

In addition to her research in Mali, O’Leary raised the money and created an online system called MorphoBank, which enables scientists studying anatomy all over the world to collect their information in one place. MorphoBank encourages those interested in anatomy of any kind to find data in one place. Tapanila credits O’Leary for creating a valuable resource. For the time, MorphoBank was “totally new. It takes a lot of effort and vision to pull that off,” he said.

O’Leary is married to Michael Novacek, an author and senior vice president and curator in the Division of Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History. He is one of the team leaders of the joint American Museum of Natural History/Mongolian Academy of Sciences ongoing expeditions to the Gobi Desert. The duo, who collaborated on an expedition in Morocco, have co-authored papers on the philosophy of science, placental mammal evolution and a team-based study of mammal evolution that was published in the journal Science.

O’Leary watches the political scene in and around Mali from afar.“I do keep an eye on it and would love to return,” she said.

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Stony Brook’s Center for Planetary Exploration opens

Renee Schofield explains the testbed for the PIXL she built. Photo by Kevin Redding

By Kevin Redding

Although some might not think of Suffolk County as an obvious hotbed of planetary exploration, it doesn’t take long to discover just how impactful the research and work conducted on Long Island has been on the growth of space science.

Going back to the Apollo program in the early 1960s, the Grumman corporation was vital in landing astronauts on the moon by designing, assembling and testing the lunar module at its facility in Bethpage.

Even closer to home, the founder of Stony Brook University’s Department of Earth and Space Sciences, Dr. Oliver Schaeffer, became the first person to date celestial objects. He confirmed that the moon rocks brought back by Apollo astronauts were more than four billion years old.

Donald Hendrix leads a research team to help future astronauts prevent long-term illnesses. Photo by Kevin Redding
Donald Hendrix leads a research team to help future astronauts prevent long-term illnesses. Photo by Kevin Redding

Now half a century later, Stony Brook University has once again cemented Long Island’s place in innovative planetary research.

In 2014, Timothy Glotch, a professor in the department of geosciences, received a $5.5 million grant from NASA through their Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute program to support his research. The department eventually obtained a 6,500-square-foot, world-class facility consisting of three different labs.

On Aug. 26, the public was invited to the official opening of Stony Brook’s Center for Planetary Exploration, where faculty members and students in the department gave a tour of their labs and showcased the inspiring work that has taken place so far.

At the core of CPEX is the Stony Brook-led multi-institutional Remote, In Situ, and Synchrotron Studies for Science and Exploration Institute, one of the nine nodes of the NASA program.

“We’re trying to pave the way for future human exploration of the solar system,” Glotch said. “Right now we are doing basic science; we are doing exploration activities that are going to get humans to Mars, back to the moon, and to the moons of Mars. That work is going on right here. We’re kind of leading the way in space exploration and we’re very proud of that. ”

He stressed the importance of the overall goal: to train the next generation of solar system explorers and scientists. The students are going to be running missions in the next decade or two, he said.

“Just as Schaeffer put together a young and talented group of researchers, we now have an extraordinarily talented group of young researchers working in planetary science,” current Chair of the Department Dan Davis said.

“We’re trying to pave the way for future human exploration of the solar system.”

—Timothy Glotch

As for the three different labs, professor Joel Hurowitz runs the geochemistry lab, which includes a student-built test bed for the Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry, which will fly on the Mars 2020 rover.

The PIXL is an X-ray microscope that looks at rock samples and builds maps of the elemental distribution in those samples to make it easier to analyze.

“From there, we can start to dig in and try to understand whether the environment that those rocks were deposited in were habitable,” Hurowitz said. “PIXL can detect things that are chemical biosignatures. It can detect biosignature in a rock on the surface of Mars. So we’re trying to place some constraints on whether or not there was ever life on Mars.”

The lab is also conducting a series of experiments to determine the damaging effects of lunar dust inhalation by future astronauts.

“What I do is I try to find minerals here on Earth that are similar to what’s found on the moon,” Donald Hendrix, a graduate student leading the research, said. “I grind them up into powders and determine what chemicals are made when they are exposed to fluid, because whenever you breathe in a mineral powder, they can produce chemicals inside your lungs that can potentially cause a lot of damage and turn into lung cancer.

Since humans are going to go back to the moon in the next 20 or 30 years, for really long periods of time, I want to know what hazards astronauts might face while they’re up there.”

Through the research he’s conducting with his team, he’s trying to figure out where astronauts could go that won’t be quite as dangerous.

Professors Joel Hurowitz, Deanne Rogers and Timothy Glotch guide their students in planetary research. Photo by Kevin Redding
Professors Joel Hurowitz, Deanne Rogers and Timothy Glotch guide their students in planetary research. Photo by Kevin Redding

Deanne Rogers runs the remote sensing facility, where faculty, students and postdoctoral researchers analyze various images and infrared data that come from Mars and the moon. From there, they incorporate observation skills and geological training to learn about the planet or moon’s environmental and climatic history.

Glotch’s spectroscopy lab is where students acquire infrared spectra of minerals and rocks for comparison to data collected by Mars and Moon orbiters. Within this lab is the Planetary and Asteroid Regolith Spectroscopy Environmental Chamber, used to re-create the conditions on the lunar surface for accurate measurements.

“I can make the moon on Earth, basically, and that’s pretty exciting,” graduate student Katherine Shirley said. “This machine is special because we can make different environments in this. Eventually we’re going to get some attachments so we can simulate the Martian surface or asteroid surface.”

The lab includes a small piece from Mars, which visitors were encouraged to hold.

Assemblyman Steve Englebright (D-Setauket), who was once a student and employee at SBU, spoke about how much the department means to him.

“I’m practically retired, but my heart is still here,” he said. “I served in this department and am proud to have been among such extraordinary researchers and wonderful human beings for 43 years. It’s a privilege now to help send resources in the direction of these extraordinary individuals who are literally writing the next chapter of our understanding of the universe and solar system. I look forward to continuing to work with you as you go forward. They say I’m technically retired, but don’t believe it. I’m just one phone call away.”

Legislator Kara Hahn (D-Setauket) presented the faculty with a proclamation from the county legislature to celebrate what this research means for the community, the university and the overall future of science.

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Supervisor Frank Petrone says staying within cap will force town to cut art and youth programs

Supervisor Frank Petrone receives the 2016 budget last year. File photo by Rohma Abbas

Huntington residents have the chance to weigh in on possible tax increases for the coming year, as Supervisor Frank Petrone (D) set a public hearing on a proposal authorizing the board to adopt a 2017 budget that would pierce the state tax cap if passed.

This year’s tax levy cap is set at 0.68 percent, and according to town spokesperson A.J. Carter, town employees’ health care costs alone would pierce that tax cap.

The state cap limits the amount a municipality can increase its tax levy, which is the total amount collected in taxes, from budget to budget. While commonly referred to as a “two percent tax cap,” it actually limits levy increases to 2 percent or the rate of inflation — whichever is lower — before certain excluded spending, like on capital projects and pension payments.

Carter said staying within the tax cap would require the town to cut arts and youth programs.

Petrone said when he began the 2017 budget process this summer, he realized how much the town would have to cut to stay within the cap, and started to draft a second budget that Carter said would cost residents approximately $18 to $30 more per household.

At the town board meeting on Aug. 16, Petrone and the board scheduled a public hearing at the Sept. 27 town board meeting to get a feel for how community members would receive the potential increase.

“What we want is a clear direction from the public,” Carter said in a phone interview. “Does the public want us to preserve our existing programs or not?”

Carter said the board will decide at the September meeting if the town will go ahead with either the budget that stays within the tax cap, or the one that pierces it, depending on feedback from the public.

Councilman Gene Cook (R) has disagreed in the past with how Petrone handles the town’s budget, and said he wants to hear how the public feels about a proposed budget that pierces the tax levy cap.

“I am definitely not for it,” Cook said in a phone interview. “I would like to do anything to avoid tax increases. But I am willing to listen to what the public thinks.”

Last year the board passed a roughly $188.7 million budget, which was a 1.3 percent increase in the town’s tax levy, and about a $29 increase for the average homeowner. Overall spending decreased by 0.2 percent.

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International students meet their host families. Director Rhona Goldman is in center of back row. Photo by Dwayne Moore

By Wenhao Ma

One local organization is helping international students adjust to American life.

An evening reception was held at the Wang Center on the Stony Brook campus Aug. 25 to introduce new international students to their host families. For 40 years, the Stony Brook Host Family Program has been providing opportunities for international students to learn about America by having them develop relationships with local volunteer families.

“It’s very difficult when you are not really comfortable with the language,” said Rhona Goldman, director of the program. “This [program] gives students a chance — off campus — to relax and interact with a family.”

Students do not live with the families, but they are invited to join them for meals or to attend events together. Goldman said some families meet with their hosted students two or three times a year, while others see each other on a regular basis.

Goldman and her husband, Dick, are hosting two new international students this year, one from Ghana and the other from China.

“There are so many international students,” Dick said. “They come in not knowing anyone. So they will gravitate to people from their own countries. The dorms, classes, study groups — everything turns out that way.”

He said a lot of international students have a difficult time adjusting to the culture. For example, they don’t know how to get a driver’s license or open a bank account. A family can ease the transition and make finding their way a much more pleasant experience, he said.

“Rhona and her husband Dick are wonderful,” said Jianing Yan, a former hosted student of theirs who graduated in May. “They helped me adapt to the life in America. They took me to shopping malls and grocery stores on the very first day I arrived. Also they helped me learn about the American culture … They really make me feel comfortable here. To me, they are my family.”

Goldman said the students are not the only ones who have benefited from the program. The families benefit, too.

David Altman became a volunteer last year. He hosted three students last semester and will host another two this fall. He said that he has traveled with his daughter to many countries and is interested in different cultures.

“I’ve studied many languages myself,” Altman said. “I know a little Chinese. [The program] helps me also. So it works both ways.”

The host family program works with the university to send out a notification to all international students after they have been admitted. To become enrolled in the program, both students and host families need to submit applications. Goldman said she matches students with families that share similar interests.

On average, about 120 students a year are assigned to 65 local families. However, according to Goldman, this year many students could not be placed simply because there are not enough hosts. She encourages families to learn more about the program and consider becoming hosts.

“We want to serve as many students as possible,” she said. “It’s a most rewarding program.”

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Eddie Munoz leads the pack as he gains yards during a game last season. File photo by Mark D'Angio

By Joseph Wolkin

Ward Melville’s football team lost four key members during the offseason, each departing for collegiate play at a Division II or Division III school.

The Patriots will be without quarterback Matt O’Hea, linebacker Patrick Morelli, defensive end Tom Lorusso and running back Nick Cervone in 2016, leaving major holes in the team’s roster.

Wesley Manning evades a tackle and moves the ball up the field in a game last season. File photo by Bill Landon
Wesley Manning evades a tackle and moves the ball up the field in a game last season. File photo by Bill Landon

However, for head coach Chris Boltrek, who enters his third year at the helm of the Patriots, improving on last year’s 5-3 record is the goal.

“Our expectations are pretty high,” Boltrek said. “We received the No. 3 seed out of 14 teams in the division. That shows everybody that the coaches in our league see us as being a pretty good team. Our expectations are to live up to those standards.”

Despite losing four seniors, 22 seniors return to the Patriots this year, making them a title contender after finishing 2015 tied for third in the division with Northport and Connetquot.

With O’Hea’s departure, Ward Melville looks to replace the young man who threw for 1,933 yards last year, good enough for 11th in New York.

“We return a lot of out skill players — key players from last year’s team after getting a year of experience under their belt,” the coach said. “I think this is a team with a lot of potential.”

Senior Wesley Manning will receive the majority of playing time at quarterback, with junior Peyton Capizzi beginning to show off his skills in preparation for his senior year. Manning enters this season with six pass attempts on his resume, featuring four completions for 79 yards, including a 19-yard pass for a touchdown against Northport.

In addition to a new quarterback, Boltrek is prepared to evaluate the team’s surplus of returning players.

John Corpac carries the ball across the gridiron in a game last season. File photo by Bill Landon
John Corpac carries the ball across the gridiron in a game last season. File photo by Bill Landon

“Our biggest strength, really, is we’re returning real football kids, even though they might play other sports,” he said. “They just love football, and when you have that mentality, coupled with their skill and athleticism, that’s a real strength and asset.”

The team’s wide receiver core remains largely unchanged for 2016.

Senior Eddie Munoz, an All-State honorable mention, is coming off a year that featured eight touchdown catches along with a total of 516 receiving yards. He will also continue to be a safety for the team after intercepting three passes last year in addition to piling up 41 tackles.

Fellow senior John Corpac is back as a wideout for the Patriots. After catching seven touchdown passes last year, the first-time All-Division receiver looks to lead the team’s offense.

As the Patriots look to move from being a solid playoff contender to one that’s in the title hunt, Boltrek said he believes there is still work that needs to be done to bring Ward Melville to the next level.

“I think the biggest thing is we need our offensive line to gel at the beginning of the season,” Boltrek said. “Last year, our offensive line was young. We had a junior playing center and two other linemen who were sophomores. The two other guys were seniors, but they were both first-year starters. This year, we’re sort of lucky that we get our center back to have a senior at the middle of the line. Stability and continuity is what we’re doing up front. It’ll be huge for us during the season.”

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Those of us along the North Shore and particularly in Setauket, who routinely live with tales of the local spies, might be especially interested in the life of Doris Sharrar Bohrer. One of the few female spies for the Allies during World War II, she died earlier this month at the age of 93 and was not publicly recognized for her extraordinary work until this century.

A Class of 1940 graduate of Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Maryland, she applied to take the civil service exam and was for whatever reason assigned to the Office of Strategic Services, forerunner to the CIA. There, after typing for a year, she was sent to photo reconnaissance school, where she learned to interpret aerial maps and photographs. Few women in the OSS rose beyond the typing pool. A posting in Egypt followed, where she would make 3-D balsa-wood relief maps from the aerial photos that helped prepare the Allied troops for the invasions of Sicily and then of the rest of Italy. Soon she was moved to Bari on Italy’s Adriatic coast, advising where to drop and to pick up OSS agents from behind enemy lines.

In examining aerial photos, she was able to see closed cattle cars with passengers heading east, and her group located the Nazi concentration camps. However, she told The Washington Post in 2011, “we were too late” in finding the concentration camps. “We kept wondering where the trains were going.”

During the war, she packed a Browning pistol in a shoulder holster but was denied the right to carry a hand grenade as a female Yugoslav partisan co-worker could do. In fact, some of her male counterparts were condescending and even outright hostile to women intelligence agents, calling them “the girls.” These included her superior officer who denied her the grenade. So she had an engineer friend fashion a dummy grenade that she carried into the mess hall where some of the other agents were having lunch. When her superior officer reached across to grab it away, she picked it up and smashed it against the table.

The boys scattered “out the windows,” she told Ann Curry of NBC News many years later. “They just disappeared. And I sat there and ate my salad.”

After the war, Bohrer was assigned to Germany, where she spied on the Soviet Union. She interviewed German scientists who had been detained by the Soviets in order to find out for the CIA as much as possible about the state of Soviet science. This was during the lengthy Cold War.

Bohrer retired from the CIA in 1979 as deputy chief of counterintelligence, training U.S. officers on tactics of foreign espionage operatives. In effect, she spied on the spies. She married Charles Bohrer after World War II and after retirement became a residential real-estate sales agent in the 1980s and ’90s in the Old Town section of Alexandria, Virginia. She also bred and raised poodles, some of which won ribbons and prizes. Her husband retired as director of the CIA medical office.

In 2013 two high-ranking CIA women directors thanked Bohrer and Betty McIntosh, another CIA operative, at the Langley, Virginia, headquarters for their service.

Bohrer’s work had remained secret until The Washington Post discovered in 2011 that she and McIntosh, the author of two books, lived at the same retirement home in northern Virginia; McIntosh had carried out propaganda work in China. Both women had not known each other during the war but had become good friends. Bohrer, whose husband died in 2007 after they were married 61 years, is survived by her son and his two grandchildren. McIntosh died in 2015 at age 100.

Bohrer had wanted to learn to fly to defend the U.S. after the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack. She never did take up aviation but found looking at aerial photographs “an interesting way to look at the world. It was almost as good as flying,” she told The Washington Post. Like the Setauket spies, Bohrer and McIntosh went unheralded for many years but their stories are now told to the world at large.

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We are a step or two ahead of the dogs from that famous Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov, who discovered that his canines salivated when he entered the room, even if he wasn’t about to feed them.

We can and do anticipate all kinds of things, counting down the days until our wedding, the start of school, a winter vacation, a new dog’s arrival, the day we retire, the start or end of another sports season.

There’s an electricity in the air that changes the usual Sunday through Saturday routine, when we otherwise might just check the calendar to make sure we didn’t miss a dentist appointment, renew a registration for a car or pay a bill that’s coming due.

These bigger events — birthdays, surprise parties, New Year’s celebrations — are like larger waves on the ocean. We ride the regular waves up and down, but the bigger waves can give us a higher high, a lower low and take us further, generally, than every other wave.

What do we do to get ready for these big moments? If we’re anticipating a reunion, we might lose weight because we want to look as fit and trim as we did 25 years ago when we graduated from high school. We might make 100 calls to make sure that all the small details about the place settings for the wedding are exactly right, that everyone’s name is spelled correctly and that no one is sitting with an ex-husband she can’t stand.

We’re often aware of the date of these bigger occasions months or even years before they arrive. A mandatory retirement at the age of 60, for example, could be on the calendar for 15 years or more, as both a liberating experience and a journey into the unknown.

The training for these experiences starts early, when our parents describe how our birthday is coming next month, next week or even tomorrow. Sometimes, the anticipation is so great that sleep the night before is almost impossible, as our minds have already jumped ahead in time, putting us at the front of the room where we have to make a speech or torturing us with a range of what-if problems, as in, “What if my pants rip?” or “What if I forget what to say after slide three?” or “What if I don’t like anyone in my class this year?”

When we’re young, we read books that we know will end. We could tell that the ending was coming because we had only a few pages left before the characters we loved would leave us for the evening, until the next book, or until the next time we read about Horton and the Whos, those brave little folks he would not want to lose.

Our anticipation can magnify any of our senses, turning that orange leaf into a harbinger of a pumpkin carving competition; converting the sound of the shower into the calming splash of the ocean as it gently laps along the shore; or recasting the scent of freshly cut grass into the exultant shouts of parents and teammates amid a walk-off hit at the end of a tightly contested baseball game.

Surely, there are countdowns some of us dread, like the start of the new school year — I didn’t say it, I just wrote it, so I didn’t violate my promise to a few kids I know. While there are responsibilities to honor, burdens to bear and hurdles to jump, there are also joys and bigger moments, like a dance, a birthday celebration or a Thanksgiving with family, that all keep the carousel turning.

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Veterans salute a memorial in Northport Village on Memorial Day. Photo by Victoria Espinoza

Assimilating back into everyday life is one of the hardest jobs that we ask of those in the military. Returning home to a normal routine can’t be comfortable for anyone who just spent years in a combat situation, having to kill — or assisting those who are wounded. Unfortunately, incidents like the one at the Northport Veterans Affairs Medical Center, where a veteran took his own life in the hospital parking lot, are not uncommon.

Thankfully, events designed to gather as many veterans in the same place in an overwhelmingly positive setting are also becoming the norm. Army veterans Frank Lombardi and Chris Levy paddled kayaks from Bridgeport, Connecticut to Port Jefferson Aug. 27 — a 22-mile trek — in the name of raising awareness for veterans with post traumatic stress disorder. On the same day, the Veterans Comedy Assault Team hosted a night of stand-up comedy performances to benefit a veteran and her family who needed some extra assistance.

That comedy team is the brain child of a 501(c)3 nonprofit called Project 9 Line, which is an organization dedicated to reintegrating veterans back to civilian life and helping those suffering from PTSD.

Depression and suicide among veterans is a significant societal problem. Events like the two this weekend serve a major purpose, though they cannot be the only plan of attack. It is the responsibility of all citizens of this country to keep an eye on their neighbor, friend or relative to make sure they don’t feel like they’re alone. Military operations are always carried out by teams. Better treatment of veterans returning home should be a team effort among those they protect.

For more information on veteran support organizations:
www.project9line.org
www.sailahead.org
www.vocwny.org
www.facebook.com/dwyerproject/

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A fundraiser was held for VetDogs, an organization that pairs veterans with service dogs, at a golf fundrasier in Huntington. Photo by Sara Ging

By Sara Ging

The dog days summer were far from over Aug. 29 in Huntington.

The 7th Annual VetDogs Golf Classic kicked off at Huntington Country Club on Monday, and since its inception in 2009, the tournament has raised more than $1 million for the Smithtown nonprofit organization, which trains service dogs and places them with veterans and first responders. Total funds raised by the Golf Classic for America’s VetDogs was not immediately known at the time of publication.

Ret. Navy Lt. Melanie Monts de Oca and her service dog Liberty smile at the golf fundrasier in Huntington. Photo by Sara Ging
Ret. Navy Lt. Melanie Monts de Oca and her service dog Liberty smile at the golf fundrasier in Huntington. Photo by Sara Ging

Two veterans who received service dogs from the nonprofit were in attendance as guests of honor at the Golf Classic. Retired Army Maj. Peter Way and Retired Navy Lt. Melanie Monts de Oca both credit their dogs with improving their quality of life tremendously.

Way lost his right leg in 2014 due to complications from an injury sustained during active duty service in Afghanistan in 2003, and got his dog Rory right around the time he was discharged from service. “It’s unbelievable all that he does for me,” Way said at the event. “He’s hands when I need them, he’s a leg when I need it. … He adapts and takes on new stuff constantly, learns what I need and works with it.”

In addition to helping him adjust to his prosthetic leg, Way credits Rory with helping him cope with his post traumatic stress disorder and reintegrate socially.

“I thought of myself as highly functional, but I was highly dysfunctional,” Way said of his recovery process before Rory. “I had successfully cut myself off from just about everybody.” With Rory’s support, Way is now very socially and physically active. He is in training to potentially compete in the Paralympic biathlon, and has been on the VetDogs board since 2015.

Monts de Oca spent 10 years in the Navy before being medically retired for injuries and illness in 2013. She got her dog Liberty in 2014. Like Way, she credits her dog with helping her both physically and emotionally.

“I just wasn’t living my life anymore, because I was in pain and I was sick all the time,” Monts de Oca says. “She’s my lifeline. She got me moving again.” Liberty is specifically trained to help with mobility, balance, and to get help in the case of emergency.

VetDogs began in 2003 as Guide Dog Foundation project, and became a separate entity in 2006. Some staff, resources, and training facilities are still shared between the two Smithtown-based charities. Guide Dog Foundation began in 1946 with the aim of helping visually impaired veterans of World War II, and eventually expanded to serve civilians with visual impairment as well.

Navy Seal Cadet Corps, NY LPD 21st Division, presenting colors for the national anthem on the green during the America’s VetDogs fundraiser. Photo by Sara Ging
Navy Seal Cadet Corps, NY LPD 21st Division, presenting colors for the national anthem on the green during the America’s VetDogs fundraiser. Photo by Sara Ging

Unlike Guide Dog Foundation, which only trains guide dogs for the visually impaired, VetDogs raises and trains a number of different kinds of service dogs to help with balance issues, hearing impairment, seizures, and PTSD, among other disabilities. The cost of preparing each dog to work as a service dog is estimated at more than $50,000. This includes not only the rigorous specialized training period that takes place during three to four months, but also the process of breeding the dogs, raising them as puppies until they’re old enough for training, and funding a two-week intensive program on the Smithtown campus to teach veterans to work effectively with their dogs. Some dogs are trained to help treat or mitigate multiple issues, depending on the needs of each veteran. VetDogs also covers any necessary retraining and some preventative medical costs for the dogs.

Katherine Fritz, director of development, said there is never a cost to applicants who receive guide dogs.

Golfer Jim Barling has participated in the VetDogs Golf Classic at the Huntington Country Club all seven years. He is on the golf committee that organizes the event each year and considers it a success story, with local golfers and sponsors coming from Huntington, Brookville, and Northport. Participation is limited by the size of the green, so the tournament is limited to about 130 people. He said there is never any trouble filling those spots.

“We sell out every year,” Barling said. While there are new participants, he estimates that 80 percent of golfers return yearly.

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Mom first met her great-great-grandson Aiman on July 13, 2016. Photo by Beverly Tyler

By Beverly C. Tyler

Growing up in Setauket, I learned a great deal from my father by his example, but encouragement and support came from Mom. My sister Ann, my brother Guy and I were taught that we were not only a family but a part of a community that extended from our relatives and neighbors across the street to our relatives and friends everywhere.

We lived with my Grandma Edith Tyler until I was 12 and then we moved into the house down the street where my father’s half sister Carrie had lived with her two aunts, Annie and Corinne, until their deaths. Soon after we moved, my Grandma Tyler moved in and lived with us until her death in 1963. A few years later my grandmother Margaret Carlton (Nana) moved from her home in Port Jefferson to our home and lived with us until her death in 1980.

During all this time, these transitions seemed very normal to me. Mom never said a cross word that I was ever aware of, nor any indication that it was the least bit difficult for her sharing a kitchen and dealing with a strong-willed mother-in-law and an equally strong-willed mother. I always loved and appreciated my grandmothers. They were, like Mom, independent women who had run households of their own.

Grandma and my grandfather Tyler owned and ran a boarding house (now Setauket Neighborhood House) until they sold it in 1918 to Eversley Childs. After my grandfather died in 1926, Grandma took the job of Setauket’s postmaster, and then as librarian at Emma Clark Memorial Library.

Grandma Carlton, Nana to us kids, had married Guy Carlton in 1909 in Alna, Maine, and the couple immediately moved to Port Jefferson where my grandfather Carlton, Pup-Pup to us kids, worked building the original Belle Terre Club. A master carpenter and cabinet maker, Pup-Pup built his house in Port Jefferson, overlooking the harbor, and my grandmother insisted that they have indoor plumbing. This was in 1909, when outhouses were the norm.

One summer (1948) I went to work with my grandfather in Crystal Brook. He was building a full bar in the basement of one of the houses. It was a beautiful piece of furniture with cabinets behind the bar in the game room of the summer cottages, and he told me, “Don’t tell your grandmother, she wouldn’t approve.” My grandfather was a tough man, but my grandmother was the strength of the family.

Mom took all of this in stride. She also believed in letting go and letting her kids explore and discover the world. When I was about 8, I was allowed to cross Main Street in Setauket on my own and take my 4-year-old sister and 3-year-old brother with me to Mrs. Celia Hawkins’ farm. We loved going across to the farm with cows, pigs, geese and a few chickens running through the house. We grew up on the buttermilk and candy corn Celia provided for us every day.

On a number of occasions, I unsuccessfully tried to milk the cows. I could never get the hang of it, but Celia let us churn the butter until our arms gave out and we collapsed on the porch. We also enjoyed mornings when we could help collect the eggs, learning quickly how to avoid having our hands pecked by the chickens.

Mom and Dad also took us on vacations to historic and natural sites from Williamsburg, Virginia, and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to Niagara Falls and the Reversing Falls Rapids in St. John, New Brunswick.

Dad drove and Mom made up games for us to play in the car, usually looking for things outside as we drove. I didn’t realize it at the time, but although Dad was the tour guide and historian, it was Mom who put the fun into the trips with details about interesting signs, structures and people along the route.

“One in; one out. Life goes on and we have a plethora of memories and stories to keep in our hearts.”

— Beverly Tyler

As adults, we took Mom on a few trips, including one to Maine for the burial service of my Aunt Etta, who died when she was 105. Going through one town, Mom suddenly burst out laughing. She pointed out a Chinese restaurant named Mi Sen Gui, and exclaimed, “That’s my son, guy.”

Mom sang a number of years with the Greg Smith singers, even traveling with them to Europe. She played bridge with a group of friends and enjoyed the Setauket Library book study group, even traveling with members of the club to London.

Mom and Dad were members of the Old Field Point Power Squadron and Mom completed every advanced grade course, including celestial navigation. I remember that after completing that last tough course, her warm, aromatic chocolate chip cookies reappeared after a few years absence. Mom was also an excellent cook whose pie crusts have no equal and my wife will attest to that.

Mom enjoyed golf, bowling, boating, car trips and other outdoor activities with my father until his death in a terrible auto accident in 1975. Mom married her second husband Lewis Davis in 1978 and together they enjoyed golf, bowling, trips to Florida and trips all over the world, making a few lasting friends in Australia and other countries as well as closer to home. I especially got to know and appreciate Mom as a friend as well as a mom after Lew died in 2008, in his 94th year.

By the time Lew died, Mom had developed paralysis due to an inherited condition that strikes different people in our family at all different ages and with varied intensities. By the last few years of her life, Mom struggled with special shoes and braces on both legs. I hardly ever heard her complain or let her paralysis slow her down. By this year she was almost completely wheelchair-bound but was still able, with assistance, to move short distances, including in and out of vehicles.

Mom has always been able to take a problem, evaluate it, and after a day, make a decision that is best for everyone around her as well as for herself. Mom always wanted her colonial era home and property to be preserved. Working through state legislator Steven Englebright, this has been accomplished and the property will now go to the Three Village Community Trust.

Mom never lost her sense of humor. Recently, her companion Elizabeth was rubbing some lotion, with a pleasing but distinctive aroma, on her feet. Mom turned and looked very seriously at Elizabeth and said, “Will this clash with my perfume?”

Mom was always able to set herself a goal and stick to it. Elizabeth said that Mom is the only person she knows who could eat one dark chocolate candy kiss and put the bag of candy back in the refrigerator.

Mom’s concern even extended to our parish priest. A week ago we all feared the end of her life was near, but we didn’t know she knew. I told her that our rector, Canon Visconti, was on the way to see her and she whispered to me, “Does he know the situation?” That’s Mom, always one step ahead of the rest of us.

Mom died Thursday, Aug. 25, in her 102nd year, just a few hours after her fourth great-great-grandchild was born in Tennessee. Mom is survived by sons Beverly (Barbara) and Guy, daughter Ann Taylor (Frank), two stepdaughters Sukie Crandall (Steve) and Nancy Rosenberg, seven grandchildren, one step-granddaughter, 21 great-grandchildren and four great-great-grandchildren.

One in; one out. Life goes on and we have a plethora of memories and stories to keep in our hearts.

The funeral will be Friday, Sept. 9 at 11 a.m. at the Caroline Church, 1 Dyke Rd., Setauket. There will be a wake at Bryant Funeral Home, 411 Old Town Rd. in Setauket Sept. 8 from 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 p.m.

Beverly Tyler is a lifelong resident of Setauket, Three Village Historical Society historian and author of books available from Three Village Historical Society.

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