By Bob Savage
Locals shaved their heads for a good cause on Saturday at Schafer’s restaurant in Port Jefferson, raising money for the St. Baldrick’s Foundation and research into childhood cancers.
Among those going bald were TBR News Media’s own Michael Tessler, who said goodbye to his curly locks.
Healthy eating habits and children don’t always mix in this day and age, but Christina Butcher is not letting that stop her.
Butcher, fitness center coordinator at the Huntington YMCA, is at the forefront of a new program — Healthy Weight and Your Child — that focuses on promoting good choices for young children who have struggled with maintaining a healthy weight.
“This gives kids the support they need and the opportunity to make healthy lifestyle choices,” Butcher said in a phone interview.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, obesity now affects 17 percent of all children and adolescents in the United States. One in six children are obese and one in three are overweight, which could lead to serious health problems including type 2 diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol and mental health issues.
Healthy Weight and Your Child is a 12-month program geared toward 7 to 13-year-old children who are in the 95th percentile or higher on the body mass index scale. All participants must be cleared for physical activity by a health care provider or school nurse, and be accompanied by a parent or caregiver at every meeting.
“Parents usually make most of the food decisions in the home, so we want them included in this learning process,” Butcher said.
The program is meant to focus on social issues in health and engage the whole family on understanding how the home environment influences the choices that lead to unhealthy food selections.
Aside from eating habits, the program also highlights the importance of regular physical activity and behavioral changes.
Butcher said kids participate in different activities like dodgeball, spud and relays, to stay active.
“My favorite part of the program is the family unity,” she said. “There are a lot of siblings in the program, and even just the single children with parents are participating in a great bonding opportunity.”
Currently, Healthy Weight and Your Child at the YMCA has about 35 children signed up. The program is offered on Wednesdays from 5:30-7:30 p.m., and is also available at the Silas Wood Sixth Grade Center in the South Huntington school district on Mondays from 5:30-7:30 p.m.
Aside from being in charge of all fitness programs the YMCA offers, Butcher is also a personal trainer at the fitness center in the YMCA.
“I have the opportunity to work with small groups to help achieve their fitness goals,” she said. “Whether it’s working on upper body strength to be able to pick up their grandchild, or getting over an injury or working toward a sport goal, I love the diversity training that the YMCA offers. It’s the best part of being a trainer.”
From a flower to an old barn, artist Maureen Pouder draws her inspiration from the simple things in life.
The Miller Place resident was honored during the Town of Brookhaven’s last meeting on for her work on an old mailbox for the American Legion Arthur H. Clune Post 1533 in Mastic Beach. Pouder, a recreation specialist for the Town of Brookhaven, met members of the post around four months ago through Marcel Van Orden, a post member and one of Pouder’s art students at the Mastic Recreation Center.
Van Orden was originally tasked with reinventing the post’s mailbox. Pouder came on board after Van Orden mentioned it in conversation. In a couple weeks, the duo transformed the old rusted delivery mailbox into an American-inspired mural depicting the American flag and a bald eagle. The mailbox will help collect unserviceable flags, which the legion burns every Flag Day, said past post commander, George Barnes. He added that the mailbox mural was so beautiful that he hates to put it outside.
“Painting [it] like a mural brings attention,” Pouder said. “People will walk past a mailbox and not take a second look. But when it’s painted like a mural they really look at it and they’ll see it’s a flag depository.”
Receiving town recognition is an honor for Pouder, who started working for the municipality in 2008. For the past several years, she’s held art classes at the Blue Point, Shoreham and Mastic recreation centers where she teaches watercolor, oil and acrylic painting skills. The artist also runs Brookhaven’s annual art shows, which are held in Port Jefferson.
Pouder has painted murals for the Cedar Beach Nature Center, among other places on Long Island. Last year, the artist decorated a bra to help raise $2,000 for breast cancer. She used wool roving and barbed pin to create flowers and butterflies on the bra.
“She’s a very talented artist … she’s also a very hard worker,” said Kurt Leuffen, superintendent of Brookhaven’s parks and recreation department. “She’s been teaching art for the last couple of years [and] she’s done a very good job. I would say all participants really enjoy her as an instructor — she’s very good, she’s very thorough and she’s very helpful.”
Leuffen has known Pouder for nearly 25 years. He added that town employees and those at Pouder’s recreation centers are proud of her and lucky to have her as an employee.
While Pouder knows various art media, she said she loves painting with watercolor, acrylic and oil paint the most. Although she can finish a watercolor painting in a couple of days, oil paintings take her several weeks, as they need more time to dry. Pouder added that she gets more joy when she donates her time to work on a painting like her mailbox mural, because she knows her work is truly appreciated.
“Maureen’s artwork and volunteerism is very well known throughout the community,” said town Councilwoman Jane Bonner (C-Rocky Point). “We are all grateful that she shares her time and talent so generously.”
For the last 180 years, it’s been Port Jefferson. But before that, the village had a peculiar name given that shipbuilding was its main industry.
When John Roe, an Irish shoemaker, became the first permanent European settler to make his home there in 1682, “the settlement was called Drowned Meadow because the area that now comprises most of the commercial district was a marsh that flooded every high tide.” That’s according to the book “Images of America: Port Jefferson,” written by Port Jefferson library staffers Robert Maggio and Earlene O’Hare. They said, “That flooding, and the steep hills and deep ravines that surrounded the marsh, made farming difficult, and the village grew slowly. In fact, by 1800, there were only a handful of houses.”
But the village did grow. It became home to several shipbuilding families, to the point where the name “no longer seemed to fit [the village’s] progressive image,” the book said.
It was Elisha Bayles, the head of the Bayles shipbuilding family, who got the ball rolling. According to an account by the late George Moraitis, a local cemetery historian, the Bayles patriarch came to Drowned Meadow in 1809 from Mount Sinai and “was a strong [Thomas] Jefferson Democrat.” He “urged the renaming” to Port Jefferson.
A vote on the matter took place at a schoolhouse on March 7, 1836. According to “Images of America: Port Jefferson,” the residents “voted overwhelmingly” in support of the name change.
The Long-Island Democrat newspaper published a notice of the change later that month, describing the vote as occurring “at a large and respectable meeting of the inhabitants” chaired by Daniel Tooker.
From there, the village became more and more of what residents know today. The “Images of America” book noted that the year after the renaming vote, William L. Jones, of another prominent shipbuilding family, “began filling in the ‘drowned meadow’ by building an 18-foot-wide elevated road across its center. … This was the beginning of today’s Main Street.”
When Scott O’Brien read his favorite childhood book, “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs,” to an elementary school class during college, he had no idea how important that moment would be to the future of his career.
“I remember reading the book to them and leaving and saying, ‘I want to do this for the rest of my life. This is what I’m meant to do,’” he said. “I think I always knew.”
The landscape architect major switched his field of study to education. Since then, the Rocky Point Middle School principal has been named Administrator of the Year by the Council of Administrators and Supervisors.
“I love every minute of being a principal,” he said. “I feel so honored to get this, and privileged to get it, but I just love my job. I love coming to work. I love what I do, and I think it’s just an added bonus to get honored by the people that you work with, that they also feel that that love of my decisions comes through and they value what I’m doing here for them, the staff, the students and everyone in the building.”
The faculty told O’Brien of the nomination in a very unconventional way.
“They had tricked me, of course,” O’Brien said, laughing.
The principal’s staff was adamant about reminding him multiple times of a department meeting in the library one afternoon. When he entered the packed library, he knew something bigger was happening. They presented O’Brien with a wrapped box. Inside, were the nominations by each teacher who wrote a supporting statement, poem or a note of congratulations.
“Before they nominated me for the award, I was well aware that I have a very special staff,” he said. “I feel extremely fortunate to work with not only dedicated and kids-first teachers and staff, but to be able to work together with them to implement change and make our building continuously better for kids. I have reflected on that moment in the library and how grateful I am to be recognized in such a meaningful manner. The work continues and the acknowledgement further signifies the importance and continuation of my role as an educational leader.”
The principal is in his eighth year at the helm of the school, but has been in the district much longer, serving as a special education teacher, assistant principal and principal at the Frank J. Carasiti Elementary School — working in that building for more than a decade. The St. James resident, who attended the John F. Kennedy Middle School in Port Jefferson Station, also worked out-of-state for four years, in Fairfax County, Virginia. O’Brien’s grandparents lived in Rocky Point, so he said he was familiar with the area when he received his first teaching job there.
Nicole Gabrinowitz, a seventh-grade math teacher who has been with the district for 20 years, said she came down from the high school the same time O’Brien arrived.
“He was very welcoming,” she said. “He’s also really open to new ideas. He knows his entire staff and works hard and uses a lot of techniques you’d use in a classroom at the staff meetings to keep us close.”
A core group of staff members came up with the idea to nominate O’Brien once they heard about the award. Melinda Brooks, the school’s instructional coordinator for six years, said she wrote in her letter of recommendation that “every single person who is employed in his building is inspired to be their very best each and every day. Each year we receive many requests from teachers who want to transfer to the middle school because they want to inspire too.”
Brooks recalled when she met O’Brien in 2010 and he was warm and welcoming.
“I immediately saw that he was one of the strongest leaders in the district,” she said. “He found his calling. He was born to do this.”
On spirit day, Brooks said the principal dressed up as Superman and his wife, Theresa, whom he met while working at the elementary school and now has three children with, had her class make him a quilt for winning the award, which was decorated with all things Superman-related.
“Everyone sees him as Superman and the kids took it quite literally,” she said. “He’s someone that has an open-door policy and is willing to listen and work with you to do what is needed and is best for the community, the teachers, the kids and everyone involved.”
Dawn Callahan, an eighth-grade social studies teacher who has worked at the school since it opened nearly 14 years ago, said O’Brien has been a refreshing change.
He also, according to many, created a strong family atmosphere, and according to Callahan, looks after the staff.
“Last year we had a student that had passed away,” she said. “Knowing that I had that student for over a year and had done home-teaching at her house before she had passed, he called me personally at home to tell me about it over the weekend, instead of me coming into school the next day and finding out about it. That to me makes you realize that the people you work for really consider this a family, as opposed to being just a job.”
She added that O’Brien gives the staff areas to grow in, and the strong vibes within the building trickle down from the top.
O’Brien works to instill this in other teachers looking to become administrators. He teaches an administrative program at St. John’s University and The College of St. Rose in his free time.
“I love inspiring teachers to be future leaders and to change the culture of buildings and teach how to do that effectively,” he said, “and teach how to get a building to be able to support powerful learning for kids, and create a building that can be the best that it should be.”
His school is in the running win the Inviting School Award, which is a national award presented by the International Exchange of Educational Practices, and is based on the atmosphere he has created.
Regardless of the accolades and success he’s had in the field, O’Brien is just thankful for the experiences.
“Making decisions in the best interest of students while supporting staff in that process was my goal each year,” he said. “The relationships I have created, supported and maintained over the years with all members of the Rocky Point School community have played a pivotal role in where I am today as a leader. I’ve had such wonderful experiences, especially in Rocky Point, and it’s been such a second home to me.”
Basketball players could soon be shooting hoops on a fresh surface in downtown Port Jefferson.
Village officials have approved a $15,000 proposal to repair the basketball courts at Rocketship Park, between Barnum Avenue and the municipal parking lot behind Village Hall.
“Our basketball courts are in disrepair out back,” Mayor Margot Garant said at the board of trustees meeting on Monday night.
But there is surplus money the village previously set aside, in the event those courts would have to be completely renovated. Instead, work simply needs to be done to repair cracks and “take away what we call the ‘birdbaths,’ or puddles,” she said.
The plan, which the board approved at its meeting, includes putting in lines for pickleball play at the courts. That sport involves paddles and has similarities to tennis and badminton.
Trustee Stan Loucks, who is the board’s liaison to the Port Jefferson Country Club, said the village feels comfortable hiring East Norwich-based Championship Tennis Courts LLC to do the basketball court project because that same company has done work on the country club’s tennis courts for the last five years.
“They do a terrific job,” Loucks said.
A proposed policy for Port Jefferson schools could change the way teachers interact with and accommodate transgender students.
The board of education’s policy committee crafted the proposal with help from the student body’s Gay-Straight Alliance club, and included rules for how transgender and gender nonconforming students would be referenced in school records and what bathroom and locker room facilities they would use.
According to the proposed text, students who want to be identified by a gender other than the one associated with their sex at birth could request a meeting with their principal to discuss names, pronouns and designations in school records; restroom and locker room access; and participation in sports, among other topics.
Students would be able to change gender designations in school records if they provide two official forms of identification indicating the new gender and legal proof of a change in name or gender.
Emma Martin, the president of the high school’s Gay-Straight Alliance, said during the Port Jefferson school board meeting on Tuesday night, “This policy could be the difference between whether a student feels safe in the school, whether their learning is hindered or it’s enriched, whether they graduate high school or even if their life could be saved.”
The proposed policy includes a provision that any student’s transgender status would be kept as private as possible, apart from necessary communication to personnel “so they may respond effectively and appropriately to issues arising in the school.”
In addition, it dictates that the district would have to accept any student’s gender identity.
“There is no medical or mental health diagnosis or treatment threshold that students must meet in order to have their gender identity recognized and respected,” the policy reads. “Every effort should be made to use the preferred names and pronouns consistent with a student’s gender identity. While inadvertent slips or honest mistakes may occur, the intentional and persistent refusal to respect a student’s gender identity is a violation of school district policy.”
Martin called the policy forward thinking.
“Even though I won’t be here to see this in place because I’m a senior — I’ll be leaving — I’m very, very proud to say that this will be in place hopefully when I leave.”
Trustee Adam DeWitt, the head of the policy committee, replied that the policy committee could not have done it without her club: “Your contributions and the students’ contributions as well as the staff were critical in the wording … so your legacy and the legacy of the students and the staff that helped us create this will live on for a long time.”
The school board accepted the policy at first reading on Tuesday and could vote to approve it, making it final, at the next board meeting. Its reception was a quiet one — there was no public comment on the policy apart from Martin’s.
That was not the case in other districts that recently attempted to make similar rules. In the Rocky Point and Smithtown school districts, discussions about accommodating transgender students turned into heated debates.
Superintendent Ken Bossert attributed the lack of controversy in Port Jefferson to the fact that the district took time to shape the policy with the help of input from many parties, and officials took up the matter on their own “without discussing any specific child.”
“That can be very sensitive when the community is fully aware of children who are involved in the discussion and that’s what I really wanted to avoid here.”
By Kevin Redding
“We have a problem, and that problem is heroin. It’s a harsh reality.”
Setauket Fire Commissioner Jay Gardiner spoke at length about the heroin and opiate addiction issue that has swept Suffolk County at a Three Village Civic Association meeting at the Emma S. Clark Library on Monday night.
As guest speaker, Gardiner addressed the importance of having a dialogue with teens and children about the dangerous consequences of these specific drugs and staying on top of how much medication people consume to avoid overdoses. Gardiner also said it was important that residents recognize why heroin has become so prevalent.
According to Gardiner, the county’s affluence plays a large factor.
“Among the most common hard drugs, including methamphetamine and crack, heroin is the most expensive,” Gardiner said. “Out on the South Shore and other areas on Long Island that have different financial demographics, cheap drugs like methamphetamine and crack are much more obtainable while heroin isn’t. High schoolers and college students in Suffolk County, whose ages make up the majority of users, might have an ability to buy the more expensive drug.”
In the United States, drug overdose deaths have exceeded car crashes as the number one cause of injury death, according to U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). Two Americans die of drug overdoses every hour and 2,500 youths aged between 12 and 17 abuse prescription drugs for the first time every day. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), opioids — a class of drugs that include prescription pain medications and heroin — were involved in 28,648 deaths nationwide in 2014.
Gardiner admitted that he can’t lecture on how to control every North Shore kid’s behavior, however, and steered his presentation less on how to prevent the drug use and more on how to recognize when somebody is experiencing an overdose and being able to take the appropriate steps to save their lives. He specifically focused on using the anti-opiate overdose antidote Naloxone, sold under the brand name Narcan.
Gardiner said he knows of hundreds of cases just last year in which Narcan saved someone’s life from overdose in Suffolk County, and said that number is growing exponentially.
“We use this atomizing medication Narcan when the person we see is not responding,” said Gardiner, who demonstrated how to exert the intranasal spray into each of the patient’s nostrils. “You will revive these patients, if you’re fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time, in minutes. We use the nose because it’s a large area where it will be absorbed to the bloodstream and remove the opiate effects in that bloodstream quickly.”
As Gardiner explained in his presentation, it’s nearly impossible to find an IV on a patient who has just overdosed because the veins are often badly sclerosed, as indicated by track marks all over the arm. On top of a quick and effective route for absorption, by using the nose as an entry, there’s a much lower risk of exposure to blood.
Because Narcan is also effective against more commonly taken opiate drugs, pain reducers like morphine, oxycodone and fentanyl, older people especially should be aware of how it’s used in a worst case scenario where too many pills are taken to subside an excruciating pain, and an overdose occurs.
Shawn Nuzzo, president of the Three Village Civic Association who brought Gardiner in to speak, says that despite the war on drugs in our country being a failure socially and medically, normal everyday people can make a difference now.
“It’s like having a fire extinguisher in your house,” said Nuzzo. “It’s not gonna fix faulty wiring, but it’s good to have it there if you need it. It’s so important that people learn how to use antidotes like this. People need to learn how to use a fire extinguisher and they need to learn how to use Narcan.”
Earlier this month, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that pharmacies across New York State would be providing Narcan to its customers without prescription, making it an extremely convenient and important addition to every resident’s medicine cabinet.
“Addiction’s an illness,” Gardiner said. “If you’re a diabetic, you carry insulin. If you’re bipolar, you have drugs to treat bipolar illness. We can’t treat addiction with drugs but we can certainly have these things around in case of an emergency because it is an illness and it’s so important to have this in your home. We can’t cure the addiction, but we can save the life even if it’s only temporarily.”
Commack School District teachers, administrators, students and community members gathered at the high school on Friday to shave their heads in the name of childhood cancer research.
About 175 people “braved the shave” to raise money for the St. Baldrick’s Foundation. This is the seventh year that the district has hosted the event, which is organized by Commack High School teachers Lee Tunick and Bill Scaduto. Tunick said that the district eclipsed $500,000 raised since they began the annual event seven years ago, with more than $66,000 and counting coming in 2016. More than 700 people have had their heads shaved at Commack since they began.
“The community feel is terrific,” Tunick said. “The community just gets behind this like you wouldn’t believe.”
Huntington Town Councilwoman Tracey Edwards (D) was in attendance to take part in the festivities as well.
“In comparison to what children are going through with cancer, it’s nothing,” Edwards said about the bravery required to have her head shaved in front of a gymnasium full of people. “It’s breathtaking. It’s easy to write a check. We do that all the time. Not enough people do that probably, but when you’re doing something like this, you’re going for it. You believe in it. You’re passionate about it,” she added.
Commack High School senior Chris Walsh had his head shaved in St. Baldrick’s name for the tenth year Friday. He has personally raised over $20,000.
Scaduto came to the event with a thick mane of brown hair but left with far less.
“We have a lot of quality teachers here who really volunteer their time to make this happen,” Scaduto said. “Administration, kids, everyone gets involved and it’s just amazing.”
Sports memorabilia items were donated to be bid on by Triple Crown Sports Memorabilia in Hauppauge, as another fundraising source.
For more information about the St. Baldrick’s Foundation’s cause, or to donate, visit www.stbaldricks.org.
More than 100 people filed into the Centereach Fire Department on Washington Avenue to lose their locks and raise money for the Centereach Civic Association’s third annual St. Baldrick’s fundraiser on Friday.
Residents could shave their heads, volunteer, or simply donate money, at the four-hour fundraiser. Attendees also had the chance to enter various raffles and get a free dinner before heading home.
The civic hoped to raise $50,000 this year. Thus far it has raised more than $8,000 toward that goal, according to the St. Baldrick’s Foundation, though it was unclear if that amount included what was raised on Friday. All proceeds go toward the foundation, which focuses on curing childhood cancers.
According to event disc jockey Rob Wilson, three businessmen established the foundation to help give back to those in need. Their success with the fundraiser inspired them to create the 17-year-old foundation and sparked an annual head-shaving tradition.
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