Village board advances nonprofit rental rates, energy tracking program
Deputy Mayor Kathianne Snaden presides over the Village of Port Jefferson Board of Trustees business meeting on Monday, June 26. Photo by Raymond Janis
The Village of Port Jefferson Board of Trustees held the final business meeting of its term Monday afternoon, June 26, during which departing Mayor Margot Garant was absent due to illness.
In her absence, Deputy Mayor Kathianne Snaden presided over a meeting marked by several notable goodbyes. Garant, Snaden and village attorney Brian Egan will all leave the board next week when trustee Lauren Sheprow takes over as mayor.
Trustee Rebecca Kassay recognized Snaden, who lost to Sheprow in last week’s mayoral election. Snaden’s four-year tenure on the village board now ends.
“You put your heart and soul into it — and it shows,” Kassay told the departing deputy mayor. Following these remarks, Snaden was greeted with thunderous applause by the dozens in attendance.
Garant’s fiancée, Traci Donnelly, delivered a short address on the mayor’s behalf. Garant thanked colleagues and constituents.
“I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to each one of you for the trust you’ve shown me over the past 14 years,” the statement said. “I hope and pray that the team of individuals who remain will continue working tirelessly to ensure the continued growth and success of our beloved village.”
Egan, who has served as village attorney since 2013, thanked the court clerks, village clerks, treasurers and professional staff with whom he had served over the last decade. In this final report, he paraphrased his favorite line from Lewis Carroll’s 1865 novel “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.”
“Lewis Carroll said it best when his advice to the white rabbit was — ‘Start at the beginning, then continue to the end; then stop.’”
Other business
The board agreed to extend the reduced rental rate for the Long Island Foundation for Education & Sports, a children and family services group which rents a room in the Village Center, until the end of the 2023-24 school year. The nonprofit will be charged $35 per hour during that period, a reduction from the pre-pandemic rate of $42 per hour.
The board also approved a resolution to track and publish energy usage data for village buildings. The initiative, Kassay explained, “moves us one step closer” toward receiving grant funds through the New York State Research and Development Authority’s Clean Energy Communities Program.
Kassay, liaison to the newly created village Tree Committee, announced the committee’s members had held their first meeting and established a set of objectives.
“Their first task is going to be exploring how to survey the existing canopy of trees” on village properties and public rights-of-way, the trustee said. The committee will also “examine the current tree code to see how it can be more effective and balanced.”
Sheprow and trustees-elect Loucks and Bob Juliano will be formally sworn into office this Tuesday, July 4, following the village’s annual Fourth of July parade. The reconfigured board will hold its reorganization meeting the following Monday, July 10, at 5 p.m.
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Democracy at work
The proudest day of my life was when my parents and I took the oath to become citizens of the United States. I was 8 years old.
As a Russian emigrant, my father applied for and received a Tolstoy grant, which sponsored our family’s journey to America. They arrived on these shores with a baby, a box of books and dreams for a brighter future.
This election season in Port Jefferson brought back the feeling of pride I experienced at becoming a citizen of this great nation.
I went to meet-and-greets for all the candidates and attended the debates. I observed as people of varied and even opposing political leanings coalesced around the candidate they thought best represented their vision for our village. I participated in putting up signs, knocking on doors and engaging in spirited discourse with my neighbors.
This was democracy at work, and it renewed my faith in the American spirit. All of us were motivated by the love we have for this beautiful harborfront village we call home and a desire to help steer it toward a better tomorrow.
This letter continues a false narrative that aims to distinguish between good and bad immigrants, painting me as a complaining socialist who doesn’t work hard. That is an unfair and unsubstantiated personal attack. I am an immigrant to this country, the first of my family to grow up and attend college here. I have been an educator for almost a quarter of a century in public and higher education. I am an advocate for a range of issues as both a volunteer and in my paid professional work.
As a citizen of this country, I have my First Amendment rights, and I use them eloquently and fully with no apology. I love this country deeply, so deeply that I am willing to do the work of improving it. It is why I have advocated for economic, environmental, social and racial justice at all levels of government. What [letter writer] Mr. Graziano calls “complaining,” I call the work of citizenship. The progress that happens in this nation has occurred because of people who would not accept the status quo as the final product.
As someone who has written in this paper for years, I’m disappointed to see the decline in quality in recent months. It seems that the editors of TBR News Media have turned the letters-to-the-editor page into a venue where personal attacks on residents are fair game. Residents and subscribers deserve better from local journalism than this.
Shoshana Hershkowitz
South Setauket
My heart is breaking for Port Jeff
It’s a sad day in the Village of Port Jefferson today. The election is over and to the surprise of many, Kathianne Snaden did not get enough of her supporters out to vote for her. This paper called the results an “upset.”
The reason I feel compelled to write is many residents don’t realize that as a result of the vote, Kathianne is now off the Board of Trustees completely, as her term expires in a short few days. What a huge loss for this village. Four years of village government knowledge and proven results are literally out the window now. You may not fully know all Kathianne did and was responsible for, which we have now lost. And after you read this you should be “upset” as well.
As our commissioner of public safety and liaison to code, Kathianne worked with the Suffolk County Police Department and brought increased enforcement and specialized SCPD units here to Port Jeff that other villages don’t get and in doing so lowered crime numbers in the village drastically. That relationship is gone now.
As liaison to parking, Kathianne worked to build the first new parking lot in 40 years in Port Jeff to address our chronic parking problems.
Kathianne worked tirelessly to beautify this village, creating parks, cleaning up dilapidated overgrown areas and instead creating small pocket parks and green spaces. The flowers you see in this village are a direct result of Kathianne’s efforts, saving you money instead of paying a gardener to do this. That eye for keeping the village sharp looking is now gone.
As commissioner of building and planning, Kathianne worked to streamline that department and helped create housing solutions that could bring more families into the village — benefiting our schools and businesses alike. Gone.
Speaking of families, we have lost the only Board of Trustees member that has kids in the school district. Kathianne worked with the district to create a positive relationship where both the schools and the village benefited as well as every one of your kids. Parents: Kathianne was your pro-schools voice in village government. That voice is gone now, leaving louder voices intent on trying to close the schools.
The loss to this village is immense. My heart breaks for this village and for my wife. She’s being prevented from doing what she loves to do and what she excels at: Making a difference in the daily lives of all Port Jeff residents.
Suffolk County Sheriff Errol Toulon, second from left, with the family of Andrew McMorris, a Boy Scout fatally killed by a drunk driver in 2018. Photo courtesy Toulon's office
Suffolk County Sheriff Errol Toulon (D) recently joined roadway safety advocates to announce a summer campaign targeting drunk driving.
Beginning during the July 4 holiday weekend, Toulon’s Office will increase DWI patrols and checkpoints from Huntington to the East End, continuing these measures throughout the summer in an effort to keep Suffolk’s roadways safe. According to the Sheriff’s Office, its DWI team has already had record-high impaired driving arrests this year, with a nearly 40% increase in DWI/DUI arrests from 2022.
Coined “Operation H.E.A.T.,” the initiative aims to ramp up already heightened efforts to mitigate these increases.
“The ‘heat’ is on this summer for drunk and drugged drivers in Suffolk County,” Toulon said during a press event Thursday, June 29. “Our deputy sheriffs will be out in full force patrolling the roadways with an eye out for impaired drivers. If you don’t drive sober, you will be pulled over.”
Joining Toulon was the family of Andrew McMorris, a 12-year-old Boy Scout who was fatally hit by a drunk driver in 2018 while hiking with his Scout troop. The driver in that crash was found guilty of aggravated vehicular homicide and sentenced to 8 1/3 to 25 years in prison.
“The Andrew McMorris Foundation asks everyone this summer and always to please make a promise to never drink and drive,” said Alisa and John McMorris of the Andrew McMorris Foundation. “Call a cab, call a friend, save a life, start a trend. You don’t have to be a superhero to save someone’s life. Just take the keys.”
Paige Carbone, regional executive director of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, also attended the meeting. She offered her support for the department initiative, emphasizing the need for stricter enforcement.
“Summer is one of the deadliest times of the year on our highways,” she said. “MADD supports Operation H.E.A.T. and will join the efforts by providing staff and volunteers to participate in checkpoints across the county this summer.”
The regional director added, “Our mission is to end drunk driving, and MADD encourages alternatives, such as designating a non-drinking driver, rideshares and using public transportation. That can prevent these crimes from happening.”
Toulon also offered these tips:
If you are hosting a party, designate a sober driver or arrange alternate transportation to ensure guests get home safely.
If you’ve been drinking and don’t have a designated driver, ask a sober friend for a ride home, call a taxi or rideshare service or stay for the night.
Take the keys from a friend if you think they are about to drive while impaired.
For more information on the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office, please visit www.suffolksheriff.com.
One of over a dozen derelict buildings that remain on the Lawrence Aviation Superfund site in Port Jefferson Station. File photo by Raymond Janis
UPDATE: The June 29 community availability session at the Port Jefferson Village Center for the Lawrence Aviation Industries Site is postponed. DEC will notify the public once a new community meeting date is scheduled.
To ensure careful and thorough cleanup efforts at the former Lawrence Aviation Industries Superfund Site in Port Jefferson Station, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation scheduled a community availability session at the Port Jefferson Village Center, 101 East Broadway, tonight, June 29, from 6-8:30 p.m. This event has been postponed to a later date.
Experts from NYSDEC, the state Department of Health, NYSDEC-contracted engineering and demolition firms, the Suffolk County Landbank Corporation and the Suffolk County Department of Health Services will be available for one-on-one interactions with community members. Multiple stations will be set up at the Village Center, with representatives available to discuss specific areas of interest.
Participants can attend any time during the session.
The community availability session will present information about the planned demolition, cleanup activities and future use at the LAI Site. Handouts of the presentation materials will be made available during the session.
Eliminating possible exposure to site-related contamination in the local community will be a point of emphasis. The updates include the latest information regarding the planned demolition of derelict buildings and provide progress to address contaminated soils and groundwater on the property.
Donald Triplett. Photo from Wikimedia Commons/
Ylevental, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
By Daniel Dunaief
Daniel Dunaief
At a recent national meeting of experts in his field, Matthew Lerner said the gathering paused to toast the remarkable life of Donald Triplett.
Born and raised in Forest, Mississippi, Triplett died on Thursday, June 15 at the age of 89, after a full life in which his family, his community and a medical and research field around him learned about a condition he helped various communities understand.
Triplett was different from other children growing up, and in 1943, after his parents brought him to psychiatrist Dr. Leo Kanner, he became “Case 1” for a new diagnosis called autism.
“Everything we know about autism started with what was learned from Donald,” said Lerner, associate professor in Clinical Psychology at the Stony Brook Neurosciences Institute. “I’m still confident the field would have found its way to autism,” but the interaction between Triplett and Kanner helped establish some of the parameters that define a condition that researchers estimate affects about one in 36 children today.
As with people who have other diagnoses, the reaction people have to those with autism varies.
“There are two broad threads in the history of how we’ve understood, studied and treated autism since the 1940s,” said Lerner.
In one, people consider it a lifetime disability, in which the diagnosis is limiting and stigmatizing.
In the second, people see autism as a different way of being, in which individuals have an opportunity to develop a meaningful and happy life, as was the case with Triplett.
“The idea of autism as being so different and so impairing was the prototype,” Lerner said. Triplett’s life “didn’t follow that trajectory at all. He had a life filled with community in which he felt supported and accepted.”
This second model of autism, Lerner added, is achievable in “far more cases than we may have historically assumed.”
Triplett, who worked at the Bank of Forest for 65 years and traveled the world, had unusual cognitive abilities that set him apart from neurotypical people. He could multiply two three-digit numbers rapidly without a calculator. He also could look at the side of a building and could indicate the number of bricks without counting them one by one. He had perfect pitch.
As he was growing up, he didn’t interact socially in typical ways for children his age. His parents institutionalized him for a year, where he became withdrawn and disinterested. When they brought him back to their home, he became more engaged, earning a high school and bachelor’s degree in French from Millsaps College.
“He may have been the first, but he was far, far, far from the only autistic person who ended up exceeding the horizons set for him when he was young,” Lerner said.
Lerner believed people in the autistic community, like Triplett, have something to teach others about challenging circumstances.
“Kids are going to get where they are going at their own pace,” Lerner said. Being patient and kind and taking time to meet people where they are as individuals can help people grow. Lerner suggested that “we need to be okay with the idea that what that person is going to be is themselves and the best thing we can do is create a space” for that development to occur.
People will develop when they don’t feel like they are failing because people around them are setting expectations that don’t match them or are underestimating what they can do, he added.
“It’s important to feel validated and valued” through life, Lerner said.
Parents of children from a wide range of abilities sometimes hear what their offspring will never do.
People are frequently “proven wrong” by that child in that family, he added.
As for Triplett, Lerner encouraged people to watch the movie ’In a Different Key” about the person later known as Case 1.”
Lauren Sheprow, mayor-elect of the Village of Port Jefferson. File photo by Raymond Janis
The Village of Port Jefferson is undergoing its first mayoral transition in 14 years. Outgoing Mayor Margot Garant, who has held the village’s highest post since 2009, will officially leave the office early next week, handing the reins of power to trustee Lauren Sheprow.
Sheprow, a write-in candidate who campaigned as an agent of change, defeated Deputy Mayor Kathianne Snaden in last week’s village election [See story, “Write-in candidate Lauren Sheprow elected Port Jeff Village mayor,” The Port Times Record, June 22, also TBR News Media website]. Throughout her campaign, she proposed several initiatives, such as new staffing procedures, committees and communications channels.
In an exclusive interview, the mayor-elect opened up about the transition process, unveiling her expectations for the office and offering some reorganization plans.
“Fourteen years is a long time,” she told TBR News Media. “Mayor Garant did amazing things in Port Jefferson, and I never want to take anything away from her and what she’s done.”
“I’m just excited to start something new and fresh, and see what we can do to help bring Port Jefferson to the next chapter,” she added.
She offered that she is currently “working through sort of an organizational chart,” assessing where current staff members will fit within the organizational hierarchy and whether there are opportunities for change.
Through this chart, she is “trying to understand if everything makes sense the way it’s laid out,” she said. “Possibly it does, but that’s the evaluation process that I’m going through right now.”
With one year remaining in her unexpired term as trustee, one of Sheprow’s highest-profile vacancies is the one she will create by swearing in as mayor. New York Village Law empowers the mayor to “appoint individuals to fill vacancies in both elected and appointed offices when the vacancy occurs before the expiration of the official’s term of office,” with this type of mayoral appointment “not subject to board approval.”
Outside of village attorney Brian Egan, who announced his resignation this week, Sheprow declined to reveal any other major administrative changes or forecast upcoming mayoral appointments.
One of Sheprow’s central positions during her campaign was the formation of new resident task forces and committees to assist the board in local decision-making. Sheprow maintained her intent to move ahead with plans for committees on parking, budgets and the Port Jefferson Power Station, among others.
“I have three or four people that I can tap into immediately on the Audit and Budget Committee,” she said. “I’ve been talking to people about the Parking Committee, the LIPA Committee,” adding that the village government is exploring a portal for residents to enter their interests and alert the committee boards on which they would like to volunteer.
Expanding upon this initiative, Sheprow said she had contacted Kevin Wood, the village’s communications committee head, about overhauling the village’s municipal website, suggesting a website revamp would likely be a multimonth endeavor.
Sheprow also said she has been scrutinizing the village’s existing Code of Ethics, noting this “probably hasn’t been touched in all the years since it’s been established,” adding that a similar approach is underway for procurement and investment policies.
The mayor-elect described the transition process as “exciting,” noting a personal lack of anxiety in preparing for the mayor’s office.
“It’s just energizing, and I’m looking forward to it,” she said. “We have a great operating institution in the Village of Port Jefferson. The people in place are doing their jobs, and I hope to empower them to do their jobs even more.”
Sheprow will be sworn in as mayor outside Village Hall this Tuesday, July 4.
Dr. Sharon Nachman, chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Stony Brook Children's Hospital. File photo from Stony Brook Medicine
With COVID-19 pandemic restrictions in the rearview mirror, residents have been returning to the open road and the open skies, visiting places and people.
In addition to packing sunscreen, bathing suits and cameras, local doctors urge people to check the vaccination status for themselves and their children, which may have lapsed.
“During COVID, many people did not keep up with their vaccines,” said Dr. Sharon Nachman, chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Stony Brook Children’s Hospital. “That has led to a decrease in the amount of children who are vaccinated.”
Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a health advisory to remind doctors and public health officials for international travelers to be on the lookout for cases of measles, with cases rising in the country and world.
As of June 8, the CDC has learned of 16 confirmed cases of measles across 11 jurisdictions, with 14 cases arising from international travel.
Measles, which is highly contagious and can range from relatively mild symptoms to deadly infections, can arise in developed and developing nations.
Measles can be aerosolized about 60 feet away, which means that “you could be at a train station and someone two tracks over who is coughing and sneezing” can infect people if they are not protected.
The combination of increasing travel, decreasing vaccinations and climbing levels of measles in the background creates the “perfect mixture” for a potential spread of the disease, Nachman said.
Typical first symptoms include cough, runny nose and conjunctivitis.
Conjunctivitis, which includes red, watery eyes, can be a symptom of numerous other infections.
“Many other illnesses give you red eyes,” Nachman said, adding, “Only when you start seeing a rash” do doctors typically confirm that it’s measles.
People are contagious for measles when they start to show these symptoms. Doctors, meanwhile, typically treat measles with Vitamin A, which can help ease the symptoms but is not an effective antiviral treatment.
As with illnesses like COVID, people with underlying medical conditions are at higher risk of developing more severe symptoms. Those with diabetes, hypertension, have organ transplants or have received anticancer drugs or therapies can have more problematic symptoms from measles.
In about one in 1,000 cases, measles can cause subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, or SSPE. About six to 10 years after contracting the virus, people can develop SSPE, which can lead to coma and death.
In addition to children who need two doses of the measles vaccine, which typically is part of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, or MMR, doctors urge people born between 1957 and 1985 to check on their vaccination status. People born during those years typically received one dose of the vaccine. Two doses provide greater protection.
Two doses of the MMR vaccine provide 97% protection from measles. One dose offers 93% immunity, explained Dr. David Galinkin, infectious disease specialist at Port Jefferson-based St. Charles Hospital.
People born before 1957 likely had some exposure to measles, which can provide lifelong immunological protection.
Nachman also urged people to speak with their doctor about their vaccination status for measles and other potential illnesses before traveling. People are protected against measles about two weeks after they receive their vaccine.
Doctors suggested that the MMR vaccine typically causes only mild reactions, if any.
Tetanus, Lyme
In addition to MMR vaccines, doctors urged residents to check on their tetanus vaccination, which protects for 10 years.
“The last thing you want to do is look for a tetanus vaccination in an international emergency room,” Nachman added.
During the summer months, doctors also urged people to check themselves and their children, especially if they are playing outside in the grass or near bushes, for ticks.
Intermediate hosts for Lyme disease, a tick typically takes between 36 to 48 hours from the time it attaches to a human host to transmit Lyme disease.
Nachman suggested parents use a phone flashlight to search for these unwelcome parasites.
Maureen Manyasa-Zangrillo near the hole where children used to fetch drinking water before a well project.. Photo from Manyasa-Zangrillo
As a child in Kenya, Maureen Nabwire Manyasa-Zangrillo, now 35, loved learning about the world, but never dreamed she’d wind up living in the United States more than 7,000 miles away.
Maureen Nabwire Manyasa-Zangrillo with her husband, Joey. Photo from Manyasa-Zangrillo
She lived several different lifestyles moving around Kenya as a child, she said, following her father’s developing career as an agricultural scientist to cities and villages and back again, fostering her love of new places and different kinds of people. As she grew up, so did that passion, expanding outward from her region and continent to encompass the entire world atlas she loved to study.
So when a serendipitous meeting over a charity project gave her a chance to travel to the other side of the world to make a new life on the North Shore of Long Island, she was ready. Now married to Joey Zangrillo, owner of Joey Z’s Restaurant in Port Jefferson, she is in the perfect setting to keep learning. “My love for geography and reading maps really helps when I meet people,” she said. “I have a clue about almost every corner of the globe.”
Growing up in Kenya
Before she even started primary school, Manyasa-Zangrillo had lived in Nakuru, the fourth largest urban area in the nation; her family’s village in Busia near the Ugandan border; a remote agricultural field station outside of Kenya’s capital Nairobi; and finally the thriving urban capital itself.
When it was time to start school, Manyasa-Zangrillo’s parents moved her and her younger sisters back to the quieter Busia, where they stayed with an aunt in a circular mud hut built in the traditional manner of their ethnic group, the Luhya tribe, while her father started the long process of coordinating construction of a modern brick house.
It was common in Kenya for breadwinners to work in the cities but keep their families back home in the villages, and such was the case for Manyasa-Zangrillo’s father. So building the house was slow progress over the next four or five years, with her father coordinating the work whenever he could make time to be home from Nairobi. Her mother, a primary school teacher, was gone awhile also to advance her training at teachers college.
Both parents made sure to stay connected to the girls. The father would send letters and packages to his daughters through the local bus company’s courier service, and — since landlines were rare — would schedule times to talk. Manyasa-Zangrillo remembered friends with landline telephones in their offices coming to tell the family what time to wait at the local payphone booth. She and her sisters would crowd around. “You’d find all of us at the booth — he’d talk to us turn by turn,” she said. “That’s how we found ways to connect.” Once the house was finished, the family finally had a landline of their own.
At age 10, Manyasa-Zangrillo’s lifestyle changed yet again, when she went to a Catholic boarding school, run by a very strict nun. “She was tough on us,” Manyasa-Zangrillo said, recalling that after parents visited, the staff would check the students to make sure they weren’t bringing in any outside food, drinks or treats.
Amid the rigid schedule and lack of comfort food, Manyasa-Zangrillo discovered bright spots: literature and geography. The curriculum included many storybooks, in both English and Swahili. For Manyasa-Zangrillo, reading was a beautiful escape. “It was a way of distracting myself from all the craziness and strictness that was going around,” she said.
Her beloved geography also gave her mind space to travel. “They would teach us about different areas — you learn about the geography, the weather of all these places, the planting, cultivation, commerce structures and all those things,” she said. “I was just curious about places.”
As she was growing up, she saw her parents rise in their education and careers. Her father obtained his university degree, a master’s and eventually a doctorate in plant breeding for arid and semi-arid regions, and her mother earned a bachelor’s in special education. “I’d see how strong willed they are,” the daughter said. “It was really motivating to see.”
Manyasa-Zangrillo, right, with her parents and a cousin in Kenya. Photo from Manyasa-Zangrillo
This motivation helped Manyasa-Zangrillo succeed in her own education, earning a government scholarship to university herself. She struggled, though, to know what to study. In the end, she settled on law. “I wasn’t crazy about it,” she said, remembering she looked into other options like English linguistics, but her dad was even less crazy about that idea. “You have good grades — a top performance,” he told her, encouraging her to choose a major he saw as more serious.
After completing her education, she was admitted to the Kenyan bar and landed a job at the firm where she had carried out her required internship. She found ways to enjoy it. Serving documents or filing petitions, for example, took her all around the region. “I liked it because I love traveling, and I love seeing and exploring,” she said. “It was fulfilling my adventurous self because I’m going to new towns, new places.”
Charitable deeds
Another thing that helped fulfill her curiosity were opportunities to serve. Along with her sisters and other neighbors in Nairobi, where her family had relocated, Manyasa-Zangrillo had started a group called Youth for Change as a means to serve underprivileged children. So when her close friend from law school, Annette Kawira, invited her to volunteer at Bethsaida Community Foundation’s home for orphans, vulnerable children and children who had been living on the streets, she was happy to go along.
By 2016, Kawira had moved to the United States and found herself, of all places, in Joey Zangrillo’s Port Jefferson restaurant, then called Z Pita. Zangrillo had started a nonprofit organization and apparel company promoting racial reconciliation, and he was also donating 10% of his profits to charity. When Kawira saw a sign about the restaurant owner’s philanthropy, she remembered the Bethsaida orphanage and made a fast friendship and partnership with Zangrillo.
As the two organized fundraising on Long Island, Manyasa-Zangrillo served as the woman on the ground in Kenya, liaising between them and the children’s home. Logistical texts and FaceTime interactions between her and Zangrillo blossomed into friendship — she enjoyed his sense of humor — then took on a flirtatious air. Interest sparked.
By the time he planned to take a trip to Kenya to visit Bethsaida and meet the children in 2017, he was also looking forward to meeting her. She remembered being nervous about what he would be like in person, but after she opened her door to him, she said, “he just busted in with so much energy, and I was like, OK, we’re going to get along.”
For his part, Zangrillo was drawn to her compassion. “What made me fall in love with my wife is when I saw the love in her eyes for the children in the orphanage,” he said. “That second, I knew.”
To Long Island and marriage
The trip was a success and plans to install a well at the orphanage moved forward, as did plans for Manyasa-Zangrillo to visit Long Island, which she did that fall. Joey Zangrillo sent Kawira and another Kenyan friend in a limo to pick her up from the airport, and she was charmed. Manhattan charmed her, too — it was larger than life, just like the movies. She even sat in the audience at “The Daily Show” to see the comic Trevor Noah she’d watched back in Africa.
Manyasa-Zangrillo found the Port Jefferson community and Zangrillo’s friends welcoming and warm, but the weather less so. “The drastic hot to cold — I felt like my ears were going to fall off,” she said.
The weather wasn’t enough to keep her away. After a couple months back in the more temperate climate of Kenya, she kept thinking about New York, Zangrillo and the possibilities. “In my legal profession, I was wallowing a bit,” she said. “Am I going to do this for the rest of my life, yet I’m feeling like this is not what I really wanted to do.”
So she took a risk and came back in early 2018, still unsure what the future would hold. Zangrillo was more certain. “He was like, ‘You know what? I would like you to stay.’”
They married that summer. “There’s no need to overthink something that is good,” she said of the quick timeline, adding that where immigration law is involved, “you date through the marriage because you don’t have a long courtship.”
She found her transition to New York easy, partly because of Kawira and other Kenyan connections, but also because of her new husband. He’d told so many people about her and about the orphanage that restaurantgoers and friends were thrilled to meet her, and to learn more about her. “It’s so refreshing because when I walk in, people say, ‘You must be Maureen,’” she said. “Through the restaurant, I’m meeting people every day.”
For Zangrillo, having her in town is “a godsend,” he said. “It changed my life — I’m a happy man, with a happy life.”
Careerwise, the future is still open for Manyasa-Zangrillo. She has taken a paralegal class and is studying the American legal system in case she wants to return to her original career path. She helps at the restaurant and has introduced a top-selling menu item — the lemon potatoes. The couple are continuing their charity work, as well, with hopes to install a school library for students in a Nairobi slum settlement.
Now living in Setauket, Manyasa-Zangrillo has come to appreciate the North Shore’s feel and location, not too close and not too far from the city. “My life dream when I was younger was just to be somewhere that is full of nature and very serene, and the environment is cool,” she said. “I’d say I got it here.”
An outdoor cooking oil container, above. Photo from Wikimedia Commons
By Aidan Johnson
Two men were arrested on June 5 by Suffolk County police for stealing cooking oil from three restaurants in the Patchogue-Medford area.
While the idea of people stealing used cooking oil may garner some confused looks and light chuckles, the ramifications of the crime are a lot bigger than expected.
Dimitris Assanis, an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Stony Brook University, spoke about the greater use of cooking oil.
“There’s these cascading layers of what you can use oil products for, so in the cooking oil side, these are basically oil that comes from the fryers. That’s probably the largest use,” Assanis said.
Depending on the quality and type of oil, along with the price point of the restaurant, according to Assanis, factor in how often the oil is changed. More expensive restaurants may change their oil daily or every few days, while a mid- to lower-tier restaurant may change its oil around once every week or two.
There’s also value in converting this oil into fuel oil by turning it into biodiesel, a net-zero or low-carbon fuel that is very similar to diesel. If done in a careful manner, the oil can be turned into high-quality biodiesel that can then be used as home heating oil or can be put in a car, Assanis said.
In the past, restaurants would have to pay to dispose of their used oil. However, restaurants are able to have it disposed for free or even get paid for their used oil, especially since there’s a secondary use for it.
“The issue is now if someone is going in and stealing their oil, they were using that additional revenue probably to discount some of the cost of running the restaurant,” Assanis said. “And usually that cost that’s lost there gets passed on to the customer because they can’t offset it.”
Jeff Yasinski is co-owner of D&W Alternative Energy, a New Jersey company that collects and recycles used cooking oil from restaurants in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware. For over a decade, D&W has had to struggle with cooking oil theft. Currently, Yasinski estimates that 30-35% of their cooking oil is being stolen per week.
Even with the outdoor cooking oil containers that restaurants use becoming more secure, thieves still find ways to steal it, usually with the help of oxyacetylene torches and angle grinders that leave the containers destroyed.
“We’ve personally reached out to the FBI, the State Commission of Investigation, pretty much every local police department in the New Jersey, Pennsylvania area,” Yasinski said. “Occasionally they’ll catch one little cargo van with two guys in it, but you got to cut the head off the snake, not the [tail],” he added.
The theft is fueled by the people who are willing to buy the stolen used oil, and according to Yasinski, it is no secret who they are.
“There’s three big outfits in New Jersey that [are] buying a lot of stolen oil, and pretty much all of that stolen oil that’s aggregated at those three places then gets sold on through one specific trading house,” Yasinski explained.
“That one specific trading house supplies one of the very biggest renewable diesel producers in the world, and they know it. Everybody down the chain knows it. It’s frustrating,” he further elaborated.
Yasinski suggests that restaurants move the oil containers inside, where thieves are less likely to steal it. He also recommends familiarizing yourself with the service provider.
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone to a restaurant trying to pick up a new account, and they thought that they were being serviced by whoever’s container was out there, but in reality, their oil has just been stolen over and over and over again,” he said.
“And the company who dropped that container five years ago hasn’t been there in five years, because every time they go there, there’s no oil there,” Yasinski added.
It’s important to make sure that the service provider being used is legitimate by checking information such as the Department of Transportation numbers on the truck. Otherwise, instead of just the oil being taken, your money can be going along with it.
One winter day, I was on my way to deliver The Brooklyn Eagle. It was the early 1950s, when I lived in Brooklyn.
I was riding my homemade bike. It was only a green frame and tires. It had no chain guard, no fenders, no kickstand and no rubber hand grips. It had only one pedal. It was all that I could afford. I remember my grandmother gave me a shot of homemade dandelion wine to keep me warm.
When I reached the corner of my block with my canvas bag tied to my handlebars, I saw Zeke with his friends. He was the chief of the Indian motorcycle gang. They were headed my way.
So I yelled out, “Hi, Zeke,” and his friends burst out laughing. Zeke then came over to me, put his arm around me and said, “This is my good friend, and anyone who messes with him messes with me.” I was in my glory.
Zeke was my idol. He was a born leader, a philosopher-king, a warrior-poet and chose his battles wisely. He always wore jeans, a jean jacket, a garrison belt and motorcycle boots. Zeke was bold, wise, honest, kind and humble. He had the right swagger and governed with humility.
When I was a bit older — in the late 1950s — I was able to buy myself a Benelli motorcycle with money I had saved up. I wore jeans, a jean jacket, a garrison belt and motorcycle boots.
I don’t know what happened to Zeke, but he was special. I bet he was one of the best Ringolevio players in all of Brooklyn (“The game of life you play for keeps.”).
Whenever I’m in a jam and don’t know what to do, I ask myself: “What would Zeke have done?” He was my true friend and mentor.
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