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Leah Dunaief

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This is a rerun of last year’s explanation, updated for the current elections. 

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

Inside this issue is a treasure trove of first-hand information about the candidates and the issues in the coming election. How do I know? Because we, the different members of the editorial board of Times Beacon Record Newspapers, personally interviewed people running for office across the three towns that we serve: Brookhaven, Smithtown and Huntington. The offices the candidates are running for are all local except for Congress, which means that these are the officials who will have the most direct effect on our lives. 

The positions range this year from county  comptroller and county clerk to state senators, and assembly men and women and Congress.

We asked them questions without bias, seeking only to understand who they were, what they believed and what we could expect from each of them, should they be elected — or re-elected, as the case might be. The setting in our conference room was relaxed, and we hoped comfortable, with opponents for each office seated together around the table responding to questions put to them by our editors and reporters. 

Sometimes there was only one candidate who  might be running unopposed or against a shadow opponent, but mostly there were two during each session. Most of the time, the hour went by calmly, but occasionally the opponents get testy with each other — they may even become openly hostile.

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At one such session some years ago, one of the candidates invited the other out to the back parking lot “to settle things.” When the other began to take off his jacket, we quickly intervened. But there were no such flare-ups this year. 

The answers were timed in an attempt to get to the main ideas without running on too long. There was ample time at the end for each visitor to tell us anything more that perhaps we hadn’t elicited with our questioning. 

We discussed the candidates at the end of each hour and came to a conclusion for the endorsement. 

We have written up the details of each interview in a separate article for the election section. Most of the time, the editorial group was unanimous because the choices were fairly direct. But for a couple of races, we talked over the pros and cons of each candidate at length before making the selection. These endorsements are based on both the in-depth interviews and the considerable information we know about the incumbents since we have been covering them closely throughout their terms in office. Of course, after reading the stories, you may or may not agree with our conclusions. Our job is to get you thinking.

The many hours that are given to this task, throughout the month of October, are a service for our readers. We are privileged to enjoy an extended face-to-face time with those standing for election, and we feel an obligation to pass along whatever information, facts and impressions we gather during these sessions. We sincerely hope we help in the sometimes-difficult job of casting a responsible vote.

Each year we include in the election section a sample ballot that we are able to procure from the Suffolk County Board of Elections because readers have told us that it is a great advantage for them to receive the ballot at the voting poll already knowing how it is laid out.

Our editorial board is made up of staffers with different political leanings, but when we put our journalists’ hats on, we try to judge each race strictly on the merits of the opposing candidates. And while it is technically possible for me to be tyrannical about the final selections, that is almost never the case. We decide by majority rule.

Sincere thanks to the talented staff who join in this extra work each year. We truly believe that we are watchdogs for the people, and nowhere is that more necessary than in reporting about government and its office holders. We hope we have helped you, whether you read by newspaper and/or online. Now please vote. 

Frank Melville Memorial Park. Photo by Gene Sprouse

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

Last week I wrote about the pleasure of getting away, even for a day, and enjoying the foliage season in lower New England. This time I want to wax rhapsodic (well, in a manner of speaking) about the special places we love here in the neighborhood. 

Do you have such a special place? By which, I mean a place you go when you want to enjoy the beauty of the area, where you can sit and relax and let concerns just melt away for a few minutes. Or where you can go to think out troubles peacefully, deciding what to do next. Or maybe, you just want a bucolic walk.

One such location for me is the Frank Melville Memorial Park, not far from 25A and my office in Setauket, but nicely hidden from view. Opened in 1937 as a memorial to Frank Melville Jr., it was the brainchild of his wife, Jennie MacConnell Melville, and his son, Ward Melville. While it is privately owned, the park is open for the pleasure of the public every day from sunrise to sunset.

So who was Frank Melville, you might ask, and how did it happen that a park is dedicated to him?

Frank Melville Jr. started by selling shoes to the residents from his sailboat on a fixed schedule, as he and his family of wife and small children circumnavigated Long Island. Eventually, he founded the Thom McAn brand with J. Franklin McElwain, a New Hampshire shoe manufacturer, exactly one hundred years ago. Their first retail shoe store in New York, selling a few simple styles at a low fixed price, then expanded to hundreds of stores across the US, becoming the largest footwear retailer in the country with 1400 stores. The brand name was eventually bought by Sears 86 years later. 

As they grew wealthy, the Melvilles, who lived in Manhattan, bought a second home for themselves in Old Field, and became increasingly philanthropic, donating local land for community benefit, including what is now the campus for Stony Brook University. And it was Ward Melville, who visualized and created Stony Brook Village in 1941, the first outdoor mall in the country, and to this day, a fun daytime destination.

When I walk through the park, which surrounds the duck pond with leafy and varied greenery now changing colors, I marvel at the generosity and vision of the Melville family in fashioning such a jewel for anyone who wishes to enjoy its paved path, picture postcard views and many benches. It is such a place of respite for those of us who work just around the corner and those who come with their dogs from farther away. 

Dogs are welcome, as long as their owners pick up after them. We sat on one of the benches last Saturday and called out, “Hello, Dog,” to the various pooches as they walked by with their owners. The dogs immediately veered over for a pat, and sometimes the owners lingered for a chat. 

It was quite a social affair on a beautiful fall afternoon for dogs and people.

One of the people we met as we strolled along was Anita Lago, an energetic woman from Stony Brook who discovered the pond and the park eight years ago and has been coming over to enjoy the swans regularly since then. When she was found cleaning out the stray fishing lines and other detritus that might enmesh the fowl, she was offered a pail and a rake by the foundation that oversees the park and invited to be official. And so, she can be found at water’s edge, when she is not at her full-time job, a hard-working volunteer helping to keep the pond clean and the swans and other fowl safe.

The Frank Melville Memorial Park is supported by donations from a grateful public. It’s that kind of place, one that brings out the best in all of us as it gifts to us all year round.

Pixabay photo

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

It was time to get away, even for a day, and when better than on foliage weekend! So Saturday, we took the ferry to Connecticut and started up Route 8 to get to the Berkshires and the seasonal colors. Were we too late in the fall? Shortly after we left Bridgeport, our choice of time and place were confirmed. It was a perfect autumn day, sunny, bright, soft breeze, balmy even, and the colors burst upon us, the reds, oranges, yellows mixed with a still significant amount of green as we began to drive through the hills. No, we were not too late.

We had been concerned, too, about the effects of the summer’s drought on the leaves. We needn’t have worried. Perhaps, it wasn’t the most dramatic foliage we had ever witnessed, some trees were already bare, but it was brilliant enough to excite our eyes. We whooped around every bend in the road that presented us with a new palette of hills and color. 

The timing of foliage season has altered somewhat over the past few years. Climate change has impacted peak leaf peeping by extending the warmer weather that keeps trees green. Hence the optimal viewing time has also been delayed. This year, according to records, seems like it will clock in as the fifth warmest. So it turned out that our urge for an outing was right on.

Where to go?

The Store

While it was possible just to drive slowly, drinking in the scenery, it was also fun to have a destination in mind. We left the highway, or rather it left us as it ended in Winsted, incidentally, my dad’s birthplace, and we started on a local road that eventually led us to Southfield, the home of a long-ago college roommate with whom we had lost contact. She, and her family, as we discovered, no longer lived there, but that didn’t stop us from enjoying the tiny town. Yes, it was one of those “blink and you will miss it” villages, but we didn’t blink. We parked and had lunch at The Store, a delightful coffee, pastry and sandwich shop with tables inside as well as out front. Happily installed in one corner of the patio with a turkey and avocado sandwich and a generous slice of chocolate-banana bread, to be washed down with ambrosial coffee, we chatted up the couple at the adjoining table, who were smiling at us.

In fact, it was the kind of day that prompted everyone to smile. There we were, amid glorious leafage, basking in ideal temperature and bright sunlight in the peaceful countryside. They told us their names, Paul and Julia, and that they were from Westchester County and celebrating their anniversary. For the first time, they were at leisure to do that because their two children, a son and a daughter, were at college. She was a psychologist, he worked in finance, and they had left their responsibilities behind to stay at the historic inn in the next village for the weekend.

They were fun to talk to, as was every other person who went by, walking their dogs. We asked each one if they knew the roommate’s family, but just about each one apologized and explained that they had only moved there 20 years ago. What a coincidence, we thought. They had all come more or less at the same time. It wasn’t until the next day that we realized what had happened those two decades ago: 9/11 happened. If one wanted to escape from a city to a safe and bucolic place, here was one such location. Perhaps that was what brought them there.

We stayed in the area, driving around, enjoying the typical New England white clapboard church with its distinctive steeple, the inn and the village common along with glorious Nature. Then, as night fell, we had dinner at the inn before returning home.

The next day, I felt as if I had been aired out.

Stock photo

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

This message is for older people who are reading this column and may get COVID-19. The information may save your life. It may have saved mine.

Especially for older people, COVID is a deadly virus. What defines older? Let’s say, beyond 50. Now there is a medicine that dramatically reduces severity and possible death from this virus, but many Americans are not taking it. Its name is Paxlovid.

“Never really in recent history for a respiratory virus can I think of an anti-viral medication being as effective, demonstrated in scientific literature, as what Paxlovid has shown,” stated Dr. Rebecca Wang, an infectious disease specialist at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, when interviewed by The New York Times.

Both random trials and data from electronic health records have shown this medicine to be effective, particularly among older patients. The medicine works by inhibiting the virus’s replication once it invades the body. Its underuse is already associated with thousands of preventable deaths, according to Dr. Robert Wachter, chair of the medicine department at the University of California, San Francisco.

“A large chunk of deaths are preventable right now with Paxlovid alone,” Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House COVID response coordinator told David Leonhardt of The New York Times. He predicted that if every American 50 and above with COVID received a course of either Paxlovid or monoclonal antibodies, daily deaths might fall to about 50 per day, from about 400 per day.

So why aren’t people taking the medicine?

For one reason, Paxlovid, which is taken twice a day for five days, does leave a metallic taste in the mouth. So I found that by eating half a banana after each dose, I got rid of the unwelcome taste. I also got the benefit of a banana a day, which is a healthy and nutritious fruit containing fiber and some essential vitamins and minerals.

Another possible reason is the association of Paxlovid with “rebound,” a second session of the disease which can occur a week to a month after the end of the first round. Experts don’t know what causes the rebound. A rebound is possible even if the patient never used Paxlovid. And even if he or she did, perhaps a longer duration of the drug is necessary for some patients than the five days currently administered.

Research has shown that out of sample of 568,000 patients, 0.016% over 50 who used Paxlovid died. For a similar cohort of patients who did not use the drug, the death rate was four times higher or 0.070. But only 25% of patients eligible to receive the drug actually took it, even though it is available and free.

Thanks to my son, Daniel Dunaief, who has spoken with two infectious disease experts, we also have some local reaction to the drug. Dr. Andrew Handel, pediatric infectious disease physician at Stony Brook Children’s Hospital, commented, “Hesitancy to take Paxlovid seems to fall in line with the general ‘COVID fatigue.’  COVID is clearly less lethal now than during prior surges, thanks in large part to vaccinations, but it still causes some hospitalizations. Those at highest risk of severe disease, particularly those who are unvaccinated, benefit from antiviral treatment if they are infected.”

Dr. David Galinkin, infectious disease expert at St. Charles Hospital, said, “The media has overblown this rebound experience. In the literature, about 10% of cases [have a rebound.] Like any other medication, people that could really benefit from Paxlovid [should consider it.] … We are still seeing people dying from this.”

Perhaps more doctors could be better informed about this drug. Additional information and encouragement are needed from the White House, and a lot more public announcements should be placed in the media to reach people. As has been the case throughout these last two-and-one-half COVID years, instructions have been changing, adjusted as the scientific and medical professions learn more about this pathogen. Proper treatment is still a work in progress.

Insomnia. METRO photo

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

Have you been waking up thinking at night? There is so much to think about, even to be deeply concerned about. There is COVID-19, of course. No one wants to get the disease, and if you already had it, you don’t want to get it again, as some people reportedly have. You also don’t want any of the long-hauler symptoms to afflict you: fatigue, brain fog, aches and pains, trouble breathing, dizziness, headache, and at least nine more on a reported list. In fact, the list is so comprehensive, it’s enough to give you anxiety, especially if you already have had the illness. Oh yes, and anxiety is also one of the symptoms.

Then there is the Ukraine. Normally a country that was somewhere in Eastern Europe, in the same general area as “Fiddler on the Roof,” now its whereabouts as Russia’s western neighbor are known around the world. We watched as Putin sent more than 100,000 soldiers to overrun its borders. Poor little Ukraine, horrid bully Russia. We are sending them an unprecedented amount of money and military aid, and we have lowered our national oil and gas supplies. Will we have enough resources if we are attacked? Even as we cheer the valiant resistance and success of the victims of naked aggression, we worry about Putin’s possible use of nuclear arms. He has over 2000 small such weapons, apparently, and it’s the Cold War all over again.

The problem of immigration was brought right to our door with the arrival of immigrants sent by southern governors of border states. They have been literally deposited here by the thousands via buses, and they have been humanely received, if we are to accept what we are told by the media. As I have written in this column before, they can represent an opportunity as well as a challenge for areas in need of Help Wanted. Indeed, I am now reading that some of the immigrants are put to work cleaning up the devastation wrought by hurricane Ian in Florida. They are even being sent back down there to help. Who knows what to believe?

If you are going into New York City, how likely are you to ride the subway? The reports of incidents underground are frightening. So are horrible, unprovoked attacks on the streets. Now, I grew up in the city, and I am used to all sorts of miserable statistics concerning crime there, but I somehow never felt fearful. With some eight million people, crime is unfortunately inevitable. And NYC isn’t even statistically the worst. New Orleans is. But somehow, these recent incidents seem more violent.

Climate change has finally penetrated national conversation. The destruction and deaths in Puerto Rico and now in Florida and the Carolinas caused by the last two hurricanes have made those of us who live on islands and along the shores more conscious of future threats. While there have always been hurricanes, some with even legendary force, the prospect of more and stronger blasts due to climate change has prompted scary instruction about emergency bags and escape routes.

Inflation and its direction are also of grave concern. Going to the supermarket now seems to net about half as many bags of groceries for the usual food budget. Restaurants have decidedly become more expensive, as they have to pay more to function. And home values seem to have stopped rising and begun to cool. The stock market, while it is not the economy, has dropped like a rock. That negates the “wealth effect” homeowners and investors feel that encourages them to spend more freely.

Heck, I even worry about the New York Yankees. Yes, they have won their division, and you might say, “handily.” That’s exactly the problem. The last time they won by a big margin, they lost their competitive edge, along with the series, remember? It even happened this year right after the All-Star break. Teams do better when they have to fight until the last minute.

Awww, forgeddaboutit! Go back to sleep.

METRO photo

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

Have you ever heard of reflective listening? While I like to think of myself as being a good listener, and really I should ask others who speak to me to make that determination, I came upon this new technique and thought I would share it with you.

Reflective listening is a communications strategy that involves two steps. The first is, if you are the listener, seeking to understand what the speaker is saying. So many times in our lives, we think we hear what the other person is saying, and it turns out we didn’t hear that person correctly at all. I think that is particularly true when on the phone or when reading a text or an email. We don’t have the benefit of seeing facial expressions or body language. And even when on Zoom, we don’t get a good look at the other person, nor do they have a good read of us.

Then the second step is to offer back the thought, and even the words of the speaker, to confirm that his or her idea was understood. Here is just a simple example between two people who sometimes quarrel that could be misunderstood.

“Do you want to go to a Yankee game with me Friday night for a change?” asks the speaker. 

The listener hears, “Do you want to go to a Yankee game with me?” as opposed to with another person Friday night, and so reflects back the question accordingly by repeating, “Do I want to go to a Yankee game with you?”

The speaker can then clarify with, “Yes, do you want to go to a Yankee game Friday night instead of going bowling?”

By repeating the words, the listener has given the speaker a second chance at making his meaning clear. The listener then answers, “Yes, I would like to go to a Yankee game with you Friday night.”

This is probably an oversimplification of how a speaker might be misunderstood, but the essence of the reflective listening is to pay respectful attention to the content and the feelings expressed by the speaker. The listener hears and then understands what is being said and lets the speaker know that she has gotten the message.

This kind of “checking out” requires responding actively while keeping focused completely on the speaker. It’s a step beyond what is normally thought of as listening. It’s reflecting back accurately on both content and feeling levels.

Reflective listening offers a number of benefits.  It lets the speaker know that they have been heard, understood, and perhaps, even cared for and supported, depending on the nature of the exchange. It gives the speaker feedback on what he or she said and how it was understood. 

It allows the listener to check his or her own accuracy in hearing what the speaker said. It avoids the illusion of understanding. It helps prevent what has been termed the “mental vacation” in which the listener is inattentive during conversation. It can give the speaker a second chance to focus on self, vent, sort out issues, express feelings and deal more effectively with emotions. 

It allows the speaker to move to deeper levels of expression at his or her own pace. It can help the speaker to articulate more clearly. It may help the speaker to arrive at a solution to a problem being voiced. It helps the listener clarify what is expected of him or her. It helps the listener to deal effectively with the issue, problem or needs the speaker raised.

In a confrontational exchange, it gives a couple of seconds pause, which might enable a cooling down.

In a social situation, it can create a climate of warmth between speaker and listener. In another situation, directions can be clarified by the listener. And as a technique in leading a group discussion, effective hearing, then repeating all points of view, is certainly required.

I hope you can see why I thought this one communication technique was worth sharing.

Pixabay photo

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

COVID caught me. After two and a half years of bobbing and weaving, trying to elude the virus, I finally have been felled. It’s like being shot on the last day of the war. 

I did all the right things. I avoided crowds, driving back from my South Carolina vacation at the outbreak of the pandemic in March 2020 instead of using my return plane ticket. I stopped going to the opera and to Broadway shows in New York City. I didn’t eat in restaurants, even after they reopened, for fear of who might be harboring pathogens at the next table. We closed the office to all but those with appointments. We ordered masks for the staff by the dozens and hand sanitizer by the gallon. We practiced social distancing at the bank, that is, before the bank closed its doors and moved away. We stopped holding events, such as “People of the Year” and “Cooks, Books and Corks” and “Reader’s Choice” that might turn into superspreaders. My family and I zoomed rather than visited. Our family holiday celebrations and vacations were suspended. And we took to our computers, to the extent we were able, for everything from classroom learning to shopping for toilet paper.

Remember all that?

Well, as much as we would like to declare the pandemic over, as President Joe Biden (D) recently did, the virus is still with us. I stopped social distancing, then recently became casual about wearing my mask. I started getting together, first with family, then with close friends, then with business colleagues. Recently, I have been eating inside a couple of restaurants. I stopped asking every repairman to please wear a mask in my house. I pushed COVID phobia way down in my consciousness.

Then I got it.

There are, of course, some differences between catching COVID early on and now. The health care professionals know so much more now about treating the disease. Hospitalizations are fewer but still some 32,000 daily, intubations are less common. But people are still dying, some 400-500 a day, to put numbers on it. Through Sept. 19, Suffolk County reported more than one death per day for the month, according to the Suffolk County Department of Health.

“We’ve had two million cases reported over the last 28 days, and we know underreporting is substantial,” Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Minnesota, was quoted in the Tuesday edition of The New York Times. He continued that COVID-19 was the No. 4 cause of death in the country.

Many of us were feeling what Biden was expressing. Yes, we have vaccines and medicines now that successfully hold the pathogen at bay, and most people have every expectation of recovering. Nonetheless, it has been a dreaded disease, especially for those of a certain age or with underlying conditions. With me, it started as a little dry cough throughout the afternoon, hardly noticeable. By nightfall, the cough had deepened and a headache began. The next day, the miserable irritation at the back of the throat started. By the end of the day, my temperature began to climb, eventually four degrees, and my body ached.

Of course, my doctor was on vacation that week, but the backup staff responded valiantly. They called me in for THE test, and when it was positive, they gave me three options. I could go to the Emergency Room and get an infusion of monoclonal antibodies, which would take an hour (not including the inevitable wait.) They could phone in a prescription for paxlovid, and I could take three pills in the morning, then three at night, for five days. They spelled out the side effects of both treatments, which didn’t sound too cheerful. Or I could just monitor the situation, drinking plenty of liquids, taking some Tylenol and see how it goes.

I chose the paxlovid.

Yes, it causes a metallic taste after it’s ingested. But it seems to have worked. 

Will I be as cavalier about relaxing precautions? No, I don’t think so. It is possible to get it again, and I REALLY don’t want it again.  I will get the next booster when I am eligible, I will continue to wear a mask regardless of what those around me are doing, and I will limit my dining, to the extent possible, to the great outdoors.

Help wanted sign in window

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

Busloads of immigrants are arriving in New York City regularly, sent from the border by the Texas governor. He doesn’t know what to do with so many, but we do. We up here in the northeast can use a lot of help, to judge from the omnipresent “Help Wanted” signs.

Of course, the newcomers cannot fit into communities seamlessly, functioning in any and every job. First, they need food, housing and perhaps medical care. Their children need to be registered for school. The parents have to be interviewed to determine their skills and preferences for work. To us, it would seem there are a number of jobs that they might fill fairly quickly even if they come with no special training, and especially if they have the benefit of a translator on the work premises or on the phone.

Restaurants in particular seem to be in need of additional help. Some positions there need energy and elbow grease, like busing tables, washing dishes and keeping the rooms clean. The same might be said for other parts of the hospitality and entertainment industries, like hotels and theaters. Hospitals need additional hands for cleaning and helping patients. Businesses and offices must be kept clean and neat. The same for private homes. 

Of great need is childcare, which in effect is a universal job but one for which applicants would have to be carefully screened. There is $7 billion of public funding available for childcare from New York State, but only some 12% of those who might qualify are aware of the program. An intense information campaign has been proposed to get the word out, and once there is a greater response, more caretakers will need to be retained and trained. The money is there to pay them.

New York City has long been the gateway to America for immigrants. And America has long been the promised land for those fleeing persecution, political chaos or even war at home, or those hoping to better themselves and especially their children in a country that offers opportunity.

We are a nation peopled by immigrants. While some families can brag about their long lineage here in America, the point is that at some time, ancestors came here from somewhere else, unless they are Native Americans. And the striving of immigrants to succeed and fit in has helped our country to succeed. Imagine what it must take to pull up roots, leave behind everything you know and those you love, and travel, in some instances great distances along perhaps dangerous routes, to come to America. Many don’t speak English. Others never make it here.

To do so must take great courage, determination and ambition. These are skills we need. And we need people. In addition to the evidence of Help Wanted signs, we know that our birth rate is dropping. More and more couples are opting not to have children, whether because of the expense, (some $300,000 per child today), the challenge of climate change or any other reasons.

We have a checkered history at best when it comes to welcoming immigrants. When I was growing up in New York City, for example, Puerto Ricans were arriving in substantial numbers. They were generally disparaged, accused of taking “American” jobs and causing crime. Leonard Bernstein’s “West Side Story” is a fairly accurate depiction set to music. Newcomers have had to elbow their way into the country, largely because they start out being culturally different, and differences are often feared.

My neighborhood as I was growing up, Yorkville, was largely populated by Germans. Restaurants advertised various krauts and wiener schnitzel. Beer halls lined East 86th Street, with polka music spilling onto the sidewalk, luring in passersby. Some residents, who had arrived generations earlier, made fun of them and their accents. Then in my teen years, the Germans moved up and out to the suburbs and elsewhere and were replaced by Hungarians, and the restaurant “specials” signs now offered “veal paprikash.” Again the same cycle. 

New York City renews itself with its immigrants. So does America. We need them to remain us.

Megan Bomgaars. Photo from Facebook

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

“Born to Sparkle” is a book written, to my surprise, by a young woman with Down syndrome. The rest of the book title is “A Story About Achieving Your Dreams.” A review of the book appears in our Arts and Lifestyles section on page B23 in this issue, and it tells a heartwarming story about the author, Megan Bomgaars, who is 29 and lives in Denver. In the words of our reviewer, Melissa Arnold, the book “teaches kids that all of us are unique and have something special to share with the world, and if you dream big and work hard, you can achieve anything.” 

Why am I surprised? Because my sister, who was two years younger than I, also was born with Down syndrome, and like Megan, on Thanksgiving Day but 50 years earlier in 1942. While she was clever and wonderful in many ways, Maxine could never have written a book, in part because she would never have been imagined to do so. What a difference that half-century makes.

There is a broad spectrum of Down diagnoses, and Maxine was pronounced “profoundly retarded,” which surely limited expectations for her life. While Megan’s motto is, “Don’t Limit Me!”, and she has become a motivational speaker and the owner of a business, the professionals who examined my sister Maxine told my parents to institutionalize her “because she won’t live very long anyway with that condition.” She lived to be 65.

It was my sister’s bad luck to be born five decades earlier, when mental retardation was considered a stigma for a family, and the response to such a birth was to hide the innocent person. Megan Bomgaars, by comparison, shared her life’s story on television with six others in the A&E docuseries “Born This Way.” The show went on to win an Emmy in 2016.

It was my sister’s good luck to have two parents who recognized her as a fully entitled member of our family and tried to give her every advantage that existed then, which were very few. When the principal of the elementary school that I attended refused to accept her into first grade, my mother asked for the “Dick & Jane” series with which first graders were taught to read and patiently worked with my sister at home for many hours a day. Eventually, Maxine could proudly read that primer. She could also do simple arithmetic, adding and subtracting, and she was very verbal. 

In fact, that was the only difficult part of life with Maxine. She talked constantly and in a loud voice, as if she were on one side of a telephone conversation. Only two things could make her quiet down: music and baseball.

Maxine would sit quietly in the back of the room while I took piano lessons from a teacher who came to the apartment. After he left and I got up, she would slide onto the piano stool and play the melodies of the different pieces I had gone over with the teacher. We’re talking here Bach, Czerny and Mendelsohn. She also adored music that she would hear on the radio, especially show tunes that she could sing. And sing she did, in a Jimmy Durante voice. One of her favorites was “Oklahoma!”

Also, she loved to listen to baseball games on the radio and watch them played on our Sunday outings with our dad to Central Park. I don’t know if she followed the intricacies of the game, but she knew when to cheer and probably loved being part of the crowd.

Megan Bomgaars loved going to school and was a cheerleader in high school. My sister also attended a school in Brooklyn that was operated by Catholic Services. A bus would pick her up, along with my mother, each day and drive them to Brooklyn. Incidentally, my mother never let her out of her sight. My parents protected Maxine from a world that could not always be kind and safe. But for Megan, a person who incidentally has Down syndrome, today society learns from her.