By Bill Landon
Comsewogue High School hosted Centereach in a boys soccer nonleague match Sept. 1 prior to the start of their respective league schedules. The teams tied 1-1.
Centereach, Comsewogue battle in nonleague tune up
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Birchwood students paint the beauty of Huntington on its walls
Huntington’s commuters are being enticed to stop and appreciate the beautiful aspects of their hometown each day as they pass under the Long Island Rail Road tracks.
Dozens of parents, teachers and students in South Huntington’s Birchwood Intermediate School community have spent hours this August transforming the railroad and pedestrian overpass on Route 110/New York Avenue into a bright, colorful community mural.
“This is the hub of the community, it bridges Huntington and South Huntington,” said Annie Michaelian, former assistant principal at Birchwood. “We felt it would be a nice place to set a gift of beautification.”
“It’s an opportunity you get once in a lifetime to do it together as a community.”
— Annie Michaelian
Barbara Wright, a fifth-grade teacher at Birchwood, said she proposed the idea to the School-Based Management Committee in March as a way of giving back to the community. Wright had previously done a similar — but much smaller, she stressed — mural with her Girl Scout Brownie troop in Blue Point. Michaelian said after mulling the idea over, she was on board.
“It’s an opportunity you get once in a lifetime to do it together as a community,” she said.
School officials reached out to the Town of Huntington, gaining the support of Supervisor Chad Lupinacci (R) for the project as it gained momentum. Next, the SBM committee held a meeting with LIRR representatives in late June, as the organization owns the railroad and pedestrian overpasses, according to Michaelian, to get full approval for the mural before going full steam ahead.
Wright had Birchwood students, like 11-year-old Danny Ryan, draw and sketch out what the mural should represent.
“We tried to think of the beautiful side of Huntington and come up with ideas, then put them together into the mural.”
— Danny Ryan
“We tried to think of the beautiful side of Huntington and come up with ideas, then put them together into the mural,” Danny said.
Area residents should be able to easily identify some of the iconic landmarks painted on the overpass including the Huntington Lighthouse and the southwest entrance to Heckscher Park, and a stylized version of the park’s fountains and bridges.
“Everything that you see, all of the elements were drawn by the kids,” Wright said. “I can tell you the kid who drew that flower, that boat, that lighthouse.”
Once the individual drawings were photoshopped together into the mural, it became a matter of finding volunteers to execute the vision, and so a signup form was put on the school’s website. Aboff’s Paints in Huntington donated all the paint, brushes, rollers and supplies needed, according to the assistant principal.
“There was an outpouring of people who wanted to help,” Michaelian said. “Community members have been driving by, beeping and saying they love it. It’s become this beautiful thing.”
“That’s what we try to teach the kids all the time: You come to school to learn, but you are also part of a bigger thing, part of your community, of your state and your country.”
— Anthony Ciccarelli
Wright and her husband, Paul, began placing outlines of the children’s drawings up on the overpass tunnels the first weekend of August, with rotating shifts of volunteers picking up the paintbrushes each Saturday from 9 a.m. to noon. Dozens of children and their parents have come down to paint and bring life to their drawings.
“They are taking complete ownership,” she said. “They are so committed.”
During Labor Day weekend, Birchwood Principal Anthony Ciccarelli could be found rolling out a blue sky on the western wall of the overpass to serve as a backdrop to an airplane.
“You are so proud of the whole school community for coming together, first for thinking of the idea and thinking of the community and, second, thinking of how to better your community,” Ciccarelli said. “That’s what we try to teach the kids all the time: You come to school to learn, but you are also part of a bigger thing, part of your community, of your state and your country.”
The committee hopes to have the mural finished for a grand unveiling during the annual Unity in the Community parade — Huntington Awareness Day scheduled for Sept. 22. Even so, its student creators hope the mural is a gift that continues to give and grow with the community.
“Maybe, hopefully, people will continue to add new things to it in the future,” Danny said.
Middle Country heads back to school
Students in the Middle Country Central School District returned to school Sept. 5, and readers responded to our request for first day of school photos.
Three Village students take on the new school year
It felt like the middle of summer outside, but Three Village Central School District students were back to hitting the books Sept. 4.
The children had a lot on their minds on the first day of school.
Hannah La Polla, a kindergartner at William Sydney Mount Elementary School, was looking forward to seeing her teacher Dawn McNally and riding the bus, according to her mother, Tara La Polla.
Then there was 10-year-old Jordyn Zezelic a fifth-grader at Nassakeag Elementary School whose eyes were on the future. She said she was looking forward to graduating in June and attending R. C. Murphy Junior High School next year.
Danielle Werner, a fourth-grader at Arrowhead Elementary School, was thinking about science.
“I am excited about making a project for the fourth-grade science fair,” Danielle said.
Courtney DeVerna, a third-grader at Nassakeag Elementary School, was in a musical mood.
“I’m looking forward to playing the viola,” Courtney said.
Her brother, Ethan DeVerna, who was starting kindergarten, was eager for the ride to school.
“I can’t wait to ride the school bus,” Ethan said. “It’s magic.”
Thank you to the Three Village residents who contributed their photos.
UPDATED: Car crashes into East Setauket pizzeria
Pizza lovers hoping for a slice at one East Setauket restaurant had to go elsewhere this Labor Day weekend.
John Fornino, owner of Via Pizza & Pasta, said he was standing at the restaurant’s kitchen door at approximately 3:25 p.m. Sept. 1 when he heard an explosion of glass. He said his first reaction was to cover his head, when he looked up he saw an SUV stopped just short of the counter.
Fornino said the vehicle came through the window, and in addition to the window being shattered, the front wall was damaged. The SUV knocked over tables and chairs inside the pizzeria, but he said no one was inside or in front of the business.
According to the Suffolk County Police Department, the 71-year-old female driver was treated at the scene and did not need further medical attention. Fornino said he didn’t talk to the driver but he could see she was distraught.
Two Town of Brookhaven building inspectors and a fire marshal were on the scene shortly after the incident, according to Kevin Molloy, a town spokesman. While it was condemned during the Labor Day weekend, he said after a visit by a town fire marshal and inspector Sept. 4, the building was deemed safe for public use.
Updated Sept. 4 to include accounts from John Fornino.
Sound Beach resident advocating for construction of skate park
Sound Beach resident Todd Leighley’s mustache is freckled with gray and his face shows lines of age, but he doesn’t mind. Though his left leg was amputated below the knee after a motorcycle crash in 2009, and now he wears a thick carbon fiber prosthetic, all that matters to him is that he continue the sports he played as a kid, namely skating. He has embarked on a mission to try to get a skate park built in his community.
“I’m fat, middle aged and one legged, and I’m having the time of my life,” Leighley said.
For the past four years Leighley, the 47-year-old emergency services specialist for public electric company Public Service Enterprise Group, has been advocating for the construction of a skate park in the Sound Beach area, which he hopes to call Hawks Nest All Wheel Park. What he has in mind is something to help those kids in the area who aren’t keen to participate in the usual team sports.
“Skateboarding is looked down upon — it’s not embraced and supported like football and lacrosse,” the skateboarder said. “The parks are coming, and they can’t keep fighting it forever.”
When he was 6 years old Leighley said he learned to love skating. He became mired in a culture that conveys freedom: freedom of expression, freedom from problems, freedom to go where you want. His appreciation for the culture deepened when he moved to Hawaii in his 20s and became involved in the surfing scene. It was a continuous part of his life until 2009 when he was involved in a motorcycle crash, suffering compound fractures in his femur, tibia and fibula. The leg had to be removed, and he did not know if he could continue with all his favorite sports from his childhood.
It was around the time shortly after the accident he said he learned, in the Brooklyn Bike Park, which was a different type of skate park, of something called a “pump track,” where riders build momentum through the up and down motion of wheels on a track with several ups and downs, either with a bike or skateboard.
“It’s like a roller coaster, but instead of a roller coaster that would use machinery to pull carts up hill, here you’re using your muscles,” Leighley said. “You’re pumping and using it to get speed. It tricks you into using your muscles.”
He said that type of skate park revitalized his lifelong passion for skating. The transcendent experience of boarding around the block is something he said he wants his community to feel.
While the skater exudes passion from every pore, Leighley has had trouble generating the right type of interest for the project from the community. While there are multiple mountain bike trails in the area and the Shoreham BMX track right behind the Robert S. Reid Community Center, there are very few options for a skateboarder other than sidewalks and roadways, not unless they want to travel many miles to either Riverhead, Amityville or Huntington.
Joseph Mannix, a Copiague social studies teacher, is also a community leader when it comes to the Huntington skateboarding community and has walked the steps Leighley is trying to follow. As a veteran skater who has been boarding since “the clay wheel days” of the 1970s, he is the one chiefly responsible for the East Northport Veterans Park Skate Park. It was built after years of working with his community, starting with skating lessons that eventually built up into clubs and a driving interest of local children, adults and eventually support from the town.
“At [the Greenlawn Skate Park] I started a lessons program and summer camp which became so successful that the town got interested, and they saw how much revenue they were making and how healthy it was,” Mannix said. “I was pushing for those kids who are not so into organized sports, or kids into organized sports who want the personal experience of skateboarding.”
While those parks remain popular, Leighley said he believes a park filled with transitions, pools and quarter pipes can only apply to 20 percent of adrenaline sports enthusiasts because of how daunting they seem to a newcomer. He said a pump track can apply to people of any skill level since riders can take any path at their own pace.
Port Jefferson resident Rachel Whalen, 30, a friend of Leighley’s, said she just got back into skating about seven months ago, and as a single mother raising two children, she wants to have a place near her home where she can exercise along with her kids.
“I would use it, I would want my kids to use it too,” Whalen said.
Despite the setbacks in trying to get the project off the ground, the Sound Beach resident said he has become closer to his community through his skate park campaign. Leighley became involved with the North Shore Youth Council, where executive director of the organization Janene Gentile said he teaches local kids basics in martial arts. While Gentile sees him as a caring man, she said others in the community have been unnerved by his classic skater-rebellion style personality.
“[Leighley] has the personality of a very radical dude, and while he’s trying to temper it, some people get taken aback,” Gentile said. “He’s a radical dude, but he’s caring, compassionate and passionate about his vision.”
Skateboarders agree that tenacity is the foundation of the sport. As long as one keeps at learning a trick, despite its difficulty, eventually any technique can be learned. It’s why Leighley said he will not be giving up on his vision any time soon.
“Kids need hope,” he said. “They need these things, they need these lifelines to pull them up.”
Greenlawn firefighters shine with pride
Greenlawn firefighters proudly showcased their dedication to service and community to kickoff the Labor Day holiday weekend.
Greenlawn Fire Department hosted its annual parade Thursday night, Aug. 30, as bagpipers, marching bands, historic trucks and hundreds of volunteer firemen marched their way down Broadway. The parade marks the start of the Greenlawn Firemen’s Fair —which claims to be the state’s oldest fair — running from Aug. 30 through Labor Day. The fairgrounds are closed Sept. 2.
Firefighters serve up fun, raise funds for foundation
On Aug. 23, the Holiday Inn Express Stony Brook hosted a 4-on-4 volleyball tournament with local fire departments, including Setauket, Centereach and Selden, competing to win and raise money for the Lt. Joseph P. DiBernardo Memorial Foundation. The money raised will help to buy “bailout systems,” which are personal escape kits, for fire departments in need all over the country.
The winners of the $1,000 prize money were members of New York City Fire Department’s Watkins Station Engine 231/Ladder 120 — Darren Fenton, Patrick Tulley, Connor Norman and Anthony Edrehi. The tournament winners and John-Paul Sabbagh, from the Terryville Fire Department who won the event’s 50/50 raffle, donated their winnings back to the foundation.
The event cost $20 to enter, and the tournament was judged by John Tsunis, owner of the hotel; Joe DiBernardo Sr.; and Leah Dunaief, publisher of Times Beacon Record News Media. Dan Keller from Stony Brook University’s athletics department served as referee.
Tsunis said the hotel hopes to make the tournament an annual event, adding, “It was a lot of fun to have all the firefighters there and all the community members we recruited to play.”
Northport school officials await results of K-Wing air study
District’s environmental consultants took 26 samples earlier this week; results to be reviewed by New York State Department of Health
Northport-East Northport school officials and parents are awaiting the results of the latest
Middle School K-wing air quality samples prior to the school’s reopening next week.
The district’s environmental consultant firm J.C. Broderick & Associates Inc. took 26 air samples throughout the K-Wing of Northport Middle School earlier this week to see if issues with gasoline fumes have been fully resolved after extensive summer renovations.
“The question I have been asked is are we going to test before we reopen the K-Wing,” Superintendent Robert Banzer said. “The answer is yes.”
The question I have been asked is are we going to test before we reopen the K-Wing. The answer is yes.”
— Robert Banzer
Edward McGuire, of J.C. Broderick & Associates, said the testing consisted of placing two air sampling cannisters in every single classroom and office space, two in the hallway, and two in the warehouse space beneath the wing, which was the previous site of chemical storage, to see what level of volatile organic compounds, known as VOCs or fumes, are present. In addition, two cannisters were placed outside the building to represent the ambient air that is brought into the school building via the ventilation systems.
“It is the créme de la créme of VOC sampling,” the consultants said. “There is no better methodology.”
The cannisters were placed at varying heights 3 to 5 feet off the ground in each location, according to McGuire, meant to replicate the typical breathing zone of a seated or standing person within the space. Each room was independently sealed off before air samples were collected for a continuous eight-hour period while the newly installed rooftop ventilation systems ran, McGuire said, meant to replicate “typical occupancy conditions.”
Brandon Weisberg, project superintendent for district contractors Park East Construction, said the K-Wing classrooms were ripped down to the studs this summer. New plumbing was installed, fire stoppers sealed, and a special heavy-duty vapor barrier applied on the concrete subsurface between the underground warehouse storage and K-Wing to prevent any fumes from penetrating into the air, according to Weisberg. The district also had new rooftop heating, air conditioning and ventilation units installed while also sealing the older ground-level passages with concrete.
The environmental consultants said their staff has worked with the district’s contractors to obtain safety data sheets for each material used in renovating the K-Wing this summer, providing a list of any potentially hazardous chemicals contained in each product. McGuire said this data will be used to help analyze the air samples and potentially used to identify the source of any abnormally high fumes or airborne chemicals found during the sampling.
“The sensitivity of the analysis will always find VOCs in the air,” McGuire said. “Our expectations are also a little higher because we know everything is brand new.”
“The sensitivity of the analysis will always find VOCs in the air. Our expectations are also a little higher because we know everything is brand new.”
— Edward McGuire
The consultants were asked to explain during a presentation at an Aug. 23 board of education meeting that any smell in the K-Wing could be similar to the odors detected by new car owners when they sit inside the vehicle.
J.C. Broderick said they will be doing a two-part comparison of the air samples taken. The first part will be a report on the ambient levels of each VOC detected, while the second phase will examine the levels found against healthy safety guidelines established by New York State Department of Health. McGuire said the standards being used will be compared against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s dose concentration guidelines, which consider different levels for sensitive populations, such as young children.
The results of the air quality testing were expected to be received within approximately 72 hours of the end of sample collection, or 48 hours after the cannisters were delivered to the laboratory. The final report will be sent to New York State Department of Health for its review prior to the classrooms being reopened to student and staff use.
The results were not yet available as of noon Aug. 29, according to the superintendent.
Banzer assured residents the district has repurposed the old warehouse space as a dry storage for “paper goods” and other such things.
“There are no chemicals stored down there, all that was eliminated last year,” he said.
Fallen Commack airman’s family receives ‘promised’ puppy
By Kyle Barr
Fallen U.S. Airman Christopher Raguso, who perished in a March 15 helicopter crash, promised his Commack family he would get them a dog upon his return. Although he never came home, a local organization has stepped in to fulfill his pledge.
Paws of War, a Nesconset-based nonprofit that helps connect dogs with veterans and retired law
enforcement as companion animals or to be trained as service dogs, gifted a 4-month-old black Labrador named Calvin to the family Aug. 24.
“I didn’t sleep at all last night I was so excited,” Raguso’s wife, Carmela, said. “We needed this — we’re wounded, our dad was a warrior, our hearts are broken and maybe this dog can help us.”
Carmela Raguso told her two daughters, Eva, 5, and Mila,7, when the truck rolled up it was just their family friend, Joe Bachert, a retired member of the New York City Fire Department, bringing his own dogs for them to play with. Instead, Bachert came out of the vehicle with Calvin cradled in his arms.
Eva ran forward with her arms outstretched, screaming with delight, and started to hug and kiss the young pooch. Mila asked her mother if the dog was theirs, who responded that of course he was.
“I’ve been dreaming about this,” Eva said, as she held Calvin’s head close to hers. “I like him so much.”
Raguso’s wife said Eva took the death of her father hard. The couple’s youngest had taken to sleeping in bed with her, “to keep her father’s side of the bed warm.” Now, with the addition of Calvin, Eva said she will be sleeping in her own bed with Calvin always at her side.
“To have this dog be her buddy and especially be her sleeping buddy, maybe she’ll sleep well,” Raguso’s wife said. “It’s been tough, but we put one foot in front of the other — we honor the dead by living.”
Raguso was one of seven members of New York’s 106th Rescue Wing killed in the line of duty when a H-60 Pave Hawk helicopter crashed while carrying out a mission in support of Operation Inherent Resolve, an American-led mission to defeat ISIS in Iraq and Syria, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.
“One can’t even imagine what the family is going through, and we hope that this adds a little sunlight to their lives because they’ve been in darkness for some time,” said Smithtown resident Robert Misseri, a co-founder of Paws of War.
The black Lab was just one of a litter of 11 puppies that Paws of War’s sister organization and nonprofit rescue group Guardians of Rescue saved from a high-kill shelter in Louisiana, days before they would have been put down, according to Misseri. The rest of the dogs will be given to other veterans and veterans’ families either as a companion animal or be fully trained as a service dog.
The Nesconset nonprofit provided the Raguso family with a puppy starter kit that included everything from food to toys, and even a cage. Calvin is already leash trained and housebroken, and Misseri said the rest of the dog’s training will be provided for free.
“The goal is just to make their lives better and put smiles on their faces,” said Bachert, who is a member of Paws of War and served as Raguso’s drill instructor in the Commack firefighter academy.
By all accounts, Calvin was excited to be with his new family, but he was still nervous of new places. As the family tried to bring him into the house the young puppy shied away from the door.
It was only when Eva went inside, suddenly upset by a rush of emotions, that Calvin darted after her. He instinctively knew his role with the family, to comfort them in their continued grief.
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