'Freedom Team' chosen to run in East Rockaway

The Freedom Party of East Rockaway has selected its candidates for the March 2011 village election. Party members met at the Commuters Club on Ocean Avenue on Nov. 17 to select the “Freedom Team,” as party President Bill Kienke called the new slate of officers.

The village’s deputy mayor, Dr. Richard Meagher, was endorsed as the party’s mayoral candidate. Bobby Klose, a two-time chief of the East Rockaway Fire Department, and local businessman Harry Levitt will run for the two village trustee seats that will be open.

Richard Meagher

Meagher is a lifelong East Rockaway resident who has been a trustee for 16 years and was deputy mayor under former mayor Joe Carrigan and the late Ed Sieban. Meagher also served on the district school board for 13 years and was its president for 5½ years. After 31 years at SUNY Fashion Institute of Technology, he retired in 1994 as emeritus dean of continuing education.

“He has a reputation as a tough fiscal conservative that is willing to make the tough decisions without any outside interference,” Kienke said of Meagher. “All [his] decisions are made with only one thing in mind — and that is [doing] what’s best for our citizens.”

Meagher is also the founding president of the East Rockaway High School Alumni Foundation, the East Rockaway Education Foundation and the Village Foundation of East Rockaway.

“I love our square-mile village,” he said. “I believe my independence and my extensive experience will be needed in the difficult years ahead.”

Bobby Klose

Robert “Bobby” Klose, a third-generation East Rockaway resident, is a two-time chief of the Fire Department, a life member of Liberty Hose Company #2 and a current member of Heavy Rescue Floodlight Unit 407. He received the Valor Award from Nassau County, the Town of Hempstead and the village in 2007 for the rescue of two people trapped in a house fire, and was named the Elks Fireman of the Year.