Influenced by an ‘amazing chance meeting’

Syd Mandelbaum traces many of the things he has accomplished in his life to his stateside service time in the U.S. Air Force Reserves from 1969-’75, and for the brief period when the Cedarhurst resident cared for a government official he became well acquainted with.

“It was 1972, I was at Andrews Air Force Base and this guy had a terrible kidney infection, he was in intensive care, it almost killed him,” said Mandelbaum, 66, now the commander of the Lawrence-Cedarhurst American Legion Post 339.
Mandelbaum, a medic, helped nurse Phillip V. Sanchez back to health. The Californian, was one of the first directors of the federal Office of Economic Opportunity created under President Lyndon Johnson as part of his war on poverty.

Sanchez, now 87 and living in Pinedale, Calif., then served as the U.S. ambassador to Honduras under President Richard Nixon from 1973-’76 and ambassador to Columbia in President Gerald Ford’s administration between 1976 and ’77. He adopted a child from both countries. Later, Sanchez was publisher of the Spanish-language newspaper, Noticias del Mundo, served as president of CAUSA International, an anti-communist educational organization, was on the advisory board of the University of Bridgeport and has a school, Ambassador Phillip V. Sanchez Public Charter, named for him in Fresno, Calif.

“We were very jovial, I was 22, he was 43, we drank tequila together, I visited him in Washington in 1973 and he came to our wedding,” Mandelbaum said. He and his wife, Diane, have five grown children.

Mandelbaum called it an “amazing chance meeting” that “influenced me at a young age” and helped propel him towards the types of jobs he had in education and science which also led him to working to preserve the stories of Holocaust survivors and World War II veterans who helped to liberate the concentration camps.

In 1985, after taping then Nassau County Executive Francis Purcell about entering Buchenwald following its liberation, a story appeared in Newsday that led to Mandelbaum’s former Air Force commander, Paris Swopes, calling him to offer an appointment to the county’s Commission on Human Rights.

Two years later, Sandy Chapin was the keynote speaker at the Commission’s conference. Meeting Harry Chapin’s widow led Mandelbaum to being appointed to the board of Long Island Cares, a regional food bank. Coupled with his existing volunteer efforts with the Claddagh Inn, part of the Interfaith Nutrition Networkin Hempstead, and then meeting entertainment promoter Ron Delsener in 1990 pushed Mandelbaum to establish Rock and Wrap It Up! a year later. It is an anti- poverty think tank that uses an army of volunteers to collect unused food from sporting events and musical shows, which is donated to organizations that distribute the food to people in need.

“I watched with pride at the progress in [Syd’s] education, his family life and his professional activities. And now, his outstanding record of civic accomplishments. I told him several times that I considered him as one of my sons,” Sanchez wrote in a 2001 article introducing Rock and Wrap It Up! to his readers.