Ellen White: Enriching children's lives

Ellen White grew up helping others. “My mother would say, ‘You always feel better about yourself when you’re helping someone else,’” recalled her sister, Joanie Kelly.

It was White’s altruistic spirit that led her to Centre Stage at South Side High School in 2008. Centre Stage is a theater program that pairs special-education and general-education students to produce a show. It was started by then students Cathy Mackey and her friend Bryan Nesdell.

“A lot of organization needed to be done to put on that show,” Mackey said. “[Ellen] just immediately stepped in to help us. She would help in any way she could: organizing students to get them ready for warm-ups, building parts of the set, bringing snacks. She was always there to help us.”

Mackey graduated from South Side High School years ago, but the Centre Stage show lives on, now being written and directed by White. Since she took over, the program has grown exponentially. In its first years, there were about 50 people in the audience. Last year, nearly 2,000 people attended, filling the high school auditorium to capacity for two straight nights.

“She saw the opportunity to lend her expertise and her talents to students with disabilities, and she just came in like a gift from the heavens,” said Dr. Noreen Leahy, the Rockville Centre School District’s assistant superintendent for special education and pupil services. “She had this wonderful spirit of creativity and warmth and fun. She’s about making this fun for the kids and fun for the adults. She appeared and has contributed so much to making this what this is today.”

White, 52, is the daughter of Jim and Joan Hyland. She grew up in Queens Village, where she attended Lady of Lourdes Catholic Academy and met Chris White, her future husband. But the two of them didn’t really connect until after high school.

Twenty years ago, White and her family moved to Rockville Centre. It was where Kelly was living at the time, and she found a house for White’s family on Sherman Avenue.