A walk down memory lane

Stories were shared and new memories were made as more than 250 people came out on Saturday to get one last look at the Seaford Avenue School, which is slated for demolition.

The Seaford School District opened the doors of the former elementary school one final time before the property is sold to the Engel Burman group and eventually torn down to make way for 112 senior housing units, the Seasons at Seaford.

Seaford Avenue closed in 1981 and was rented to Five Towns College and later BOCES, but it has sat empty since 2010. “It’s a little sad because it got so run down,” said Virginia Molic Michalek, who attended the school in the 1950s. “It’s too bad they couldn’t do something to preserve it.”

Michalek remembers her first impression of Seaford Avenue after transferring from the nearby, also since-closed Jackson Avenue School. “I remember thinking it was such a big school,” she said. Her three daughters would later go there.

Seaford Avenue School opened in 1939, and August Schaefer attended during its first decade. He remembers his first performance, singing “God Bless America” on the gymnasium stage in kindergarten, as the springboard to a 40-year-career in entertainment. Now living in North Babylon, he said most classmates would remember him as “the guy with the snake.”

Schaefer said he found out that morning that the school would be open to the public. “I had to come and just see it one more time,” he said. “It has a lot of good memories for me. I’m sad to see it go. At least they’re going to put the property to good use.”

All guests were invited to sign their names on a long white sheet of paper hung near the main entrance and labeled “Seaford Avenue School Memories.” David Dubin saw that his first-grade teacher, Mrs. Volkman, had signed, and he quickly started looking around the building in the hope of finding her.

It was half-century since Dubin was in first grade, and said Mrs. Volkman left after that year to have a baby, and none of the students ever saw her again. Picturing what she would look liked 50 years later, Dubin found her and said they had a nice chat. Of all the people he wanted to see during his visit to the school, “This was the one,” he said. “I got what I wanted out of today.”