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Light Rain Levy-Lakeside celebrates 60 years of learning
School opens permanent exhibition, ‘Merrick, Then and Now’
In 1952, Merokean Jerome Medowar was a 22-year-old recent graduate of Long Island University, living with his parents on Hedge Lane, off Merrick Road, just west of Cammans Pond. So Medowar had a perfect vantage point to observe construction that year of Lakeside Elementary School, which became Norman J. Levy-Lakeside Elementary School after the death in 1998 of the popular state senator.
Medowar often passed by the school as its foundation was being poured and its distinctive red bricks were being laid. Then, in June 1952, two years into the Korean War, Medowar was drafted and served stateside as an artillery instructor for two years.
“I saw the school being built when I left,” Medowar said, “and it was finished when I came back.”
Lakeside was built to accommodate the swelling population of children in the area amid the post-World War II baby boom. Construction of the school was completed in October 1952, and classes began soon afterward.
After his military service, Medowar became a third- and fourth-grade teacher in the Merrick district while earning his law degree at Brooklyn College at night. He went on to become the Merrick district’s legal counsel from 1972 to 1982, and then a district court and family court judge. He is also a longtime officer of the Merrick Historical Society.
Medowar was among several dignitaries who attended Levy-Lakeside’s 60th anniversary celebration on May 18, at which the school unveiled a permanent photography exhibit in the central hall, titled “Merrick, Then and Now” and organized by a subcommittee of Levy-Lakeside’s site-based team. The subcommittee comprised Jennifer Gargan, Jodi Turk-Goldberg, Melissa Levine, Marisa Mitchell and Maggi Raadsen-Coviello.
The exhibit juxtaposes large, framed black-and-white photographs from Merrick’s past, provided by the Merrick Historical Society, with present-day color photos of the same locations, shot by Levy-Lakeside PTA historian Christina Infuso. The Merrick Theatre movie house was once located where the Waldbaum’s shopping center is now, on Merrick Road. A stately mansion stood where the Bank of America and the post office are now, at the southeast corner of Merrick Avenue and Merrick Road.
