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'Muzzy' Healy comes home

92-year-old Sandy victim returns to her rebuilt East Rockaway house

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As she sat in her new favorite chair in her rebuilt East Rockaway home, 92-year-old Frances “Muzzy” Healy couldn’t hide her elation over finally being back in her house, nearly four years after it was heavily damaged by Hurricane Sandy.

“I’m relieved to be home,” Healy said with a smile. “It’s wonderful to be able to do things here.”

When she left her house, near the community of Bay Park, on Oct. 28, 2012, Healy didn’t know just how bad Sandy would be. She didn’t return to her rebuilt home until Aug. 22, 1,394 days later, having moved from place to place, staying with one or another of her eight children for varying lengths of time and eventually settling into a trailer on her property. Her dog, Shadow, a Korean hunting breed, was by her side through it all.

“It was terrible,” said Healy, a survivor of polio and breast cancer, “because I didn’t know where I was.”

During the storm, water lifted her house, which was built in 1923, and when it settled back down, it was no longer aligned with its foundation. The walls and ceiling cracked, and mold began to grow. According to Healy’s daughter, Kate Hughes, New York Rising, the statewide reconstruction program, concluded that the home was 76 percent damaged, and would have to be rebuilt.

Healy couldn’t move back in until the structure was demolished and rebuilt, but her children were unable to get demolition permits until plans to rebuild were in order, which required funding. “I’m still dealing with New York Rising,” Hughes said. “We don’t have the final check from them.”

Hughes, a retired special-needs schoolteacher who grew up in East Rockaway before moving to Ronkonkoma, was with her mother throughout the ordeal. The reconstruction process began last December, she said, and the family spent $60,000 on rebuilding. Healy’s new house is roughly three feet higher than the original home, as a precaution against potential future disasters.

Neighbors pitched in, too, during Healy’s lengthy wait for a new home. Local community relief group the11518, a grass-roots organization founded after the storm, acquired a dumpster for her to help with the cleanup. A neighbor helped keep up her property in her absence so she wouldn’t be fined by the Town of Hempstead, another did her laundry for her when she lived in the trailer, and yet another shoveled snow for her.

“They’re good, good, people,” Hughes said of her mother’s neighbors. “It’s an old-style neighborhood, which is the way it should be.”

Healy, who has lived in East Rockaway for 90 years, moved into the home with her late husband, Jim, in 1947. Jim worked for the village for 44 years and was a volunteer firefighter. The Healys had 11 children, eight of whom survive, and Frances became Muzzy when one of her daughters couldn’t properly pronounce “Mommy.”

“East Rockaway, to her, is her home,” Hughes said. “She grew up here. She went to East Rockaway High School, the same way I did, but I moved. She’s the only one who has stayed in East Rockaway.”

Though the process of returning to her home was taxing and, according to Hughes, took a physical and mental toll on her mother, she was willing to do whatever it took to remain in East Rockaway. “I never left East Rockaway,” Healy said. “[Kate] got married and left — I got married and stayed,” she added with a laugh. “Of course, my kids, God bless them, they’ve done more than their share. They’ve really helped me.”

Post-Sandy life has been an adjustment for her. She drove until she was 89, but now relies on her children to drive her around to shop or attend church. It will take some time for her new house to truly feel like home, she said. Post-It notes line the kitchen, reminding her which drawers contain what.

There is also more work to be done on the home. Yellow caution tape surrounds one of the doors because there is no railing on the narrow stairs that descend from it. Even though the work isn’t complete, however, Healy said she is relieved to be back on the property she has called home for nearly seven decades.

“If I could be in East Rockaway, this is where I want to be,” she said. “And it’s funny — we go different places … we go to Mass on Sunday, and there are nuns hugging me and kissing me. And a lot of people say, ‘Boy, you’re important.’ I’ve been around for a long time.”