By MIKE CAPUTO
Staff, community members and other supporters are preparing for the 100th anniversary gala celebration that takes place at the Lawrence Village Country Club on Saturday, April 12.
As they look forward to the celebration, longtime staff and community members like Maryann Holmes, director of personnel, all share one feeling:
"It is pride," Holmes said, "because this agency can exist that long in assisting people in all kinds of ways to get people out of poverty and an opportunity to help ourselves."
Like many of her co-workers and community center attendees, Holmes, who utilized the community center as a child, remembered her father talking about the center when it was simply known as "the trade school."
Before the modern Five Towns Community Center took shape in its new facility in 1975, the property housed a trade school that was originally established in 1907. The school was one of the many projects anchored by affluent Five Towns resident Margaret Olivia Slocum Sage, at the time a widow and sole executrix of the famous millionaire Russell Sage's estate after he died in 1906. According to various historical references, Margaret Sage distributed over $75 million of her late husband's estate to various philanthropic and personal projects across the globe.
Margaret Sage was also known in the Five Towns for building a small housing district in a section of Cedarhurst around Court, Clinton and Fifth Streets known as Sageville. The smaller houses were geared towards hard workers with lower incomes.
In the beginning stages, the property housed what was known as the Margaret Sage Industrial School. The industrial school, also known as the "trade school" or a settlement house to many locals, was funded by the endowment provided by Sage. The school offered education for young people in areas such as cooking, sewing and carpentry.
For many years, the trade school continued to offer its array of human services, which included the education of young people in trades and providing social services for members of the Five Towns.
In the '60s and '70s, there was a national initiative around the country started during President Lyndon Johnson's administration in 1964 as the "war on poverty." One of the contributions Nassau County made to that "war," headed by late former County Executive Ralph Caso at the time, was the decision to bring human services in the Inwood/North Lawrence area together under one roof, which in essence defined the Five Towns Community Center building (then known as the Inwood Community Center building.) The three main branches that were implemented into the complex at the time were the Inwood/North Lawrence Health Clinic, the Peninsula Counseling Center and the Five Towns Community Center.
Overall, the center serves more than 16,000 people in the Five Towns.
Inside and outside of the building, the center has many departments to offer its constituents, including: the Committee on Drug Abuse, the Youth Community Action Center, the AIDS Services Program, the Inwood Senior Center, the Aid to the Foreign Born Department and Five Towns Head Start. For more information on these programs, visit the center's Web site at www.fivetownscommunityctr.org.
The major funders for the programs the center's programs are: the Five Towns Community Center, Inc. Endowment Fund, the Five Towns Community Chest, Friends of the Five Towns Community Center and the Economic Opportunity Commission of Nassau County.
In 1974, the county agreed on a 50-year lease agreement to carry on the services in the center, which would expire in 2024. In July, the county mulled the possibility of selling the property. Bus loads of community center supporters went to Nassau County Planning Commission meetings to voice their opposition to the possible sale. Those plans have since been nixed, and the county is in negotiations to sell ownership of the property to the Five Towns Community Center, Inc.
Several key individuals that contributed to the center will be honored at the 100th anniversary gala at on April 12 at the Lawrence Village Country Club.
Photo by Andrew Vardakis
