By Scott Brinton
That better place, of course, was the Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District.
If not for the fire, Cohen, 58, said he wouldn't have become Central's deputy superintendent, the post from which he is retiring this June. Rather, he would have likely supervised in one capacity or another in the New York City Public Schools, where he had taught English for 13 years in a poverty-stricken Brooklyn neighborhood before the Blaze.
After the fire, Cohen and his family lived in a trailer on their front lawn for a half-year while their home was restored. To further develop his education skills -- and raise his spirits -- Cohen took an administrative certification class locally. One course participant, a Bellmore-Merrick employee, suggested that he apply for an administrative assistant's post that had opened up in the district.
So, with the one sheet of paper that Cohen's wife, Phyllis, found in the trailer, she typed his r
