Thursday, October 1, 2026
Local seniors have been learning about local history on private bus tours of the area led by former Sea Cliff Mayor Ed Lieberman, who tells the stories of a number of historical landmarks.
The Oyster Bay, Sagamore Hill Teddy Roosevelt Bus Tour is the most frequent of a number of tours focusing on different areas of the community and their past. On this tour, Lieberman highlights President Theodore Roosevelt’s life and related landmarks.
“I have a detailed conversation about Teddy Roosevelt’s life — his family, his life and presidency,” Lieberman said. “The tour leads us to Sagamore Hill, and then, in the interim, we go through the North Shore areas and I lay out the historic significance of the villages we pass through.”
Sagamore Hill was the primary residence of Roosevelt and his wife, Edith, from 1886 until they died, the former president in 1919 and Edith in 1948.
Another bus tour goes along Route 25A in Northport, and Lieberman details George Washington’s Culper Spy Ring, a network of Revolutionary War spies who were active in Setauket and Oyster Bay.
“I came up with the idea for the tours as a way to fill my time up between my practice and not being the mayor anymore,” said Lieberman, who is an attorney. “It started out because I wanted to do a walking tour of the Village of Sea Cliff, the main street, and explain the [significance] of the different buildings and parks in the area.”
The seniors who take the tours are residents of the Atria in Glen Cove. “The residents have been enjoying learning from Ed. He really brightens their day,” said Diane Ziems, the facility’s executive director. “They’re learning something about their community. My residents ask a lot of questions, and find he adds a lot of humor to the information and the tour. Ed truly is a wealth of knowledge.”
Now, Lieberman says, the seniors are filling the bus each time there’s a new tour, and he is taking second and third trips to some locations so the people who didn’t get on the first tour can see what they missed. On Oct. 20, Lieberman took the bus on the Teddy Roosevelt tour again, with a second group of Atria residents.
“It was really just something that I wanted to fill my time with and benefit the seniors,” Lieberman said. “I also try to get them interested in some of the surrounding history that we have in our immediate areas here.”
His next tour is scheduled for Friday, on which he will partner with an organization called the Mutual Concerns Committee, and explore historic sites in Roslyn and Great neck with a different group of seniors, from Sea Cliff and Glen Head. Mutual Concerns is a grass-roots group that formed 42 years ago to meet some pressing needs of residents of the North Shore School District. The organization hosts a senior lunch every Tuesday, providing hot meals and fun activities for the community’s seniors. The group agreed to collaborate with Lieberman on the bus tours in order to get more seniors involved who weren’t Atria residents.
“I was glad Ed came to me — I thought it was a good idea,” said Peggie Como, president of Mutual Concerns. “He’s a big history buff. He just knows so much about the origins of our community.”
Another benefit of the tours, according to Como, is the opportunity they offer less-than-mobile seniors, who can’t get out much, to enjoy the historic tours alongside their neighbors. “We have about 20 to 30 seniors in our lunch program, and they love to have different things to do,” Como said. “[The tours] get them out of the house and get them to socialize, especially after being cooped up inside for so many months.”
“I also give talks about the law and the history of law in group discussions at the Atria, to get the seniors intellectually motivated,” Lieberman said. “The bus tour idea came from those talks; it was something that I always wanted to do.”
Lieberman is looking to expand the tours to surrounding communities. The current tours aren’t just limited to Atria residents. Anyone who is interested can call Como at (516) 675-7239.
