By: Scott Brinton
He slashed $103,000 in "discretionary" contracts with the Bellmore-based Long Island Crisis Center, amounting to 37.4 percent of the private, non-profit group's $275,000 budget for its suicide-prevention hotline.
The cuts devastated the crisis center. In the March 9, 2000, edition of the Herald, we wrote, "With the agency in such dire financial straits, any further county cuts would likely put the service group under for good."
Thankfully, the Long Island Crisis Center survived that awful year. In truth, though, the agency has faced funding cuts throughout its 33-year history. And one way or another, the center has managed to hobble along while providing absolutely vital suicide-prevention services.
Ask any of the hundreds of volunteers who have given their time to the center over the years and they'll tell you that the agency has survived largely because of the Herculean efforts of its longtime executive director, Linda Leonard.
Paula Grenot, who recently retired as the center's assistant director, said, "If it wasn't for Linda, the place would have gone under a long time ago. She is amazing and tenacious and has dedicated her life to the crisis center.
"She's always fund-raising, going after grants," Grenot went on. "Every time there has been a cut in funding, she has found a way to keep the agency afloat."
For all that Linda Leonard has done through the years to keep the Long Island Crisis Center alive and well, the Bellmore Herald proudly names her our 2003 Person of the Year.
Frieda Hoffman, who has volunteered at the crisis center for six years and now also serves as a center board member, said that Leonard "has an absolutely amazing work ethic. Linda is so on top of what's going on [at the crisis center]. She could take over anybody's job at any time. She's there at all hours, at the strangest times."
More than 150 crisis center volunteers, many of whom are Bellmorites, provide around-the-clock, seven-days-a-week hotline counseling for young people who are considering taking their own lives or who may simply need a sympathetic ear. While the hotline is intended for teenagers and young adults, it doesn't discriminate. Anyone of any age can call and get counseling.
In recent years, with Nassau County facing the horrifying aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks, the Long Island Crisis Center has served as a critical lifeline for people on the edge. In any given year, the center fields more than 10,000 calls. In the days and weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, it saw its call volume shoot up 500 percent. Calls again spiked in the weeks before and after the first anniversary of the attacks. And over the past four months, with the Bellmore-Merrick community reeling after the sex-abuse attacks at a Mepham High School football camp in August, the crisis center once again saw a jump in the volume of calls.
Mepham High students recognized the absolute need for the crisis center. In October, several hundred students organized a walk-a-thon on the track behind the school, with the proceeds benefiting the crisis center. The students raised more than $8,000.
Those close to Leonard describe her as a loving wife to Michael Book, who is a teacher in the Rockville Centre School district, and a super-involved mother of two grown children, ages 23 and 20.
Leonard, who lives in Dix Hills, loves to travel with her family in their camper, and she and her husband always have animals scurrying about their home. Every summer she opens her backyard to more than 100 crisis center volunteers for a very large barbecue. "Everyone brings food," Grenot said. "We set up volleyball. Sometimes we have people performing music. It's very nice that she opens her home up like that."
Hoffman said Leonard is "just a really nice person. She's very easy to talk to. Her door is always open. She never stands on ceremony. It's a pleasure to work with people like that."
Leonard, who has served as the crisis center's executive director since 1981, holds a master's degree in mental-health counseling from C.W. Post and an undergraduate degree from Boston University. She began with the center as a volunteer only four years after it was founded as the Middle Earth Counseling Center at Adelphi University. She then became a center secretary and worked her way up through the ranks to become executive director.
Throughout the years, the crisis center, which now makes its home in a tiny office behind the Bellmore Presbyterian Church at Martin and Bellmore avenues, has continually expanded its services despite the constant threat of funding cuts. It now offers not only suicide-prevention services, but also rape and runaway counseling through its hotline.
Additionally, in the fall of 1999, Pride for Youth, a Friday-night coffeehouse for gay and lesbian youth, opened as an offshoot of the crisis center. It can be found just down the road from the center in a Bellmore Avenue office.
In February 1999, the crisis center became the first agency in the nation to offer free, one-on-one, live confidential counseling via the Internet.
And just recently, the center restarted its Street Outreach Project. The federal grant on which the project depended was cut three years ago, but was renewed in 2003. Through the project, crisis center counselors head by van into many of Nassau County's most troubled neighborhoods to speak with gang members about ending street violence and with young people about stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS and drug addiction.
For a relatively small non-profit agency, the Long Island Crisis Center has accomplished much. Indeed, there are many, many people throughout Nassau County and beyond that literally owe their lives to the center. And without the very humble, very talented Leonard, we likely wouldn't have a crisis center. We at the Bellmore Herald salute you and thank you, Ms. Leonard. You are without doubt one of this community's great, unsung heroes. You are indeed our Person of the Year for 2003.
To volunteer at or offer a donation to the Long Island Crisis Center, call (516) 826-0244. Anyone needing confidential counseling may call the crisis hotline at (516) 679-1111.
