By:Scott Brinton
Drug counselor, educator, spiritual leader, personnel manager, salesman, desperately needed lifeline. These are but some of the many roles that Barry Wilansky plays as executive director of Tempo Group, a substance-abuse treatment clinic and education center, with offices in North Merrick and Woodmere.
Over the past three decades, Wilansky, of North Bellmore, has turned Tempo, once a small clinic with four paraprofessionals treating a handful of clients, into an expansive organization with a $2 million annual budget. Tempo now boasts a staff of 33 certified social workers, psychiatrists and physicians who care for its primary client base, high school and college students.
Tempo was founded amid the turbulence of 1969, when drugs were all the rage. It started as an all-volunteer group, counseling kids out of their addictions. A trained educator and accredited substance-abuse counselor, Wilansky took over the organization in 1975, and began to slowly, patiently build it up. He professionalized Tempo and carved out a niche for the treatment clinic in the Five Towns, developing an ever-larger client base. He opened the North Merrick office in the mid-1990s.
For the past 29 years, Wilansky has served as Tempo's biggest cheerleader and its staunchest defender, and has ensured that the clinic stayed afloat even when the state and county slashed their contracts with it. Through the years, Tempo has treated thousands of young people, giving them the strength to overcome drug dependence and offering them hope.
For all this and more, the Bellmore Herald proudly names Barry Wilansky its Person of the Year for 2004.
Wilansky is a soft-spoken man, but when he speaks, people listen, because he's widely seen as one of the South Shore's and Nassau County's leading authorities on drug addiction and treatment. He's erudite, reading constantly. And he's a genuinely decent man with old-fashioned values. He's known as a loving husband and father. In short, he's a really good guy.
Wilansky doesn't see Tempo as simply a treatment clinic. The organization takes a proactive approach to educating the community about the dangers of drug addition. Wilansky has worked with the Bellmore-Merrick, Hewlett-Woodmere, Lawrence and Lynbrook school districts, among others, to provide parents with vital information about substance abuse. Over the years, he has led numerous informative parent forums.
This year, Wilansky joined Calhoun High School Principal David Seinfeld to create an Alcohol Awareness Committee at the high school comprising educators, guidance counselors, social workers, educators, parents and students. He explained that the group will not only look at ways to fight substance abuse, but also explore reasons why students use drugs as well as ways to make them feel comfortable with and proud of their decision to stay away from them. "Not all kids drink and drug on weekends, and we have to understand how students manage it," Wilansky told the Herald in early December.
The committee, now in its formative stage, has already identified short-range projects. For example, it is putting together an informational pamphlet that will be sent to the home of every Calhoun student.
Students also want to paint an anti-drug mural somewhere in the school. Assemblies are in the works. And, Seinfeld said, the school is looking at how to embed the anti-drug message more deeply into the school's current character-education program.
In 2004, Wilansky also worked closely with the Community Wellness Council to form a Bellmore-Merrick-wide Alcohol Awareness Committee. The group, of which this reporter is a member, has many plans, including a community bus tour for PTA leaders. The tour will highlight the places where students tend to congregate on weekends to drink and use drugs. The idea behind the tour is to give parents the specific information they need to talk intelligently with their children about drug abuse.
Wilansky served as an adviser and a source for the Heralds' recent yearlong Teens & Alcohol series. We are enormously grateful for his guidance.
Tempo replaced Rapport as Bellmore-Merrick's drug-treatment clinic almost 11 years ago. After Rapport closed, Nassau County, one of Rapport's primary funding sources, sought to do away with a drug treatment center in Bellmore-Merrick. The county contended that area residents could attend treatment programs in surrounding communities. But Dr. Marc Bernstein, the former Central High School District superintendent, pushed hard for a Bellmore-Merrick clinic to fill the service gap caused by Rapport's departure.
New York state Sen. Norman Levy, a Republican of Merrick who died in 1998, stepped in, securing $75,000 in state grant money to keep a clinic in the community. Requests for proposals went out, and Tempo produced the winning bid.
Today, Tempo-North Merrick treats more than 500 local young people a year. That's roughly 10 percent of the Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District's student population. Tempo social workers can be found in all Central schools, identifying young people's abuse problems before they become full-blown addictions.
Dare we even imagine Bellmore-Merrick without Tempo Group and Wilansky? We at the Herald shudder at the thought. So, for all Wilansky has done to help young people lead healthy, happy, productive, drug-free lives, we name him our Person of the Year for 2004.
