By Angela Marshall
The Herald has selected Mayor Eugene Murray as its Person of the Year for 2001.
Mayor Rudy Giuliani has been repeatedly lauded for his courageous acts during and following the World Trade Center attacks. He kept his city together. Although on a much smaller scale, Mayor Murray did an equally diligent job in Rockville Centre.
For weeks, this reporter bumped into the Mayor at memorial after memorial, vigils, prayer services, fundraisers and countless other events. And then he went further. Murray visited the homes of Rockville Centre's many victims. He offered comforting words in a troubling time.
Within a week, a make-shift memorial listing victims' names was placed in Village Hall. The We Care RVC Fund was soon created to help support victims' families with the Mayor acting as one of its main forces. A community vigil was planned.
Over and over, the families of the lost have written to thank the community for rallying around them.
Other communities on Long Island, like Garden City and Manhasset, lost more residents to the attacks, but none pulled together like Rockville Centre.
This would not have been possible without strong leadership.
The Mayor's response to this tragedy came as no surprise to many residents. His legacy of going above and beyond has long been applauded with numerous awards. And he has not had a challenger in the last three village elections. Many have taken to calling him Mayor for life Murray.
He is Rockville Centre, said Bill Croutier, chairman of the We Care committee. He grew up here and he loves this place so much.
While some other village mayors just attend board meetings and check in for messages or photo ops, Murray is often one of the first people at Village Hall in the morning and is out late at some meeting or community function most evenings. He has taken a technically part-time position and made it his life.
Former village administrator Anthony Cancellieri said he and the Mayor spoke constantly during their 14-year tenure together, bouncing ideas off one another and handling any problem that came along. Hiring Cancellieri was one of Murray's first acts as mayor.
He's more than the Mayor to me, Cancellieri said at his final board meeting. He's a very good friend.
Cancellieri said he learned a lot about people from watching Murray over the years. Although the former village administrator always played a big role in finding solutions to problems and implementing them, it was the Mayor who delivered the news, good or bad, to the people.
For several years, Murray has portrayed the Grandfather in the RVC Guild for the Arts' production of the Nutcracker. And that is how many residents see him. Perhaps it is because he seems to be related to most of the village.
Denise Festa, a member of the We Care committee, thinks it is because, He cares about each and every person individually.
Young children flock to him. During a recent trip to Hewitt School, the Mayor stopped into a second-grade class he had visited once before. The students all remembered the gray-haired jolly man. Most ran up to shake his hand and some shared stories with him.
It was his second trip to the school in less than two weeks. The first time he had helped pack up garbage bags of toys the students collected. A parent standing in the hallway said, If only people could see you now.
The Mayor smiled, laughed and said this was nothing
