Former O'sider Dunn-Franz dies at 97
Audrey Dunn-Franz, an award-winning floral arranger and noted horticulturists who once lived in Oceanside and Rockville Centre, died Jan. 8 at St. James Healthcare facility in Smithtown after a long illness. She was 97.
During her time in the Oceanside-Rockville Centre area, from about 1928 to 1967, Dunn-Franz raised two children, taught art at Oceanside High School, served as an air raid warden, and belonged to several clubs and civic groups.
In 1927 she married Paul Francis Dunn, with whom she had two children, Paul Dunn and Shiela Zapf. After her husband died in 1944, Dunn-Franz supported her family by teaching antique painting on glass and metal stenciling to adults at OHS. Later she taught her students in an art studio she built in the basement of her home on Windsor Place in Oceanside.
"She had a tough life," said Paul, her son, who resides in Pinehurst, N.C. "After my father died, she had to raise me and my sister teaching what was a night school-type class for adults."
During World War II, Dunn-Franz served as an air-raid warden in Oceanside's Civil Defense Organization. Among her duties during practice drills was to ensure residents blacked out their lights in case of an Axis attack.
In addition to her son and daughter, Dunn-Franz is survived by her 14 grandchildren, 31 great-grandchildren and four great-great-grandchildren.
A memorial service was held March 27 at the Old Field Club in Setauket.
County and town 2004 plans mirror last year's
In stating her goals for the coming year, Denise Ford, who in November 2003 defeated incumbent county legislator Michael Zapson of District 4, which covers a large section of Oceanside and Barnum Island in Island Park, plans first and foremost to reach out to the people in both towns to learn about their concerns.
"I need to know what's going on to be effective," Ford said, adding that she planned walks around the neighborhoods of both towns to get a better pulse of these communities.
Three OHS students among Intel
semifinalists
Bevin Cohen, Kristin Lurie and Adam Moss were among 75 Long Island high school students and 300 students nationwide who earned semifinalist spots in America's most famous research contest - just a year after Oceanside High School produced no semifinalists.
For Cohen, earning semifinalist status had been the culmination of a rewarding year of research, after her paper, entitled "Factors Associated with Hand-Hygiene Practices in Two Neo-Natal Intensive Care Units," was published in the June issue of the Pediatric Journal of Infectious Diseases. Cohen's work showed significant results in hand-hygiene practices that could help explain certain infections spreading through a hospital.
Lurie researched a class of cancer-related drugs with the potential to combat tuberculosis, and Moss produced a psychology paper pertaining to visual attention.
"The entire class, not just the winners, exhibited the qualities that are necessary for success in both publication and in competition: intelligence, motivation, perseverance, and the belief and focus in their work," said Renee Barcia, science research coordinator at OHS,
Each semifinalist earned $1,000, and were considered for 40 finalist spots nationwide, to be announced Jan. 28. If chosen, they will be brought to Washington, D.C., in mid-March to compete for a top scholarship prize of $100,000.
Glanes repays fellow POW with symbolic gift
Nat Glanz presented Ed Hynes with a chai, a Jewish symbol for life, at the Jewish Community Center in Oceanside a month after the POWs reunited since their first meeting 58 years before.
When Glanz and Ed Hynes met and spoke briefly while imprisoned in a Nazi camp in 1945, Hynes handed him two Catholic miraculous medals, hoping they would help his fellow American get out alive.
Their reunion was sparked by a story in the Herald after Glanz showed the Jewish War Veterans in Oceanside a documentary on his war experiences that was recently archived in the Library of Congress. Hynes read the story and recognized certain details about Glanz that he recalled from their 10-minute meeting at the Ludwigsberg prison camp. After living in Oceanside for 52 years, both men finally reunited in Dec. 2003 at the Veterans of Foreign War in Oceanside, where Hynes gave Glanz two more miraculous medals.
"May it bring you good luck and happiness," Glanz told Hynes when he handed him the chai, "and thank you for being such a mensch."
Teens rob young shovelers
Three boys, ages 12 and 13, were shoveling their neighbors' driveways and sidewalks after about five inches of snow fell on Jan. 14, when police said three male teenagers stole their earnings. Two days later, police arrested a 15-year-old Oceanside resident for first-degree robbery in connection with the crime.
After the three boys finished shoveling the property of a home near Temple Avodah, at 3050 Oceanside Road, they walked through the synagogue's parking lot, where the three teens approached and robbed them of $105, one displaying a knife tucked in his waistband, said Sgt. John Azzata of the Fourth Precinct. The victims handed him $105, and the subjects fled on foot in an unknown direction without hurting their victims.
"Our investigation has led us to make one arrest in the case so far," Azzata said, "and we are actively pursuing the other suspects in the case."
County to post electric sign at O'side Library
In the wake of an accident outside the Oceanside Library in which a minivan struck and 85-year-old woman in March 2003, Nassau County officials announced an overhead electric sign would be posted above the crosswalk outside the library on Davison Avenue.
Over the past decade, the library's administration had corresponded with the police and elected officials in an effort to rectify the traffic problems, particularly with speeders, which threaten pedestrians. During that time, signs were posted around the library that read "yield pedestrian," and the street itself was marked "X-ING" in bold white paint. But the library felt these measures were still inadequate.
The library requested a full stop sign or traffic light at the crosswalk. But since the library is close to Long Beach Road, these measures would likely create further traffic problems on the town's main thoroughfare, the county concluded.
McGuire named top cop
The commanding officer of the Fourth Precinct, Deputy Inspector Richard McGuire, was promoted to inspector during formal ceremonies this month.
McGuire, who has been Fourth Precinct commander at the Hewlett station house for nine months, said he has been told he will stay put, and there are no plans to transfer him to another precinct. The Fourth Precinct takes in Oceanside, Island Park, the Five Towns, Atlantic Beach, East Atlantic Beach, East Rockaway, Lido Beach and Point Lookout.
The promotion ceremony took place at the New York Institute of Technology in Old Westbury Jan. 22. During the ceremonies, Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi and Police Commissioner James Lawrence swore in 48 new police officers, who are now assigned to the Nassau Police Academy for 25 weeks of training.
McGuire said he will continue to target quality-of-life offenses, cracking down on speeding cars, loud noises and traffic congestion and problems with complaints at Island Park nightclubs during the summer.
February
BB shots taken
at animal clinic
Five bullet-like wholes were fond in the front window of the Wood's Avenue Animal Clinic in Oceanside. Police suspect the holes were made by BB gun pellets shot through the large window pane sometime between 9 p.m. on Jan. 27 and 3 p.m. on Jan. 28. The animal clinic, on West Davison Avenue, is in the middle of a strip mall. No other store was targeted.
The owner of the animal hospital, Dr. Stuart Gower, said he didn't believe his business was attacked by anyone with a grudge against him, and speculated the incident may have had something to do with the Christmas lights in the outline of a deer that were mounted on a shelf in the clinic's front window.
"It almost seems like someone was fooling, around trying to shoot at the deer," Gower said. "I don't see any reason for someone to target our place."
Rabbi on the rise
in the OFD
After completing basic training to become a certified fire fighter with the Oceanside Fire Department in 2003, Rabbi Mark Greenspan of Oceanside Jewish Center was able to fight fires directly, and was found around town performing his duties during the early half of the New Year.
Among his contributions were snuffing out dumpster fires at the rear of TJ Maxx department store and 1-800-Flowers on Long Beach Road in Oceanside.
"It's was just a dumpster fire," the modest Greenspan said about the fire at TJ Maxx. "It wasn't very romantic. I have to do those kind of fires, too, you know."
Repulsed by the atrocities of Sept. 11, 2001 and the heroic efforts of rescue workers both professional and civilian, Greenspan got involved with the local fire department. He joined the department's Columbia Engine Co. No. 1, where he became what he calls a "non-structural" firefighter: the guy who performs simpler tasks than fighting fires, such as connecting hoses to hydrants.
Greenspan was named an associate chaplain, a newly-created position in the department which he had give support to families and firefighters involved with intense circumstances usually involving fatal fires and car accidents.
O'side schools propose $8 million budget hike
Start-up costs for the district's capital improvement projects will boost the Oceanside School district's 2004-05 school budget to nearly $100 million, the board announced at its regular meeting this month. The proposed budget worked out to an 8.6 percent - or $7.9 million - increase from last year's final figure.
Superintendent Dr. Herb Brown kicked off the first of three budget workshops the district would hold by highlighting areas of greatest increase. Brown mainly discussed the costs of the $31 million bond issue passed last January that would fund a district-wide capital-improvement project, $2.5 million of which will be added to the budget this year.
"The money was borrowed last summer at a very favorable rate of under 4 percent," Brown explained, "locking in that favorable rate for 20 years for Oceanside taxpayers. And the money has to be paid back, principal and interest, beginning next year."
Rotarians 'Interact'
to feed 41 families
As they do each year in February, members of Oceanside High School's Interact Club and their parent organization, the Rotary Club of Oceanside, gathered to put together food packages to go out to poor families in the area.
Some 41 of these families in Oceanside and Long Beach received boxes of non-perishable food items donated by generous shoppers in Oceanside and collected, packaged and delivered to them by the Interact students and Rotarians.
With funds from both its collections and budget, Rotary also provided each family with bread, snack cakes and gift certificates from Stop & Shop in Oceanside.
The food drive is a project undertaken by Rotary of Oceanside for many Februarys, at a time when paying heating bills can be a strain. The food is donated to help ease the burden some of these families face in meeting their payments.
IP bank robbed in morning hours
A bank teller handed over an undisclosed amount of cash after a man gave her a note demanding money at the Bank of New York, 212 Long Beach Road in Island Park, at 11:05 a.m. on Feb. 18.
After the employee complied with his demand, the suspect took both an undisclosed amount of cash and his note, exited the bank and ran southbound down Long Beach Road. Police said that the suspect never displayed nor indicated he had a gun. At the time of the robbery there were five customers and six employees present, but no injuries were reported, police said.
Police set up a perimeter, saturated the area with patrol cars and dispatched a helicopter overhead in search of the suspect. There was no indication he was driving a car or had one waiting, although police didn't rule out that possibility.
However, the suspect, a white male in his 30s, was caught on surveillance video inside the bank.
MARCH
Taxi owner starts new safety program
The brutal slaying of a man walking home from the Lynbrook train station sparked taxi company owner Lawrence Blessinger to establish a new safety program for train commuters.
Blessinger, the vice president of his family-owned All Island taxi service, decided after this Lynbrook man was stabbed and shot to provide commuters free rides to their cars. Initiated the week of March 7, the 24-hour, seven-days-a-week service allows cautious commuters to step off a train and hop into a cab that will take them to their cars parked at or near train stations where Blessinger's cab hubs are located.
These include McRides taxi in Island Park and Freeport, All Island taxi in Lynbrook, Rockville Centre, Merrick, Mineola and Little Neck, and Ollie's taxi in Hewlett. While many commuters use taxi services from train stations rather than risk walking home and becoming a criminal's victim, Blessinger's program takes this precaution one step further by making commuters feel safe when even a walk to their cars may be dangerous.
With taxi hubs in several locations throughout Nassau County, Blessinger has heard often enough about the larcenies, muggings, beatings and other crimes that occur around the train stations, which he believes have been on the rise. The week before, an attempted robbery and beating occurred near Blessinger's McRides taxis hub in Island Park.
IP Superintendent calls budget 'kid oriented'
The proposed 2004-05 budget for Island Park Schools focuses on "the needs of the kids, not adults," said Superintendent Dr. Ed Price at the district's public budget hearing.
The district unveiled its $24.7 million budget, representing a 4.9 percent increase from last year and containing a significant increases in salaries and benefits, Price said. While the proposed budget features no new major initiatives, the district will maintain "an environment that is conducive to academic growth for our children," he added.
Overall, 45 percent of the budget goes toward salaries, 14 percent to benefits, 20 percent toward tuition for the district's 300 high school students, and six percent to tuition for special education students who attended private schools or BOCES. The budget increase benefits by 49 percent, salaries by 36 percent, and transportation by 15 percent.
O'sider takes fight
to Iraq
Oceanside Matt Scheiner, a paratrooper with the 3rd Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division, arrived home unharmed in January after a nearly year-long deployment in the Middle East.
Along the way, his experiences ranged from firefights with the Republican Guard to a dip in one of deposed dictator Saddam Hussein's palatial swimming pools.
After arriving in Kuwait on Feb. 15, 2003 and training for a month, Scheiner and his regiment convoyed through Iraq behind the 3rd Infantry Division to Baghdad, stopping at various cities to clear out opposing forces and collect weapons.
Scheiner said that his closest brush with death came when Hussein's sons, Uday and Qusay, were killed by coalition forces and Iraqi resistance fighters opened up on Scheiner's unit.
Scheiner was due to report back to Fort Bragg in North Carolina in April.
O'sider stands beside Bush at future 9/11 memorial site
Oceansider Bill Weitzman stood on the same stage with President Bush when he helped break ground on a memorial in Eisenhower Park for victims of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 this week.
Weitzman, president of the Empire State Regional Council of Carpenters Union, Local 7, was invited to attend the event as the union's representative, and was introduced to the president by Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi as the man whose brother workers will build the monument.
"I got a chance to shake the president's hand and talk to him for about 15 seconds," said Weitzman, a Vietnam War veteran. "I said, 'I saw you in Washington when I was at the convention,' and I said, 'Please finish the job you started.' I was referring to the war in Iraq."
He said that Bush told him not to worry. "'I'm going to finish it, don't worry,' he told me," Weitzman said. "I felt like saying, Don't leave anyone behind like we did in Vietnam, with the MIAs, and don't stop short like your father did. But he told me at least twice, 'I'm going to finish.'"
APRIL
Telese convicted
of double homicide
After deliberating for two days, a jury convicted Louis Telese of the murder of Richard and Susan Eigan at their Oceanside home 20 years ago.
Some jurors were convinced of Telese's guilt because his thumbprint was found on a plastic Foodtown shopping bag used to suffocate Richard, 17, and two strands of his hair were inside a bandanna used to strangle Susan Eigen, 41, on Feb. 26, 1984.
When he took the stand on March 14, Telese said his fingerprints showed up on the plastic bag after she gave him $5 to by Coors beer, which he bought at a Foodtown supermarket and carried back to her house in the plastic shopping bag. Assistant District Attorney Robert Biancavilla pointed out that Coors had not been distributed in New York State until 1987, three years after the murders. Telese couldn't explain how his hairs got on the bandanna, nor how a urine stain with his DNA ended up on a bed sheet in one of Susan's children's room.
The jury deliberated for two days, in part, because some were swayed by Telese's family. Stephanie Telese, the convicted man's estranged wife, testified that on the day of the murders she and her husband went to her mother's home in Brooklyn to celebrate her parent's birthday, a claim backed up by her mother, Teresa Arciszewski, and brother, Chris Arciszewski.
Telese was convicted on two counts each of intentional murder, murder committed during a robbery and murder committed in the course of a kidnapping. His sentencing was set for May 19.
Dunwoody, long-time OHS secretary, dies
Betty Dunwoody, who worked in various secretarial positions at Oceanside High School for 48 years, died April 7 after complications from heart surgery.
Prior to her many years at OHS, Dunwoody was a secretary for principals at both School 5 and the junior high school then at Merle Avenue. Upon arriving at the high school in 1955, she was a secretary for the principal and then the guidance department. In her final twenty-five years she became secretary and coordinator for Student Projects, and worked in that capacity until the time she fell ill in May 2003.
As secretary of Students Projects, Dunwoody coordinated all the after school organizations and events, such as the Key Club, Distributive Education Clubs of America (DECA), sports night and home coming.
"Betty worked tirelessly seven days a week to try to make sure that everything went right for the kids at the high school," Superintendent Dr. Herb Brown said.
Gang members arrested in O'side after IP assault
Police arrested reputed members of the Latin Kings gang and charged them with surrounding and beating three youths with a bat at a party in Island Park.
Frank Beltran, 18, Dane Buchanan, 18, and Daniel Ortiz, 18, all of Long Beach, Juan Tavaras, 19, and Edwin Rodriguez, 19, both of Freeport, and Rogelio Martinez, 19, of Baldwin, were arrested and charged with assault in the second degree April 7.
A dispute began between the six defendants and three victims at a party on Trafalger Boulevard in Island Park over the purchase of beer, police said. One of the defendants used a knife to menace the victims, and another defendants used a bat to beat the victims across the chess and arms, causing them contusions and lacerations. APRIL 1
OHS student wins $20,000 in national
science competition
Bevin Cohen took a top spot in the Young Epidemiology Scholars (YES) Competition, a first-year nationwide contest held in Washington, D.C. from April 16-19. Out of a field of 600 applicants, Cohen emerged with third place honors and a $20,000 scholarship.
Cohen earned the honor for her epidemiological research based on her paper, "Factors Associated with Hand-Hygiene Practices in Two Neo-Natal Intensive Care Units," that was the lead article in the June 2003 edition of the Pediatric Journal of Infection Diseases. The paper presented results that could help explain why certain infections spread through hospitals. The research earned her a place in the Intel semifinals, and $20,000 to put toward her college tuition.
Cohen competed against 60 other students from across the country, and later the top 12 competitors vied for the main prize of $50,000. Cohen was the top student from New York, placing behind two $50,000 winners from Pennsylvania and Illinois.
Town, county compete
to close O'side Motel
A group of Oceanside residents confronted the owner of the Oceanside Motel after Nassau County Legislator Jeff Toback held a press conference outside the motel to announce that the county had taken steps toward closing it.
Days before, however, the Town of Hempstead board revealed its plan to use eminent domain law to condemn the motel property and convert the site to a public use. The town said that at its May 14 meeting it would adopt a map for a public parking field that officials are considering for the property once it comes under town ownership, after which the town will formally institute a legal proceeding to condemn the property.
Toback announced before about 60 Oceansiders outside the motel that the county served the owner a "first notice of prohibited conduct," which essentially states that prohibited conduct has allegedly occurred at the motel - five drug-related arrests occurred on the property of the previous nine months - and that the owner is obliged to cease such conduct or face having his business shut down.
Told that the town may take his property at whatever a judge deems fair value, Bhett said, "If they give me $3 million I'll get out tomorrow."
Mensch and Sullivan
elected to library board
Florence Mensch and Ellen Sullivan were elected to the Board of Trustees of the Oceanside Library Association after having filled the vacated seats of two members. Both candidates ran uncontested and were elected to five-year terms on April 27.
Mensch, the board's treasurer, joined the board in December 2002 after trustee Richard Roberts relinquished his seat when he moved out of the Oceanside school district.
Sullivan, the board's secretary, filled the seat of Peggy Salute after she moved from town last spring. Library bylaws prohibit an individual from holding a trusteeship if he or she lives or moves outside the district.
