This season, the team went undefeated, with seven wins and three ties, and made it to the playoffs.
Budget approved
Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District residents approved a $95 million budget for the 2004-05 school year, raising district spending by 7.8 percent.
Dr. Thomas Caramore, the district superintendent, said that 5.09 percent of the increase went for routine costs that the district must incur, and 2.75 percent went to fund a new ninth period for all three of the district's high schools.
The additional period, he said, would cost $1.8 million for 24 new teachers, and $600,000 in extra transportation costs. District officials said the ninth period was needed to help students stay competitive with other districts that already offer it. The ninth period, Board of Education members said, would allow students to take courses that would not otherwise be open to them.
Wild art photo:
Box:
Photo credit: Rebecca Lopatin/Herald
Photo caption # 60629A: The Mepham senior experience is an internship program that gives students the chance to check out the world of work.
DWI law reconsidered
On April 20, 82-year-old Vernon Ketcher slammed his Jeep Cherokee into an Oldsmobile minivan at Hempstead Turnpike and Hill Avenue in Elmont. The van carried five members of a local youth soccer team. Two squad members, Jos Hernandez, 14, and Fermin Bravo, 13, were killed instantly.
Police alleged that Ketcher was driving drunk. Tests revealed that his blood alcohol content was .17, more than twice the legal limit of .08.
Ketcher, of Elmonst, had been arrested twice before for driving while intoxicated, in 1982 and 1994. The first time, he paid a $250 fine. The second time, he paid $500 and was sentenced to probation. He served on jail time.
New York state Sen. Charles Fuschillo Jr., a Republican of Merrick, said Hernandez's and Bravo's tragic deaths spurred him to revisit last year's reworked DWI law and find ways to toughen it.
At a news conference in late May, Fuschillo proposed two bills. The first would bar a person charged with driving while ability impaired (DWAI) from plea bargaining down to a non-alcohol offense. As the law stands, someone charged with DWAI can plead guilty to a non-alcohol charge, which masks the crime of driving while intoxicated.
The second bill would require anyone convicted of DWI who had been found guilty of the crime in the previous five years to serve jail time. Requiring repeat offenders to serve time would discourage drunk driving, Fuschillo said. Currently, a two-time drunk driver can serve five days in the county jail or be sentenced to community service.
Smokestacks tumble down
In late May, the smokestacks on Freeport Village's Power Plant No. 2 were removed, effectively rendering the 30-year-old plant inoperable.
For three years, Merrick, Bellmore and Freeport residents had protested Plant No. 2, saying its exhaust was a likely cause of the area's apparently high cancer rate. In 2002, Freeport agreed to shut down the plant and replace it with a clean-burning, gas-fired model. The $50 million natural gas plant, which sits alongside the old Power Plant No. 2, was completed last spring.
June
Attackers appear in court
Phil Sofia, a former captain of Mepham High School varsity football team who was convicted in the sexual assaults of three-junior varsity players at a training camp in Pennsylvania, appeared last week before Wane County, Pa., President Judge Robert Conway and was told he had three more months of boot camp.
Sofia, 17, and two other players, Ken Carney, 17, and Thomas Diasparra, 16, were charged with involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, a federal felony, and convicted as juveniles of the assaults in January.
Herald office burns down
Suddenly, people accustomed to covering the news became front-page news themselves. In a matter of minutes, a decades-old institution was homeless, and not long after, an effort to regroup and continue a journalistic had begun.
A quick-moving fire ravaged the Herald community Newspapers' building in Lawrence on Tuesday, June 15, forcing about 120 employees to safely evacuate to the street.
The blaze gutted much of the historic building, at 379 Central Ave., which is home to Richner Communication, publishers of 16 weekly newspapers and PrimeTime Guide. The building had been in continuous use as the newspapers' home since 1927 when the Nassau Herald and Rockaway Journal relocated from Far Rockaway.
Herald Newspapers survived, however. The newspaper group quickly relocated to a temporary office in West Hempstead and will be moving to a permanent home in Garden City in the near future.
Farewell to Kass
The North Bellmore School District bid a fond farewell to Irma Kass, a Board of Education trustee who had served 20 years on the board and announced last spring that she was retiring from the volunteer position.
Kass was touched by the outpouring of support that was shown to her. "I am still going to come to [school-board] meetings out of habit," she said. "It has been a wonderful ride, and I want to thank my mom, who taught me to work hard, and my husband, Ira, who told me to go for it and encouraged me to" seek election to the board.
Killed in DWI crash
North Bellmore residents Arthur and Sylvia Horowitz, ages 76 and 69 respectively, were killed in a DWI accident in Brooklyn last June.
When Pakistani immigrant Amin Moughal and his family moved to Little Neck and Pierce avenues in North Bellmore, the first people they met were the Horowitzes.
"They were just good neighbors," Moughal said. If I had a problem with my car, Arthur would always give me advice on how to fix it, and he was always giving me advice on money and how to raise my family. His wife, Sylvia, was always around. She was great. I'm going to miss her."
July
Wildart photo:
Photo credit: Rebecca Lopatin/Herald
Photo caption #70443A: Magically good time
Photo caption: Kids enjoy a summer magic show at the Bellmore Library in July.
Tomorrow's promise
When Calhoun High School sophomore Amanda Sosnowski took the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test, she never expected to become one of 350 students invited to take part in the Global Young Leaders Conference, a leadership development summit in Washington, D.C., and New York City.
Sosnowski, 15, of Bellmore, was selected for this prestigious conference based on her PSAT scores and responses to a questionnaire she filled out before taking the exam. Questions included: What kind of college do you plan to attend and what do you want to study? What kind of career would you like to have?
"I took an Advanced Placement class in world history this year," she said. "Once I get into college, I plan on studying philosophy or law. Eventually, I plan on becoming a military lawyer in the Navy."
The leadership conference, organized by the Congressional Youth Leadership Council, took place July 11 to 22. The theme of this year's conference was "The Leaders of Tomorrow Preparing for the Global Challenges and Responsibilities of the Future."
Mecca for indie films
The organizers and sponsors of the Long Island International Film Expo this year moved the festival's venue for the first time, from Malverne to the Bellmore Movie Theatre.
Since 1998, the expo has provided a showcase for independent filmmakers and helped them find distributors and music composers. The event also features discussion panels that provide information about moviemaking. And year after year, the festival continues to grow.
Debra Markowitz, one of the festival's founders and director of the Nassau County Film Office, said the event started out at Malverne Cinema 4.
"We loved Malverne, " she said. "But the Bellmore Movie Theatre is a bigger venue, providing 350 feet of space while Malverne only provided 185 feet."
Superintendent welcomed
The North Bellmore School District officially announced during a July 8 Board of Education meeting that it had hired a new school Superintendent, Dominic Mucci, to succeed outgoing Superintendent James Parla.
Mucci, of Long Beach, served as an assistant superintendent in Mineola and superintendent in the Springs Union Free School District, and was selected through a comprehensive search, said board Trustee Irma Wilk.
"Mr. Mucci was the best for the district, she said. And I think we made a good choice.
James Parla, the outgoing district superintendent, was pleased with the district-s decision and welcomed Mucci and told him if there was anything he needed, all he had to do was pick up the phone and ask.
New principal takes reins
When Bellmore School District officials set out to find a new principal for the Charles A. Reinhard Early Childhood Development Center on South St. Marks Avenue, they wanted an administrator who would meet certain very tough requirements. That-s why the Board of Education needed four months to find Steven Caster and name him as the school-s new principal.
According to Sheldon Dumain, superintendent of the Bellmore School.
Fire guts cycle shop
Emilio Manzo, who lives on Linden Street in Bellmore, woke up to the sound of helicopters and sirens and the smell of acrid smoke on Thursday, July 22, at around 5:15 a.m. "I went to my window, and over the top of the trees, I could see smoke and fire," Manzo said. "It was like daylight over the trees."
The fire was blazing at the nearby Custom Cycle Inc., a motorcycle-parts store and repair shop that has been business for 35 years at Newbridge Road and Camp Avenue.
Manzo got dressed and drove his truck four blocks to the fire site. "I went to see if there was something I could do to help," he said. "I was just worried that someone was in danger."
Once there, Manzo found firefighters covered in smoke and soot as they battled the blaze that quickly engulfed the motorcycle shop and jewelry store next door.
Bellmore Fire Department Chief Robert Frazer said the blaze started at 4:48 a.m. Four departments -- Bellmore, Merrick, North Merrick and North Bellmore - rushed to the fire site. East Meadow and Levittown were standing by to offer support, as well. One firefighter was injured while battling the blaze.
Volunteers needed nearly two hours to extinguish the roaring fire. The cause of the blaze is yet to be determined. The Nassau County Fire Marshal's Office is investigating.
Transportation trauma
In an effort to deal with public-transportation concerns expressed by Long Island residents, Nassau County Legislator David Denenberg formed a panel comprising Long Island Rail Road commuters to follow up on raised during a July 27 meeting.
The session, which took place at the Bellmore Memorial Library, was hosted by Denenberg. Guest speakers included John Vitiello, branch line manager of the LIRR, and Robert Brennan, assistant director of corporate communications for the railroad.
Some of the issues included pigeon contamination, lack of parking and unclean platforms at five LIRR stations: Bellmore, Merrick, Freeport, Seaford and Wantagh.
August
Trustee steps down
Charles Reinhardt, president of the North Bellmore Board of Education and a Central High School District trustee, stunned the community in August when he announced his resignation from both boards. He stepped down after it was revealed he had spent nearly $7,000 in Central District money attending conferences, but failed to turn in expense sheets to justify that amount.
News of his resignations was made public during an Aug. 12 North Bellmore school board meeting. North Bellmore Board Vice President Nina Lanci, who became board president, read a statement on Reinhardt's behalf. It said he was leaving the Central and North Bellmore boards for personal reasons.
Reinhardt's resignation came at a time when school districts were looking more closely at their spending practices in the wake of the Roslyn School District scandal.
According to a statement released by the Central School District, an internal district audit turned up spending discrepancies in Reinhardt's travel expenses.
Father speaks out
Five torturous days,
That's how long it took before the 15-year-old North Bellmore girl, whose story appeared in newspapers and on TV in early August, finally told her father she had been raped. The police reported to the media that she had told him on the night of the incident. In fact, fear and confusion had kept it bottled inside her for five days. She hardly slept or ate.
"I was just back and forth in my head about whether I should say anything or just drop it," the victim said in an interview with the Herald.
Eager to flesh out the details of an alleged crime far more complicated than first characterized by the media, and angry at published comments from those close to the accused insinuating she had lied, the victim and her father addressed the incident for the first time publicly in the Herald.
Mepham rebuilds
Dressed in maroon-and-white practice jerseys, baggy shorts and well-worn helmets, members of the reconstituted Mepham High School football team dashed across their gridiron in mid-August. The sun beat down hard. Again and again they sprinted, huddled in the middle of the field, broke and took off once more.
At precisely 12:15 p.m., practice ended, and the squad marched tiredly off the field into the school, through its unlighted kitchen and down the hall to the locker room. Players carried their helmets in their hands, breathing heavily and sweating. One young man slipped as he clattered across the tile floor in his cleats. He was all right. He laughed, and the others joined in.
It was a seemingly normal practice. But of course, it wasn't. It was the first time in a year that the Mepham squad had practiced together. In 2003, the Bellmore-Merrick Central District Board of Education abruptly canceled Mepham's football season after it was revealed that three varsity squad members had sexually abused three junior-varsity teammates at a Pennsylvania training camp. All three perpetrators pleaded guilty to the crime. One was on parole and living at home in Bellmore, where he received tutoring. One was sentenced to boot camp in Pennsylvania. The third underwent counseling at a Pennsylvania facility.
