SUFFOLK CLOSEUP - 9/11, Commack's Rob Vasiluth And EEL Grass

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

For Robert (Rob) Vasiluth, it began on 9/11.

The operating engineer from Suffolk County was in Manhattan hoisting a section of a sign high up on the Renaissance Times Square Hotel when just a few miles to the south he saw the World Trade Center being struck. 

“I saw the second plane hit,” recounted Vasiluth last week.

“I went home to my family” in Commack, he said, feeling “so terrible.” And the next day he was at Ground Zero, part of a “bucket brigade” that hand-to-hand was moving debris. Soon his task was “cutting steel” so corpses could be found in the pile.

“This was the city I love,” said Vasiluth. And he was “seeing what the world destroyed looks like.” From that experience, he committed himself to “saving life.”

Several weeks later, he was at Sunken Meadow State Park, and an alewife, a species of herring which returns to where it was born to lay eggs, had jumped out of the water and “was wriggling on the ground.” It had been blocked from getting to where it was born by a dam. He picked up the alewife “so it could get back on its way.” It “swam away. I couldn’t get it out of my head. This fish needed help.”

Since, Vasiluth has been pushing for pathways so alewives can get around the dams which, he said, exist now on Long Island in virtually all waterways in which alewives seek to return to spawn. 

Then he joined with the organization Save the Sound to plant spartina grass to restore wetlands. And, he began thinking about the vegetation beyond wetlands: notably eel grass.

He asked himself: how could eel grass beds best be restored?

Eel grass “is the foundation in the shallow sea,” notes Rob. “It’s a nursery ground for juvenile fish. It’s where scallops can thrive. Eel grass produces oxygen. It slows down erosion. It’s a natural buffer. It neutralizes acidification. It absorbs carbon.” 

But “95 percent of eel grass in New York waters is gone,” he said.

There have been attempts to plant eel grass seeds but they have largely been unsuccessful. He studied the issue for months.

And then he came up with an idea: using a glue to affix eel grass seeds to clams. The clams with the seeds would, he figured, bury themselves in the sea bottom and this way the seeds could far better germinate rather than just being scattered in the water as was being tried. 

Chris Pickerell, marine program director at Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County, opened its laboratory in Southold to Rob for experimentation of the concept. And it worked.

The glue used? Cyanoacrylate.

That’s the stuff that is the basis for Crazy Glue.

The germination rate of gluing eel grass seeds to clams—five to 10 per clam—to produce eel grass has turned out to be “phenomenal,” said Vasiluth. Eel grass seeds, he explains, “are very similar to caraway seeds on the everything bagel.”

He has been involved—with Cornell Cooperative Extension, Save the Sound, The Nature Conservancy, Seatuck Environmental Association and the Stony Brook University School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences—in the planting of eel grass seeds on clams widely in waters off Long Island. These include waters of the Long Island Sound off Stony Brook, in Sterling Harbor off Greenport, in the Great South Bay off Fire Island, and in Shinnecock Bay, assisted by the Science Club of Hampton Bays Schools. 

Last year, a major eelgrass seed collection initiative furthering Rob’s concept began off Fishers Island, the little island two miles off Connecticut that’s part of Suffolk County. Save The Sound, in an online article on the project—which includes a photo of Rob in a mask and scuba gear in the water holding up a bag of eelgrass seeds—notes that it is aimed at increasing “eelgrass propagation…by using clams as an alternative to traditional planting methods.” Fisher’s Island, the piece says, “is the home of the last best eelgrass habitat in the Long Island Sound due to the work of the Fisher’s Island Conservancy Eelgrass Management Program.” 

An operating engineer skilled with working heavy equipment, age 53, the father of three, Rob has invented a hugely important process for bringing back that vital aquatic vegetation: eel grass. 

From the devastation at Ground Zero, he is bringing back life to the sea. 

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books. 

Library Board Of Trustees Rescinds Policy On Pride Month Displays

By Stacy Altherr

After mounting pressure from community members and groups, as well as a possible investigation by a state human rights department, the Smithtown Library board of trustees rescinded its decision to remove Pride Month displays from all four of the town library’s children’s rooms.

The library board of trustees held an emergency meeting 6:30 p.m. Thursday evening via Zoom to retract the decision. More than 1,000 people attended the virtual event.

Library board president Brianna Baker-Stines, who voted against the measure Tuesday night, when a 4-2 vote approved the policy removing the displays from Smithtown Library District’s four libraries, said that the board needed to trust the highly skilled and educated librarians to know what books should be included in displays and noted the board should stick to its work of managing budgets and other trustee responsibilities.

After the decision Tuesday to pull the display, New York State Governor Kathy Hochul quickly issued a news release stating that New York will not become the next “Don’t Say Gay” state. “Public places are prohibited by law from engaging in discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity,” she said via the statement.

In addition to the governor’s office, local and national LGBTQ organizations have reprimanded the library board of trustees for their decision and applaud the quick reversal. 

“The entire community made this happen,” said David Kilmnick, President of the LGBT Network. “It woke up a sleeping giant majority that believes in safety, equity, fairness and love for our children. There is a lot more to do to create and provide safer schools, and LGBT instruction and this victory tonight shows what we can do when we lift our voices and act together.

Tonight’s  vote to rescind Tuesday’s decision was 4-2 with one abstention.

Vice President Thomas Maher said he voted to remove the displays, thinking it would only be until the next meeting when a policy would be made. 

“I will reverse my decision,” he said at the meeting, saying he wants the Smithtown library system to be an “open, safe, and accepting place for everyone.”

Library trustees Marie Gergenti and Theresa Grisalfi voted against the reinstating the display. Both said they were concerned about the content in some of the books. Trustee Marilyn LoPresti, who abstained from the vote, said she spent time reading the books and was also concerned about some of the content.

None of the books were removed from the library shelves when the displays were removed.

Statement from the Board of Trustees of The Smithtown Library:

Earlier this evening the Board of Trustees of The Smithtown Library rescinded our earlier decision to remove Pride displays from our Library’s Children’s Departments. The majority of the Board recognizes that our earlier decision was made without the time, care and due diligence that a decision of this type deserves and that it was the wrong decision. Moving forward we will commit our collective energies toward ensuring that we get the advice and guidance needed from our Library Administrators, staff, outside experts, legal counsel and most importantly from Smithtown residents before we make important decisions regarding our Library.

The Board’s goal for The Smithtown Library is to be a place that welcomes openly all Smithtown residents. We recognize that we have our differences but we believe that what we have in common outweighs those differences. We know that a good library will contain things that may trouble each of us but understand that our primary role involves representing many different viewpoints and opposing ideas. We do this by giving voice - and space - to each.

The Board looks forward to reviewing our decision-making processes and our policies related to our Library’s collections, displays, programs and services to ensure that they are helping us fulfill our mission of “providing access to diverse information, lifelong learning and entertainment resources through outstanding service for all residents of the Library District.”

We will report back to the community regularly on our progress.

The Smithtown Library Board has posted a link to tonight’s emergency board meeting. Click here to listen to the audio recording of the June 23 Emergency Board Meeting. 

"I Didn't Speak Out For Fear Of Offending" A History Lesson

History Lesson

June Capossela Kempf

Sitting on the front porch waiting for the school bus with my granddaughter, G G. (Gorgeous Granddaughter). My attention is split between the time and the street corner; hoping the bus would come before she drives me crazier than I already am for signing up for this detail in the first place – really?  I cherish these precious moments, sharing and bonding with her

Today, she started off by asking; “How old are you?  When I answered, she swung into gear with a slew of questions.

“Do you remember Martin Luther King?” 

 ‘Sure do.”

“When he was alive? You remember his march in Washington. You were living – then? 

“Yeah, I watched it from a distance. I had a dream,” I quoted. Then, reflected how I wished I did more to support the dream - how I admired the people who marched for freedom back then.  As she struggled with the idea that her grandma witnessed her recent history lesson, I heard the words to Aretha’s ‘ R_E_S_P_E_C_T’  tumble around my brain , mixing it up with freedom songs of the sixties. I softly sang, ‘If I Had a Hammer’. 

“How did you feel when he got killed?”

“So scared. I thought his dream for freedom would be lost forever and there would be rioting - everywhere.”

“.. But that didn’t happen, right?”

“His message got through. Laws were passed that not only inspired racial tolerance but protected the poor and disabled throughout the country.”

 G G carefully studied me like I was a talking relic dug up from an archeological dig. 

“Did you go to Woodstock?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

I explained that I was a little older than most of the people who went.  I was married with a child, a house; and I didn’t approve the drugs and the wild crowds, but was there in spirit.”  Blah. Blah, Blah. 

 “Were you a Dove or a Hawk?” she said. 

Luckily, the bus arrived which enabled me to dodge the question. “I’ll tell you later,” I said.  

“Never mind, Grandma… You were no Hawk. “

How could she know? Especially since in the beginning I thought we were fighting the good war in Vietnam. Once I saw the destruction and realized the privileged could avoid the draft and we were losing, at a terrible cost, I leaned towards the bird of peace. But, I stayed on the fence. Did I get out and march - face the fire hoses or write one letter of protest? 

I decided to talk to her tomorrow and tell her how during those days; I didn’t speak out for fear of offending my friends and neighbors - that the bird I was most closely associated with was a chicken?

Perhaps tomorrow, I’ll tell GG that it is never too late to take a stand for your values.  We see now, as history repeats itself; that freedom can’t be taken for granted or expected to endure if we don’t fight like our forefathers to preserve liberty and justice “ – all over this land.”

Thank you Dr. King – Peter,Paul and Mary, Aretha . And thank Heaven for G.G.

June Capossela Kempf: Essayist and  Author of : Yo God! Jay’s Story, a memoir  and Lady of the Dollhouse, a YA mystery

SUFFOLK ClOSEUP : Dr. Berger And Lyme disease

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

A medical pioneer in Suffolk County in identifying, treating and also speaking out about the gravity of Lyme disease and its spread died this month.

Dr. Bernard Berger, a dermatologist who passed away at 85, wrote early journal articles in the 1980s on the identification of Lyme disease and its treatment with antibiotics. And he was highly critical of the lack of urgency the Suffolk County Department of Health Services took toward the disease. 

“I absolutely believe we’re approaching an epidemic,” Dr. Berger was quoted as telling The New York Times in 1987 in an article it published headlined “Tick-Borne Disease Infects Suffolk.” Said Dr. Berger: “There are certain areas like Montauk, Shelter Island and North Haven where it’s not unusual to have at least one member of the family contract Lyme disease.”

Dr. Berger was a “go-to” medical person when I wrote early on about Lyme disease.

As to the insufficient interest in Lyme disease by the Suffolk County Department of Health Services, in this column in 1987 I noted that the New York State Department of Health had just described Lyme disease as “endemic” in Suffolk and said the county was the worst area for Lyme disease in the state.

I related that Suffolk County health commissioner, Dr. David Harris, asserted that Lyme disease must take “its place besides other diseases in the county” and holding that it was “treatable.”

That’s 35 years ago, and in retrospect it should be acknowledged that Dr. Harris, and under him the county Department of Health Services, was vigorous then in efforts at dealing with AIDS. AIDS was striking the New York area—and Suffolk—hard in the early 1980s. And unlike many areas of the nation where, amid the homophobia of the time, strong action wasn’t taken, the Suffolk health department was moving robustly, even though the miraculous “cocktail” drugs for AIDS were yet to become available.

But, no question, on Lyme disease, strong action by the Suffolk agency was lacking. Indeed, Suffolk County Legislator John Foley of Blue Point, long chairman of the legislature’s Health Committee, felt compelled to put forth a resolution directing the Department of Health Services to develop an action plan because, as Foley said, its actions had not “been strong enough.”

Meanwhile, Dr. Berger, out of his office in Southampton, was treating hundreds upon hundreds of Lyme disease victims, conducting research and speaking out.

He retired in 2018 noting that when “I opened my practice in 1971, with my pregnant wife serving as secretary and nurse, I was the only dermatologist on the South Fork,” and that he planned to remain active in sports. He was a passionate athlete who competed in triathlons and running events, loved tennis and sculling. 

He was diagnosed that year with Amyloidoisis, a disease that causes failure of organs such as the heart and kidneys. He died at home in East Hampton surrounded by his family and friends. Dr. Berger and his wife of 52 years, Phyllis, had three children.

Dr. Berger also had an extensive military career. This included serving in the Army as a captain with service at an Army hospital. Discharged in 1968, he went back to the military in 1975 joining the Air Force and was chief of hospital services at a U.S. base in Japan. He continued in the Army Reserve retiring with the rank of colonel.

Will the kind of miracle drugs developed for AIDS ever come about for Lyme disease? There’s work going on now on a vaccine to provide immunization based on mRNA, also used in the vaccines advanced for COVID-19.  It is being developed by Valneva, a vaccine company in France, along with New York-headquartered Pfizer—a name so familiar to us these days for its COVID vaccine. 

In a press release on April 26—the week before, on May 7, Dr. Berger died—Valneva and Pfizer said it’s “the only Lyme disease vaccine candidate currently in clinical development.” As to Lyme disease, the companies stated: “While the true incidence of Lyme disease is unknown, it is estimated to annually affect approximately 476,000 people in the United States and 130,000 people in Europe. Early symptoms…are often overlooked. Left untreated, the disease can disseminate and cause more serious complications affecting the joints, the heart or the nervous system. The medical need for vaccination against Lyme disease is steadily increasing as the geographic footprint of the disease widens.”

Dr. Berger warned us decades ago about that widening. 

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books. 

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP : Suffolk County's History Includes The Fight For Abortion

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

A decision by the U.S. Supreme Court involving a longtime Suffolk County person—Bill Baird—was at the base of its subsequent Roe v. Wade decision which legalized abortion in the United States. Now, Roe v. Wade is likely to be overturned by a court majority. A draft opinion leaked to Politico written by Justice Samuel Alioto sets the stage for it.

And Baird, long a resident of Centerport in Huntington Town, who after death threats and the firebombing of one of his birth control/abortion clinics on Long Island has lived in another state, was expressing his outrage to me last week.

The three Trump nominees to the Supreme Court—Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett—should, said Baird, be “removed from office” for testifying that Roe v. Wade was established precedent when they underwent confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee. “They lied,” said Baird. “All they wanted to do was to get into office and prevent women from getting abortions.”

Baird began battling for legalized abortion after, in 1963, as the clinical director of EMKO, a manufacturer of birth control products, he was at Harlem Hospital “coordinating research, and “I heard the scream of a young African-American woman covered with blood” from the waist down. She was bleeding caused by “a piece of coat hanger” used in a self-inflicted abortion. The unmarried woman, who already had nine children, “died in my arms.”

He was to establish the Parents Aid Society, and later the Pro-Choice League, and be jailed eight times in five states for advocating birth control and legal abortion.

In 1967, students at Boston University sent Baird a petition asking him to challenge the Massachusetts’ “Crimes Against Chastity, Decency, Morality and Good Order” law. He gave a presentation at the university attended by 1,500 students in which he gave a female student a condom and a package of contraceptive foam. Police immediately “swooped in” and he was arrested as a felon, convicted and sentenced to three months in jail.

Thomas Eisenstadt was to become the sheriff of another Suffolk County—Suffolk County, Massachusetts—so Baird’s challenge of the Massachusetts law was titled Baird v. Eisenstadt. In 1972, Supreme Court Justice John J. Brennan, Jr. wrote the decision in that case stating it was legal for an unmarried person to be provided contraception. It declared: “If the right of privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as to whether to bear or beget a child.”

That decision—and its emphasis on the “right of privacy”—would be the basis the following year for the Roe v. Wade decision in which the Supreme Court ruled it was legal for a woman to have an abortion.

Other arrests of Baird included one in Huntington in 1971 at a presentation attended by 300 people, he related. He showed a birth control pill and a diaphragm, and on the basis of a mother being in the audience who was “holding a 14-month baby,” he was “handcuffed” by the Suffolk County Police Department, “spent the night in jail” and charged along with the infant’s mother with “endangering the welfare of a child.”

There would be other legal challenges including two more cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. Further, Baird “every year for 30 years” went to an anti-abortion gathering called the “National Right to Life Convention”—he says the term “right to life” was devised as part of the anti-abortion PR strategy post-Roe v. Wade. At the conventions he conducted a “dangerous noontime picket” bearing a cross written on it “Free Women From The Cross of Oppression.” 

His clinics, in Hauppauge and Hempstead—the Hempstead clinic was struck by a man who barged into the waiting room wielding a firebomb in 1979—are now gone. But Baird, who will be 90 next month, keeps going. He urges people to translate their support for legal abortion in elections this and coming years making sure “they choose candidates who support a women’s rights to make their own decisions,” and to otherwise take action.

“Bill is tireless and amazing and still out there,” says Marilyn Fitterman of East Hampton, former president of the National Organization for Women–New York State, a grandmother of nine who has worked with Baird for decades and authored the recent book “Why I Marched” Moreover, she warned last week: “If the right for reproductive freedom falls, other things are also going to fall.” 

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books.