RJO Student Georgia Grace Berriola Wins A Visit From LI Ducks Mascot QuackerJack

By Shannon Troccoli

Contest winner Georgia Grace Berriola and QuackerJackGeorgia Grace Berriola, a fourth grade student at RJO Intermediate School in Kings Park, is a winner in the annual TD Bank “Take A Duck to Class” essay contest.

Students wishing to participate in the essay contest were required to fill out an online application and to write an essay (250 words or less) about a hero in the community and explain why they are a hero.  According to TD Bank the contest is competitive with thousands of essays submitted.

Georgia Grace, or GG as she is known at school, wrote one of four winningPrincipal Rudy Massimo, Ms. Rosato, GG, Quaker Jack, Jennifer Arnold and Shawna Hand essays. GG choose the Kings Park Fire Department as her hero. GG’s prize was a gift card and an hour long visit at the school with the LI Ducks and mascot Quacker Jack.

The entire fourth grade class gathered in the school’s auditorium where they were greeted by Principal Rudy Massimo and Ducks Assistant GM Doug Cohen who congratulated GG on her essay. 

GG, a student in Ms. Rosato’s class confidently, read her essay aloud to the students and took questions from the audience. GG was presented with a $50 Visa gift card by Jennifer Arnold and Shawna Hand from TD Bank. Fourth graders were then treated to a visit from Quacker Jack and received gift bags courtesy of TD Bank.

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP - Gov.Cuomo Proposes Free Tuition At SUNY And CUNY

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s proposal last week for free tuition at SUNY and CUNY schools has roots going back nearly two centuries in this region—to 1847 and the founding of the Free Academy of the City of New York, which became City College and also later dubbed “the poor man’s Harvard.”

It was a highly attractive centerpiece of the presidential campaign last year of U.S. Senator Bernard Sanders who was with Mr. Cuomo when he announced his plan.And it’s as important and as relevant in Kalamazoo as it is on Long Island and in New York State. Indeed, the New York Times Magazine ran an extensive article in September on the success of a program that began in 2005 in that Michigan city through which unnamed donors pay tuition to Michigan’s public schools of higher education “for every student who graduated from the [Kalamazoo] district’s high schools. All of a sudden, students who had little hope of higher education saw college in their future. Called the Kalamazoo Promise, the program…would be the most inclusive, most generous scholarship program in America.”

The vision is brilliant. And it’s so American—integral to the ideal here that public education should be widely provided, not be an exclusive benefit of a privileged few.

I’ve been so fortunate for many decades to be a professor at one of the four-year public colleges on Long Island, SUNY/College at Old Westbury, and I’ve also taught as a part-time adjunct at two-year Suffolk County Community College. I’ve seen first-hand, again and again, students gaining from the life-changing opportunities that education can provide. And it’s not just they who benefit. We all gain. 

Last year, SUNY/Old Westbury celebrated its 50^th anniversary at an event at which 50 graduates were honored—women and men deeply involved in enhancing this island, this state, this nation. So many had the title doctor in front of their names and are prominent in fields from science to music to business to government to education to media to health and on and on. 

Students who are first-in-their-families to go to college are highly represented at both Old Westbury and Suffolk Community. It’s difficult going to graduation at SUNY/Old Westbury and holding back tears when one sees students—last year, for example, a woman, a refugee from war-torn Aleppo in Syria who studied journalism with me—going onto the platform at a commencement that truly commences their entry as valuable citizens of our society.

The Free Academy was founded, notes the CUNY website, “to provide children of immigrants and the poor access to free higher education based on academic merit alone.” Its first president, Dr. Horace Webster, described it as “the experiment” as to “whether the children of the people, the children of the whole people, can be educated; and whether an institution of the highest grade, can be successfully controlled by the popular will, not by the privileged few.”

“City College,” it continues, “thus became one of the nation’s great democratic experiments, and it remains today one of its great democratic achievements. Even in its early years, the Free Academy showed tolerance for diversity, especially in comparison to the private universities in New York City.” It tells of its many graduates who have won Nobel Prizes and, “Like City students today, they were the children of immigrants and the working class, and often the first of their families to go to College.”

In announcing his plan last week to cover the tuition of students accepted at a state or city college or university in the state—provided their families earn no more than $100,000 a year in 2017, $110,000 in 2018 and $125,000 in 2019—Governor Cuomo said: “This is a message that is going to provide hope and optimism for working-class families all across the state.” 

The governor continued: “This society should say, ‘We’re going to college because you need college to be successful.’”

Senator Sanders added: “Today what Governor Cuomo is proposing is a revolutionary idea for higher education.  And it’s an idea that is going to reverberate not only throughout the state of New York but throughout this country.”

When I graduated high school in 1959, my local public college, Queens College, was free. But now, like the rest of CUNY and SUNY, there’s tuition—that has risen and risen through the years. The budgets of CUNY and SUNY have been shifting with tuition increasingly rising and government support decreasing. For SUNY’s four-year schools, tuition has gone up every year for the past five years.  Many of my students work not one but two and some even three jobs to get through school. 

The Cuomo plan will need the support of the New York State Legislature to become reality—as it should.

Kenneth LaValle of Port Jefferson, long-time chairman of the Senate Higher Education Committee, comments that he and his colleagues will “thoroughly” consider it “to ensure this measure truly helps to offset the extraordinary debt brought on by undergraduate college costs for middle-class families in New York.” He received his master’s degree in education from SUNY at New Paltz. 

Mr. Cuomo made his announcement at LaGuardia Community College in Long Island City, founded in 1968.

St. Anthony's HS Student Christopher Koch Named Semifinalist In National Regeneron Talent Search

Principal of Saint Anthony’s Brother Gary Cregan,Christopher Koch, Science Research teacher Mr. Paul Paino, Science Department Chairman Mr.Jim MedinaFellow Kings Parkers Christopher Koch and Ms. Denise Creighton, Alumni Director at Saint Anthony’s HS.Christopher Koch ‘17, a Senior at Saint Anthony’s High School and Kings Park native, has been named a Semifinalist in the National Regeneron Science Talent Search (formerly Intel).  Christopher’s mentor, Mr. Paul Paino, reports that he is among the top 300 Science Research students in the nation and that he is the only Catholic High School student named in New York State .”We are very proud of Christopher’s accomplishments,” said St. Anthony’s Alumni Director Denise Creighton. The pool of 200 Semi-Finalists will be narrowed down to 40 National Finalists by January 24th. 

Letter To Editor - Let's Work Together

LET’S WORK TOGETHER.

With the New York State Senate leadership, 32 Democrats to 31 Republicans, finally 

decided, it my hope that the United States Congress (Senate and House of 

Representatives,) with its Republican majority, follows the initiatives of the NY Senate’s 

Democratic majority and works together for the good of its constituency and not just its 

Party’s self-interest.  Cooperation, Compromise and Compassion should be their mantra.  

Rather than just complaining about the other side, political party leaders should insist that 

they work together for the all the people rather than blaming each other.  Elected officials, 

including members in County Legislatures and Town Halls, must tone down the rhetoric 

and instead talk about what is their vision, mission and future plans.  Rather than being so 

critical, they should STAND UP and LEAD.

Richard S. Macellaro

Book Review - "Karsh: Beyond the Camera"

BOOK REVIEW

“Karsh: Beyond the Camera” - By David Travis 

167 pages – David R. Godine

Reviewed by: Jeb Ladouceur

Like the magnificent San Francisco-born landscape photographer, Ansel Adams, Armenian-Canadian portraitist, Yousuf Karsh, worked exclusively in black and white images. Also, as was the case with Adams, his immigrant Middle Eastern contemporary, Karsh, became far and away the world’s dominant artist in his chosen field. 

Both photographers were born shortly after the turn of the 20^th Century and lived long, productive lives. Also, it is indicative of the men’s compositional genius that they were widely recognized for unmatched creativity during their lifetimes. Adams was awarded honorary degrees from both Harvard and Yale, while Karsh’s work has appeared on the postage stamps and currency of nations throughout the British Empire.

In this biographical Yousuf Karsh memoir (superbly printed in Lausanne, Switzerland), author David Travis employs a technique that is cleverly fashioned to work on three levels … visually … historically … and poignantly. The combination makes for a reading event that nearly defies description as a satisfying literary experience.

With each turned page of ‘Karsh: Beyond the Camera,’ we are treated to a splendid portrait of a legendary personality (in only a few rare cases did Karsh include more than one person in a photograph). On the page opposite each image, is a direct quote from Karsh himself involving the making of the facing portrait. Following that revealing verbatim recollection, author Travis, a renowned curator of modern photography, explains heretofore little known facts surrounding the history of Yousuf Karsh and his subjects.

Most recognizable of all the iconic images included in this fascinating collection is undoubtedly that of a glaring Winston Churchill. The wartime Prime Minister of Great Britain had (reluctantly) agreed to sit briefly for a single photograph during a 1941 trip to Canada’s capital, Ottawa where Karsh’s atelier was located. Of course, in Sir Winston’s mouth was the ever-present Churchill cigar. Feeling that the fat cigar hid too much of the Prime Minister’s photogenic face, Yousuf slyly approached the great man, plucked the stogie from between Churchill’s lips, and triggered the camera’s shutter release the instant he was able to step out of the picture’s frame.

“He looked so belligerent, he could have devoured me,” Karsh says in his accompanying note on the incident. But the insightful photographer had clearly detected what he wanted to see … and record … in that famous face. And he knew precisely how to produce it. 

When the portrait adorned the cover of Life Magazine shortly thereafter, Yousuf Karsh became nearly as celebrated as the luminaries who flocked to his studio. They included virtually every famous face of the mid-20^th Century: Einstein … Picasso … Elizabeth II … Hemingway … Jackie Kennedy. Everyone wanted to be immortalized by the Armenian genius by way of Ottawa, Canada … including my mother, Peggy.

When she was seventeen, Mom was working as a salesgirl at Simpson’s department store in her native Ottawa. A young man a few years Mother’s senior had recently opened a photography studio in town and he was shopping for a shirt. Yousuf Karsh approached my mother, introduced himself, and asked if she would consider posing for him the following weekend. Mom agreed … and the resulting portrait hangs in our Smithtown home on Stony Hill Path almost a century later.

Karsh’s cameras and other photographic equipment have been donated to the ‘Canada Science & Technology Museum’ … where they are on permanent display. ‘Library & Archives of Canada’ holds his complete collection of documents, portraits, prints, and negatives … including my mother Peggy’s.

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Award-winning writer, Jeb Ladouceur is the author of a dozen novels, and his theater and book reviews appear in several major L.I. publications. His newest book, THE GHOSTWRITERS, explores the bizarre relationship between the late Harper Lee and Truman Capote. Ladouceur’s recently completed thriller, THE SOUTHWICK INCIDENT, is due next month. It involves a radicalized Yale student and his CIA pursuers. Mr. Ladouceur’s revealing website is www.JebsBooks.com