Kings Park Heritage Museum Gets Historic Marker

When visitors come to the Leo P. Ostebo Kings Park Heritage Museum they will experience a walk through time and relive the rich history of historic Kings Park including the Revolutionary War, the Spanish American War, Howard Orphanage, Grumman Space Program and the Kings Park Asylum and Hospital and more! The museum wing includes 10 rooms with exhibit showcases, as well as, a library of photos and articles.

Museum Adult Education Evening Classes sponsored by the KPCSD are available through www.kpcsd.org. There are more than 10 books and pamphlets written about the history of Kings Park by resident historian authors available for sale.

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In June 2018, The American Association for State and Local History (AASLH) proudly announced that Leo P. Ostebo is the recipient of an Award of Merit for Curation and Directorship of this site. 

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The Leo P. Ostebo Kings Park Heritage Museum is located in the Ralph J. Osgood Intermediate School Building, (circa 1928), on the corner of 99 Old Dock Road and 101 Church Street in the North Shore Long Island town of Kings Park. All visitors are scheduled for private tours. For more information visit www.KPHeritageMuseum.net or call 631-269-3305.

Editorial - Judicial Process Is Bad But A Republican On Democrat Line Is No Answer

I had hoped to give a thumbs up to the women who have decided to take on the very political judicial nominee process. Dare I say it’s about time. There is no time like the present to change the back-room deal making cross-endorsement system that allows political chairpersons to horse trade endorsements that offer little or no benefit to the public.

Unless… what you get is worse than what you are giving up. 

Democrats going to the polls to vote in the Democratic primary Thursday, September 13 will have a choice of voting for a Democrat or a Republican for Suffolk County Surrogate Court Judge to represent Democrats on their line in the November 6th election.

Newsday’s Editorial Board calls the Surrogate Court Judge position “ the mother lode of patronage.” The surrogate judge assigns attorneys legal work including handling wills and guardianships. Billing for these services can be lucrative.

Under the guise of cleaning up the judicial nominating process Republican Tara Scully solicited signatures and will challenge Democrat Theresa Whelan for the Democratic line on the ballot.  

Two reasons for not supporting this move are: It will restrict voter choice and secondly changing the selection process does not come from judges, it comes from the New York State Legislature. So a vote for Ms. Scully on the Democratic line will do nothing to rectify the process.

If Scully wins she will hold both Republican and Democat lines essentially wiping out voter choice. There is an old saying that goes if someone says it’s not about the money know that it’s about the money. In Scully’s case the mantra that it is not about the judgeship it’s about corrupt process, doesn’t withstand the smell test. The usurpation of the Democratic line by a Republican offers November 6th voters no choice and no remediation of the faulty process and allows Ms. Scully an uncontested path to the judgeship.

Democrats, like Republicans and all Suffolk County voters will have the opportunity to vote for Ms. Scully on November 6th. A vote for a Republican on the Democrat’s line is not a vote to change a bad process, rather it is a vote for a Republican on the Democratic line limiting voter options and contributing to voter disgust.

Pat Biancaniello

Commack Honors The Memory Of 9/11 With Night Of Reflection

By Stacey Altherr

Members of the Commack Community gather for 9/11 Memorial Ceremony 2015The night of the September 11^th attacks, Debbie Virga and her neighbors stood on the street with candles like many other Americans. Tuesday evening, Virga and other Commack residents will hold another candlelight vigil, just like they have done for the past 17 years.

Virga, the organizer of the Commack School District 9/11 Night of Reflection event, said each year the 9/11 event has grown and diversified. Now, there is a formal 9/11 memorial at Commack High School, built in 2012, complete with an authentic piece of steel beam from the World Trade Center site. 

Each year, along with the ceremony and vigil, a specific aspect is selected to highlight. One year, it was every group of the military. Another, a recognition of the cadaver dogs who worked “the pile,” a short-hand name used at the time for the World Trade Center site.

LT. Christopher Raguso (Military Times)“This year, we are dedicating it to Lt. Christopher Raguso,” said Virga. Raguso, a Master Sargant in the New York Air National Guard, was also a member of the Commack FD and a lieutenant in the FDNY. On March 15, he was killed while on a tour in Iraq when the helicopter he was in crashed. Raguso enlisted in the military after the 9/11 attacks, Virga said.

The memorial, set at the high school athletic grounds, has the names of those associated with Commack  – Debbie Virga and others at 2015 9/11 eventwhether residents or former high school graduates – who were killed during the attacks., and the emblems of the four New York City public service units most affected by the attack- New York Police Department, The Fire Department of New York, Emergency Medical Services and Port Authority- are also honored at the memorial. Two reflecting pools will be set up for the event,  gatherers will have the opportunity to throw in flowers into the reflecting pool in honor of those who died

“SCPD will do a fly over,” said Virga. “I have 100 lanterns we put up around [the site].”

Since the remembrance event also honors those who have died due to 9/11 contamination on the World Trade Center site, Dr. Michael Guttenberg, 50, of Jericho and a Commack High School graduate, will be remembered. Guttenberg was an EMT who worked on the Pile for the months after the terrorist attack. He later become a physician and served as medical director of Northwell Health’s clinical preparedness and Center for Emergency Medical Services (CEMS). He died last year from pancreatic cancer, linked to his work at the World Trade Center site. His niece, Jaime Guttenberg, was one of the students killed in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting last February 14^th.

“This family has really suffered,” Virga said. “This will recognize him and his contribution.”

Virga noted that memorial stones with names of the victims are set around the memorial.

“Sadly, the list is growing.”

Anyone can attend the ceremony, which takes place Tuesday, Sept. 11, at the Commack High School, One Scholar Lane, off Town Line Road. Ceremony begins at 7 p.m. this year in deference to those celebrating Rosh Hashanah.

Commack Residents or former Commack High School graduates 

honored at the memorial

Died on 9/11

Ezra Aviles-Port Authority

Benilda Domingo-World Trade Center

Dennis Scauso- FDNY

James Munhall -World Trade Center

Joseph A. Kelly-World Trade Center

John T. Schroeder- World Trade Center

Died Post 9/11

Traci Tack-Czajkowski- NYPD

Marci Simms- NYPD

Dr. Michael Guttenberg

Master Sgt. Christopher J. Raguso, who died in Iraq and served because of 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The Mansion At Ebo Hill

By Stacey Altherr

Richard Albano drove by the old white house on Edgewood Road, and knew he had to buy it.

Historic Mansion at Ebo Hill on Edgewood Ave (Photo Ebo Hill Facebook Page)“I passed by it and fell in love with it,” said Albano, 57, now living in Deer Park. “I said to myself, ‘Someone needs to fix that up.”

Built in 1843, and in a severe state of disrepair but with many of the original details, the Deer Park resident bought the house known as the Mansion at Ebo Hill. Albano, who owned an auto repair shop for 30 years in West Babylon and now owns pizza parlors in Commack and Deer Park, had also been buying and fixing up homes since 1984. This one, he wanted as his own home.

Albano was so enthralled by the thought of the project, he began work even before the closing, with the blessing of the previous owner, renovating to restore the grandeur of the old home by painstakingly going over every historic detail, working on it 7 days a week.

The Mansion at Ebo Hill fire 2018 “I worked on it five weeks before the purchase went through,” he said. “Two weeks later, it burnt down.”

The home was reduced to rubble on March 26, leaving behind a smoldering mess and chimney remnants. A cross beam in the fireplace, the only one fireplace of the four in the home deemed safe to use by an outside company, had caught fire. The fire must have been smoldering for hours before it flamed, he said. 

“I was at my girlfriend’s house about five houses down and a neighbor called,” he said. “By the time I got there, it was fully engulfed.”

“Friends tried to console me, saying that everything happens for a reason,” but it wasn’t until his daughter told him that it could have happened while they were all asleep in the house, that the words rang true. “I was sure of it. The problem with the chimney wouldn’t have been found.”

Albano was devastated. He had gone so far in the process with structural work, and the roof work was to begin the day after the fire. Already “thousands of dollars” into the house, both by sale price and renovation, the home could either be abandoned or rebuilt. For Albano, there was no question. His love of the house and its history meant he would rebuild.

Construction at The Mansion at Ebo Hill on Edgewood Ave. September 7, 2018With the community on his side (more than 6,800 follow his Facebook page), the house restorer has already laid the foundation and is working on the framing. He is using those same historic pictures to make the home as authentic as possible.

“My kids didn’t want me to do it,” Albano said. “They said it was too much of an undertaking and it will cost 10 times what it was going to cost, but I decided I would keep going. I feel a responsibility to the community and the home. Hundreds of souls have lived in that home.”

For anyone who would like to watch the process of the house restoration and rebuilding, follow The Mansion at Ebo Hill on Facebook where Albano puts up pictures and information on the progress of the project regularly.

Op-Ed Republican Running A Democratic Primary Is Hardly A Teaching Moment

By Elaine Turley

Surrogate Court candidate and Republican Tara Scully is asking Democrats to vote for her in the Democratic primary and is telling Democrats that she hopes to run on the Democratic and Republican Party lines to teach the Democratic Party not to make deals for cross endorsements.  Ms. Scully apparently objected to the candidate chosen by the Democratic and Conservative Parties to run for Suffolk County Surrogate because she agreed with Newsday that judicial candidates being endorsed by more than one political party deprives voters of a choice of candidates.  

If Tara Scully wins the Democratic Party primary she will run on the Democratic and Republican Party lines – thus depriving voters of the choice for Surrogate Court Judge she has said she is running to preserve.

Tara Scully herself accepted the cross endorsements of the Independence Party and the Reform Party when she ran for District Court Judge in 2015 and if she had received the Conservative Party endorsement she would not have lost her bid by a mere 173 votes.  Voters could vote for Ms. Scully on any of three party lines in 2015 and for her opponent on any of two party lines.  It seems that voters do have a choice for judge even with cross endorsements – but they did not choose Tara Scully.

Ms. Scully told Newsday that her plan and motivation for running is to change the New York law that provides for elected party delegates to select Supreme Court judges to a law that provides for electing judges in primary elections.  But Ms. Scully has posted on her website an article from the newspaper that endorsed her acknowledging that she has no power to make this change as judge since only the New York legislature can change this process.  Tara Scully speaking of her plan to “change the way we select judges in this state” and “to change the political climate” in the county gives voters the false impression that her being elected Surrogate Court Judge will allow her to implement her plan when she must in fact work in the legislature to do so.  But Ms. Scully is not campaigning to be elected to the legislature where she can make that change and she never has.

Tara Scully, an attorney, does not mention on her website that the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008 upheld New York’s method for choosing Supreme Court judges in a decision that opines that those complaining of this method “complain not of the state law, but of the voters’ (and their elected delegates’) preference for the choices of their party leadership.”  New York State Bd. Of Elections v. Lopez Torres, 552 U.S. 196(2008).  The Court notes that the “New York Legislature remain opposed to the primary (as a means of selecting judicial candidates), for the same reason their predecessors abolished it 86 years ago; because it leaves judicial selection to voters uninformed about judicial qualifications, and places a high premium upon the ability to raise money.”  The potential for large sums of money that must be raised to wage primary campaigns corrupting the judicial system disturbs not only the U.S. Supreme Court, but also at least one judicial selection task force in New York that recommends against this system of selecting judicial candidates. The Judicial Task Force of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York in December 2006 noted, “The need to raise large sums of money in order to compete independently and effectively for a nomination for Supreme Court Justice is profoundly disconcerting. …The primary targets of those fundraising efforts are the attorneys and law firms that appear or could appear before them.  The specter of sitting judges actively and aggressively soliciting large quantities of money for those who will or may appear before them is acid that corrodes public confidence in the independence and integrity of the State judiciary.”  Of course another concern for those attorneys who might appear before a judge waging an aggressive primary campaign is that opposing such candidate could be held against them in the future.

Ms. Scully’s website consists of multiple pages of Newsday editorials railing against the Democratic Party, political party leaders, and cross endorsement of judicial candidates which have been upheld and supported by the U.S. Supreme Court and the NY legislature.  The postings make political attacks against judicial candidates, not because the candidates are unqualified, but because of the men to whom they are married and the party leaders who selected them as candidates.  One would believe from Ms. Scully’s website that she is actually running against Democratic Party chairman Rich Schaffer and the spouses of qualified women who have served honorably in the judiciary and who are respected by the legal community of Suffolk County. 

Ms. Scully’s website includes in bold print, “Tara A. Scully’s candidacy would launch a wrecking ball at the plans of Democratic Party county leader Rich Schaffer….” and continues, “I am proud to step forward to offer voters an alternative to the political deal-making that has made it almost impossible for independent qualified candidates to become judges in Suffolk County.”

Tara Scully’s campaign for Surrogate Court Judge is a prime example of why courts and legal analysts have opined that judicial nominations should be made by party conventions or appointments rather than primary elections.  A judicial campaign is not the proper forum for aggressive attacks or for legislative advocacy.  Ms. Scully should know better.  

Ms. Turley is an attorney who lives in Smithtown. She is the former chairperson of the Smithtown Democratic Committee.