After a series of early morning break-ins this week, police have stepped up patrols in an affluent area of Long Island searching for a suspect who has terrorized several female victims.

At a press conference Thursday at Nassau County Police headquarters in Mineola, Nassau County Police Chief of Detectives Steven Skrynecki said the recent series of events is as concerning to police as it must be to residents.

“Occupied burglaries is something we don’t take lightly at all. We recognize that the communities are living in quite a state of anxiety right now, and we are doing everything we can as fast as we can to investigate this, bring it to a successful investigative conclusion and also to take measures to try and prevent another incident from occurring,” said Skynecki.

A robust investigative team worked through the night investigating the four similar cases while scanning thousands of field interviews and pouring over prior cases that date back up to two years.

“We have already identified at least one case that has some similarities,” said the chief, referring to an unsolved occupied burglary where there was a confrontation with a female in a house in the area.

Coordinating with Kings Point police, Nassau County units have enhanced patrols of the area and stepped up surveillance. Aviation components, K-9 units and additional officers are working through the night in continuing investigation that has yet an arrest, according to Skynecki.

Police are searching for a 200-pound Hispanic male, 25-30 years old, with black hair, a dark complexion and facial hair, was seen wearing a black wool cap, black jacket, blue jeans and black shoes with silver buckle type loops on the sides.

Earlier in the week, a 15-year-old female repelled a home invasion in Great Neck after being awoken by an intruder as she slept in her bed.

Police say the teen fought off the attack on West Shore Road, near the border of the affluent community of Kings Point, after waking up to find an unidentified male sitting on top of her while holding a wet cloth across her face at 4:40 a.m.

Det. Lt. Kevin Smith of the Nassau County Police Department said after fighting off the attack from a first-floor bedroom of the home, the teen searched for an object to defend herself with then ran upstairs and awoke her mother as

Intruder escaped out the back door.

A navy baseball-style hat and a rag was recovered by police from the home as evidence.

Smith said the first victim refused medical treatment for minor injuries at the scene.

Anyone with information regarding the crime is encouraged to call crime stoppers at 1-800-244-TIPS. All calls will remain anonymous, according to police.

Details of Wednesday’s early morning break-ins, according to police:

• At 2:50 a.m. Wednesday in Kings Point on Lighthouse Road, an unknown male subject entered the residence through a bathroom window where two girls, ages 1 and 5, where sleeping. The 5-year-old was awakened and startled to see a man standing over her bed. The subject then left the room and fled the house.

• At 3:15 a.m. Wednesday on Lighthouse Road in Kings Point: a 63-year-old female victim was awakened to the sound of banging and broken glass. She discovered an unknown male subject looking at her the broken glass door. The suspect fled the scene in an unknown direction.

• At 4:43 a.m. Wednesday in Great Neck on Georgian Lane, a 61-year-old female victim was in bed on the second floor of her home when she was awakened to a male subject entering her room. The subject put a kitchen knife to her throat while holding her down. The victim wrestled the knife away from the subject and chased him down to the first floor and out through the back door of the house. The victim suffered a small cut of her hand for which she did not need medical attention.

A 15-year-old female repelled a home invasion in Great Neck early Sunday after being awoken by an intruder as she slept in her bed.

Police say the teen fought off the attack on West Shore Road, near the border of the affluent community of Kings Point, after waking up to find an unidentified male sitting on top of her while holding a wet cloth across her face at 4:40 a.m.

Det. Lt. Kevin Smith of the Nassau County Police Department said after fighting off the attack from a first-floor bedroom of the home, the teen searched for an object to defend herself with then ran upstairs and awoke her mother.

“The intruder then ran through the house and out the back door,” said Smith.

But that wasn’t all.

According to Smith, minutes later, the mother and daughter witnessed the unkown intruder reaching through a front window of the house, terrifying the family further before fleeing the scene.

“It may have been an indication that he was high or intoxicated,” said Smith.

No arrests have been made in connection with the case.

After recovering a navy baseball-style hat and a rag from the home as evidence, police say they have canvassed the area and continue to search for the intruder, described as a white male, 5’8″ tall, with short, curly hair.

Smith said the victim refused medical treatment for minor injuries at the scene and that language barriers exist in dealing with the family members who speak Russian.

Anyone with information regarding the crime is encouraged to call crime stoppers at 1-800-244-TIPS. All calls will remain anonymous, according to police.

Two sides of the season provided the ambience for Christmas tree lightings in Williston Park and Mineola over the weekend.

On Sunday night, residents braved stiff winds and freezing temperatures to turn out for the Christmas tree lighting in front of Village Hall in Williston Park.

Daisy Troop 1591 from the St. Aidan School sang holiday songs to the accompaniment of the South Shore Brass. They sang tunes that evoked the devotional nature of the season, such as “The First Noel,” as well as “Frosty the Snowman” and an enthusiastic version of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.”

Village of Williston Park Mayor Paul Ehrbar presided over the festivities, with Deputy Mayor Teresa Thomann and Trustee Barbara Alagna in attendance. Ehrbar encouraged the St. Aidan Daisies, putting some of the singers on the microphone he was using to give the singers impromptu solos.

The tree came to life with its array of colored lights as Santa Claus came into range, drawing an enthusiastic response from children in the crowd and the girls who provided the musical prelude to the big event.

In Mineola on Friday, it was a windless night just chilly enough to appreciate the hot chocolate outdoor in the parking lot next to the Mineola Fire Department headquarters.

The Chaminade High School band played fine renditions of “Greensleeves” and other seasonal favorites as a crowd of more than 100 people gathered to witness the lighting of the Christmas tree, which stood next to a Menorah with candles lit to denote the passing days of Hanukkah.

Village of Mineola Mayor Jack Martins and all members of the Mineola board of trustees were in attendance, with the mayor presiding to extend greetings of the season to those present and thank the Chaminade band for its efforts under less than optimal conditions.

The crowd responded enthusiastically to the lighting of the tree, and then many took the short walk across the street to Village Hall for an indoor reception where Santa Claus held court, giving youngsters a chance to tell him what they wanted to find under their trees on Christmas morning.

When Willy Parkers director of marketing suggested a food-raising campaign as a first gesture from the new owners signaling their desire to get involved in community activism, it struck a chord with Louis and Rino DiMaria – two brothers who grew up in Williston Park and own the restaurant.

For Rino DiMaria it conjured memories of stories her mother had told him about how her family struggled during her childhood in Sicily.

“My mother grew up dirt poor,” he said.

Both brothers wanted to set a tone for their new role in the business community with their Hillside Avenue location, which had shown mixed results for previous restaurant owners.

“You have to give back to the community,” said Louis DiMaria.

For Tim Meyer, who doubles as Willy Parker’s line chef, it was a chance to exercise skills he had developed during a college internship with the New York Public Interest Research Group.

Louis DiMaria thought of involving five other local restaurants in the effort, and that proved its worth, with the initiative ultimately yielding between 50 and 60 pounds of food for Island Harvest.

The other restaurants participating in the drive were TR’s Great American Fine Food and Spirits, Williston Townhouse Diner, Frantoni’s Pizzeria Ristorante and Angelina’s Pizzeria and Restaruant.

“Six drop-offs can raise more than one,” Meyer said.

It’s just one effort the DiMarias have in mind. They’re planning to approach the village board about making the Thanksgiving food collection an annual community event.

They’ll also be joining the Chambers of Commerce of the Willistons next month.

Right now, the DiMarias are focused on making Willy Parkers the kind of casual American cuisine pub they think they think suits the community.

“We’re doing this place right. This is the way it needs to be done,” Rino said

It’s a special kind of homecoming for him, who once worked as a busboy in the same location when it was Bomonts Cafe years ago. He worked to raise money for wrestling camp.

Both brothers made their mark as members of the Herricks High School wrestling squad. Louis was a state high school champion in his weight class in 1992 and went on to be a two-time All-American at Penn State University. Younger brother Rino was a Nassau County champion in 1988, when he was also All-State. He attended Hofstra University on scholarship, but suffered a career-ending injury in his sophomore year.

The former wrestlers have shared a common career interest in the restaurant business, most recently developing a chain of restaurants called Joanne’s Gourmet Pizza. They still own their original Joanne’s location on Northern Boulevard in Manhasset. But they sold four of the other restaurants in the chain to revive Willy Parkers.

“We saw the place was available and it was a good concept,” the elder DiMaria said

Despite the history of the location, which has had a series of bar-eateries over the past several years, the brothers thought there was some cache in the name, with its obvious play on the name of the village itself.

“It’s a cool name. It’s a popular name in town,” he said.

The current restaurant has the same name as its immediate predecessor. With eight flat-screen TV screens, it evokes the atmosphere of a sports bar, boasting 24 beers and ales on tap.

Live rock bands will perform on Friday and Saturday nights, with live jazz bands on Tuesday nights and karaoke on Wednesdays. On Tuesday nights, there will be a “Bringing Back Bomont’s” – a bar that preceded Willy Parkers in the location with 2-for-1 drink specials. Lades drink for half-price at Thursday night Ladies Night.

It’s the first time the DiMaria brothers have owned a restaurant with non-Italian cuisine. But they bring plenty of business experience to their most recent effort and they appreciate the response of community residents thus far.

They said they’re already booked up for the holidays, and the future looks promising.

“The neighborhood is behind it. Everyone’s been supportive,” Louis DiMaria said.

Willis Hobbies owners Steve and Ken Ford vividly recall the first time they set up a large scale train set, with their father, Al, years ago in the hobby shop’s original location on Mineola Boulevard.

“It was a family project,” Ken said, smiling.

That memory naturally recurs when the Ford brothers survey their latest and largest installation, another family project in the basement of the popular Willis Avenue store. The sprawling train layout with four train sets that can be operated by four separate remote controls tells a story about the changing dynamics of the business. The trains dominate the landscape of a party room – also equipped with an eight-lane slot car track and model plane flight simulators – aimed to bring in additional revenue and promote the trains and cars by giving children a hands-on experience.

That was something that the Fords had plenty of growing up with a father in the business of hobbies – a tradition the brothers have continued under their direction at the store on 300 Willis Avenue in Mineola.

“We grew up in the business and had all these hobbies when we were kids,” said Steve.

Steve, 55, started working at his father’s store on Saturdays at age 14, followed closely by his younger sibling.

“It’s a fun business. It keeps evolving,” Steve said.

For kids unfamiliar with the latest technology, the party room is an eye opener. Model trains have crossed the digital divide carrying new bells and whistles – literally – as part of a digital soundtracks embedded in the trains on the physical tracks to add a fresh dimension of realism. Remote handsets can operate multiple trains, with industry giant Lionel leading the way.

The slot cars, larger and more realistic than the Aurora home slot-cars that dominated basements a few decades ago, come in two scales from two primary producers, Carrera and AFX.

As a classic hobby shop, Willis Hobbies carries the myriad accessory buildings and other features that model train enthusiasts still use to create their own paster of paris landscapes. Some of those elements are now be remotely animated by engineers who can also load or unload cargo cars on their trains.

“There’s a whole new dimension to trains now,” Ford said. “This is what gets the kids – the electronics.”

The digitization of model trains revived the pastime over the past decade – with some help from the movies. The hit animation “Polar Express” had a “huge” impact on model trains, according to Steve Ford, who noted that Lionel’s “Polar Express” train set has been its biggest seller over the past five years – partly due to the seasonality of the business.

“Trains are very big at this time of year,” Ford said, but he added that the increased popularity of hobbies that foster family interaction – particularly hobbies fathers and sons can share – has also fueled the resurgent popularity of both model trains and slot cars.

Ford points out that trains enjoy a longevity as one of the oldest American hobbies. And an imperceptible unbroken line of hobby traditions carry on through generations of customers who’ve continued to shop at Willis Hobbies.

“We have customers who are second and third generation,” Ford said. “You make friends. You’ve known people for so long, you build up relationships with them.”

But some hobbies, like building models of various vehicles from kits, have waned. So the Fords party room activities also include model-building sessions for cub scouts, to introduce them to that pastime. Model building, sparked by the imagination of the builder, has been supplanted by video games “so you have to get people to experience it,” Ken Ford said.

The basement space is large enough to enable demonstrations of new micro-helicopter models designed for indoor use. The video flight simulators mounted on one wall also give youngsters a sense of what it’s like to fly a model airplane by remote control.

Steve Ford said his father passed on the importance of promotion to his sons, both in displaying products and letting people have a tactile experience with them.

“When you put something into people’s hands, that’s what gets them excited,” Ford said.

As a past president of the Mineola Chamber of Commerce, Ford has sought to pass some of those lessons on to his business colleagues in the community.

“I always try to tell businesses you have to keep your store fresh, change displays and demonstrations,” he said.

Ford, who said he also follows his father’s advice about “staying active” in the community, is also a member of the Mineola Lions Club.

Of course, trends dictate what gets prime display space in any store. Display cases with Armour die cast models of realistically painted World War II fighters and bombers no longer being produced suggest another aspect of the hobby spectrum: adult collectibles.

Military veterans and World War II buffs come in seeking specific Armour models to complete a collection, according to Ford.

“We used to sell a lot of them,” Ford said. “Now they’ve become a collectible.”

Devotion to their respective hobbies motivates customers, but Willis Hobbies is also running seasonal sales specials of 20 percent off on all model kits and 30 percent off selected items in the store to give customers more incentive over the next two weekends.

Extending their own family tradition, Ken Ford’s wife, Robin, and daughter, Brittany, work in the store on weekends, along with Steve Ford’s daughters, Lisa and Stephanie.

The model trains and cars are certain to roll on with new features, and the Fords are keeping current with the trends to keep customers coming back.

Mineola school board member members sharply criticized fellow board member John McGrath at last Thursday night’s meeting for discussing an idea to merge the Mineola and Herricks school districts with newspapers before presenting it to them and then declined to support his motion to approach the Herricks school board with the idea.

Members of both school districts dismissed McGrath proposal to merge the Herricks and Mineola districts in a Williston Times news story.

The Herricks School Board also rejected the indirect overture in a subsequent public statement.

“Mineola High School students would no longer be in an industrial area,” McGrath said, in presenting a plan to shutter the high school and middle school and eliminate administrators that he said would save the district $50 million to $70 million over the next decade. McGrath also said the state would give the districts $50,000 to draft a study of the prospective merger.

“Doing a feasibility study won’t cost us anything,” he said.

Board member Irene Parrino set offer a heated discussion when she seconded McGrath’s amotion to approach the Herricks school board.

Asked why he chose to address his idea with newspaper reporters before raising it at a public school board meeting, McGrath said, “My purpose in discussing it with the newspapers was to get the the community going in the conversation.”

And McGrath volunteered to act as messenger to Mineola’s neighboring school board.

“If the board wants someone to go to Herricks, I’d be happy to do that,” he said.

School board vice president Christine Napolitano and school board president Terence Hale unleashed a verbal barrage at McGrath – and his timing.

In a statement recounting the deliberative process the board and the community had pursued to plan elementary school consolidation, Napolitano said McGrath “suggested that we close both our high school and middle school while keeping all the elementary buildings open and cramming our children in with children from another district all while saving tons of money, with no supporting evidence of [your] numbers.”

Napolitano said McGrath “arrogantly assumed” that Herricks residents would be eager about a merger with Mineola, and questioned his motives.

“The only thing I can conclude is that it is your goal to disrupt the process anyway you can with little regard for the resident, their children and the reputation of this district,” Napolitano said.

“After we’ve had such an intense debate, you owed it to the community to discuss it first [here],” Napolitano said. “I would think the community would expect more of us than that. You’re entitled to your opinion.”

“I certainly am,” snapped McGrath.

A visibly exasperated Mineola school president Terence Hale said, “Maybe we’ll be forced to merge. Who knows? I don’t know. Maybe you’re a seer now and you can see the future. I don’t get it, John, I really don’t. We have to close schools. Get over it buddy. This $5 million to $7 million [savings] a year, you don’t know that for a fact,” he added, referring to McGrath’s savings estimate. “It’s just disturbing that you’re doing this to disrupt this effort.”

In a recent public statement, Herricks school board president Christine Turner said, “We do not believe that a merger is in the best interests of the community at this point.”

Turner also said the board had been “surprised” to see the issue addressed in local newspapers since it had not been broached through official channels.

McGrath said he had not brought his proposal up because the board never discussed a $6.1 million bond issue it was considering presenting to district voters as an alternative to the $6.7 million bond proposal that voters overwhelmingly rejected.

At its last meeting, the Mineola board voted to present a $4.4 bond proposal to build additional space to accommodate grades 3 through 5 at Jackson Avenue on a February ballot, and fund a $1.7 million addition to the Hampton Street School with its capital reserve.

The board later voted 2-2 on the motion to approach Herricks about a merger, with Parrino voting with McGrath in support of it.

But board member William Hornberger, who arrived just after the vote, said he would have put the kibosh on it.

“You mean ‘Herneola’?” he said when asked about it. “I would have said ‘No thank you’,” Hornberger said.

After the vote, Mineola Superintendent of Schools Michael Nagler reviewed the $4.4 bond plan approved by the Mineola board as part of a reorganization plan.

Nagler presented an artist’s conception of the new wing planned for the Hampton School to make it the Pre-K through grade 2 facility for the southern part of the school district – with a price tag higher than the $1.7 million contemplated. District architects H2M provided a 19-classroom addition with a library equipped with a media center dominated by walls with large modernistic rectangular glass planes in light and dark blue and varied rectangular shapes. An art room, music room and reading labs would also be part of the new space on Hampton, according to Nagler, who estimated the dimensions at 3,300 square feet for $2.1 million. Adjoining athletic fields, including a lacrosse field, would remain undisturbed.

“It’s kind of funky. It kind of fits in but it shows it’s a modern extension,” Nagler said, noting that uncertainty about the schools’ futures had preempted any improvements at Hampton or Cross Street, the first elementary school slated to be shuttered next year.

Projected costs include a contingency fund of $175,000 for overruns, but Nagler noted that the $2.1 million price “doesn’t cover anything.”

If the $4.4 million Jackson Avenue bond passes, that means the school district likely would spend more then $6.5 million on Jackson and Hampton. Most of the board members seemed favorably impressed by the plan, but Hale suggested paring down the space to 2,500 square feet.

“It looks great. But the community just turned down a $6.7 million bond. You think they’re going to approve a $6.8 million bond?” said McGrath. “Hey, if you guys want to do it, go right ahead.”

Afterwards, Nagler repeated that the two projects would be funded from entirely different sources, with capital reserve funds for Hampton Street not affecting the tax levy.

“I like the proposal of making a separate media center,” Napolitano said. “It does drive the cost up. But if we’re going to do something, we should do it right.”

The Hampton upgrade would redress an imbalance between that facility and the northern Pre-K through grade 2 school at Meadow Drive, which already has a media center, as well as arts and music rooms.

Wheatley School senior Sonya Prasad finished fourth with her three-person team in the national Siemens Math, Science and Technology competition last weekend.

Finishing fourth in the Siemens competition out of the final six teams isn’t really like losing in the usual sense. Prasad and her project partners, Nikhil Mehandru of Roslyn High School and Santosh Narayan from Munster High School in Munster, Ind., each won $30,000 scholarships for their efforts.

Prasad is the only the second Wheatley student to make the national Siemens finals in the past 20 years.

Prasad said she wouldn’t deny that she and her team were hoping for the top spot, and she said they all felt confident after their presentation and Q&A session. Beyond the initial letdown at being named fourth, Prasad said they were proud of their work.

“We thought it was an accomplishment being at the national level. I did feel like I won,” Prasad said.

Prasad and her team have applied for a patent on their research, which used a biomarker to determine the toxicity of very tiny particles in pancreatic cancer cells. The patent application was made through the research laboratory at Stony Brook University, where they conducted their reasearch.

They conceived their approach as a relatively inexpensive method for pancreatic cancer detection, but Prasad said the application of their concept could be broader than that.

“We designed it for pancreatic cancer, but we can design it for a different type of cancer,” Prasad said.

They had chosen to specify the treatment for pancreatic cancer since that form of cancer has such a high mortality rate.

The finals of the Siemens competition came down to the top six teams of 14 students who advanced from their respective regions to make presentations on their respective research projects at George Washington University on Sunday. They also faced a panel of 12 scientists who questioned them privately about their research.

Based on the presentations that he saw on Sunday, Paul Paino, Wheatley science research director, said he couldn’t figure out which team was likely to win after the presentations.

The winning team, two students from Portland, OR wrote a computer program that interacts with human voice to analyze the sound patterns to detect emotion.

He detected Sonya’s disappointment in not taking top honors and told her to remember there only 14 other students in a similar position in the national Siemens competition on Sunday.

“Nobody loses when they go to Washington,” Paino said.

Prasad has yet to determine where she’ll go next, depending on where she is accepted to college. She does intend to pursue a career in medicine or another scientific field. Her mother, Nalini, is an anesthesiologist and her father, Kris, is an engineer.

The Village of Great Neck unanimously agreed to move forward this week with the Town of North Hempstead to study the possibility of ambulance services charging residents for calls, saying they believed it could reduce the village’s tax levy.

Currently, village taxpayers subsidize ambulance services other than those provided by the county. Village officials hope to change that scenario in an effort to trim the budget.

“Unfortunately, the way things are going, the cost of ambulance service is going up dramatically and it is adding to the tax burden,” said Village of Great Neck Deputy Mayor Mitchell Beckerman at Tuesday’s regular meeting. “We are looking to make it so we have other ways to take care of things besides just taxes.”

Under the current contract, The Village of Great Neck, with a population of about 9,700, currently pays more than $22 per resident each year for the vigilant ambulance service. The $218,222 annual agreement will expire next year.

Mayor Ralph Kreitzman said the proposed plan would save the village money and allow residents to send ambulance bills to their insurance providers for payment. He said he does not have an answer for the uninsured.

“How are you opting into this without any answer?” asked Great Neck Village resident Victor Habib at the board meeting Tuesday

“Right now, everyone is paying for every ambulance call through their taxes,” said Kreitzman. “We will be able to reduce that charge to all of our residents, their taxes would go down.”

The plan would reduce ambulance costs from the village budget, but it doesn’t necessarily translate into real savings for taxpayers.

“I’m not saying there would be a dollar-for-dollar reduction in the tax,” said Village Clerk John Domisky on Wednesday.

According to the Kreitzman, the vigilant service would be broken up into two sister not-for-profit agencies, one for fire, one for ambulance service.

“The meaningful ramification is that the ambulance company will be entitled to charge and be reimbursed by insurance companies for their services,” Kreitzman said. “It will still be a vigilant company, it will just cost our taxpayers less.”

Kreitzman said he doesn’t have a problem for the “20 percent of those (without insurance) to get an 80 percent reduction in costs to all taxpayers.”

Regardless of the outcome of the study, Dominsky said the village is set on studying idea.

“Whether their is a grant or not, there is a commitment to go forward with this,” he said.

Some at Tuesday’s meeting thought the plan was a good idea.

“Sure, sacrifice the people without money, why not?” said one resident, noting that the proposed procedure might help reduce frivolous ambulance calls.

Village of Great Neck Trustee Mark Birnbaum agreed, noting that a high percentage of the calls are not life-threatening.

“If you don’t charge anybody, anything, then people will continue to use it without deference to cost,” said Birnbaum.

The Town of North Hempstead Town Council will discuss the ambulance service grant proposal at a regular meeting on Dec. 14.

The pool at Michael J. Tully park, just reopened in October after extensive repairs to the pool and the recreation facility, will be shut down for 10 days in January to replace or repair a leaking pool liner.

The exact closure dates are yet to be determined, but the pool will likely be closed sometime in mid-January for the repairs, according to a Town of North Hempstead spokesman.

E-mail messages among members of the New Hyde Park civic associations have been saying that the pool was cracked after it was shut down on Nov. 29 and 30.

Town of Hempstead Supervisor Jon Kaiman said the pool was not cracked and had been shut down because of a heating problem in the building.

“We’re still planning on shutting down at some point, which involves replacing the liner and ultimately keep the pool open. Right now there’s moisture getting through the liner, so we’re asking them to either redo it or put a new one in,” Kaiman said.

He criticized residents for spreading misinformation for what he suggested were other reasons.

“It’s just kind of interesting that they’re talking about the pool being shut down. This is not about the pool, it’s about politics,” Kaiman said.

“It’s not people who go to the pool. It’s people who have a personal agenda.”

Kaiman said the town had anticipated having to shutter the building periodically for maintenance work in the wake of a $15 repair and refurbishment of the aquatic center that took 18 months to fix. Myriad problems with the building’s plumbing, rotten wooden window sashes and other issues prolonged the repairs

The repairs will be undertaken by Norberto Contracting, which oversaw the original repairs to the pool and the building, will replace or repair the pool liner at no additional cost, according to Kaiman.

The liner fix will follow a $15 million repair job that kept it closed for 18 months until early October.

Marianna Wohlgemuth, president of the Lakeville Estates Civic Association, said the pool has been “closed more than it’s been open.” She said other residents had told her the pool was cracked, and expressed concern that the underlying landfill that the recreation center and pool were built on is the problem.

“Common sense would tell you that there is sinking going on because of the land that it sits on,” Wohlgemuth said. “The problem is where it sits. I don’t know if there is a solution. The town is probably trying the best that it can. They’re trying their hardest to keep it open.”

New Hyde Park residents can still use the aquatic center through December at no charge.

Kaiman said membership fees for the facility will be revealed at the town council meeting next Tuesday night.

Two years ago, Gail Werner was diagnosed with brain cancer.

The Williston Park resident, who was 38 at the time, was told she had 4 to 7 years to live.

In that time, Werner hoped to leave something for friends and family and one day while watching a news story on CBS learned about Memories Live.

A free service founded by Great Neck native Kerry Glass in 2010, Memories Live creates moving images for the families of patients that allow those stricken with life-threatening illness to talk to future generations and leave behind a window to their lives.

By capturing family history, personal life experiences and advice for children and grandchildren, the movie helps capture the essence of who her clients are, according to Glass.

Glass said she began the business earlier this year after hearing of a tri-state woman who died of lung cancer and left behind a husband, and two children under the age of six.

As a mother of two young children herself, Glass was emotionally struck by the thought of the devastation that this family must have felt. She said she was left saddened even more so by the notion that these two young kids would never know fully their mother’s hopes and dreams for her kids, or some solace in knowing better who their mom was.

Glass grew up in Great Neck and attended high school there, her parents still live in Lake Success. Supported by donations and now living in Millburn, N.J., she said her greatest rewards are not monitery.

“Every time I leave the clients home I get a hug,” she said. “They are so grateful, so happy to be given the opportunity.”

Werner said that Memories Live is now helping her cope with the reality of her situation as she remains hopeful of her days ahead.

Werner, who has lived with her mother in Williston Park for the past two years while undergoing cancer treatments, recently completed the filming a 90-minute movie filled with personal details of her life and battles with her illness. With the help of Memories Live, she is pleased to have created a connection to her friends and family which she hopes will last forever.

“I was able to express my feelings in life and for other people,” said Werner, who had 95 percent of a life-threatening tumor removed from her brain in 2008.

The surgery left her with diminished vision in one eye, but she remains optimistic and active as she continues her battle to fight the disease. Hopeful yet cautious, she said her tumor is not growing at the moment which has enabled her to enjoy her life with family and friends; she went skydiving in October.

Although the doctor said the cancer will return someday, she has no plans of slowing down.

“Don’t let anything that is holding you back, hold you back,” she said.

With high praise for the Memories Live process, Werner said the concern and professionalism shown by Glass for her situation was fantastic. She said she is completely satisfied with the company and the treatment she received.

“If it was a one to 10, I’d give them a 15,” Werner said. “(Glass) was amazing.”

On a mission to help people like Werner with life-threatening illness preserve their images, stories and wisdom by creating personalized movies to pass on to their loved ones, the not-for-profit company provides a process which is quick and easy.

Clients receive a standard list of questions centered on life events or milestones to help with initial movie ideas. Filming then takes place in a comfortable setting of the clients choice. The footage is edited by Memories Live with music and memorabilia layered into the final product upon client approval. The result is a combination of video footage, music and photographs presented in a DVD format.

From start to finish, the memories live process takes between three and four weeks, according to Glass. The core interview takes approximately two hours. More information can be found at online at www.memorieslive.org.

This past week, Nassau County Executive Edward P. Mangano joined Rockville Centre-based Mid Island Collision owner Bob Jesberger and Long Island’s two largest food donation organizations, to mark Jesberger’s generous donation of $75,000 in turkeys and other foods for the Holiday Season.

“I have always believed that local businesses are the heart of our communities, and this is a great illustration of why they are so important,” said Mangano. “Bob Jesberger understands that charity begins at home, and he is taking care of his own. We thank him for his generosity and hope other businesses follow this incredible example of giving.”

The donation made by Jesberger will make a big difference this year. According to Randi Shubin Dresner, president and CEO of Island Harvest, donations of turkeys are down this year while requests are nearly double that of last year’s among the 570 agencies supported by Island Harvest.

“We’re fortunate to have the support of local companies like Mid Island Collision in our fight against hunger,” said Dresner.  “Thanks to their continued generosity, thousands of Long Island families who otherwise would have gone without will enjoy a brighter, more hopeful holiday.”

Island Harvest provides food support for 285,000 Long Islanders – including 110,000 children – who face the risk of hunger every day.

“Long Island Cares is grateful for the generosity of Bob Jesberger and the team at Mid-Island Collision for their generous support of hunger relief efforts on Long Island,” said Paule T. Pachter, executive director of Long Island Cares. “Bob’s generous donation of food to Long Island Cares and Island Harvest will go a long way in helping the more than 320,000 Long Islanders who are hungry and/or food insecure.”

Jesberger believes that the business community must increase its charitable giving. “If every local business just gave a little, there would be no shortage of anything-food, clothing, or shelter. Businesses need to do more, and they are not,” said Jesberger.

Frankly, that portrait of poverty on Long Island is shocking. What is more troubling is to think that a community has to rely on the kindness of a wealthy businessman, which even Jesberger acknowledges is an “iffy” thing.

All of a sudden, there is an imperative to make sure that needy families have a turkey for Thanksgiving, and toys for Christmas – perhaps to avoid the pre-repentant Scrooge’s fate.

What bothers me about the Season of Giving is that it seems designed to inoculate from responsibility the very people who are the architects or the enforcers of policies that have made a sham of the American Dream.

I don’t know Jesberger or his business specifically, but there are many, many prosperous businesses who make charitable gestures while refusing to pay a living wage to workers, or who fight to block new technology and businesses that might bring down the cost of living for families and create jobs.

Take for example Wall Street, and particularly Goldman Sachs, which is having yet another record year for bonuses. In 2006 Wall Street handed out $38 billion in seasonal bonuses, a record at the time. Your average Goldman Sachs associate netted $600,000. But that year, Goldman Sachs and two other major investment companies owned a chunk of Burger King, which refused to pay migrant workers a one-cent increase per pound of picked tomatoes. One cent! Just one of Goldman’s $600,000 bonuses alone would have paid the total increase.

The same people who are repulsed by the idea of government creating opportunities for people – grants for college or job training, food stamps to get a family through a rough patch, unemployment check of $290 a month to keep a family of four from becoming homeless, even assistance in having access to health care, just love the idea of charity, which in essence is a way of lording over the less fortunate, of exerting the power to bestow gifts on chosen causes or types of people.

Instead of creating opportunities that would set people free of poverty, America is increasingly becoming like unMerrie Olde England – with a rich, privileged and powerful aristocracy and the impoverished increasingly made up of those who have fallen from the middle class.

This season, you can see a real-life “Christmas Carol” being played out on the floor of Congress with Republicans on the one hand taking a firm stand against extending unemployment benefits – thrusting some 2 million people off the rolls and onto the streets by Christmas – while demanding that the Bush tax cuts to the wealthiest 2 percent continue

What would the American Scrooge see reflected in the mirror?

She would see the greatest gap between rich and poor since the Gilded Age. Between 1979 and 2007, the chasm separating the after-tax income of the richest 1 percent of Americans from the middle and poorest fifths of the country more than tripled, according to an analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Over the three decades ending in 2007, the top 1 percent of the nation’s total after-tax household income more than doubled, from 7.5 percent to 17.1 percent. During this time, the share of the middle 60 percent of Americans dropped from 51.1 percent to 43.5 percent, and the bottom four-fifths (that is, 80 percent) declined from 58 percent to 48 percent. Oops, there goes the middle class .

Reviewing the Census data, David Cay Johnston of the New York Times concluded that the Bush tax cuts which have already drained the Treasury of $2.3 trillion were a major contributor to the record US income gap (as reported at Perrspectives.com): “Of the total increase in income in 2007 over that in 2005, nearly 30 percent went to taxpayers who made $1 million or more. One of every eight dollars of the tax cuts went to the 1 in 1,000 taxpayers in the top tenth of 1 percent, the annual threshold for which was in the $2 million range throughout the last administration.”

Meanwhile, there are more Americans living in poverty than in the 51 years for which the government has collected data: 43.6 million people were living in poverty in 2009, up from 39.8 million in 2008 – the third consecutive annual increase.

In 2009, the nation’s official poverty rate was 14.3 percent, up from 13.2 percent in 2008 – the highest since 1994.

More than 50 million Americans lived in households that had a hard time getting enough to eat at least at some point during 2009. That includes 17 million children, and at least 500,000 of those children faced the direst conditions. They had inadequate diets, or even missed meals, because their families didn’t have enough money for food (and what does that do to test-taking and public school performance?)

“Household food insecurity remains a serious problem across the United States,” says U.S. Department of Agriculture Undersecretary Kevin Concannon.

Given the economy, the rates of hunger would have been even higher, he noted, were it not for the Food Stamp program. Alas, the government was forced to cut back the Food Stamp program as a “compromise: to get unemployment benefits extended the last time. And now, a $4.5 billion bill to reauthorize and expand the school lunch and child nutrition programs has stalled over a proposal to pay for the expansion by – you guessed it – further trimming future food stamp benefits.

How’s that picture of America for you?

The Republicans claim that their darkest vision of the future, the thing that scares them the most is the prospect of growing national debt, and insist that extending the Bush tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires will address the bigger problem: jobs creation. Except that it hasn’t happened in the 10 years that the Bush tax cuts helped move the largest amount of wealth to that narrow top 2 percent since before the Wall Street Crash, which is not coincidentally what Bush’s trickle-down, laissez-faire economics brought us to.

What is proven is that extending unemployment benefits provide one of the biggest “bang for the buck” in terms of stimulating the economy (whereas tax cuts for the uber-wealthy are the weakest way). That’s because 100 percent of what families get in unemployment benefits (amounting to a mere $290 a month) are spent on the necessities of living, and would thus help create jobs (and ending the cycle that has kept unemployment rates stuck at 9.6 percent).

On the other hand, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof calculated that “Republicans would give the richest 0.1 percent of Americans an average tax cut of $370,000. Does anybody really think that those taxpayers are going to rush out and buy Porsches and yachts, start new businesses, and hire more groundskeepers and chauffeurs?”

But in this season, the very people who make these policies and profit from these policies and soothe their souls and their clear their consciences by tossing some coins to the poor. They will make contributions to favorite philanthropies – probably faith-based ones which are an even better guarantee of getting into heaven.

I don’t delude myself into thinking that poverty can be eradicated – after all, there is always a bottom percentage.

But the condition should not be a damnation to hell. There should be the hope and the possibility of a better life, if you strive for it.

In December 2007, Walter Adler was on the Q train in New York City with two of his Jewish friends when the three were assaulted by a group of anti-Semitic attackers.

Hassan Askari, a Muslim who was born in Bangladesh, stepped in during the taunts and punches to stop the incident. While Askari was stopping the fight, Adler pulled the emergency brake to call police to the train.

“I did what I thought was right at the time,” Askari said.

Adler, who is currently a New York City Emergency Medical Technician, recalled on Tuesday that this attack was an experience he would never forget.

“Hate crimes threaten the fabric that a city is run on,” Adler said. “As an EMT, I feel it is necessary to try to carry the torch that the Holocaust survivors had during their difficult time. This may not be as bad a time as the Holocaust, but it has the potential to be.”

The Village of Great Neck Plaza honored Adler and Askari and two other “upstanders” – people who took positive action to stop or prevent past and present hate crimes from happening – at a ceremony kicking off a a month-long exhibit that is being hosted by the village called “Upstanders Then and Now: Courage Knows No Era” throughout the month of December in the village courtroom, located at 2 Gussack Plaza remembering the events of the Holocaust.

The exhibit will feature panels of photos from the Holocaust, including photos of Pastor Andre Trocme who is credited with saving thousands of Jewish children during World War II.

The Harriet and Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Resource Center of Queensborough Community College and the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County are working in collaboration with the village to host this exhibit.

The village gave proclamations to Holocaust survivors Renee Wiener and Herman Horowitz as well as Askari and Adler.

“This is an important and significant program that I am pleased to be able to bring to this community,” said Ted Rosen, deputy mayor of the Village of Great Neck Plaza. “We are the closest level of government to the community and thought it was necessary that the people should know the history and lessons of the Holocaust.”

Wiener was from Vienna and fled to France during the Holocaust to live a “normal life,” which consisted of always looking over her shoulder to be on guard for Nazi soldiers.

Wiener, who currently lives in Great Neck Plaza, was a member of the French Resistance during World War II and was awarded the medal of Commander in the French Legion of Honor this year for her courageous acts of rescuing and finding homes for numerous Jewish children who escaped to safety in Switzerland.

Horowitz was a 20-year-old when he became a soldier in the Seventh Armored Division where he took part in the Battle of the Bulge during World War II. Horowitz landed in Normandy on June 15, 1944, only nine days after D-Day, and said his mission during the war was to kill Germans, destroy their equipment and liberate people in the Hitler regime. Horowitz’s unit liberated the Bergen-Belsen and Ohrdruf concentration camps in Germany.

“It was difficult for people to understand who we were because any uniform meant trouble,” Horowitz said. “It took days for them to realize I was a Jewish-American there to help them be liberated. A new generation of people should never forget what happened during World War II.”

Arthur Flug, executive director at the Harriet and Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Resource Center of Queensborough Community College, said the story of the four honorees was important for people to hear.

“The people being honored today are not famous and nobody knows their faces, but their level of bravery to rescue Jews is important,” Flug said. “They all did the right thing by standing up and saying something with their voice. This exhibit furthers our center’s mission to educate current and future generations about the ramifications of prejudice, racism and stereotyping.”

Beth Lilach, senior director of education at the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County, said the exhibit can teach people that being an upstander can prevent future incidences from taking place.

“Tragedies that we are talking about now could have been prevented if there was an upstander who stepped up before an incident happened,” Lilach said. “The only person to not choose a role during a hate crime is a victim. By remaining silent, a bystander is helping the perpetrator. The simple remedy is for any ordinary person to be an upstander and perform an extraordinary act of bravery and kindness.”

The “Upstanders Then and Now: Courage Knows No Era” exhibit is free for all guests to see during the entire month of December. Village Hall is open on Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 4:45 p.m.. Anybody interested in seeing the exhibit after hours can call the Mayor’s Office at (516) 482-4500 to set up an appointment.