Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Msgr. Alan Placa

MSGR. ALAN PLACA

I wonder if Msgr. Alan Placa will write a book.

I think he should.

Placa is the lawyer/priest, or priest/lawyer, who is a boyhood friend of former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, although I don’t know why newspaper editors insist that we always put that in.

Giuliani gave Placa a job when Placa was suspended as a priest for seven years—yeah, who knew?—for sexually abusing a St. Pius X minor seminarian, which wouldn’t have made a difference, legally, anyway, because the statute of limitations had run out.

But that was nothing.

Placa also advised the parents of young people who claim to have been sexually abused by priests that they should meditate and pray for divine guidance (and, he did this repeatedly) and divine mercy and divine wisdom…until, incidentally, the statute of limitations ran out on criminal and civil prosecution of the priests.

Clever, no?

Placa didn’t actually say that in his counsel to the parents, by the way. He kept mum.

Nor did he say that he was a lawyer, as well as a priest. Nor did he point out that he was the lawyer for the Diocese of Rockville Center, where the priests worked. This diocese had a mammoth special interest in the priests’ getting legally far away from these parents, because the parents, besides being driven to homicidal rage by the priests’ behavior, would have sued the…all right… brains…out of them and the Church that employed them.

But, as I said, Placa didn’t mention that when he was acting as advisor, counsel, father confessor…priest, to the parents of the (allegedly) sexually abused children.

The latest on Placa was that he was off priestly suspension, this for sexually abusing a student, himself, also after the statute of limitations had expired (also, after a just-to-be-sure, 7-year investigation by the Pope).

In the book, the one I’m suggesting he write, Placa could justify, or make a logical explanation for; or, capitalize on; or, perhaps profit from his (a) lousy luck during, or, (b) his lousy luck after, the turn-of-the-century, priest-child sex-scandal on Long Island; that followed the City of Boston’s turn-of-the-century, priest-child sex-scandal; or The City of Chicago’s turn-of-the-century, priest-child-sex-scandal; or the Republic of Ireland’s priest-child…(yada-yada-yada).

Were it not for those public scandals, Placa’s handbook on the Church’s handling victims of “short-eyed” priests (a prison term, meaning, child sex-abuser) would have saved the American Church a fortune, and total credit would have gone to Placa.

Basically, Placa, in his advice to other dioceses, says the given diocese has to have an abusive priest counselor (I don’t know how to punctuate that, or what to emphasize in saying it), who is also a lawyer (but who does not say that), who (again, secretly) is also specifically a lawyer for the diocese, as well.

This priest-lawyer acts as a spiritual advisor to the victim and his parents, and should (whisperingly, is my guess) counsel the parents to meditate and pray, and, then meditate and pray, and then to meditate and pray, until the statute of limitation runs out—Oh, look at that; must be God’s divine will—or until one of parties dies (Drat, we’ll never know the truth, now.).

That’s the Alan Placa I know, not just some Giuliani lackey.

Perhaps Placa will gloat in the book, because of his absolutely incredible luck after that unwanted public attention (Well, I may consider it unwanted, come to think of it. He may rejoice in it.) when no less than the Pope, the Vicar of Christ on Earth—and two other guys, Cardinals, I think, single-handedly (well, all right, not literally single-handedly, triple-handedly)—returned him, after seven years priestly suspension, to active duty as a working priest.

Placa can work again in The Diocese of Rockville Center, here on this little island East of New York, The Pope and his committee having determined that he is not a pervert. At least not by their divinely inspired, studied view, and according to the laws of The State of New York, which was clear from the outset.

Just think of the achievement: The Pope has a folder with a case in it (I’m just guessing that they call this a, “case”), with Alan Placa’s name on top of it, and maybe with The Pope’s name on it, too.

Hey, it’s possible; there’s three guys, you know, putting notes on the margins, and they’re sitting around, reviewing the facts. They each have folders, and The Pope’s folder has Al Placa on it.

And he’s making notes, and they are talking about what Alan Placa did or did not do in Uniondale one day, or a bunch of days, with this minor seminarian, this kid. (It really doesn’t matter what his name is, they’re interchangeable, aren’t they.).

That has to be, if not unprecedented, at least unusual enough to set pen to paper (all right, keyboard fingers to hand-held, personal communication device) and message the rest of us (I mean, the rest of the freaking world, really) what it feels like.

Wouldn’t you want to know how humble (or proud) Placa is, how it has changed his—I don’t know—Saturday mornings; or, the way he prays; or whether he quit bowling…no, golf. I forgot. He’s a lawyer…whether he quit playing golf.

Hell, I say there’s a book in that alone.

Then, there’s the question of how did he manage to get in this sordid, creepy little scandal in the first place? Did a parent whose refusals to listen to reason summon Placa’s name to the Bishop, I mean, given his law degree, and everything.
Maybe his success with those parents got him a new (or maybe an old) role with the Diocese, handling other poor souls, whose devotion to Holy Mother Church and priestly respect had been undermined by their own child.

Sometimes, even, they actually believe the child—“God forgive me,”—over the priest, and insist on protesting the priest’s weird, scary (dare I say it) advances, or suggestions, which have the child so upset. Crying even. Confused. Feeling betrayed.
Did Placa protect the Church against that kind of attack?

Man.

I wonder if I can stomach reading the book.

Friday, December 25, 2009

Uh, Poof!

Uh, pooof


Your letter:

I don't know if I already answered your letter or not. It seems to be something I would carry around in (the damaged, but still useful part of) my brain for a while, but ... well, maybe I think I answered it, because I did think about it for a while.

Or, maybe I answered one like it, or eight, as a matter of fact, but it was not so haunting as yours about the book proposal. A lot of people have said that, made me think about it, anyway, but I’m no expert, I say. And then…

Now, I don't know any more, which turns out to be as good a thing as it is bad (Would make me a valuable member of a debating team.) but that may help somebody who feels stupid because he doesn’t know. “Look, Gladys, Ed Lowe, here, had a stroke, and it says that he didn’t know what to make of it, either.”

I have thought, too, about adding my paragraphs to the stroke literature, only because I think I was freed, I mean totally liberated, by one paragraph in one of them, which I can see across the room, dammit, and can't remember...oh...stroke...Stroke of Genius. No. Stroke…My Stroke of Insight. That’s it. It’s right over there, it’s just that I’m tired and lazy, and I can say what I want without the book.

The woman, the author, who was on Oprah two years ago (when I could not have seen her, because I was chatting with the angels at the time) and then last year (the paperback tour), where I did see her, because I couldn't do much but watch television and...well, watch television. She was—is—a neuro-something, a brain scientist, who had a rare kind of stroke.
The rare part was that, unlike me, and 99 per cent of the stroke patients, she had the kind of stroke that gives you a front-row seat to your own production, your own show. You watch yourself fall apart. (I passed out, and that was that.).

Once she realized what was going on, she was able to experience the brain’s changes, the losses, as her brain was filling with blood and short circuiting language, color, memory, perception, the very borders that distinguish her from the furniture, from the air. An expert who actually experienced what she studied, she knew what was happening (to the extent that you know you’re losing half your mind), and she knew what was going to happen. She had to dial while she still knew what the phone was, remember a number while her grip on, “number,” was slipping away. Say, “I’m having a stroke…” while the meaning disappeared before her eyes. It’s really…well, incredible.

I'll get her name in a minute—all I have to do is stop thinking about it. Of course, when I learn that trick, I'll...well, yeah, you'll see…I’ll be, “…more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings with a single bound…”

Anyway, she really tossed away a line in there that made me feel so--I don't know, stupid, on the one hand, and liberated on the other--that I've been thinking, “Maybe I could do that, too. Maybe I could write 50,000 words of, I don't know, funny, entertaining, nonsense, that accidentally (of course, accidentally, I mean, this is imagining something really happening; it would have to be a freak) had some phrase in it, some little joke, or anecdote that made some reader say, ‘Holy...Holy Frisbee... this is IT. This is...’” you know, the secret he or she has been looking for.

So, yeah, I have thought about that. Of course I have. And, wouldn't I want to be to him or to her the person who had the magic potion the stroke-recovered neuroscientist—Taylor, her name was. Taylor—was to me. Yeah, I would. I’m not ashamed of that.

Do I think it's going to happen? Well, come on. No.

Then again, maybe that’s the old me talking. The new me is freer to fantasize. I’ll think about that, maybe here, while I’m trying to make one finger do what, maybe six, used to do. (This, by the way, is new and self-indulgent, thinking with my fingertips. A guy who wrote today, who suddenly got Multiple Sclerosis, said I should write a bunch of columns and sell it as a book; then he says; “How in the hell do you possibly type out your column each week?” I wrote back, “Slowly. Very slowly.”)

I’m also tempted to say that I think that what happened to me was a simple thing that most people get, sooner or later. I'm just one of those thickheads that have to fall into a deep hole and be rescued from certain death, or be brought back from drowning, or spend three months unconscious with pneumonia, a heroically failed liver and a deadly stroke, before they get it.
And that, because I thought I knew. I thought I was ahead of the pack, because I realized early on that this was a fabulous life. And, it is, but it's far more fabulous than I knew, way more than what I thought, and I thought I had the lock on knowing it was. I had no idea.
The one point that got me—and, don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of points—oh, Bingo: Jill Bolte Taylor, Phd., My Stroke of Insight—was this: that the brain recovers from a profound disappointment, a crushing loss, a life-changing betrayal, in, like, two minutes; really, in less than two minutes (I just need the two.).

Think of it. Could it be true? It’s true. War, of all things, tells you; not to mention tidal waves, earthquakes, floods, Pompeii. The crushing blow is delivered, the brain reels, the old blood is replaced by new blood, you say, “Wow,” maybe, if you want, and go on.

Do you how many Irishmen’s lives, alone, would be completely different, if that got around?

Of course, you can hang onto the wound, or disappointment, or betrayal, or the loss, if it makes you feel more justified for thinking whatever you thought of it, but, really, no more than two, say, three, minutes—all right, take five, but not in combat—and you can move on. “All right, what’s next. Lay it on me.”

Do you know what that meant to me? I’d been hanging onto some things as long as 40 years.

Uh, poof.

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Touchy Subject

Okay, be warned, I’m going to risk another try at humor, here, that taps on the delicate Waterford crystal window separating good taste from not-so-good taste.

We’ll be going along the lines of what-you-might-call your eau de toilette subject matter. It really means, “toilet water,” but, well, you know, it’s French, for God’s sake. I remember learning a romantic nickname that a man, a Frenchman, uses to endear himself to his all-time-favorite (?) woman. He calls her, “Ma petite chou-chou.” It means, “My little cabbage head.”
.
So, that’s French. The Waterford reference was Irish. For some reason, perhaps stemming from the questionable social behavior prevalent in all classes during the last revolution in France, the French have the edge on certain subjects, and all references to them couched in French are excused.

The Irish are another matter.

Anyway, persons who find these subjects anywhere from sophomoric to morally reprehensible will be warned, at periodic breaks during our discussion, that to go further in their reading risks reading that which they would not like to read, and they should stop.

Stop. That should take care of you.

This—subject, as it were—first occurred to me at the Brokerage Comedy Club, I think in 1992, when I suspect, now, I was inaugurating my most recent life, which ended about two years ago. I thought it was the absolute best of a series of outlandish lives, and was grateful for every minute (…well, really of all of them, although I didn’t recognize that until later).

Currently, I am living what I call a, “bonus,” life, and I feel a little freer than I felt when I lived any of the lives before, and, to be blunt, freer than when I had to worry about the opinions of my mother’s friends as to my deductions and conclusions.

She was alive, then, and I therefore tried to placate the sensibilities of people I didn’t care a whit about. But she did. Some customs you care about; some you don’t.

I cared about that one.

So, this, in 1992, was the third time I performed at a comedy club, and I was nervous. Entertaining at a comedy club is vastly different than speaking, say, at an annual dinner-dance for the county medical society, or a golf outing for the Village Officials Association, or the Christmas—oops, Holiday—Party for the Suffolk County Librarians Association.

With them, if you are clever, they are really happy. If you are funny, they are ecstatic; no fewer than four members of the board will claim credit for having invited you. If you are knock-down, slap-your-thighs, can’t-even-breathe-hysterical, they’ve had one the best nights of their lives and will talk about you a year after your obit has appeared in the newspapers. Ooh. Bad reference. If you are writing for future readers, don’t use almost-dead words.

In a comedy club, only (c) is good.

So, like I said, I was nervous.

I didn’t know that nervousness would make me make up comedy routines that I’d never heard before.

I’m onstage about a minute when a guy in the audience gets the uncontrollable urge, I guess, to go.

He stands up, shrugs an apology to me, and takes fully fifteen seconds to meander his way from the left corner of the wide, wide room to the right corner, where the bathrooms are.

I stop whatever my opening ministration is, and get a chuckle for that (from a really friendly audience), for the first three seconds. For some reason, I remember the sign on the bathroom wall, and I say to him, “Don’t forget to wash your hands after you, you, uh, finish, in there. There’s signs, you know, that will tell you what to do. Pictures of a hand washing the other hand, so they both are clean, after you, uh, touch yourself. People out here are counting on you. They know, now, that you’re in there.”

The man waved--nice man, good sport--and disappeared into the dark, leaving me, suddenly, with the subject of his going to the bathroom.

I didn’t want that. I was going to talk about being an 11-year-old boy in the Amityville junior high school, with grown women all around; or catching a mouse and being forced to put it on a nun’s desk in the eighth grade; or my three observations as a student teacher (you get two. I had three, because the judge could not believe it.).

All right, stop reading right here. Seriously. You were warned.

“You know,” I said (figuring, ‘Ah, what the hell. I’m not a comedian anyway.’) I think it’s the Irish Catholic influence that made that rule, the one about washing your hands after…you know. I mean, what other culture is so convinced that a certain part of the body is dirty, so dirty, so inherently dirty, I mean, really intrinsically dirty, filthy. Even clean, it’s dirty. It’s dirtier than dirt."

I mean it. Go.

“I mean, you take a man…has to be a man, by the way…works on, let’s say, Wall Street…”

Oops. Might not be able to say that. “…works for AIG,” no, “Merrill, Lynch…” Yikes, “…works at the Postal…no…The New York…“Knicks, and he gets up, takes a shower, a long shower, where he uses lots of soap, good lather, maybe Irish Spring, so he is squeaky clean, then perhaps some powder here and…there…

“Then he puts on some laundered, folded, stacked, boxer shorts, clean, smelling of Tide. Then a T-shirt, and a white dress shirt, then some cleaned and pressed trousers, and, socks and shoes.

“Off he goes to the Huntington Railroad Station, in a cab, which is as clean as a cab can be, his hands touching the cab, touching his money, the cabbie, the cabbie’s money, the coffee truck driver’s change, the railing, the train, the train’s railing…so now he has anything from Swine Flu to leprosy, certainly pink eye and AID’s… to Penn Station, the railing upstairs from the tracks, and (damn that second cup of coffee), the bathroom, where the push plate of the door hosts Back Death plague and poison ivy, and there’s a line, and he opens his trouser with a zipper, sticks his diseased finger inside, past the tail of the white dress shirt, past the undershirt, past the opening of the boxer shorts, to this unsuspecting part of his body…

“…and we want him to wash his hand, because now he has touched something dirty.”

Monday, December 7, 2009

Stroke Strikes

Stroke Strikes

I may have reached the end of my patience with some aspects of what we call, “stroke.”

I mean, I’ll admit, the Earth and its atmosphere got a well-earned break for the years I still have to re-learn to speak. But I can name the three times my right fist hurt anyone, and one of them was my right fist. I only sang in the bathroom in recent years, and that in an empty house.

I don’t understand most of the rest, either, especially this paralysis thing.

I suppose I did give some thought to being, “lame,” or, physically, “disadvantaged,” or, “cripple,” when that was a descriptive word, before it became an insult.
But I don’t recall what I might have thought about the disadvantages of being, I guess, imperfect (Owf, that looks like what it looks like, you arrogant, self-important, “perfect,” bastard.).

In the early days, I just thought maybe that guys who wore casts, temporary casts, got a lot of enviable attention in school. I don’t suppose its news that I was among the others who envied the would-be jocks whose casts became the canvas for signatures by the girls. It’s just that…I don’t know…breaking bones? It wasn’t my style.

Otherwise, I don’t remember thinking much about it, and, now I have to—I suspect this is one of those unkind memories you have when the, “other” guy’s, boat comes looking for you—because, “There, but for The Grace of God go…etc.” I guess I got caught running afoul of, “The Grace of God.”

So, the right half of my entire body has elected to retire (or, maybe the left half of my body has withdrawn its retirement papers, without telling the right half. Whatever.).

My right half has lost its consciousness, or its will, or its interest, its get-up-and-go; leaving me alive--and ultimately well, mind you, considering what I thought a stroke was--but increasingly impatient about the disagreements between halves of my once-cooperative-self, particularly, this year, as regards the direction they each have selected to go.

One side of me decides on all-ahead-full, for instance, and sets about it as if nothing had changed (the ignorant cuss). The other meanders about and flirts, let’s say, for instance, with a strange leg.

It doesn’t bother listening to, helping out, or even reminiscing with its former partner. And the new attraction could be a chair leg, or a table leg, or, most embarrassing, a human leg (which requires the lower part of the body taking care of the removal of the offensive leg, while the upper part explains away to a possibly offended person what the lower part is doing, which he does not know, himself, but has to make up. And this while the mouth sounds like it has just discovered speech.).

Most of lower part listens inattentively, if at all, while it blithely becomes the showoff sport of wind, gravity, and, even, I am beginning to suspect, the vagaries of the barometer. Moreover, if it agrees to “go,” it wishes for some reason to go the right, of all things, instead of what the rest of the body thought was straight ahead. Somehow, it wants to go even more to the right on humid days.

I never saw anything like it. At home, my left side wants to get in the car and go to town to see what’s doing, while my right side, perhaps knowing the car has long been sold, is perfectly happy doing nothing, unless of course it is to the right of what I set my sights on.

Let me jump off, here, and re-emphasize, “well,” because, (a) I am; and, (b) I don’t believe it either. I probably need to see it in print, myself, to get comfortable with it. I like to think I am not complaining, but trying to figure things out little better, so I don’t become a complainer.

Previously, before my stroke, and for as much as a year after, I thought a guy who had a stroke was pretty well done. He simply had parts that disagreed vehemently with the finality of the sentence. The fact is, however, he had stepped too far one way or the other, caught a crippling undercut that he knew (dammit) he had flagrantly risked, and now was only waiting for the cross-punch to his aptly-named temple, which will end the era of history that had him as a cast member in it.

Until the blow’s delivery, hopefully a fast, relatively painless one--maybe, if he’s lucky, a knockout--he could see the crowd, recognize some disappointed fan’s faces, be present at some family functions and know, always know, his mistake.

The rest of his life is simply waiting, trying increasingly to attend to some of his own needs, so as to give some poor soul a break from the tedium of attending to another person’s tedium. Otherwise, he should be careful to avoid spitting, drooling, and the like, because it’s just plain embarrassing; and keep the jokes to maybe two words, tops, because he’s libel to forget one and mispronounce the other.
Actually, it is like that, at first, but somehow, it doesn’t seem so bad at all, after awhile.

What really is annoying is the brain’s taking its time to tell the nervous system what’s going on. About a year in, I decided to give the keyboard, what they used to call the typewriter, one last try. (The first two tries were beyond description. I might as well have tried to crayon the word, “antediluvian,” on a live crab.).

I fantasized that I would try to show my appreciation of some of the people (I didn’t know how many there were, nor do I yet) who helped me the night my brains fell out, and for months thereafter. I started with the word, “Communicate,” because I still was full of myself. After several hours of struggle, I gazed at the screen, and the word, “allegory,” looked me dead in the eye. There was no other word, and no other person with me.

“Allegory,” I said. “I don’t think I’ve ever used, “allegory,” unless it was on an entrance exam 58 years ago.”

I tried again the next day: “communicate,” I wrote, painstakingly, aiming my finger at the, “m,” and the, “u,” and the, “n.”

“Allegory,” my brain evidently spelled, with no, “m’s,” or, “u’s,” or, “n’s.” .
Eventually, I got past that, which, believe me, was frustrating. Eventually, I will feel capable of explaining it, too.

The discovery is, you recognize that every effort results in a triumph. How did that escape me all those years? Every effort. It’s really mind-blowing.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Dinsoaur Tales

by Ed Lowe



Dinosaur Tales

The gathering calls itself, “The Dinosaurs,” a loosely organized group of survivors of an era on Long Island they believe was influenced by what they did—what we did—in our day-to-day, year-to-year, suddenly, decade-to-decade, “work,” lives; chronicling what other people did in their day-to-day, year-to-year, decade-to-decade work and play lives, and trying to make sense of it.

Like, we, with our notebook and cameras, could even guess.

They meet monthly in a diner, these Dinosaurs. I unkindly equated diners with advanced age, for some reason, favoring pub-restaurants. I have described myself as a great fan of age and experience, but my evasion of diners tells a different tale.

I passed this particular diner six times weekly for, maybe, thirty years, and only this summer viewed it from the inside.

I had to use the ramp, too, to gain entry.

Most of those gathered were photographers, either because the founder was one, or because photographers see the obvious before the rest of us do. I got along well with news photographers, especially because of their devil-may-care attitude toward human subjects. The more important the human subject thinks he or she is, the more flippant the photographer’s attitude becomes, until the subject realizes that he has to do whatever the photographer asks him, or in some cases, tells him to do. And be quick about it. And smile.

I decided to join, if they would have me.

I’ve seen scripts and plays and movies about how in the final analyses (whatever that is), chroniclers of a couple of decades or four sometimes render conclusions about to the, “futility of it all.” But I haven’t done that yet. I’m still having fun telling stories, maybe now more than ever. And now, I get to tell old ones.

I thought of two just recently, under the subject heading of, “God, it is easier than spit to make a boss lose it. (Too bad you didn’t know it then).”

A resident of Amityville, the first town in Suffolk County on the South Shore of Long Island, I had just transferred from the Suffolk County desk to the Nassau County desk of Newsday. Though it had divided the Island into the two different counties (I know, there are four.) the newspaper purported to cover both jurisdictions even-handedly. They, “cooperated,” with each other. No territorial rivalries.

Shortly after my transfer, my mother called me to ask if I had heard anything about a murder in Amityville, which now was not supposed to be my concern. I said, “No.” She said the, “Plectron,” a special radio tuned to the police channel my father needed in his role as Lieutenant of the Amityville Police Department, had mentioned not only a murder, which was unusual in Amityville, but a murder of six people, a whole family, in their beds, on Ocean Avenue.

She couldn’t get hold of my father, so, could I just check on it. Besides, it seemed to her (being ignorant of jurisdictional nuances), that I might want to know that this was going on.

I called the Nassau desk and asked them to call the Suffolk desk to ask if they had heard about it, and the Suffolk desk said that, no, and, “What did you say?”

I was close to home and finished my Nassau County work. I said I would check it out.

By the time I reached Amityville, I learned that The Suffolk Editor had issued a public proclamation against my involvement in the reporting of the story (He was not in favor of my transfer. Maybe that was it.).

The story could really be a competitive one, with news reporters from all over the New York area. “We,” had a reporter at Newsday who lived around the corner; who had spent his whole life there; who knew everybody; who was there, already, now.

Of course you wouldn’t want him there. It would be unfair to the other newspapers.

I hung out in a bar, the long-forgotten Henry’s, where the first revelations of the deed were revealed, and I became the prime source for other Newsday reporters, and invited the Newsday police reporter to use my house, my phone (there were no cell phones) and have a sandwich and drink some beers.

I felt no pressure at all, which was nice.

The Ed Lowe column began when the Queens edition began, which was when the Long Island Press folded, and Rupert Murdoch bought the New York Post. “We,” were going to make Murdoch worry about holding onto his subscribers from Queens, before he made, “us,” worry about the Post stealing away Nassau readers from Newsday.

Murdoch evidently didn’t care about Nassau, but that’s just a detail.

The column, meanwhile, morphed to an ROP (run-of-the-press) column as the Queens Edition turned into the New York edition of Newsday, and then into New York Newsday, until a editor who was fiercely opposed to Ed Lowe stories (only thing I can figure) barred it from New York Newsday, and then spent years and fortunes of money barring it from the Newsday magazine, so, it ran in Newsday only (?).

Came a time, maybe 10 or 11 years ago, when a 13-year-old student in a Queens Junior High rescued his entire family.

His principal called to tell me. She lived in Nassau. The boy had come with his mother, looking a little disheveled, for a transfer to another school. Asked why, he said his home in Ozone Park had been destroyed.

One night, the boy awoke because his asthma was bothering him, because his house was burning. He quickly awakened his mother and one sibling, and then ran upstairs to awaken two more siblings, ushered them all outside, where he found a parked car to keep them as warm as he could. He next ran next door and dialed 911, and then, when his mother realized her baby girl was asleep in her crib, he ran back into the now-in-flames house to crawl around and rescue her.

Finally, the sight of approaching Emergency service vehicles freed him to collapse, because, after all, his asthma was bothering him.

I wrote the story, a front page story in the Nassau-Suffolk edition. Readers came with clothing, food and a house in Freeport, and The New York Knicks invited him to a game, because they wanted to meet a real hero.

The story didn’t run in the New York Newsday.

I guess somebody showed me a thing or two.