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Steller student gets award
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_________________ BALDWIN ________________
JUNE 2 - 8, 2022
Stories behind the monuments Baldwinite honors father’s memory of service to country War, he anticipated being called to serve overseas, but his troop was never called, and he moved This month, Pinelawn Memo- on to work in communications. rial Park and Arboretum, in After Vietnam he served in the Farmingdale, will begin honor- Army Reserve and then the miliing the veterans laid to rest there tary police, working as a guard with the launch of the Pinelawn at Fort Knox, Tennessee. Veterans Legacy Project. In an Ayers was activated by the ongoing initiative, Pinelawn will National Guard during the U.S. share families’ stories about postal strike of 1970. The strike, their loved ones, in that March, over appreciation of p o s t a l wo rke r s ’ their service. wages and working Jennifer Ayers, conditions, lasted of Baldwin, is one of eight days, spread the first particifrom New York to pants, telling the other cities in the folstory of her father, lowing two weeks, Patrick Ayers. She and is considered the remembers him as a largest wildcat strike dedicated E8 first JENNIfER AyERS in U.S. history. sergeant in the In the 1990s Ayers Army, with a great Daughter of veteran trained soldiers at smile and an unwavvarious base camps. ering love for his He was on call when family. “My dad loved being in the Gulf War started, but once the military, and our family was again was not called to action. so proud of his 20-plus years of “At that time, he felt it was time service,” Jennifer wrote to the to retire,” Jennifer recalled. “He Herald. “He was strong, reliable, did over 20 years, and he knew in and loved his children and his heart that it was time to grandchildren as fiercely as they leave.” loved him.” Aye r s, w h o s o m e t i m e s Her father’s service started, worked three jobs odd jobs when Jennifer said, when he joined the Jennifer was young in the 1980s, National Guard in either 1966 or was familiar with strikes, and 1967. At the time of the Vietnam Continued on page 10
By KARINA KoVAC kkovac@liherald.com
Photo by Mark Simonsen
Honoring the fallen Grand Marshal Alfred Ficalora led the Baldwin Memorial Day Parade down Grand Avenue on Monday. The parade ended at the Baldwin Veterans Memorial Plaza.
Former Baldwinite writes book on music industry experience By KARINA KoVAC kkovac@liherald.com
Don Henze comes from a musical family: His father, Don, was in the band Curt Jensen with the Don Henze Rhythmaires and played on American Bandstand. His grandfather Phil Henze played banjo at various live venues. His great-greatgrandfather Otto, who emigrated from Hamburg, Germany, played upright bass at Carnegie Hall in the 1900s until his death in 1916 from syphilis due to ‘fooling around’ with the Hippodrome showgirls. So when Henze (pronounced HEN-zee), 58, was going to Baldwin High School, he knew his destiny was a musical one. When he met up with Roger
Daltrey, lead singer and songwriter of the Who, it altered the course of his life. Accounts of the highs and lows of that experience can be found in Henze’s self-published new book, “Roger Daltrey and the Bright Shiny Object,” out now. “For me, the music thing started long before I was even born,” Henze said. “It was inevitable. It was instilled in me by my father to be a famous musician from the age of 4, when I started taking lessons from him.” There was something of an unofficial curse in his family that once you got to the top, your time was up. His grandfather played so hard in 1978 on stage at a big family reuion he passed of
a heart attack three minutes after finishing his set, nearly fullfilling his goal of dying like his idol Eddie Peabody-a famous banjo player who is said to have died playing the banjo. “I was there,” said Henze, who was 14 at the time. “I saw the whole thing. [People] kept screaming, ‘One more song!’ ‘One more song!’ and he was struggling and struggling — his face was beet-red.” “So both (great grandfather and grandfather) died as a direct or somewhat direct result of being muscians,” said Henze. But Henze’s father wasn’t deterred from a music career, and neither was Don Jr. He started a band called Radio Stupid when he was 26, and began playContinued on page 4
T
he family as a whole misses him. He was the glue.