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HERALD
September 16, 2021
Higher Education ENABLING A BRIGHTER FUTURE
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Higher Education Inside
VOL. 21 NO. 38
No date yet for library opening
Mustangs went to Williamsport
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SEPTEMBER 16 - 22, 2021
Marking a day like no other BY LAURA LANE llane@liherald.com
Karen Millindorf/Herald
MEMBERS OF THE East Meadow Fire Department marched with community members from their firehouse to Veterans Memorial Park on Sept. 11 to honor those who died in the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center and the first responders who have succumbed to 9/11-related illnesses in the years since.
In the early evening of Sept. 11, 2001, Kathy Martinez Walsh and Patricia Magnus Brown, captains of the East Meadow Fire Department’s Rescue 5 Ambulance Company, were stationed at Chelsea Pier in Manhattan. But before arriving there, they were taken to what was then simply known as the pile at the World Trade Center. “It was scary,” Brown said. “The police officer driving the ambulance didn’t realize how heavy the debris was.” “It was as though we were buried in ashes,” Walsh recalled, adding that the ambulance was CONTINUED ON PAGE 3
Victims say anti-Muslim acts continued after Sept. 11 BY LAURA LANE llane@liherald.com
Jijoe Joseph, 42, an emergency doctor who worked at Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow from 2016 to 2020, can clearly remember Sept. 11, 2001, and, more so, how much his life changed afterward. Of Indian descent, he was born in the U.S. and is Catholic, but on Sept. 12, people thought he was a Muslim terrorist. “When I went to pick up my girlfriend in Queens, people started taking pictures of me and of my license plate,” Joseph recalled. “New York City became nicer as a whole after Sept. 11,
but if you had brown skin, as I do, it was different. . . . To this day, there is a stigma, a naive notion, that everyone who looks like me is a Muslim.” Although he never felt he was in danger, Joseph said he was uneasy living in Nassau County, except while at the hospital. He is from Westchester County, which he described as a melting pot. He was surprised by the many comments that were directed at him while he lived on Long Island. “There was a lot of verbal abuse,” he said. “I’d get comments while I was at a restaurant and at bars like, ‘Go back to
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o this day, there is a stigma, a naive notion, that everyone who looks like me is a Muslim.
JIJOE JOSEPH
Former NUMC doctor your country,’” he said. “It took me until I was in my mid-30s to realize that Nassau County had racism.” One time when someone yelled at him to go back to his
country, he was with a woman from Russia. “She is white and blond,” he said. “She yelled back at them, ‘You should be yelling that at me.’” Eventually, the comments became intolerable, leading Joseph to ask his friends to meet him at restaurants and bars in Queens. After he left NUMC, he moved to Long Island City.
Ali Baqueri owns Sir Speedy Printing & Signs, a print shop in Plainview. His family is from India and is Muslim, but he was born in the U.S., grew up in Albertson and has lived in Huntington for three years. Twenty years ago, he was a high school senior. He has fair skin, and no one was racist toward him until they CONTINUED ON PAGE 11