Franklin Square/Elmont
HERALD Basement fire on Polk street
F.s. tradition draws hundreds
Community raises money for mother
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NOVEMBER 12 - 18, 2020
VOl. 22 NO. 46
Restaurateurs prepare for the winter Offer heated tents, indoor dining with space heaters so they can continue to offer outdoor dining during the winter. Local restaurant owners have “We did everything we could spent lots of time and money do to make the outdoor dining over the past few months ensur- magical, as we have installed ing that their dining spaces were lights, music and holiday decoracompliant with tions,” said Anna, guidelines issued who co-owns the by the state Departrestaurant with ment of Health and her husband. “We the Centers for Diswanted to have the ease Control and same vibe we had prevention, while when we did also trying to bring indoor dining.” customers back to At the restautheir eateries. rant’s third anniVito and Anna versary on Nov. 4, Cortesiano have the tent was filled hired additional aNNa with fall decor and staff at their res- CORtEsiaNO colorful balloons, taurant, Salvaand patrons posed tore’s of Elmont, to Co-owner, Salvatore’s for photos near a clean and sanitize of Elmont h ay s t a c k f i l l e d all the tables and with pumpkins. chairs, and to ensure that every- They were offered Uncle Louie G one who gets up from a table to ice cream and cupcakes sporting use the restroom or get a drink is the Salvatore’s logo, and anyone wearing a mask. If not, a Salva- who was dining in, either in the tore’s staffer will offer one. tent or at two indoor tables, The Cortesianos also spent received a bottle of champagne. several weeks this spring buildBut not everyone is comforting a fenced-in outdoor dining able dining in during the panarea on the vacant lot next to the demic, Anna noted, so the resrestaurant — complete with a taurant is continuing to offer brick floor, a waterfall and plants — and recently installed a tent Continued on page 3
By MElissa KOENig mkoenig@liherald.com
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Melissa Koenig/Herald
ValERiE JaNEK aNd Gregg Cajuste hosted Lana Mae Noone at G’s Club in West Hempstead last Sunday for a live reading of “Children of the April Rain.”
From Vietnam, with love
Local woman honored for chronicling airlifts By MElissa KOENig mkoenig@liherald.com
A s t h e Vi e t n a m Wa r dragged on in the fall of 1974, Lana and Byron Noone were fighting a battle of their own at home in Garden City South, struggling to deal with two miscarriages and having given up on conceiving a child of their own. Distraught, they couple talked to their pastor, the Rev. Dan Fritz, of the Christ First Presbyterian Church in Hempstead, and he suggested that they visit an adoption
agency in New York City. There the Noones were told that they would have to wait two years for an American child, or they could adopt a Vietnamese child who had been orphaned by the war. They chose the second option, figuring these children had nowhere else to go. The story of their adoption efforts, part of a international rescue program dubbed Operation Babylift, became the subject of a book written by Lana Noone, now 73 and still living in Garden City South, and a play she co-wrote, after
the Noones’ adopted daughter, Jennifer, graduated from H. Frank Carey High School in Franklin Square. The play, “Children of the April Rain,” was read by actors last Sunday at G’s Club in West Hempstead.
Rescuing the orphans
By 1975, the South Vietnamese city of Da Nang had fallen to North Vietnamese troops, and U.S. and South Vietnamese officials feared that Saigon — where Ed Daly, the chairman and principal Continued on page 8
e did everything we could do to make the outdoor dining magical.