_________________ FREEPORT _________________
HERALD $1.00
library patrons plant a garden
locals resist secretive bill
Brooks runs for District 5 seat
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Vol. 87 No. 23
JUNE 2 - 8, 2022
A day of remembrance and community spirit Parade honors military, refreshes village unity By REINE BETHANY rbethany@liherald.com
Deliah Roberts/Herald
SpEcTAToRS AT THE Freeport Memorial Day Parade lined Merrick Road and filled the lawn of the Freeport Memorial Library.
With flags waving and band instruments shining bright in the sunlight, Freeport’s Memorial Day parade honored the sacrifice of the community’s fallen soldiers. Beginning at the high school, the parade processed up West Merrick Road to Freeport Memorial Library, named for the stone war memorial placed on its front lawn in 1924. Veterans who are members of Freeport’s American Legion William Clinton Story Post 342 carried its large banner and acknowledged spectators’ cheers with big smiles as they passed. The village’s many organizations and groups stretched in colorful ranks all along the parade route. Members of the volunteer Fire Department, the state’s largest, marched in midnightblue columns, followed by a long line of fire trucks and rescue vehicles.
District students ages 9 and up showcased their musical abilities, marching, playing and dancing. After Deacon Bruce Burnham, of Our Holy Redeemer RC Church, delivered the invocation, Post 342 member Dominic Albanese led the Pledge of Allegiance, and Freeport High musicians played the national anthem. After welcoming the dignitaries in attendance, parade announcer William H. White Jr. turned the microphone over to Mayor Robert Kennedy, who, at the conclusion of his remarks, offered a cautionary quote from American journalist Elmer Davis: “This nation will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave.” Post 342 treasurer and Past Commander Calvin Andrew introduced the parade’s grand marshal, Coy Richardson, a highly decorated Vietnam veteran who has lived in Freeport with his Continued on page 4
Outcry from residents and officials after mass shootings By REINE BETHANY rbethany@liherald.com
Recent mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas, have evoked stronger-than-ever local outcry for gun-control reform. Social media posts by state and county officials and a rally in Uniondale expressed the public’s outrage that more has not been done to limit access to guns, especially assault weapons. In Uniondale, Sergio Argueta, founder of STRONG Youth, a Uniondale-based youth outreach organization, coordinated a rally on May 25, a day after the Uvalde
tragedy, in which 19 elementary school students and two teachers were killed. Argueta spoke to about 70 people who filled Martin Luther King Jr. Peace Park, a small park at the corner of Uniondale Avenue and Nassau Road. “Yesterday the unthinkable happened,” Argueta said. “There are individuals here that know all too well the tragedy of losing a loved one to gun violence, here in our own communities.” Argueta connected the teenage gunmen in Buffalo and Uvalde to the loss of his own best friend in a gang shooting nearly three decades ago. He described
the shooters, then and now, as “young people who find it easier to get their hands on guns than it is getting their hands on jobs — individuals that find it easier to buy a box of bullets than it is to get access to a college or a university, or a trade to move forward.” To emphasize the pain and fear the shootings have incurred for children, Argueta called several middle-schoolers and teens to speak from the terraced platform surrounding the metal statue of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Richard Paul, an intervention counselor at STRONG, acted out
a dramatic poem he had written, which read in part: “Once you pull that trigger you can never take it back. Mother loses her son, a son loses his father, Ill feelings are harbored because of that revolver.” Paul added, “If it was doubledigit numbers of young people
from Uniondale, Roosevelt, Freeport, Hempstead, our communities would be devastated! We can’t wait for somebody to magically come and save us.” He urged everyone to contact their elected officials. Lawyer and community advocate Fred Brewington, who Continued on page 14