_________________ FREEPORT _________________
HERALD $1.00
county District 1 candidates speak
Hispanic Month at Woodward
Mulé and Mcevoy face Q and A
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Vol. 86 No. 43
october 21 - 27, 2021
Controversy over Cleveland Field deepens by reiNe betHANy rbethany@liherald.com
Reine Bethany/Herald
boArD of eDucAtioN President Maria Jordan-Awalom clarified the board’s view of the Cleveland Avenue Field controversy during the Oct. 6 board meeting in Caroline G. Atkinson School. At left was Superintendent Dr. Kishore Kuncham.
A fundamental disagreement between Freeport’s village and school boards over the legal status of the Cleveland Avenue Field has prompted litigation from both sides, and ignited confusion and controversy among Freeport residents. The conflict hinges on the legal meaning of a 1949 document in which the Long Island State Park Commission granted an easement of parkland to the Freeport Public Schools. The school system has used the land
as an athletic field for 72 years, and claims the easement cannot be revoked. The village gover nment denies the authority of the 1949 document, and claims a legal right to revoke the easement and sell the land. “The village is in the process of negotiation with Amazon,” said Village Attorney Howard Colton in a phone interview. “They’re looking to put in one of these last-mile distribution hubs that they have in other parts of Long Island, and Amazon has identified Cleveland Avenue as a possible location Continued on page 8
Local author’s memoir awakens decades-long grief, love by reiNe betHANy rbethany@liherald.com
Before Barbara Spinelli, the career counselor at Freeport Memorial Library, wrote “The Letters,” her grief over losing her young husband in the Vietnam War in 1970 remained deeply private. Now people from all over who have read “The Letters” are texting and calling to tell her about their own grief. They are reaching for the healing that she found when she courageously faced the pain that she had shut into a hard-shell suitcase half a century ago Grief is never an easy topic to approach, and hardly the route
to a best-seller. But Spinelli’s subtitle — “Memoir of Love, L o s s a n d Re s t o r at i o n ” — strengthens the reader to pick up the book and not put it down until the end. The devastation of losing Lester “Chip” Cafieri while he was on an Army mission in a Vietnamese jungle is balanced by the restoration that she discovered when she reread the 200-plus letters that he had written to her, and rediscovered the power of his love for her. Spinelli, 70, begins her book with the date 9/11/2020 and the words, “It is often said that many of our life changing experiences occurred on an average day or in an ordinary manner. This is no
exception.” Amid the pandemic, she had her hair done for the first time in six months. A chance encounter near the beauty shop sent her to her childhood home in West Hempstead, to which she had returned years ago after a divorce. In a dusty crawl space in its attic, she found the suitcase that held the letters, and re-entered the world that she had consigned to obscurity — the world of her true love. In 1968, Spinelli was a Brooklyn girl transplanted to West Hempstead. She met Lester “Chip” Cafieri through a friend. Spinelli described the discovery of her soulmate straightforwardly: “That night, I learned you
were genuine, insightful and compassionate. You wanted to know about me and listened to everything I said. . . . A few weeks later you told me you loved me and I knew I loved you. . . . Our fate was sealed.” Spinelli held a book signing at the library last Sunday. She told her audience that when she and Chip met, “The world just fell
away . . . and it opened up. He was a volunteer fireman. . . . To see what volunteer firemen did was interesting and fun and I was very proud of him.” Through short excerpts from “The Letters,” Spinelli carried the audience through those initial months of falling in love to the afternoon when the couple Continued on page 13