________________ LONG BEACH _______________
HERALD Also serving Point Lookout & East Atlantic Beach
City to digitize old documents
Hundreds run Snowflake Race
l.B. gymnasts nearing goal
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Vol. 34 No. 7
FEBRUARY 9 - 15, 2023
$1.00
Library hosts celebration of Lunar New Year ists in Partnership, which organized the show, “A 2023 Lunar Celebration,” in conjunction A bit of Asian culture, color- with the Long Beach Library, ful, bold and musical, came to said the fact that the city’s Asian the Long Beach Public Library community is small made it all last Sunday, the last day of the the more important to hold the Lunar New Year. event. Two groups composed pri“It’s all about making people marily of teenagers aware of other cul— the Ryu Shu Kan: tures,” MathiesonJapanese Arts CenEllmer said. “We’re ter, of Farmingville, an island, but we’re and the Chinese not alone amongst Center of Long ourselves.” The celeI s l a n d , i n We s t bration was an Hempstead — staged opportunity to separate half-hour expand understandperformances on the ing among different l i b r a r y ’s s e c o n d JoHANNA groups and to showfloor to celebrate the MATHiESoNcase different holiyear of the Water day traditions, she EllMER Rabbit. said. The Water Rabbit Artists in The event took is a symbol of lon- Partnership place at a time of gevity, peace and high tension prosperity in Chibetween the United nese culture. The year 2023 is Station and China. Last Saturpredicted to be a year of hope. day the U.S. shot down a Chinese Long Beach has a tiny Asian spy balloon that had drifted population — only about 4.5 per- across the American continent. cent of the city’s roughly 35,000 The Chinese have condemned residents identify as Asian. The the action. only group that is smaller is Nonetheless, MathiesonLatinos, who comprise about 3.8 Ellmer said, art took precedence percent of the population. over conflict at the library on But Johanna Mathieson- Sunday. Ellmer, executive director of ArtContinued on page 5
By JAMES BERNSTEiN jbernstein@liherald.com
i
t’s all about making people aware of other cultures.
Tim Baker/Herald
GiNNY ANd doN Kelly look forward to Valentine’s Day on Tuesday.
Long-wed couple met in Lido Beach as teenagers in 1946 By JAMES BERNSTEiN jbernstein@liherald.com
O
ne day in the summer of 1946, Ginny Lamanda, then 14, was chasing a group of young boys down Park Street, in Lido Beach, in a game of Ringolevio. A 14-year-old boy, Don Kelly, was watching it all from a nearby stoop. “They were running away from Ginny,” Kelly said in the Point Lookout home he shares with his wife of more than 60 years, Ginny Kelly, née Lamanda. “She was eliciting these blood-curdling screams. I knew right then and there, she was the one.” “She was so involved with life, so pretty,”
Kelly, now 90, said. But, he added, “It took me three years to get up the guts to ask her out.” As teens, they lived two houses apart but barely knew each other. The couple, who married on Oct. 8, 1955, at Manhattan’s elegant Waldorf Astoria Hotel, plan to spend Valentine’s Day next week the way they have for decades. Ginny will take delivery of a large bouquet of red roses from her husband, and they will go out to dinner. “Now that we’re approaching 68 years together, I don’t know how a florist is going to handle it,” Don joked. He and Ginny, he added, will have dinner alone, without their two daughters, Nancy Continued on page 11