________________ LONG BEACH _______________
HERALD Also serving Point Lookout & East Atlantic Beach
Gun buy-back this Saturday
Hodge leads unofficial votes
Fireworks show set for Friday
Page 2
Page 4
Page 16
Vol. 34 No. 28
JUlY 6 - 12, 2023
$1.00
He saved a stranger’s life L.B. resident donates marrow to young leukemia patient By BRENDAN CARPENTER bcarpenter@liherald.com
Justine Stefanelli/Herald
A 4K on the Fourth Hundreds of Long Beach runners hit the boardwalk on Tuesday for the annual Fabulous 4th 4K Race. Children kicked it off with a 1K fun run before the adults lined up. Story, more photos, Page 14.
In February 2021, Julius Wolfe came down with a fever, and small red spots, called petechiae, appeared on his legs. His mother, Tabitha Nilson, took him to an emergency room to make sure he didn’t have Covid-19 or some sort of allergic reaction. Blood tests confirmed that he didn’t have a viral disorder. Later that day, Julius, a 14-year-old resident of Stanwood, Washington, picked up a friend with his mother and went to church. Just
minutes later, his mother and stepfather got a call, drove back to the church, told Julius they had to leave and packed him and his friend into their car. “I didn’t know what was going on,” Julius recalled. “My friend had to be dropped off immediately at t h e i r h o u s e. T h e n we arrived at the hospital and I was rushed to the emergency room. Then I was told that I had cancer. And it was not a good feeling.” He was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia, a rare cancer of the Continued on page 10
Learning to combat drug addiction on the wrestling mat By SEAN KENNEDY Intern
Kevin Glenz, a star lacrosse player at Lynbrook High School and the son of Larry Glenz, a longtime wrestling coach at the high school, died in 2010, at 27, of a heroin overdose. Last week, Long Beach High School hosted a camp for dozens of wrestlers in an effort to take on this problem, which has had an impact on scholastic wrestling. Over 150 wrestlers in all grades, from across Nassau County, gathered at the Wrestling Takes Down Drugs summer wrestling camp on June 28. The
program was funded by Friends of Long Island Wrestling and the New York downstate chapter of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame. “It’s important for us to be here, helping these kids,” said co-organizer Hilary Becker, a coach of Lynbrook High’s wrestling team and a National Wrestling Hall of Fame inductee. “Hopefully they can take two things away from this — for one, they learn about the sport they love, but they can also take with them the meaning of saying no to drugs.” “We want to eliminate this problem in the wrestling community,” added Kevin Murphy,
W
e want to eliminate this problem in the wrestling community.
KEViN MURPHY Co-organizer
the other co-organizer, a member of the Hall of Fame’s downstate chapter and a fellow inductee. Both Becker and Murphy have received the hall’s Lifetime Service to Wrestling Award — and both were coached by Glenz at Lynbrook High.
The pair founded Wrestling Takes Down Drugs in 2018 with the hope of impacting young lives not only in their community, but also across Long Island. They received the support of a fellow former Lynbrook wrestler, current Nassau County Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder. “When we were starting the Wrestling Takes Down Drugs
program, we called Pat and asked if he wanted to help,” Murphy said. “Not only was he helpful, but he was able to elevate it to the level we are now, and we couldn’t have done that without him and the Nassau County Police Department’s help.” Since its inception, the proContinued on page 9