_______ Lynbrook/east rockaway ______
HERALD Also serving Bay Park
Students show love for literacy
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Vol. 31 No. 6
FEBRUARY 1 - 7, 2024
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Lynbrook woman logs evolution of maternity By NIColE FoRMISANo
nformisano@liherald.com
Courtesy Sarah Sobey-Parrott
Barbra Sobey, in orange cap above, has 13 children, 21 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. She was inspired to have a large family after reading “Cheaper By The Dozen,” but one-upped the Gilbreth family — literally.
Labor and child-raising isn’t what it used to be. Barbra Sobey, of Lynbrook, hasn’t just researched it — she’s lived it. She’s had 13 children over the course of 29 years, and experienced a dramatic shift firsthand. “It was very dark,” Sobey, 80, recalled of her first labor in 1960. “The doctors came every once in a while with flashlights to check the patients there. And everybody, I remember, was screaming their heads off. It was horrible. “And then I was given a shot of something. That was all I remember ConTinueD on paGe 9
No end in sight for flooding in East Rockaway and Bay Park By BEN FIEBERT bfiebert@liherald.com
As parts of East Rockaway and Bay Park continue to flood in heavy rainstorms, it’s clear to residents that the Nassau County Storm Drainage Improvement Project has yet to help them. Work that was supposed to solve the flooding problems appears to have made things worse for some and done little for others. The hundreds of million dollar project was completed last spring, but after the new drainage system was put to the test several times over the past couple of months, neighbors have made it clear that they are
not happy with the results. The project was announced in 2014, but work began about three years ago, at the height of the pandemic. According to NassauCountyNY.gov, its objective was to address the urgent need to improve drainage in the area to avoid a repeat of the catastrophic flooding that resulted from Hurricane Sandy two years earlier. Brian Barry, who lives on West Boulevard in East Rockaway, said that the project did not accomplish what it set out to do. “The Town of Hempstead is not maintaining the new drainage system,” Barry said. “It’s full of debris, it’s full of leaves, it’s
full of branches.” Since the completion of the project, Barry noted, his neighborhood has flooded twice, despite the fact that flooding hadn’t been a major problem since Sandy, until 2022. After the storm, community members were given an option to sign over their homes temporarily to the New York Governor’s Office of Storm Recovery, which pledged to mitigate the flooding by raising homes, or hire their own contractors to restore and elevate their homes. Barry chose the first option, which, he said, eventually resulted in worse flooding on his street. “The town installed a drive-
way at my home, which is almost a foot lower than the rest of my front property,” Barry said. “They raised the street six inches, so now the street in front of my house on West Boulevard is higher than my driveway.” The construction at Barry’s home was completed in 2019. Since then, water from the Grand Canal, roughly a hundred feet from his house, has mixed
with sewer water coming up from a drain installed in his driveway to create what he describes as a health hazard. Barry’s home became a breeding ground for black mold, and the saltwater that ponds around the house during winter storms freezes, causing cracks in the floors and walls. “They have a key to the drain ConTinueD on paGe 11