Malverne/West Hempstead
HERALD Intramural sports in Malverne
New air purifiers at Molloy College
Young costumed characters
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NOVEMBER 12 - 18, 2020
VOl. 27 NO. 46
From Vietnam to W. Hempstead L.I. Breakfast Club honors local woman who memorialized airlifts By MElIssa kOENIG mkoenig@liherald.com
Melissa Koenig/Herald
ValENtINa JaNEk, faR left, and Gregg Cajuste hosted Lana Mae Noone at G’s Club in West Hempstead last Sunday for a live reading of “Children of the April Rain.”
As the Vietnam War dragged on in the fall of 1974, Lana and Byron Noone were fighting a battle of their own at home in Garden City South, struggling to deal with two miscarriages and having given up on conceiving a child of their own. Distraught, they couple talked to their pastor, the Rev. Dan Fritz, of the Christ First Presbyterian Church in Hempstead, and he suggested that they visit an adoption agency in New York City. There the Noones
were told that they would have to wait two years for an American child, or they could adopt a Vietnamese child who had been orphaned by the war. They chose the second option, figuring these children had nowhere else to go. The story of their adoption efforts, part of a international rescue program dubbed Operation Babylift, became the subject of a book written by Lana Noone, now 73 and still living in Garden City South, and a play she co-wrote, after the Noones’ adopted daughter, Jennifer, Continued on page 3
Malverne author wins praise for science book series By NakEEM GRaNt ngrant@liherald.com
Malvernite Carol Basdeo said that one of her biggest goals as a mother was to show her two children — Kayla, 10, and K.C., 8 — that they could pursue any career they wanted while helping them develop a love for learning. She believed that she could accomplish this through her favorite subject, science. “My belief was that I wasn’t going to decide their career path for them,” Basdeo, 39, said. “But as a parent, it’s my responsibility to expose them to all the different facets that’s out there so that they can make the proper
decision.” Basdeo, who was a bank teller for more than a decade, now owns Nassau HVAC Supply Inc. in Lynbrook, and has also become known as an author. A native of Guyana, she launched the first of four short children’s books with science themes in April 2018. She got the idea for the first one, “K.C. & Kayla’s Science Corner: The Apple Experiment,” from K.C., then 5, when he came home excited about a school experiment. “My first book was based on my son’s experience,” she recalled. “He’d done the apple experiment” — in which he placed an apple in a bowl of
water, saw that it floated, and then explained why. Later that evening, Basdeo wrote her first draft in a new marble notebook in about half an hour. “I wanted my kids to remember their childhood,” she said, “and that’s why I based my story on them and their experiences, so they can look back on their memories.” Basdeo’s books, which she is calling K.C. & Kayla’s Science Corner series, are all published by MindStir Media. Her series garnered recognition in the children’s book categories of two national book competitions last month, the Manhattan Book Awards and the Moonbeam
Awards. All four books are aimed at first- and second-graders. They teach science concepts through stories accompanied by instructions for easy-to-perform experiments. “I really did believe in it, and I thought that it was something that kids would love,” Basdeo said. “I think the part that I enjoyed the most was when I
would go to the schools or the libraries and I would read to the kids. Just to see the look on their faces — that really gave me the motivation to keep going.” Basdeo had planned to do a book reading at the Queens Public Library as part of Indie Author Day on Nov. 7, but the coronavirus pandemic forced the Continued on page 14