_________ Oceanside/island park ________
your HEALTH body / mind / fitness
and February 23, 2023
with a focus on:
HEA RT HEALTH
HERALD Your Health Heart Health Inside
Vol. 58 No. 9
Service dog helps a veteran
Arrested for lewd Snapchat photos
Page 5
Page 14
FEBRUARY 23 - MARCH 1, 2023
$1.00
Returning to a legendary ship World War II veteran Herbert Alberg gets reacquainted with USS Midway By KARINA KoVAC kkovac@liherald.com
Courtesy USS Midway Museum
HERBERt AlBERg REAlIzEd his dream of returning to the USS Midway last Saturday after 77 years. His year on the carrier in 1946, as an 18-year-old radar man during Operation Frostbite, was an unforgettable experience, he said.
“At night I’ve lain awake thinking about it,” Herbert Alberg, 97, said. “If I had a bucket list, it’d be on the bucket list.” Alberg served on the USS Midway, an aircraft carrier, in 1946, when he was 18. Last weekend, he stepped aboard the ship, which is now a museum in San Diego, for the first time in 77 years. He reminisced, and donated one-of-akind photos he took secretly while aboard the ship, as well
as other items, to the museum. He also met up with other World War II veterans and answered museum guests’ questions. Preparing for his flight from New York, Alberg packed a suitcase in his Oceanside home with, among other things, pictures of icebergs, enlisted men plowing snow off the Midway’s flight deck, sailors sunbathing in Guantanamo Bay, and Cuba. Each photo brought back memories of his time aboard the Midway as a radar man in the Combat Information Center. Continued on page 16
Harnessing the potential of students’ wonder and awe
Interactive Big Science Day comes to Island Park, along with Hall of Science representatives By KARINA KoVAC kkovac@liherald.com
Live insects, bubbles, electricity, slime, and rockets. That’s what students six through eight grades at the Lincoln Orens Middle School in Island Park enjoyed learning and tinkering with as part of Big Science Day, an inschool program facilitated by the New York Hall of Science. The event is one part of the district’s three-year strategic plan to promote wonder and awe in students toward science, technology, engineering, arts and math.
This was the first Big Science Day for Island Park schools and the first New York Hall of Science school outing since the pandemic’s onset. The New York Hall of Science is an interactive science museum in Queens that features over 450 hands-on exhibits along with community outreach programs. The school district used to host National Circus Week funded by the Parent Teacher Association, but reallocated the funding towards more applicable skills like critical thinking, teamwork and problem solving. “Those types of skills are not
really something transferable,” Superintendent of Schools Vincent Randazzo said. “What we’re doing here is we’re getting them excited about science and engineering, which is preparing them for jobs in the future. So, the PTA, who sponsored National Circus Week, approached me last spring and said, ‘You know, we’d like to do something a little different.’” Assistant Superintendent Alison Offerman-Celentano was the science director while working in the Commack school district, so making Science Day happen was a passion project of hers.
“We’re hoping that the students become inspired that they find a passion and a love for any of the STEAM fields, whether it’s science, technology, engineering, arts or mathematics, and they carry that forward into high school when they have more choice in the course offer-
ings that they’re able to take, as they advanced,” she said. “And then hopefully, these skills and this inquiry-based approach to learning will carry them forward into jobs that we don’t even know exist now, but will be based on collaboration, Continued on page 4