_____________ ROCKVILLE CENTRE ____________
Edition Graduation Keepsake
June 22, 2023
HERALD
GRADUATES the C L A S S
OF 2023
the best and brightest
Vol. 34 No. 26
Shimkin makes waves in Big 12
long Island author releases new novel
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JUNE 22 - 28, 2023
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Mount Sinai looks back on the pandemic By karINa koVaC kkovac@liherald.com
In December 2019, Adhi Sharma, the president of Mount Sinai South Nassau, first heard of the coronavirus. He thought back to the 2012 outbreak of the Middle East respiratory syndrome, known as MERS, which had a high mortality rate but was short-lived. Nonetheless, Sharma beginning preparing MSSN for whatever might come, because, he said r e c e n t l y, “ Yo u never know what these emerging infectious diseases are going to do.” By January 2020, it was clear that the coronavirus was not going to be contained like MERS, and at a planning meeting the following month, the hospital administration began anticipating a “very, very bad pandemic,” Sharma said. What worried him
LON, NAS, LYN, MAL
Daniel Offner/Herald
Carl WEEkS, of the Rockville Centre Fire Department, will serve as grand marshal of the Fourth Battalion Fire Parade and Drill July 14-15.
Longtime firefighter honored
Carl Weeks is named parade grand marshal By DaNIEl offNEr doffner@liherald.com
The Rockville Centre Fire Department is gearing up to host the Nassau County Four th Battalion’s Fire Parade and Drill competition July 14-15, and Carl Weeks, a 68-year member of Woodland Engine Company No. 4, has been named this year’s grand marshal. “It’s a great honor,” Weeks said. “I love the parade. Years
ago we used to go all over the state. We were the state champions. We marched in New York City and all over the whole state.” Weeks, 88, joined the Eureka Hook, Ladder and Bucket Company No. 1 in Rockville Centre shortly after graduating from Oceanside High School in 1954, at age 18. He served the company for about 10 years before joining Woodland Engine Company No. 4 LON, NAS, LYN, MAL
on Driscoll Avenue — not far from his home. “I used to run in the drills all the time, and was known for being a fast ladder climber,” Weeks said. His grandfather was one of the charter members of the company when it was created in 1912 to provide additional fire protection on Rockville Centre’s south side. “There’s a lot of tradition Continued on page 9 JUNE 22, 2023
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most, he recalled, was, “If it is global, there’s no place to go for resources. Everyone’s competing for the same resources.”
The beginning of the wave
That February, the hospital purchased 40 ventilators from Florida, and scrounged locally for about a dozen more. On Feb. 27, MSSN had its first confirmed diagnosis, and the staff began masking immediately to limit exposure. The hospital couldn’t afford to lose staffers before the approaching wave. In March, “Our beds (were) getting filled with Covid patients and there was really no good treatment,” Sharma said. “We were stuck with really no scientific data and trying to manage the sickest of the sickest patients in the county with no good tools.” Continued on page 20
Election Results Rockville Centre Mayor Francis Murray, Deputy Mayor Kathy Baxley, and newcomer Gregory P. Shaughnessy were elected to the village board on Tuesday night in uncontested races. William Croutier Jr. also won his re-election bid for village justice without opposition. Each will serve a four-year term.