_____________ ROCKVILLE CENTRE ____________
HERALD Time to fall back
Spooky Fest returns to RVC
Daylight Saving Time ends on Sunday
Remember to set your clocks back, and change your smoke and CO detector batteries
Page 3 Vol. 34 No. 45
NoVEMBER 2 - 8, 2023
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Two named Women of Distinction By NIColE FoRMISANo nformisano@liherald.com
Tim Baker/Herald
Raising money on the runway Assia Winfield hits the runway during the Rockville Centre Breast Cancer Coalition’s annual Fashion Show at the Garden City Hotel last week. Story, photos, Page 10.
Mercy staff secures 18 percent raises
Union employees negotiate a three-year contract By DANIEl oFFNER doffner@liherald.com
Employees of Mercy Hospital, in Rockville Centre, who are members of the 1199SEIU union, also known as United Healthcare Workers East, have successfully negotiated a new contract agreement with Catholic Health services that includes an 18 percent wage increase over the next three years. The contract agreement — the third since Mercy joined the union in 2017 — covers more than 500 staff members working in patient care, housekeeping, transport, food preparation, pharmacy and other parts of the hospital. It does not
include doctors and nurses, but applies to the technicians and aides that keep the facility running smoothly from day to day. Jobs with the lowest pay will receive additional increases over the next year, to bring their compensation and benefits closer to those of other 1199SEIU members in the metropolitan area. “The pay increases we fought for and won are substantial,” Dawn Naughton, a dietary aide who has been working at Mercy for 15 years, said in a statement. “A lot of us have been working overtime or two jobs to survive. I did the calculations, and (the increases) are going to make a big Continued on page 14
For eight area women who have gone above and beyond for their communities for decades, it was their tur n to receive some much-deserved thanks last weekend. Assemblyman Brian Curran honored them as Women of Distinction at Crossroads Farm at Grossman’s, in Malverne, on Sunday. “The one thing that all eight of these women have in common is their love and devotion to their community and their n e i g h b o r s, ” C u r r a n s a i d . “Whether it is their contributions to public safety, in local government, drug prevention, Boy Scouting, or children with disabilities or allergies, these eight honorees have made the conscious decision to bring their expertise and efforts to better their community.” Two of the honorees, Elizabeth Boylan and Katie Conlon, are Rockville Centre residents.
Katie Conlon
Locals may best know Conlon as a village trustee, but she be gan helping people long before she joined the board. She became a nurse practitioner after graduating from New
York University in 1995, and specialized in oncology. “It struck a chord in me,” Conlon said. “There’s something about the battle that cancer patients fight. Their true grit. What they go through just to survive another day.” It was a profound and humbling experience to work in Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center’s bone mar row transplant unit, she said, and to see some of her patients go on to live happy and healthy lives. Conlon left nursing in 2010 to raise her three children, Kathleen, now 17, Liam, 15, and Aidan, 14. As they grew, their mother coached soccer at the Rockville Centre Soccer Club and volleyball at St. Agnes Cathedral School. An athlete in middle and high school herself, Conlon said she wanted to foster a love of sports while connecting with her kids and their friends. She has since returned to work, becoming a nurse at Oceanside High School. She said that although she loved the intense, clinical atmosphere of a hospital, the opportunity to help kids in a new way has been gratifying. “We’re dealing with a lot of Continued on page 6