______________ VALLEY STREAM _____________
HERALD Your Health
R.V.C. Diocese picks schools chief
Film expo marks 25 years
Inside
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Mental Health Vol. 33 No. 30
JUlY 21 - 27, 2022
$1.00
A tale of an Eagle Scout and legislator By JUAN lASSo jlasso@liherald.com
Courtesy Carrié Solages
StepHeN AND JACKIe Green, Mekhi’s parents, and Mekhi pose with Legislator Carrié Solages at the Eagle Court of Honors ceremony at Wesley United Methodist Church in Franklin Square.
Long before Mekhi Green, of Boy Scout Troop 485, in Franklin Square, earned the rank of Eagle Scout, a photo — taken 12 years ago — captured a unique moment in Green’s scouting journey. The picture, dug up by a staffer in Nassau County Le gislator Car rié Solages’s office, shows Green and his fellow Cub Scouts of Valley Stream’s Pack 106 crowding a hallway at Howell Road Elementary School, beaming, with Solages behind them.
Mekhi’s mother, Jackie Green, who at the time was the pack’s scoutmaster and den leader, remembers arranging for Solages to pay a visit to the scouts to help them earn their citizenship belt loop and pin. One of the requirements was that the scouts interview someone involved in local government, Jackie recalled. Her thoughts turned to the then recently elected Solages who gave the fourth-grade scouts a civics talk. Mekhi’s shared moment with the legislator seemed to have left him with quite the Continued on page 9
Waiter who served up comfort, companionship dies at 93 By KARINA KoVAC kkovac@liherald.com
Victor Morfessis, who was a native of Greece, lived through occupations by Italy and Germany in World War II, the Greek Civil War and a devastating 7.2 magnitude earthquake in 1953 before he came to the U.S. seeking any opportunities available in 1955. Leaving his hometown of Homeric, Ithaka, where he was born on Jan. 13, 1929, he followed many other Greeks who emigrated to America. “There was literally no opportunity to stay there, and that was a time when a lot of people from that area migrated here to the
United States,” Victor’s son George, 59, said, telling the story of how his father jumped a ship from Greece in New York, was discovered and deported, and then jumped ship again in Montreal to cross the border. Victor worked as a server in restaurants and diners across the metropolitan area — including the Baldwin Coach Diner — for nearly 50 years, until his death on July 3, at age 93. “He was working pretty much in the restaurant business for his entire working life,” George said. He built a house in Valley Stream for his wife, Stella, and, later, George. In the last months of his life, he still tended the
flower and vegetable gardens. He was known to work on the house during his one day off each week, always focused on improving it. “You appreciate a lot of the daily stuff that happened all the time that, at the time, you really didn’t appreciate it, but you realize it had a lasting effect on you,” George said of life with his father, adding that he raised his own children to be generous like his father. In 1960, Victor began working at a semi-famous luncheonette on Jamaica Avenue in Queens called Teddy’s. He was there until it closed in 1975, and then he got a job at the Baldwin Coach
Diner, and stayed there for 25 years. At the counter, he served comfort food and companionship to those who wandered in and the regulars alike. A half-dozen former customers came to Victor’s wake. “My father left the Baldwin Coach over 20 years ago,” George said. “I wouldn’t expect anybody from a place that I worked at 20
years ago to show up — (not) even the people I worked with, let alone people I served.” George likened his father to a bartender who lends an ear to a customer. “The same people sat at the counter and knew each other day after day year after year,” George said. “I think you estabContinued on page 15