Living in the Five Towns

Look what’s happening

AprIL

Courtesy Five Towns Kiwanis The Five Towns Kiwanis Club donated facemasks to the health care workers at LIJ Valley Stream Northwell Health.

MAY

Jeffrey Bessen/Herald In lieu of its annual Memorial Day Parade, the Inwood community celebrated essential workers in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic..

JuNe

Jeffrey Bessen/Herald Five Towners took part in a march through Cedarhurst and Lawrence to show their support for the Black Lives Matter movement.

Courtesy Sasha Young At least 3,000 donated facemasks were distributed at the Five Towns Community Center. From left Jessica Dennehy, Community Center Executive Director K. Brent Hill, Erika Kirchner, Diane Kirchner, Sasha Young, State Sen. Todd Kaminsky, Sarah Hayes, Marianella Mena, Pattie Slaton, Tzigane Morris and Edward Dennehy.

LIVING IN the Five towns

Across the Five Towns, living has changed dramatically in the past several months, from schools and businesses closing in March to the four-phase reopening of the economy that continues.

For the uninitiated, the Five Towns are Cedarhurst, Hewlett, Inwood, Lawrence and Woodmere. The area also includes Atlantic Beach, Hewlett Bay Park, Hewlett Harbor, Hewlett Neck, Meadowmere Park, North Woodmere and Woodsburgh.

School buildings shut down, which caused disruption to the school year and compelled districts and private schools to transform rapidly from in-person instruction to remote learning, a combination of which will be used as the new school year unfolds.

Instead of the usual late winter, spring and summer events that are synonymous with living in the Five Towns, there were collections and donations of facemasks, gloves and hand sanitizer, along with organizations helping to feed essential workers and those in need after many lost their jobs.

The Five Towns Community Center in Lawrence is now a beehive of activity, from Gammy’s Pantry, run by Inwood resident Sasha Young, offering food, clothes and other items for free, to the pantry becoming a Long Island Cares site that also provides free food.

In Hewlett, Blair Longaro organized Feeding Local Heroes and Friends, which had ordinary people ordering food from restaurants that was then delivered to hospital workers, police officers, firefighters and pharmacists.

The Marion & Aaron Gural JCC partnered with ComContinued on next page

Jeffrey Bessen/Herald Emily Simens, left, and Stacey Simens, from Hewlett, ate lunch under the outdoor tent at Friendlier Italian Restaurant in Woodmere. Continued from previous page munity Chest South Shore and Gabriel Boxer, the Kosher Guru, and many other sponsors to distribute free fresh food and produce community-wide. The Gural JCC also distributes or delivers food to those in need through its Rina Shkolnik Kosher Food Pantry.

Lawrence-based Achiezer remains at the forefront of assisting the Five Towns with Covid-19-related issues. The community resource center, founded and run by Rabbi Boruch Bender, helped bring a temporary outpatient center to Sh’or Yoshuv Institute in Lawrence at the height of the pandemic.

Stalwart charitable organizations such as the Kiwanis of the Five Towns and Peninsula Kiwanis continued their history of giving by collecting personal protective equipment such as face masks, gloves and gowns, and donating the items to hospitals and the police. Five Towns Kiwanis helped to bring food to seniors in need.

It was never easy or easygoing. At the beginning of the pandemic, there were many instances of people across the Five Towns not disposing of the protective gloves properly and just throwing them on the ground. Photographs of the trashed gloves appeared, public shaming arose on local Facebook pages, and it ceased to be a problem.

Because people could not congregate together in large groups, celebrations such as birthdays, retirements and school graduations took on a new appearance. Many on Long Island began organizing vehicle parades and driving by or parking at celebrants’ houses in the case of birthdays or retirements. Graduation parades took routes to drive by graduates’ homes, or in the case of Hewlett High School, the Homecoming parade route was used.

Summer in the Five Towns was different as well. The annual Santa Marina Festival in Inwood was canceled. Beach clubs, village beaches and county- and town-run swimming pools needed to adhere to state guidelines for capacity and social distancing, while ensuring that people wore facemasks.

Because not every day camp opened, and because only a few sleepaway camps opened, the campers and teenagers who usually spent hours or weeks away from home had to find other diversions. Older teens founded small businesses, such as Hewlett residents and twin brothers Caleb and Josh Goldstein, who created Five Towns Lifeguards and offered their skills to supervise children at backyard swimming pools.

The pandemic remains, and at press time in late August, it was unclear how the remainder of the 2020 would look. Would the outdoor fall fairs be held? Would all the Christmas tree and Hanukkah menorah lightings take place?

Living in the Five Towns has become different, but no less interesting.